Roblox, the online game that is massively popular amongst children, is facing the growing pains of moderation as it rolls out artificially intelligent bots to sweep the platform for unsavoury content.
If you don’t know about Roblox, I’m sure a kid in your life does. The appeal of the online world is twofold: Users can explore an open world as well as create their own games within Roblox. Roblox saw some steady growth since its release in 2006, but popularity soared as the platform became a staple in 2010’s meme culture as well as a major source of entertainment for kids during the covid-19 pandemic. As you might imagine, a platform so big with such an impressionable audience is bound to see some bad actors, and Roblox chief scientist Morgan McGuire has expressed the company’s hurdles in moderating the platform.
“It’s such a challenge to moderate 3D,” said McGuire yesterday at the Reuters Momentum conference in Austin Texas, as quoted by Reuters. “This is more like shutting down speakeasies.”
Roblox is using bots to patrol the game for any content it deems inappropriate or controversial, specifically monitoring any user-generated content and games. McGuire went on to explain that the company is able to remove this unsavoury content within a few minutes thanks to the company’s artificial intelligence software as well as human moderators, and said that what slips through the cracks is not “horrifically bad.”
A recent lawsuit, however, may beg to differ. The lawsuit was filed in California by anonymous plaintiffs, who allege that the platform allowed an adult man to connect with a young girl (who is now 13 years old, per the lawsuit). The man then persuaded her into downloading Discord and Snapchat where he reportedly convinced her to drink alcohol and take prescription drugs while introducing her to other grown men. McGuire offered no comment during the conference on Roblox’s role in the lawsuit.
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