Roblox CEO interview about child safety didn't go well

Around that time in the video what I see is a journalist that did not do his homework, as he crumbled under the CEO's snarky "do you know this research company went out of business?" - he should just started to read the report findings and ask if they are true [1] or popped out the 16 public arrests [2] tied to Roblox in the US of A.

Both journalists were VERY agreeable and were like trying not to pick a fight. Want to talk about the fun stuff Mr CEO? There's no fun when so many kids are being systematically harassed by evil adults in the platform.

[1] https://hindenburgresearch.com/roblox/

[2] https://thebearcave.substack.com/p/problems-at-roblox-rblx-4

The entire leadership team of Roblox is unserious. Consistent amateur hour behavior out of them.

Not at all. It reads exactly the opposite: grounded concern, and then an absolute mess of an interview that provides solid reason to question their governance.

It must be tiring though to keep the "neutral" approach for every article. How many benefits of doubts is Roblox owed, really? Asking for a more neutral tone is almost akin to asking for Hunter S Thompson to rewrite "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" in a more neutral tone.

I understand the justified hysteria against pedophiles grooming kids. Although it is amusing coming from a country that is reeling from the Epstein affair.

But this is not a Roblox problem it is an internet problem. And I do not know how to solve it except more censorship and control.

Yes, I closed it immidiately as it had the tone of a tabloid.

Absolutely.

> Polymarket, a cryptoscam-based prediction market

How is this "reporting" even real? Awful article. The interview was so bad that painting roblox in the bad light was the right and objective thing to do, yet they somehow managed to make it look biased.

I didn’t have a problem with it, given the headline I knew it was commentary on a shit show of an interview from someone who should be prepared to answer hard questions and represent a company position to the public. I’m not offended by the opinionated writing given the context.

Maybe someone who's pro-pedophile like Donald Trump could perform a more "fair and balanced" interview.

Reports like that don't need to be completely dispassionate. If you want that, there are other sources to read. But people have opinions.

No seemed pretty easy to read to me.

>It's not trying to portray facts

So what? It's a story about an interview.

The story quotes directly from the interview. I watched the interview, and the characterization is accurate. Here's a passage:

Newton: (interjecting) You don’t think you have a problem with predators on the platform.

Baszucki: I think we’re doing an incredible job at innovating relative to the number of people on our platform and the hours, in really leaning into the future of how this is going to work.

>it's clearly trying to make the reader interpret the situation in an anti-roblox light

Yes, I would imagine the thing described as a "pedophile hellscape" should look pretty bad to the average reader. But just so I'm getting this right: the thing you're maddest about is the bad PR for Roblox?

I think this interview doesn’t require much analysis. The CEO’s own words make him look bad.

Or if you want the tl;dr, ask an LLM. I think the general sentiment is overt and simple enough that the LLM wouldn’t omit or misrepresent anything important.

> It reads, to me, as so obviously slanted and opinionated against Roblox from the outset.

When you’re writing about a bad thing, you don’t have to pretend it’s good. Or even neutral. It’s okay to write so that it’s clear that it’s bad.

> When asked about the “scope of the problem” of predators in the application, Baszucki came in shoulders first saying, “We think of it not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well.”

I mean… how much benefit of the doubt is one expected to give someone who runs a game for kids who sees paedophiles as an ‘opportunity’? Like, this isn’t a criminal trial, it’s a news article. There is no presumption on innocence, and the company’s past is relevant.

kotaku or any "gaming journalism" articles are like that in general

I suspect what the CEO was trying to convey was that this was a "small problem" given the number of users etc, "no need to worry share holders and investors! Not a big deal!"...

But I don't think that argument really works for paedophilia. Society does not want to allow it at any scale (zero-tolerance - and rightly so), so even if it is a "small" proportion of the entire platform, it's still bad especially if they're basically only paying lip service to any protections.

This person didn't seem to really understand that though and was trying to spin it as some sort of "business is great! We're doing great! Look at all these users and engagement! Growth growth growth!" type typical hype bullshit, but totally misread the situation.

Yes, and it's not something many tech people want to acknowledge. https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-work-for-an-evil-compa...

Yup. When it comes to the "FO" part of "FAFO", there are two sweet spots... either you're so piss poor and destitute you can get away with literally robbing trains [1], or you're so large and rich that fines don't matter because it's just another line on the balance sheet. Why care for society at large when you have absolutely nothing to fear?

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/auburn-gresham-resident...

The effectively silent response of the CEO in respect to seriously tackling a pedophile problem was damning, it's an understandably difficult problem with bad optics.

The fully open gleeful embrace of using Roblox to groom future gambling addicts as a path to future revenue streams is so far past damning it screams walking abyss of moral self awareness.

Most of them don't build, but consume "content" from other people.

Easy way to know if Roblox is safe for children is to ask the following question: Is Roblox available on Nintendo?

Nintendo would never turn away money, unless they feel it would damage their reputation as a company you can trust your children with.

