← Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families
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- [00:06]
A
After months of pressure from the Esafety
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Commissioner, gaming platform Roblox is today announcing fresh changes to make its services safer for kids new age.
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An exclusive interview for podcasts in Australia today on the Happy Families Podcast. There are massive changes coming to Roblox as they continue their work in telling us that they're making the platform safer for children and young people. I've been offered an exclusive opportunity to have a conversation with Roblox's Chief Safety Officer. His name is Matt Kaufman. Matt and I are gonna be talking next about the changes, what they mean for our kids, whether or not Roblox can be trusted with these changes, and how you can work with Roblox and your child to give them a safe online experience, assuming that you're letting them use Roblox. Like I said, this is the only podcast conversation where Matt is speaking to somebody in Australia about this. We've got the exclusive here at Happy Families and that discussion is is next. G'. Day. Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. Today, a podcast exclusive in Australia, a conversation with Matt Kaufman. Matt Kaufman has served as the Chief Safety Officer at Roblox since 2023. He leads the company's safety and civility efforts across product and operations and policy. He first joined Roblox in 2017 as VP of Product and Operations and since then has continued his work with Rob. Roblox knows his stuff, holds a degree in mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering from University of California, Davis, and a master's in Aerospace Engineering from Virginia Tech. Before Roblox, he worked at senior roles in places like Crunchbase, Oodle and the online virtual world there dot com. That's enough of the bio stuff, Matt. I really appreciate you joining me for this conversation. Let's just talk through the changes right now. There's a whole suite of changes that Roblox is going to bring in specifically in Australia. As of the revamped emphasis in Australia on children being safe online, what can you tell us about these changes?
- [02:07]
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So the first change we're making is that we are introducing a Roblox Kids accounts and we're calling Roblox Select Accounts. Roblox Kids accounts are for anybody who is under nine. And our select accounts are for users who are between 9 and 15 years old. And what these two accounts types do is that it makes it easier for parents to understand what their kids have access to on Roblox. So our existing standards for communication still apply. Kids under 9 can't communicate or talk to anybody. As you get older and you're in like the nine plus Then you get sort of added features to be able to talk to your friends and others like that. And the other thing is we're talking a lot more about the content you have access to. So with Roblox Kids accounts and our Roblox select accounts, the content you have access to is the content that we have the highest confidence in, high quality content that has the right age ratings for those age groups. And we are using age checks or face to age estimation as one of the mechanisms for doing those age checks to make sure that users get into the right accounts that are appropriate for them.
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Matt, I'm going to link to the changes via the Roblox website in the show notes. Two of the biggest challenges that I've been quite noisy about when it comes to children and their safety on Roblox, and there are more than just these two, but two of the biggest challenges have my concern around the content that kids can see and their access to people that they don't know. And when you were in Australia a couple of months ago with David Bouzucki, the CEO of Roblox, the three of us got to sit down and have quite an in depth conversation about what's going on there, which was a real delight or a privilege to be able to do. It sounds to me like these changes are directly oriented towards the those areas. Before we go into them in more depth though, the biggest question that I have is around age checking. Now you've just hinted that age checking is an integral part of this. If kids are going to be age bracketed for year nine and under and then you're nine to 15 and then 15 and over, there has to be an effective way to age check. The social media companies are saying that it doesn't work and I'm wondering how confident you are in what Roblox is going to be doing for age checking. And a follow up to that is what happens when it gets it wrong?
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I guess I want to start with saying that Roblox and myself included, we're optimistic that going through age checks and using the camera in order to estimate your age, we're confident in that, in being a highly accessible global solution that we can offer that's very easy for users. Is it perfect? And the answer is no. But I would argue that most things in life aren't perfect. Now we know that for users who are under 18 years old, the age check process using a face to age estimation gets people's ages right within about plus or minus 1.4 years. And we know that from data but there's really two parts of age checking. There's part one is determining whether the person on the other side of the camera is a real person. Whether like they're not just somebody holding up their phone of their favorite celebrity or showing a cartoon character, but is it a real person? And then the second part of age check is taking a face and converting it to an age. The second part, there's a lot of data, scientific data that shows under 18 plus or minus 1.4 years. We're confident in that. The checking to see if you're a real person is something that companies have to devote a lot of energy to do. Roblox has taken the approach that we care deeply that the person on the other end of the camera is real and we don't want people faking it. So we implement all kinds of checks to make sure you're a real person. I think what makes the age check process confusing out there for parents is that there are lots of companies doing this, lots of products and services doing it, but not everybody takes that first step of making sure it's a real person. Not everybody goes to the likes that say Roblox does. Despite issues, it is categorically more effective than simply asking somebody how old they are.
