Proposal: Establishing a Centralized "Social Layer" to Improve Community Retention

[iphoneisstrong1234]

TL;DR Basically Social Media but Roblox Community Standards level Appropriate

Note: To avoid misinterpretation, this proposal suggests an integrated social layer within the existing Roblox platform and ecosystem, not a separate product or external app.

Hello everyone,

Currently, Roblox excels at connecting users with 3D experiences, but lacks a dedicated, modern space on the platform (website/app) for persistent community building and social interaction that isn’t tied to a specific game server. This creates a reliance on external links and third-party platforms for these 3 reasons:

• Communication Gaps: Community discussions are often forced onto third-party platforms because the current “Groups” forums and “Feed” systems don’t support real-time or threaded social experiences.
• Brand Friction: It is difficult for developers and creators to create a “social hub” for their brand without users having to be actively inside an experience.
• Platform Exit: Users often leave the platform entirely when they aren’t playing a game because there is no “social layer” to keep them engaged with their friends or favorite creators on the dashboard.

The Proposed Impact

Providing a dedicated social space would increase platform “stickiness” and allow for more organic growth. It would bridge the gap between “playing” and “belonging” to the Roblox community, keeping the social graph contained within the ecosystem.

Visual Concept:

This is a conceptual look on how a persistent social hub (e.g, “Social Land”) could be integrated directly into the platform’s navigational menu.

Possible Solution / Footnote:

One potential way to solve this could be a revamped social dashboard under another Roblox-controlled domain, – something akin to a “community hub” or “social land” where users can interact via persistent profiles and shared interests, similar to how modern social platforms handle threaded discussions and media sharing.

Trust and Safety Integration

To ensure this space remains consistent with Roblox’s safety standards, the social hub will utilize:

• Automated Filtering: Leveraging the existing text-filtering pipelines for real-time and threaded communication.
• Creator Tools: Giving group owners and developers the ability to appoint moderators and set specific “Community Rules” within their own hubs.
• Verified Presence: Requiring certain account milestones (e.g., age verified or email-verified) to participate in high-traffic hubs to prevent botting and spam.

This social layer would be age-segmented to maintain safety and regulatory compliance. A persistent social layer also opens new opportunities for creators to build brand identity and long-term engagement loops.

Conclusion

By evolving the platform’s social architecture to support deeper community interaction safely, Roblox can ensure it remains the primary destination for both creation and connection. Closing the gap between gameplay and social engagement will empower creators to build stronger brands and provide users with a safer, more integrated environment to interact with the communities they love.

Thank you for taking the time to read this,

iphoneisstrong1234.

Note: Clarifying the Scope and Professional Intent of this Proposal

To clarify for everyone, ‘Meme Land’ was an earlier, discarded feature request/concept for a category on the DevForum. This proposal is entirely different.

We are talking about “Platform Infrastructure” - a native, social layer on the main Roblox site/app designed to solve the “Platform Leak” and improve developer-to-player engagement. Let’s keep the focus on how this serves as a professional Community Hub for creators as a concept. This post has been sent into the internal spaces, so let’s keep the discussion focused on high-level feedback that can help the internal teams refine this vision.

[Clxzed]

You could’ve just said integrate Guilded into Roblox, but no you had to make this

[iphoneisstrong1234]

I see what you’re coming from, but the goal here is true native integration. While Guilded was a great tool, requiring users to jump to a separate app or domains creates “Brand Friction” and “Platform Exit”. Guilded literally shut down an entire year ago. Relying on third-party apps is not the long-term solution for a platform trying to reach “utility” status. We need something native, age-gated, and compliant with Roblox’s standards - exactly what this proposal outlines.

My proposal is about keeping the social graph directly within the Roblox ecosystem (website/app) to improve retention and safety, rather than relying on third party links or external account linking.

[EzraPalo (EzraPig)]

i like it but “social land”…

[iphoneisstrong1234]

That’s a fair point on the name. “Social Land” was just a placeholder for the mockup to illustrate the concept. The goal is a native social layer to truly align with Roblox’s vision of connecting to a billion people every single day.

[VitalWinter]

The Roblox platform itself already is this social layer, no? The terminology is unclear to me, which makes this request difficult to understand what exactly you are getting at. Is “Social Land” a platform level forum?

