How old are you really? Inside Roblox’s new campaign to verify user ages
SAN MATEO, Calif. — One morning in late May, an 11-year-old armed with a fake mustache had a mission: fool Roblox’s age-estimation tool into thinking he was older.
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But moments after Cole Moretti looked into the camera, the system flagged him as a child between the ages of 9 and 12. Moretti was one of several children brought in by NBC News to try the technology at Roblox’s headquarters.
“Sorry, you can tell your friends at school it doesn’t work,” Eliza Jacobs, Roblox’s vice president of safety product policy, told Moretti, as she held the iPad in front of him.
Moretti’s failed disguise was part of a recent demonstration where the company gave NBC News an exclusive look at the biometric age-checking tool that, starting this month, will be used to place users into age-based accounts.
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The platform has touted its age-checking technology, which rolled out globally earlier this year,as it tries to address persistent child safety concerns and reassure users, parents and investors that it is taking steps to keep younger users in age-appropriate spaces.
Since its launch in 2006, Roblox has become the biggest social gaming platform for kids around the world, with its sprawling virtual ecosystem of user-made games, called “experiences.” The company has cracked down on in-game communication between users as numerous states and families allege the platform has become a hunting ground for child predators.
Now, Roblox is launching separate age-based accounts for minors. Those ages 5 to 8 will be placed in Roblox Kids accounts, which disable all messaging by default and restrict users to games with a content maturity label of “minimal” or “mild.” Users ages 9 to 15 will be in Roblox Select accounts, which gradually introduce more chat functions and allow access to games up to “moderate” content maturity. Users 16 and up will generally have the full suite of Roblox games and chat functions.
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