During the briefing, Kaufman called Robras “one of the safest places online for people to come together and spend time with friends and family.”
Kirra Pendergast, founder and CEO of Safe On Social, is CEO of Save On Social, an online safety organization operating around the world, and because Roblox's latest safety measures are largely opt-in, “it's the responsibility to identify and manage risks to minors. For example, features such as machine learning age estimation tools can misclassify users as older or younger. In-person code scanning “assuming face-to-face QR code scanning is inherently safe,” she says.
“Pedators often use real-world grooming tactics,” says Pendalgast. “QR scans don't verify trustworthy relationships. Predators can build trust online, manipulate children to scan QR codes offline, and verify “trusted connections” on Roblox's system. Actual protection requires joint parental confirmation of connections, not child-initiated permissions. ”
Additionally, they say that trustworthy connections only apply to chat, and that “a large surface area exposed and at best a brittle barrier” applies only to chat.
When face-to-face QR codes ask how minors can keep them safe from real-world grooming tactics, Kaufman echoes a press conference's comment that there is no “silver bullet.” Instead, he says it's a lot of systems working together. “These systems start with our policies, our community standards,” Kaufmann says. “Automatic monitoring of things, it's our partnership, the people behind the scenes. So there's everything that's in place to keep people safe. It's not just a QR code, it's not just an estimate of age, it's all of this acting in concert.”
Kaufman says Roblox is “more ahead” than other platforms because children ages 13 to 17 cannot pass trustworthy connections and have unfiltered communication. “We feel that we are really setting global standards in the sense of having safe and open communication for our teenage audiences.”
According to Roblox's briefing, the updates are part of Roblox's typical development process, with no “the impact of a particular event” or feedback. “It's not a response to anything,” Kaufman said. “This is part of our long-term plan to make Roblox as safe as possible.”
Kaufman also tells Wired that the game's scrutiny and increased discussion have not dramatically affected the company's plans. “What we're doing with this announcement is trying to set up a bar for what we think is suitable for the kids,” he says.
Looking at technologies like generative AI, he says: “Technology may have changed, but the principles are still the same. We also see AI as a real opportunity to do what we do safely when we think about moderation. AI is at the heart of that.”
During the briefing, he said that Roblox believes it is important for parents and guardians to “build dialogue” with their children about online safety. “It's about discussing where they spend their time online, who their friends are and what they're doing,” Kaufman said. “That argument is probably the most important thing to do to keep people safe, and we are investing in the tools to make it happen,” he added that Roblox recognizes that families have different expectations for proper online behavior. “If parents make decisions about what suit their children, it may not match the decisions we may make, and I may make them for my own family,” he said. “But that's fine, and we respect the difference.”