The concept mock also has Roblox social features like Messages, Connect, and Communities. Adding an extra menu for “Social Land” seems confusing. Maybe specifying more clearly what “Social Land” is, and renaming it would help make the feature request more clear, and make the concept mock make sense from a user perspective.

[VitalWinter]

I think it is important that Roblox feel like a platform that experiences exist on, and that games don’t feel like “Roblox Mods”

The distinction between Roblox as a flavored product and Roblox as powerful platform is important. For games to feel independent they need Roblox to be a platform. Roblox should support games and fade into the background. Roblox does have a massive social network, and user’s platform presence is equally important.

A subtle way to dip into both needs, Roblox could make a discovery for groups, or improved group browsing, such that community forums feel connected under a broader network.

[fredtheprank2335 (Conductor KSI)]

this could work as like a general roblox player forum or smth

[fredtheprank2335 (Conductor KSI)]

i agree with this since roblox itself isn’t really a “Game”. It’s better to just make communities and forums for each game/ group made on roblox, which we already do have.

[iphoneisstrong1234]

@VitalWinter

The Roblox platform itself already is this social layer, no? The terminology is unclear to me, which makes this request difficult to understand what exactly you are getting at. Is “Social Land” a platform level forum?

The concept mock also has Roblox social features like Messages, Connect, and Communities. Adding an extra menu for “Social Land” seems confusing. Maybe specifying more clearly what “Social Land” is, and renaming it would help make the feature request more clear, and make the concept mock make sense from a user perspective.

That’s a great question. To clarify: While Roblox has social features (Forums, Messages, Communities, etc.), they currently exist in “silos”, they aren’t integrated into a single, persistent social experience.

1. This is not just another forum: Unlike the old forums or old group wall feeds, this will be a real time, threaded environment where a user can follow a “Dev Log” or a community discussion without having anyone leave the dashboard or joining an experience. We have Forums for groups, but there is no “Social Area” for communities outside the forums.
2. Renaming: I completely agree. Also, just to clarify, “Social Land” was only a placeholder. A more accurate name would be “Community Hub” or “Social Nexus”.
3. The goal is to not add more clutter, but to centralize. Think of it as the “Home” of your social identity for Roblox, similar to how modern platforms have a “Feed” or “Community” tab that brings everything together in one place.

And to answer the question about “Is Social land a platform level forum?” No, it isn’t a forum in the traditional sense. While it shares the “discussion” aspect of a forum, the UX is fundamentally different. Think of it as the difference between a Message Board (2000s) and a Modern Social Feed (2020s).

• Forums are for long form, archived support and deep-dive threads.
• The Social Layer is for real-time engagement, “Pulse” updates from creators, and quick-hitting community interaction that keeps people on the platform between play sessions.

It’s less about starting a thread and more about joining the conversation that is already happening across a broad group of friends. This could most likely be mobile-first because forums are very clunky on phones, but a “Social Layer” is designed to be scrolled on the Roblox app, which is also separate from Roblox Moments.

[iphoneisstrong1234]

@VitalWinter

I think it is important that Roblox feel like a platform that experiences exist on, and that games don’t feel like “Roblox Mods”

The distinction between Roblox as a flavored product and Roblox as powerful platform is important. For games to feel independent they need Roblox to be a platform. Roblox should support games and fade into the background. Roblox does have a massive social network, and user’s platform presence is equally important.

A subtle way to dip into both needs, Roblox could make a discovery for groups, or improved group browsing, such that community forums feel connected under a broader network.

I completely agree with that philosophy. For a game to feel like a standalone “brand” and not just a “Roblox mod”, it needs its own space to breathe.

My goal with the “Social Layer” isn’t to force a “Roblox flavored” skin over everything, but to provide the infrastructure that allows a creator’s community to thrive without leaving the platform.

• Discovery for Groups: Your point about improved group browsing is spot on.
• The “Background” Approach: Imagine if this ‘Hub’ was white-labeled or highly customizable for top developers, so it feels like their community space, powered by Roblox’s safety and tech.

It’s about moving away from the “Group Wall” (which feels like a mod comment section) and moving towards a Community Hub (which feels like a professional landing page).

[EnzonianTheGreat (enzo90)]

This would be interesting, sort of like the forums were but perhaps more moderated.

The main pages have been plain since they removed feed, as it’s basically a connections list and two pages of experiences- continue playing, recommended, etc, almost the same with the experiences landing page.

