As of yesterday, Roblox released an announcement on changes to policy with regards to experience moderation. Without quoting the entirety of the announcement, here’s the major changes they announced:
- Games revolving around what Roblox deems as “sensitive” topics would be blocked to players ages 13 and under by default
- Initially, the “sensitive” topics list includes but is not limited to:
– Vaccination policies
– Pay equity in sports
– Marriage equality
– Reproductive rights
– Prayer in schools
– And more - Roblox defines a “sensitive” topic as one that involves:
– Polarized Viewpoints: Does the issue have a limited number of strongly opposing viewpoints, with little room for compromise or middle ground?
– Strong Emotional Response: Does the issue evoke strong emotional reactions and/or passionate debate? - Parents would have to explicitly disable the “sensitive topic” filter in order for the player to play those experiences.
This post serves to highlight the problems with this policy, and proposes changes that will make the policy less damaging to the platform. The new policy change with its vague scope and wording is extremely problematic and dangerous for a number of reasons.
It sets bad precedent.
This policy’s vague scope, and vague definition of a “sensitive topic” sets a very bad precedent for the freedom of speech and expression on the platform. Currently, the policy covers experiences that are “primarily themed on” what Roblox defines as a “sensitive issue”. However, due to the vagueness of what constitutes a “sensitive issue”, it is entirely possible for many things to be classified as one. What stops this policy from classing the following as sensitive issues?
- Racial equality (human rights)
- Neurodiversity (human rights)
- Global warming (Science)
- Spherical earth (Science)
The list here could go on and on. The fact that the vagueness of the policy’s scope is so broadly reaching to many subjects is a problem. It can cause issues for the advocation or portrayal of human rights, the sciences, and more on the platform.
Furthermore, the term “primarily themed on” is also extremely vague. What exactly does “primarily themed on” entail? If there is a platformer game that features a trans-gender NPC character with repeated appearances in the story, is that considered “primarily themed on”?
How about a tank game? To quote @extraclear:
So we’re developing a tank game still. We’re including a variety of nations’ tanks, from American tanks, to German tanks, to British tanks, to Russian tanks and eventually Chinese and Israeli tanks. These are all examples of nations that, to one group or another, have deployed tanks in a negative connotation that could illicit a strong emotional response regardless of how we try to distance ourselves from their origins. We’re planning to release tanks from every nation for the sake of equal representation and have to find a way to adhere to ROBLOX’s guidelines to do so.
Would this tank game be considered “primarily themed on” a sensitive issue? What about a zombie outbreak game, where the story revolves around finding a cure and providing it to the remaining human population (see prior works of art such as World War Z, The Last of Us, etc). Would that be considered “primarily themed on” vaccines? Would it be considered “primarily themed on” undead, which could be a sensitive topic?
Yet another issue is possible future changes based on this precedent. What stops this policy from changing in a way that it covers REFERENCES to those sensitive topics? What stops this policy from expanding its scope to cover player avatars and development items such as sounds? If the concept of “same sex marriage” is classed as a sensitive topic and the policy scope expands to cover REFERENCES to it, that would effectively be the censorship of transgendered people, as an example.
It is effectively a ban on whatever gets classed as a “sensitive topic”
By default, the new policy restricts access to any experience that is considered to be themed on a sensitive topic. This, coupled with the fact that there is no granular control over which sensitive topics a parent can allow, makes the new policy a functional ban on those topics. This is a problem for a number of reasons:
- Most people will keep the default settings on, either being unaware the setting exists, not being bothered enough to change them, etc. To quote @TheNexusAvenger:
The concern with this is that the default setting for something can (and should) be assumed to be the setting almost everyone will have. Either the default “works”, people don’t know the setting exists, or they don’t know what they are missing. This can be as benign as a theme color or subtitles text size, but it applies to bigger picture stuff like this. If this setting affects searching and recommendations (I’m not sure; “if” is important, and this could change), this being a block by default could lead to people not even knowing what they can’t play.
If there is no attention brought to it [the setting], I don’t think an informed choice can be made if most parents won’t know it exists until they see another reason to go to whatever page it is on.
