Nearly a year after the COVID-19 pandemic, Carolyn, a mother of six, finally gave in to her children’s begging. Her kids wanted to join her Roblox, a platform that allows users to create and host her multiplayer games online. Roblox helps kids Connect Virtually During a Pandemic, and despite her concerns about her children under the age of 12 interacting with others online, Carolyn and her husband decided to let the kids play. , a drastic change in content moderation on Roblox has made it harder for young children to control what they see. She made the difficult decision to stop letting her children play.
I’ve deleted my kids’ Roblox accounts and I encourage everyone to delete them too. I played 6 hours of 5 year old games and it sucks Something is very wrong with Roblox Corp.” she said in a tweet thread.
In the following tweet, Carolyn explained additional nasty content she encountered while playing on the platform. public toilet simulator Mimicked a public restroom environment. Carolyn told Polygon that she expected toilet humor, but what she found was worse: In the game, her character slipped in a puddle and got stuck on the ground. Other players in the game then appeared to take turns roleplaying. simulated attack her character, incident What happened to others on Roblox.
Anyone can make games on Roblox. The platform works much like YouTube, but instead of uploading videos, it allows all users to design and publish games, or, as Roblox puts it, “experiences” for others to play. “, except that you can do This gives young users a huge opportunity to develop and play in any virtual world or game they can imagine. According to a Roblox spokesperson, the platform will have 58.8 million active users in the third quarter of 2022, 46% of whom recognize that he is under the age of 13. increase.
This raises content moderation issues. According to his Roblox website, users will have around 9 million experiences to choose from. Despite the company’s active role in overseeing the platform, this vast amount of experience makes it more difficult to moderate.
Roblox filters potentially inappropriate user-generated skins, chats, and personal information.The company employs a team of “thousands” to monitor its platform for inappropriate content, and its trust and safety team typically addresses behavior that violates its terms of service and community standards. It says it will take “a few minutes” to complete the game. slavery and fascism or those Mass shooting simulation appeared on the platform.
For most of 2022, no individual Roblox game had an “age-appropriate” designation or rating. This is because the target audience of the platform was simply younger children. Parents can restrict their child’s accounts so that they can only play with certain accounts. A curated setlist of games By Roblox, along with other safety features like disabling chat.
But in September, Roblox launched “Experience Guidelines.” age rating For games, it seems to meet that demand Increase in users over the age of 13 on the platform. The game has three age group labels (All Ages, 9+, and 13+) with a recommended age of “Based on Child Development ResearchAccording to the Roblox Developer Conference blog, “and an industry standard.”Parents now have the following options Restrict access to certain games based on recommended age.
Everyday folks making games on Roblox need to make sure their content has age-appropriate ratings.To that end, developers Experience questionnaire — specify if violence is depicted in the game, its frequency, intensity level, and whether there is blood — this will generate the recommended age group for the game. As of January, any game whose developer has not completed an experience survey will Not recommended for young users(The development forums do not specify whether young users can find these games independently.)
Polygon spoke to a Roblox developer who specializes in making games for the family and who requested anonymity because of his relationship with Roblox. They believe Roblox takes strong steps to inform parents, but ultimately believes it is the responsibility of parents to monitor their children’s activities.
“While Roblox is making significant changes and efforts to notify parents, along with age guidelines, of content found in certain games, we do monitor young children and provide online safety guidelines and rules to follow. It is still up to the parents to teach them,” they said.
Carolyn and her husband took an active role in their children’s digital lives and regularly played Roblox games with them. she and her husband Runescape When Ragnarok Onlinethey were aware of the potential dangers of playing with others online.
“We had a pretty good idea of what we could do and what we could publish with just text and voice chat. etc.) has opened up new issues for parents to worry about.”
These experience guidelines only add to the existing moderation challenges on the platform. Children can interact with others on the platform through role-playing, although the content of certain games may be deemed age-appropriate by the developer. The accompanying role-playing game is one of the most popular on this platform. This opens up opportunities for inappropriate interactions via chat or roleplay elements. As such, even if the game does not contain blood or other age-restricted content that research has determined is appropriate, users may participate in the game and simulate assault.
roblox Terms of service When community standards Content rules are relatively strict compared to other platforms like YouTube and social media sites. For example, Roblox not only explicitly bans content about extremist groups, but it also bans depictions of romance and political parties. To enforce these rules, the company also moderates through its reporting system. This allows users or parents to report specific users or games for violating Roblox terms.
Polygon reached out to Roblox and received the following comment:
“To determine the suitability of content for each age category, we researched global industry standards and consulted child development experts to guide our policies. [Carolyn’s] The Twitter thread is marked as “All Ages”. This is because the content is generally suitable for all ages and in rare cases may contain mild violence or unrealistic light blood,” a Roblox spokesperson said. told Polygon in an email.
The spokesperson also said that while the new system expanded the pool of experiences, the company upgraded its parental controls to let parents customize access to experiences based on age recommendations. I was.
While the percentage of older players on Roblox is increasing, there remains a large number of users under the age of 13. While it is true that Roblox takes a stronger stance on content moderation compared to other content platforms, such changes nevertheless ensure that younger users are not exposed to age-inappropriate content on the platform. may be exposed. After tweeting other parent When family members They said they deleted the game, and others said shared their own horror stories.
So, for now, sandwiched between major company changes and the whims of her own children, Carolyn is stuck with the decision to delete her account. It looked like
“We expected a massive meltdown. But they were actually really cool with it. All right, let’s play again when it’s safe. And I was like: yes. Wow. have understood. cool.”