A dedicated social page could see the return of the status update too, with dedicated replies for public statuses. Possibly could do the same with communities who want to keep their announcements public too, as a way to advertise their community/ experiences.

[iphoneisstrong1234]

@EnzonianTheGreat

This would be interesting, sort of like the forums were but perhaps more moderated.

The main pages have been plain since they removed the feed, as it’s basically a connections list and two pages of experiences- continue playing, recommended, etc, almost the same with the experiences landing page.

A dedicated social page could see the return of the status update too, with dedicated replies for public statuses. Possibly could do the same with communities who want to keep their announcements public too, as a way to advertise their community/ experiences.

That’s a great point! I agree that the landing page have felt a bit “hollow” since the Feed was removed. Bringing back status updates within a dedicated “Social Land” would give users a reason to actually hang out on the platform rather than jump game-to-game.

I especially like your idea about public announcements for communities - it would solve a huge discoverability issue for creators. I’m currently in touch with some folks at Roblox about this, so I’ll definitely keep those suggestions in mind as the proposal moves forward. Thank you for your feedback!

[iphoneisstrong1234]

Update:

After reviewing the feedback here, I want to clarify an important missing piece: Roblox cannot rely on experiences alone to sustain community retention. Experiences are great for gameplay, friends are good for direct chat, but neither feature provides the persistent social substrate that keeps users engaged between sessions.

This is the same reason platforms like Minecraft grew explosively–not just because of the game itself, but because of the ecosystem around it (forums, SMP communities, modding hubs, creator spaces). Roblox does have pieces of this ecosystem, but not a unified, native equivalent.

The goal of this proposal is to prevent or slow down a “platform exit” by giving creators and players a centralized, age-segmented, safe social environment directly on Roblox. This would reduce reliance on Discord, external forums, and third-party tools, while keeping the social graph inside the ecosystem.

I’m continuing to refine the terminology and structure (e.g. moving from the placeholder name “Social Land” towards something like “Community Hub” or “Social Nexus”), but the core idea remains the same: Roblox needs a persistent, integrated social layer to support long-term community health and creator retention.

Thanks again for the thoughtful feedback - I’ll keep iterating on this as more insights come in.

[iphoneisstrong1234]

I’m tagging @Roblox for visibility, this is not a call out.

I want to clarify that I’m not criticizing any individual product manager, engineer, or Developer Relations member, or singling them out. I’m tagging Roblox because this issue is becoming structurally urgent for the long-term health of the platform.

I cannot fit this into a support ticket because there’s a character limit, so I have to post this here.

Long-Term Economic Risk Without a Social Layer

Roblox is entering a period of structural risk – not sudden collapse, but a slow erosion of the platform’s economic engine. If the platform continues for months or years without a native Social Layer, collaboration will decline, creator communities will fragment, and the ecosystem will begin to resemble like a bulletin board rather than a living platform.

When social infrastructure disappears, creators stop forming teams, players stop returning daily, and low-effort content fills the vacuum. This is the “content treadmill” problem that has killed entire platforms before. YouTube Kids is a perfect example: once low-effort content swarmed the surface, the ecosystem lost cultural value and became irrelevant.

Roblox is at risk of the same trajectory. Without a persistent, age-segmented, or website-segmented, Discourse-like Social Layer – separate from the DevForum and built natively into the platform, – the ecosystem will stop generating value. Experiences alone cannot sustain retention. Chat alone cannot sustain community.

If Roblox continues removing social infrastructure without replacing it, the long-term economic risk becomes a real problem. This proposal exists to prevent that outcome.

Groups did not solve this problem. When group walls got removed and got replaced with the current Forums system, a huge amount of organic interaction disappeared. Forums are excellent for long-form, archived discussions, but they do not function as a real-time social environment. In practice, the shift from Group Walls → Forums reduced day-to-day community presence and made social interaction even more fragmented.

Groups are valuable, but they cannot serve as the platform’s social structure. They are siloed, static, and lack the persistent presence needed to keep communities active between play sessions.

Final Edit:

Also, make age-segmented categories, and migrate the entire Discourse layout to the Social Layer, then reintroduce “Lounge”, add a new “Off-Topic” category to the social Layer, and maybe make it a local Discourse page, without having to add those notifications and preventing bypasses.

