Roblox claims to be “overwhelmingly positive experience” despite over 13,000 child exploitation incidents in 2023

• Roblox reported 13,316 incidents of child exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2023
• Of all content on the platform, “only” 0.0063% has been flagged for violating bullying, hate speech and violent extremism policies

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Despite reporting 13,316 incidents of child exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2023, Roblox claims that its platform is an “overwhelmingly positive experience” navigating the “complexities” of online child safety.

Those incidents were reported by Roblox itself at an increase from roughly 10,000 in 2022. Meanwhile, at least 24 arrests on grooming and abuse charges in the US have occurred in the past six years alone – where predators met victims via Roblox.

And following a recent Bloomberg report which called the alleged “paedophile problem” an “enormous” one, Roblox has now shared its perspective with Eurogamer.

With 13,316 instances over a year in the context of 77 million daily users (as of Q1 2024), Roblox has claimed the Bloomberg report contains “glaring mischaracterisations” about user protection and “fails to reflect both the complexities of online child safety and the realities of the overwhelmingly positive experiences that tens of millions of people of all ages have on Roblox every day”.

“One of the safest online environments”

Aiming to reassure users, Roblox has stated that new strategies are implemented regularly to improve its moderation systems, and that the company has spent nearly 20 years “making the platform one of the safest online environments for our users, particularly the youngest users”.

Roblox’s chief safety officer Matt Kaufman shared that “only” 0.0063% of all content has been flagged on the platform for violating bullying, hate speech and violent extremism policies, and that internal metrics are continuously measured by humans and AI.

He also highlighted preventative safety measures as a “fundamental” investment at Roblox, ever-important as the platform continues to evolve and scale up – naturally leading to more communication between users.

“With each passing year, we implement new strategies and technology to achieve gains in speed and effectiveness of our safety and moderation systems,” Kaufman said.

“We will continue to work tirelessly to keep our users safe and be vigilant against bad actors who might attempt to circumvent our safety systems. And we recognise, too, that this critical work is never finished.”

A total of 904 billion messages were sent on Roblox in the 12 months up to September 2023. Potential communications have grown exponentially in 2024 with the introduction of a real-time chat translator using AI technology, overcoming the language barrier between players.