At this point, I kind of have to feel sorry for Roblox. The company came under increasing criticism for failing to adequately protect children, and then courted even greater controversy when it started requiring children as young as nine years old to submit a video selfie for age verification.
The latest development in the saga is that the age verification process appears to be failing badly, with the company saying that you can’t expect everything to work on day one …
Roblox age verification
Following growing criticism that the app was putting children at risk, Roblox introduced an age verification process . The company said it would do this to limit communication between adults and children in chat.
The new feature got a partial launch in December of last year before being rolled out globally this month.
In theory, Roblox offers a choice between age verification based on photo ID and AI age estimation from a video selfie. The reality, however, is that few young children have government-issued photo ID, and so need to go the video selfie route.
While the company told us that the video selfies are only required for access to chat features, and are deleted after the checks are complete, many parents were extremely unhappy about the requirement.
Process is ‘a complete mess’
Wired took a look at how well the process is working and described the results as “a complete mess.” Players, developers, and parents alike are unhappy, and the system simply isn’t doing the job it was designed to do.
The site found that the AI system was identifying children as adults, adults as children, and that predators can buy accounts which have been age-verified as children for as little as $4.
Players are already in revolt because they can no longer chat to their friends, developers are demanding Roblox roll back the update, and crucially, experts say that not only is the AI mis-aging young players as adults and vice versa, the system does little to help address the problem it was designed to tackle: the flood of predators using the platform to groom young children.
In fact, WIRED has found multiple examples of people advertising age-verified accounts for minors as young as 9 years old on eBay for as little as $4.
Roblox says it can’t be flawless at launch
Roblox’s chief safety officer Matt Kaufman told us that teething problems have to be expected.
To suggest that our age check technology isn’t working is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it takes to shift safety at scale. With a global community of over 150 million daily active users, we are pleased with where we are in the roll out process. It’s a process that will take time, you can’t flip a switch while building something that hasn’t existed before.
Tens of millions of users have already completed the process, proving that the vast majority of our community values a safer, more age-appropriate environment. Expecting the system to be flawless overnight is ignoring the scale of this undertaking.
The company also said: “We are aware of instances where parents age check on behalf of their children leading to kids being aged to 21+. We are working on solutions to address this and we’ll share more here soon.”
9to5Mac’s Take
I know I’m going to sound like a broken record at this point, but it’s further fodder for my argument that Apple age verification with a privacy focus is infinitely preferable to thousands of developers using their own random processes. I also know that some commenters are going to want to wish away the need for it …
- Official Apple Store on Amazon
- Wireless CarPlay adapter
- NordVPN – privacy-first VPN with no logs and independent audits to verify
- Official Apple iPhone Air cases and bumpers
- iPhone Air MagSafe Battery
- Official iPhone cases: iPhone 17 | iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max | iPhone Air
Image: Roblox
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