Roblox to block children from talking to adult strangers after string of lawsuits

Submitted ⁨⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨simple@piefed.social⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2025/nov/18/roblox-facial-age-estimation-children-adults-chats-blocked

From next month it will start enforcing facial age estimation to allow children to chat with strangers only if they are in their broad age group.

Roblox compared its new system to school cohorts such as elementary, middle school and high school. It will be introduced first in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, where children will be blocked from privately chatting with adults they do not know in real life from next month, and in the rest of the world in early January.

Users will be placed into the following groups: under nine, nine to 12, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, 18 to 20, or 21 and over. Children will be able to chat only with others in their age group and similar ones. For example, a child with an estimated age of 12 will be able to chat only with under-16s. Images and video used for the checks would not be stored, Roblox said.

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supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

From next month it will start enforcing facial age estimation to allow children to chat with strangers only if they are in their broad age group.

This is going to backfire spectacularly, what idiots.

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- Carmakazi@piefed.social ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Right on its face, is it even legal to collect head shots of minors? I know US privacy laws are a joke but there’s usually some carve outs that protect minors.
  
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  - Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It’s illegal to collect ANY data from children under 13. Facial scans are WAY worse than the anonymized use stats those laws were put in place to block
    
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  - meco03211@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Can’t protect them too much, though. Otherwise, how would the pedo-in-chief and his ilk get a fresh crop of sex slaves?
    
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- dil@piefed.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Ais gonna be like you look mature for your age putting ppl higher or lower
  
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- pivot_root@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  No, no. It makes perfect sense from an investment standpoint. Their actual target audience would love to be able to pay for access to that catalog.
  
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Doomsider@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
I don’t allow my kids to play it. It sucks, but the reality is the game has been captured by pedos. I saw too many questionable things when I watched them play. Invariably they will be unsupervised at some point, even for brief periods, so it is not worth the risk.

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rtxn@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Problem: the game is getting a notoriety for being infested by pedophiles.

Solution: send your photographs to the game infested by pedophiles to prove you are a real child.

Fucking. Incredible. If this was written in a manuscript, it would be tossed for being too cartoonishly unrealistic.

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- Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Do you have a better idea?
  
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  - rtxn@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Absolutely! Multiple, in fact. In order of preference:
    
    Shut down the game, dissolve the company, and donate all remaining funds to a women’s shelter.
    
    Prosecute groomers instead of banning and threatening the people who are trying to stop the fuckers and crying about vigilantism even when the proper reporting channels are used.
    
    Use AI for a beneficial purpose at least one goddamn time. Scan the text and voice communications (it’s a public game, there is no expectation of privacy), flag suspicious exchanges for human review, then ban and report groomers.
    
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  - altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Them having an office large enough to moderate in-game communications, on every popular language? They have some billions to spare. Serving kids requires a lot of work they have neglected for a very long time.
    
    Facebook was a vehicle for hateful, genocidal messages in Myanmar, and they seemingly got of the hook having no person understanding local language on the market they occupied.
    
    If Roblox primarily targets kids, they can’t go without agressive moderation, psy-help on demand, things one would find obvious, but these are never required, not to say it’s not that sexy as getting profits and cutting corners.
    
    I don’t know if their business model would be viable if they started things right from the beginning, but it would be more stressful to them to finally start doing something about that.
    
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  - chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Emote only chat
    
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peopleproblems@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
See, what I figured out is that I don’t have to let my son play Roblox. Sure, he might be the “weird” one who’s dad doesn’t let him. But he was going to be “weird” anyway. That’s just how our lives work.

Plus you have AuADHD, having it myself, it makes you vulnerable to predators in ways you can’t understand yet.

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- kmartburrito@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Hey there’s maybe tens of us! Hello fellow reasonable parent!
  
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- Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  FINALLY a good parent!
  
  Please have more babies!
  
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  - peopleproblems@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I would happily have more babies as children are fun.
    
    Unfortunately that requires a partner who values intelligence, child development, learning and desires children. When I find such a unicorn I’ll make as many babies as I can reasonably raise (probably like 2 or three more maximum)
    
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Gullible@sh.itjust.works ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Image

Recognized as [teen]

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pyria@kbin.melroy.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I wouldn't be complaining about this, except I am because Roblox is operated by pedos.

Something extreme measures such as face recognition has to be taken to ensure problems like this won't happen again. However, though, pedophiles having access to data storage containing such verifications can go so wrong on so many levels.

So heres what they should do:

Fire and prosecute all of the pedos.
Replace the pedos with trustworthy people to operate Roblox.
Then go through verifying.

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- Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Option 2…shut down roblox. It doesn’t NEED to exist.
  
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  - Eranziel@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I like this option best, tbh.
    
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  - pyria@kbin.melroy.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I don't get the appeal, really. It's just a lego-looking ripoff where the arms are fucking huge and everything. The things that get chosen to be popular, says a lot about people's collective tastes sometimes.
    
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- UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  “Guess we arent allowed internet privacy after all everybody. Dont worry, its for the children.”
  
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Broadfern@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
God forbid they just shut down the chat function??? Ffs

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- nomorebillboards@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  That would be stupid, many games rely on chat and aren’t exclusively played by children
  
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  - Doomsider@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    You are correct, Pedophiles also play.
    
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  - MotoAsh@piefed.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    and? Why do you want to enable pedos?
    
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blave@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
So, Roblox is shutting down? The entire thing is a child sex crime, so unless they’re shutting down, nothing has changed

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TomMasz@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
after string of lawsuits.

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- Brewchin@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  This. Imagine being a company who suddenly has to do the right thing simply because they can’t afford the “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas” approach any more.
  
  Litigation may be an awful substitute for regulation, but at least its having some positive effect here.
  
  Shame about the way they’re doing it, though. It’s a wet dream for politicians and activists in favour of age verification, and for the hackers who’ll inevitability get their hands on all of it.
  
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  - Eranziel@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Not even “can’t afford”. They’re rolling in money. They merely made the calculation that paying lip service to the problem (and farming their user base for even more data to leverage, count on it) could cost less than future lawsuits.
    
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atrielienz@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
But asking them to verify their age via selfie. We live in the worst time line.

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- explodicle@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Come on, it’s not like anybody can just create a unique selfie of a kid. They’d have to be artists or something. /s
  
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pivot_root@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Company profiting from allowing pedos to groom children enacts steps to prevent pedos from grooming children? Like that’s going to happen.

Whatever solution they come up with, I can guarantee that it “accidentally” has a loophole in it.

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