Age Checks to Access Chat, Studio Team Create, and Links on Roblox

[burger_worm (soapiee)]

I do not want to feed my ID or my face to an AI. I do not want Roblox collecting millions of photos of children’s faces and feeding them to an AI. There is no world in which you could make that not sound disturbing to me, especially as someone who remembers the days when “don’t share your personal information” was the biggest piece of advice for children on the internet. Weird how nobody says that anymore now that it’s become profitable to collect information!

This does not help security. If anything, it makes the jobs of predators EASIER because if they just use AI or something to bypass the check and get placed in a young age range, they’ll be put in chats that ONLY allow young children to interact with them - NOBODY older can view or report them unless they have edit access to the game. And after the stuff that happened with Discord, you cannot convince me that this technology is just suddenly safe or accurate enough.

Every time Roblox makes a poor decision, you bootlickers are always whining about “oh, isn’t this what you asked for???” No. We want them to stop taking nuclear solutions that invade our privacy for little benefit and START adjusting the systems that are already in place instead. We want them to LISTEN when bad actors are called out instead of ignoring it like with Teddy.

But sure, give your face and your ID to the third party AI company. I’m sure they’ll be satisfied with that, and they’ll never ever ask for anything more if people keep letting them. I’m sure your information, along with the information collected off of millions of children, won’t be caught in a data leak like with Discord’s verification partner. I think it will go well for you.

[AnythingWontGo (tisika)]

To some of us long time players, it really does feel like the final nail in the coffin for us. I feel this kind of change was an inevitability, but man it does concern me to see them rush this through while ignoring all feedback from the community.

[crazybangles]

I’ve been strongly considering moving my activities elsewhere also. I have been thinking about it for several months, but I think it is time. The updates this year have been appalling. I’ve thought about a great many updates as being potentially detrimental to the community, and now I can completely without question declare this the worst. This is a complete invasion of privacy.

[TheGrimDeathZombie (Reapimus)]

@burger_worm

And after the stuff that happened with Discord, you cannot convince me that this technology is just suddenly safe or accurate enough.

While I too hate this update, it should really be noted that what happened with Discord was 100% their fault and had nothing to do with the provider that actually verifies IDs. Discord made the poor decision to allow ID verification to be performed through an unsecure channel (their support email) that was never designed with or qualified with the necessary security certifications required for storing IDs.

As far as I can tell Roblox at least hasn’t made the mistake to allow ID or age verification to happen in any way aside from directly with the provider, which those providers get held to pretty strict security standards by all the governments they partner with for access to ID databases.

[burger_worm (soapiee)]

that’s true, but I still think having to submit my ID to access basic features like I’m buying alcohol at a store is absurd, and I still see no reason to trust Roblox with my private information like that, especially if there is at the very least precedent in the past for other companies to completely & utterly mishandle it so recently. and that’s not even touching on just how uncomfortable the face stuff makes me

[KingJesseDev (jessethedev)]

DO NOT DO THIS. this will make it like 10x harder to interact with my dev team or literally any player on a game. anything but this seriously

[Oppressed_II]

I am willing to bet money that your team drew straws for who had to announce this horrible update on dev forum.

[KingJesseDev (jessethedev)]

Oh my god. I just realised this will apply to team create collaboration too. seriously? im not even gonna be able to work on my dev team’s game anymore, I actually cannot believe you guys honestly, this isnt even about privacy anymore, this is just completely stopping me from doing development anymore.

[TheGrimDeathZombie (Reapimus)]

OP of this post is the Chief Safety Officer, they were clearly very confident about how this update would be received for someone that high up to announce it themselves.

[crazybangles]

I was going to find a way to make things work without chat before. If they’re restricting team create as well, that eliminates about 90% of what I would be doing on this website. It’s upsetting that they’ve come to this.

[Maxocado_Avocado (Max)]

You really think these companies actually delete anything? Come on. They don’t erase data, they just mark it as deleted in the database, and if you’re lucky, they’ll anonymize it.

[RealCheeseAcorn]

So instead of improving your moderation, you harm nearly every game on the platform by ruining communication. Games like Traitor Town where everyone in the server needs to chat with everyone else rely on open communication, this change destroys that instead of doing anything that will actually increase the safety of children on the platform.

