Roblox Unveils New Parental Controls
Ubiquitous online video game Roblox is adding new content moderation tools designed to give parents more control over how their children use the game.
In an email sent to parents who manage children’s accounts, Roblox says it will introduce “Roblox accounts with parental privileges” next month. These accounts will be linked to the child’s account and will allow parents to “view and update parental controls for their child from their device,” as well as access information about their child’s daily screen time and friends on the platform.
Roblox will also require parental permission to use some chat features for users under 13 and will introduce new experience labeling that will detail content rather than just specify age, allowing parents to set limits on the type of content children can access . Users under the age of 9 will soon need parental permission to access content labeled “Moderate Maturity Level.” (I’m surprised this hasn’t happened yet!)
Currently, Roblox accounts can be created instantly with the age chosen by the user, without any verification or verification. Entering a phone number allows you to use voice chat. Conceivably, an enterprising child could create an account and lie about their age to get around the new parental controls and content restrictions.
Roblox’s new parental controls come on the heels of reports that it’s an “X-rated pedophile hellscape.”
The announcement of the new safety features comes weeks aftera damning investigative report from Hindenburgh Research called Roblox an “X-rated pedophile from hell” that exposes children to “grooming, pornography, violent content and extremely offensive language.”
The report lists inappropriate Roblox content that was open to children, including games such as “Public Toilet Simulator”, “Beat Up the Homeless Man”, “Escape to Epstein’s Island” and “Diddy Party”, and describes the open trafficking of children. pornography in the game. The Hindenburg report mirrors an earlier warning from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation , which concluded that Roblox is “too high a risk to children.”
And that’s a lot of children. According to Roblox’s SEC report , 21% of the game’s estimated 79.5 million players are under 9 years old, 21% are between 9 and 12 years old, and 16% are between 13 and 16 years old.
Along with detailing “pedophile hell,” the Hindenburg Report accuses Roblox of lying to investors, regulators, advertisers and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about the number of people using the service and other key metrics.
In response to Hindenburg’s report , Roblox says it has a “robust set of proactive security measures designed to identify and prevent malicious or malicious activity on the platform” and calls Hindenburg’s financial statements “misleading.”
A quick search on Roblox reveals that most of the specific events listed in the Hindenburg Report have been removed from the game, but as of this writing, you can still visit Fak Off, Beat Up the Homeless. and enjoy the atmosphere of a “public bathroom simulator ”. Advertised for players over 9 years old, it took me about 45 seconds to encounter avatars simulating sex on a bathroom floor in Public Bathroom Simulator.