- Blocking this content by default discourages its continued existence on the platform.
- The type of subjects being blocked from the start is also problematic:
– Prayer in schools. This is effectively blocking an example of someone exercising their 1st amendment rights from the constitution of our country, and practicing their (nonviolent) religious beliefs.
– Marriage equality, pay equity & reproductive rights. This is effectively blocking examples of human rights.
– Vaccine policies. This is effectively blocking a reference to science, and can potentially be dangerous. Children uneducated about and not knowing about vaccines, and not taking them, is dangerous to their health. Full stop.
Overall, blocking these types of subjects make it easier to keep children uneducated, closed-minded, and easier to control by figures of authority in the long-term. This would be like banning a book about vaccines from the children’s section of a public library.
The lack of granularity in this policy makes it possible to slip almost anything under the “blanket ban”.
Smaller addendums
Overall, while this policy is touted as an effort to “protect the children”, it is really just a tool for censorship. If it was truly meant to protect the children, the policy would cover sensitive topics such as gore, suicide, sexual reproduction, and more. Not science, not human rights, not the concept of being transgendered.
As an example of this - some children rely on LGBTQ+ hangout games not just as an escape from the world, but also an escape from their parents. There are children that would face persecution by their parents and families if it was found out they were gay. I’ve personally known people that have had their lives ruined by their families when they came out to them as gay. Roblox is literally a safe haven for some of these people, that safe haven should not be taken away.
Roblox claims this new policy was not a result of the current US administration. That is a blatant outright lie. Roblox literally has republican lobbyists on their payroll to “better cooperate” with the current administration:
https://x.com/Roblox_RTC/status/1857279464486346910
https://careers.roblox.com/jobs/6382650
https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/11/14/roblox-dc-office-public-policy-hiring.html
Furthermore, to quote @LowPolys:
Deemed controversial by who? Half of the issues claimed to be controversial are only culture war topics in the US. Gun control is not really a talking point in most of the world, and therefore wouldn’t be controversial in say, the UK, where not even 20% of people believe owning a gun makes people safe. Vaccines are minimally controversial again, anywhere but the US
Things like vaccines being classed as sensitive subjects are also problematic, because there is nothing sensitive about them. The whole “vaccines cause autism” thing was spread from a bogus research paper.
Hbomberguy did a great video on the subject : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BIcAZxFfrc
TL;DR: ex-Dr. Andrew Wakefield “created” a fake bowel disorder, claimed it caused Autism and was due to the MMR vaccine. He rushed to get it out as a paper and went wild, and got retracted. He originally want people to get a split version of the MMR vaccine, and was working on a patent for one of these to make money. This patent was found to be the cause for the “study”. The study included 12 children that A) some didn’t have Autism but claimed they did, B) no informed consent for major operations included anesthetic, and C) 1 or 2 having to go to other hospitals for the tests causing life-threatening injuries. Side note: one of the other people tied to this thought they could cure Autism with his bone marrow.
What needs to change with the policy
Overall, this policy is extremely problematic and potentially dangerous to the freedoms of speech and expression on this platform. Here’s what needs to change with the policy to improve it:
- Change the vague language and scope. The scope should have a limit. The list of what is considered a “sensitive topic” should not be broadly reaching to an undefined number of barely questionable subjects like “human rights”. There shouldn’t be any concern from the wording about it being expanded to include references, and non-experiences.
- “Allow” as the default. Roblox claims it is neutral in these issues, but by blocking access as the default, Roblox is functionally taking a stance in the issues. True neutrality would be allowing as the default so parents can decide to block, instead of making the decision FOR them. By allowing these experiences as the default, this policy change is not functionally a full ban against them, as a majority of players would be able to access them.
- The policy needs more granularity. If a parent wishes to restrict access to experiences that depict same-sex marriage but want to allow their child to access experiences which reference women in sports, there should be granular controls for that. Currently it is an “all or nothing” setting which simply does not work.
I highly encourage other developers to speak up about this problem. This is something we need to question now, as it becomes much harder to change this later.