If they had believed Roblox was safe, they would have 100% taken that money.

Anything that's online and anything that has large multiplayer lobbies/worlds is inherently very low on the kid safety gauge, no?

Kids use roblox to play the kind of games kids love, but adults hate. They are basic, repetitive and adults dont find them educational or artistic enough.

But kids love playing them.

Note that whole your comment was about assumption it is education hidden in toy, which is what you want. But, kids often just want a toy.

There are several documentaries on how Roblox explores children, relatively easy to find.

Especially the whole virtual economy where they profit from children work, without giving anything back, due to how virtual money converts back to real currencies.

It's very simple: if it's a company run service that's free to access it's because it's one massive commercial break. (So is news.ycombinator.com of course).

How anyone on here does not immediately see Roblox for what it is is beyond me. They have to be one of the clearest cases around, and yet their PR apparently is strong enough you believed it was kid-friendly and kid-safe.

> I had always heard Roblox presented as kid-friendly and kid-safe.

Yeah, no. I have kids and have walked this path over the last few years. Roblox is, as a company, your standard big org. That is, completely amoral, extracting cash in whatever ways are possible, protecting users (kids) only to the minimal extent required by law or perception that might harm business.

Very very little of their user-base are actually making games, and of those, 99.99% are getting nothing for the work they put in. That whole side of things is one part of the scam (exploit the labour of kids with the idea of making it big, but ensure the reward tier is high enough to avoid needing to cash out for nearly everyone). This is the least problematic part though.

Essentially, Roblox is the wild west internet I grew up on in the early 90’s. Sure, your friends are there, but it’s chock full of pedophiles offering candy if you just sign up to this discord channel. Free Robux might be the common lure, but they can be far more sophisticated. The sad fact that most parents don’t like to think about is that the pedo networks are large, sophisticated, and constantly, actively, hunting for any opportunity. Roblox is a platform of choice. The moderation and level of care from this company may as well be non-existent. It’s just enough to convince the public that they are doing the right thing.

Then there is the never ending stream of gambling games. The currency is Roblox, and that can be converted to cold hard cash, so there are infinite games just built around trying to addict kids and use that to extract the almighty Robux. It’s every evil trick you see with mobile game trash, just sometimes more transparent.

All in all, it’s a terrible place, but at first glance, fine. Your kid playing the popular games with their friends; it’s just like Nintendo. But wander off the happy path, just a little, and the monsters are waiting.

I find it puzzling you imagined tools for kids to build things to be somehow safe on its own.

If a game provides the ability for kids to build things out of blocks, those same kids will make pornographic images out of those blocks.

After watching how my kid played Roblox I turned off messaging and never dropped a dime on it

> I had always heard Roblox presented as kid-friendly and kid-safe.

I have a 12-year-old playing Roblox right now, couldn’t agree less.

Roblox is the 2025 equivalent of AOL chat rooms circa 1998. You should assume that a child playing it will encounter the worst of humanity, and if you aren’t aware of that you’re not paying attention.

Think common British English. It did not read weird to me. The Title Casing Was a Car-Crash Though.

Same. I thought he had caused a car crash and took as an opportunity to promote Roblox.

That would probably be preferable from a PR standpoint.

The original car crash interview:

https://youtu.be/7Qir4EEpawE

The BBS scene was much more accountable. I mean, I met some weird dudes on there and consumed some weird stuff, but at the end of the day it was a local community, and everything was traced back to real people.

I tried to sign up as “Roger Rabbit”, who was 21, and therefore gain some access to a particular mov that was popular at the time. It was then that I learned two things:

- The sysop can talk to you directly!

- The sysop can see your phone number and knows Roger is that kid that signed up ages ago…

Met the sysop in real life some years later and he had thought the whole thing was pretty funny.

The point is that this was a local community; and the internet just doesn’t work like that.

Kotaku and their parent company are in the dogmatic "silicon valley bad " camp. Not to defend Roblox or Polymarket, but if they were doing a pretty good job, I would expect the presentation to be the same.

Mustn’t be mean about the poor innocent megacorps on this here orange website.

To protect the capita... I mean, the delicate HN readers from the horrors of... I'm not sure what horrors are they protected against, but by God they will be protected, willingly or not

IMHO the solution is human moderators. (Or AI bots when they got good, but they aint yet.)

Too expensive? Too bad, Roblox. Worlds tiniest violin is playing for you.

Rethinking the problem? Engaging with the questions like a human being and not a snake oil salesman? Falling back on the Scunthorpe Problem and how easy it is for people to move chat to another platform comes across as not actually concerned at all. You could just make up stuff on the spot and sound more reassuring and human. For example: “one thing we track is users who predominantly engage in chat, which is common enough, but we then filter for people constantly contacting new strangers and then focus on the kinds of conversations”, blah blah blah.

Once he gets to the high five stuff, it’s clear the person is a twelve year old themself. Skibidi toilet.

I can’t watch your link right now, but what you describe is exactly how I approach it.