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Comment by zh3 | Hacker News Reader

As a purely tactical measure, we use the same older person (me) for age verification for all family members - zero failures so far and it poisons the well.

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In the case of Roblox they have a horrible system where they estimate your age and only allow you to interact with people of a similar age, meaning if you verified your kid with your face then they'd only be able to interact with adults and not other kids. At least that's the theory. It doesn't take a lot of effort to figure out how a predator could misuse this system to their advantage (which is why I call it horrible)

Reference: https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/en-us/articles/39143693116052-...

Predators have been using roblox since its inception, but I don't think they are doing age verification because of that. They're looking to expand into more adult experiences and, of all horrible ideas, dating.

I’ve seen Roblox invest and conduct child safety research for several years now.

Maybe they are expanding into other industries, but the safety focus predates that.

I think it is much simpler: they are feeling regulatory pressure. In various countries there are increasingly strict laws that allow people to hold companies accountable for issues on their platform. By using age verification, they can increasingly move responsibility away.

> As a purely tactical measure, we use the same older person (me) for age verification for all family members - zero failures so far and it poisons the well.

Is there a 'break glass' workflow in case you are not available (e.g., health incident)?

We only do it for one-off age verification, not stuff that requires repeat authentication (those we simply don't use).

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