[parkerjolo]

Very well said. This all reminds me that we’re losing touch of what the internet is – a place. If you wouldn’t let your kid walk around a crowded city unsupervised, you shouldn’t let them head around the internet unsupervised. Parents need to be held accountable as well.

[zoharee4 (Optiplxrr)]

NO JUST NO STOP IT MY GAME IS GONNA BREAK BRUH TEAM PVP GAMES ARE GONNA BREAK. The end bruhhh

[CCCelestina (Celestina)]

Alright, I’ve came back after they’ve “addressed” the concerns (I will be addressing the ones that caught my eye, not the whole thing).

@RbxRocketMan

• As our vendor, Persona has committed to delete user images and video immediately after the Facial Age Estimation process is complete. To ensure compliance to this, as with all of our vendors, we conduct security reviews to confirm their systems meet the standards we expect. Persona was selected after evaluating several providers and reviewing their past history in handling sensitive data, privacy practices, and overall effectiveness of the age estimation solution.

I want to ask Roblox’s higher-ups this, did y’all check whether if this Persona company is legitimate or not? How many complaints that they’ve gotten and resolved?
I know it myself after doing some research about “your vendor” company that you’ve partnered up with.

[All of the stuff I will be showing is from TrustPilot, the reviewers are real (I’ve blurred them 'cause I don’t want them to get harrased.) you can check it out yourself if you want! (withpersona.com Reviews | Read Customer Service Reviews of withpersona.com)]

I could go all day, but my main point still stands, you just picked up a company that clearly has no interest in security - sure, they may delete your ID that you used to verify with - but it still doesn’t answer the fact that this company has negative reviews and it speaks a-lot of volumes.

@RbxRocketMan

We also review behaviors on Roblox to determine if someone has provided a false age. Our moderation and safety systems that monitor chat are still in-place which we continue to invest in. Age checks are an addition to these systems as another layer and not a replacement for our other safety systems.

Normally this isn’t a question that I would ask (if Roblox actually listed the statistics for actual human moderators public), though I want to ask, how many human moderators do you guys actually have in the Safety Department?

And I don’t normally assume things; however, if there are moderators in the Safety Department, why aren’t they checking to see if there are bad actors on the platform? Why use AI to determine that?

My conclusion on this “addressing the community” update is that this isn’t addressing the issues that people have brought up, this is just dodging accountability if not pleasing the investors.

Another thing, Roblox was made by the community, not the investors. If you want to get actual honest feedback, ask the ones whom were there all the way back in 2009-present.

[Caxseii]

I’m very worried about the future of this platform, while this could be me just overreacting, a lot of social and RP games will likely die with this change, not only them but any regular game, people like to chat and talk about the game or with the friends that joined them, yes the kids could just do an age check but let’s be for real, I don’t think they would (or if they do, they’d fake it)

The intentions here are good but too extreme, not only will people fake their ages but all the privacy issues this change might come with (we even have a recent example with discord’s data breach)

[ATMnou]

Yea sure, just unban schlep and cancel all outageous plans.

Games requires team coopration, like biair which communication is mandatory for known evidence, trait of ghost etc.

Age group chat? nonsense. For me, I am already leaving Roblox developing and moved to Godot.
If this goes live, more developer will quit and..

Let me predict : If this goes live, Roblox will shut down at Early 2028 due low income.

[firechaos70 (FireChaos)]

Sounds cool. Here’s a couple of ideas you should consider:

1. Do your job
2. Quit your job

[SUOUSK (Ramsa_Ajeossi)]

Should we chat in Morse code?

[Drafter_Real (Drafter)]

This has to be reveresed, this is the worst way to handle this.

Why does EVERY community have to suffer from these ridiculous policies because Roblox cannot control it’s pedophilia problem?

I’ve been doing Roblox full time and have had Roleplaying communities for 7 years now and 18 year olds play with the 13-14-15-16 year old grunts all the time with STRICT server rules, not a single issue in 7 years.

But now we all must suffer because Roblox cannot control it’s pedophilia problem.