[FnfCorruptionFan32 (Squidify_Dortios)]

good idea, i wish the uk online safety act was never too strict

[Denied_ID]

This might be connected to a Roblox experiment that just popped up this month called “blackbird”.
EDIT: This is probably not the case anymore when looking into a post from one of the Weekly Recaps.

@HealthyKarl

Blackbird

There’s another bird other than “Songbird”, now there will be “Blackbird”.

Roblox seems to be working on eventually giving Premium Subscriptions a Free Trial. But that’s just speculation.

It’s possible that this icon is a new badge as well. There’s seems to be an icon, but I’d have to find it first. Apparently, it’s just the paper airplane icon for sending something.

[iphoneisstrong1234]

This might seem unrelated to my feature requests, but it highlights an even more urgent reason why Roblox needs a persistent Social Layer.

Rec Room – a $3.5B platform with over 150 million players – has officially announced that it will be shutting down on June 1st, 2026. Their farewell post explains that despite strong community engagement, they were unable to build a sustainable long-term ecosystem. School’s Out for Rec Room — ‎

This is a reminder that even large, beloved platforms can disappear when they lack the social infrastructure needed to retain community, culture, and long-term engagement.

Roblox is far larger and far more culturally significant, but the same structural risks apply. A native Social Layer isn’t a “nice to have feature” – it’s foundational to the platform’s long-term health.

If we want Roblox to remain a thriving ecosystem for the next decade, we need to build this now, not later.

[iphoneisstrong1234]

I also want to highlight a potential strategic risk with a purely compliance-first model, based on well-documented statistical patterns.

This pattern can sometimes be discussed in relation to concepts such as Regression to the Mean or Goodhart’s Law (as explored in this Veritasium analysis)

A Possible Feedback Interpretation

1. A platform sees a natural fluctuation - a dip in safety metrics or a spike in liability risk.
2. Out of fear, leadership implements hyper-strict measures and more restrictive safety-oriented policy posture.
3. When the metrics naturally return to the average (Regression to the Mean), leadership may conclude: “Our strict corporate tone worked!”
4. In reality, the community was actually suffocated. The improvement wasn’t caused by the sterile tone, it was caused by a natural statistical correction.

This highlights that platform outcomes can diverge from engagement signals, and that multiple factors (including economics and moderation policy) interact in complex ways.

If we optimize for liability mitigation at the expense of the Social Layer, we aren’t just making the platform safer; we are just making it quieter until there is no one left to talk.

But if we do optimize for liability mitigation at the same time as the Social Layer, we will make the platform safer, and we will also make it safely chaotic and fun at the same time.

Update:

Roblox has introduced new age-based accounts and expanded parental controls for users under 16 in this blog post here.

Why does this relate to my Social Layer proposal? In the Evaluation Criteria section, the blog post states that “By default, Roblox Kids and Roblox Select accounts will not include games that feature sensitive issues, social hangouts, or free-form drawing games.”

This restricts default access to unstructured social environments for the 13-15 age range, even though these experiences remain technically available if a parent enables them. When young people lose access to social spaces – both online and offline – it can lead to feelings of isolation or disconnection. For teens, especially those in the 13-15 age range, unstructured social environments play an important developmental role.

These spaces help them practice essential skills like talking to new people, reading social cues, navigating group dynamics, expressing identity, handling conflict, and building confidence. Research has shown for decades that opportunities for open-ended, self-directed interaction support healthy social and emotional growth.

This isn’t just a developmental issue – it’s also a network-level issue. According to Metcalfe’s Law, segmenting the network reduces the number of cross-group connections which lowers the effective network value even if the total users stay the same. When an entire age group loses access to unstructured social spaces, the number of possible connections decreases, which weakens the overall network effect for the platform. In other words, limiting how teens can interact doesn’t just affect them individually – it may change the distribution and density of cross-user interactions depending on how alternative discovery and social systems evolve. This suggests one possible design direction worth exploring for the Social Layer.

If Roblox prefers to reserve unstructured social environments for users 16 and older, the Social Layer could just simply be classified as a 16+ feature. The proposal is flexible – it can serve the 13-15 demographic if allowed, but it can also operate as a 16+ social infrastructure if that aligns better with Roblox’s policy direction.

That’s why it’s so important for platforms to provide safe, age-appropriate environments where teens can interact, express themselves, and build community – not by removing unstructured spaces entirely, but by designing them thoughtfully.

More Sources:

Metcalfe’s law - Wikipedia
The many wondrous benefits of unstructured play