- [06:25]
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Matt, I hear what you're saying and I hope that you're right. Other than the photo, how do you know that the 10 year old who's saying that they're 10 is actually 10 and it's not a 50 year old who is pretending to be 10 and holding up a photo of a child or bringing in their own child and getting them to smile for the camera. What do you have beyond the facial
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recognition, the bringing in the photo thing? Because I think this comes up a lot. I mean it's sensational on social media. Look, I held up a picture of my dog and it said that I'm 25. But that's not how it works and that's not how Roblox works. So how do we tell. The first thing is when we take the picture of you and it's asking you to move your head around, what people don't really realize is what it's actually doing is looking to see if you have an ear. Because if you take a profile picture, like I take your picture right now, Justin, and I take a snapshot of it and I'm going to, I'm going to be like, hey, I'm at a kid. I'm going to go use Justin's picture to like claim that I'm you know you look older than 25, but I'm not going to guess how old. I'm going to claim that I'm, you know, an adult. I can't see your ears because in the profile I can't see it. But when these a check process is run and it's asking you to move your head and you're following instructions, it's looking for these basic signs of are you a real person? And there's lots of stuff that goes into that. The other thing is, let's say that you're a kid and you get your parent to do it on your behalf. And that was actually something that we saw a lot of, to be honest with you, is that I think kids are so accustomed to getting an ask on their phone to verify this, verify that, agree to this, agree to that, that a lot of kids just hand the phone to their parents and say, hey, do this for me. And I can't blame them. I mean, I think we've trained kids that this is what you should do. Ask your parent. But the parent gets the phone. They're taking care of lots of other things at the same time. And we saw a lot of cases where the parent was like, oh, wants to take a picture. Here we go, it's me. And the parent didn't realize they were setting the age for their kid. They just didn't know. So we have ways of fixing that. Parents can create a verified parent account and they can adjust the age of their kids. We allow parents and kids to reset the process and start it over again if they screwed up. We allow you to use a photo ID if you want. So we have these other mechanisms in there to correct it. Now, not only do we have that, but we also look at your user behavior after you've gone through the age pec process. And if we notice your behavior, like what you're playing, if you're talking to people, how you're talking to them, things like that, if we notice that they that looks different than what you age checked as will ask you to do the process again. So these are never like one and done things. And that is how we think about the age check process.
- [09:19]
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Matt Kaufman has served as the Chief Safety Officer at Roblox since 2023. He leads the company's safety and civility efforts across product and operations and policy. Let's talk about content classification. With the content classification, I presume it's going to be done by technology, by AI a lot more than it's going to be done by people. Will people be involved in both. And the reason that I'm asking this is I'm sure that the word Hindenburg is not one that's smiled on very much at Roblox at the moment. But for people who missed it, a couple of years ago, a group called Hindenburg Research published a contested but scathing report on damaging allegations against Roblox.
- [09:58]
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When you talk about a platform with an 80 million daily active users in that age group, there will be concerns around child safety. I mean, the content that they are consuming, how much time they are spending, what kind of communities are thriving on that platform. And I think that's what Hindenburg is bringing into focus, that there isn't enough content safety.
- [10:19]
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And something that really stood out to me in the Hindenburg research report showed that when they set up a test account registered as an eight year old, they were able to access groups that were openly trading child sex abuse material simply by searching the word adult. So in terms of this best in the world moderation, obviously with the age checking that's occurring now, there's still going to be content that needs to be placed into the appropriate age group. How is the content classification going to be done?
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We do content classification. There's actually two parts of it. One, there is moderation to say, does the content meet our standards? I mean, if somebody is doing something truly nefarious, they're celebrating terrorism or they're doing anything that would endanger a child, that is not allowed on our platform. It is against our policies. Even if one person sees it, or five or ten or out of the hundred plus million people who are on Roblox every day, it doesn't matter. It is not. Okay. So I just want to start with that. Now, when we look at content, first we decide is it acceptable on our platform or not? And the second thing we decide is what are the ratings associated with the content. We are working with acb, the ratings board in Australia, to apply their ratings to our content. And we're going to be doing that in the future. So there's two parts of it. We use both humans looking at content and we also use machines. And so it's really, it's a marriage of the two. I don't think that, you know, entirely AI or entirely human. That is not the answer. The answer is you have to use both. So I do want to talk about the content that is accessible to our younger users, our users who are under 16, or users who have not gone through the age check process. If you choose not to go through the age check process, no problem, you'll just not have access to any content that you know, our wider set of content, you'll be limited to what our under 16s have access to. One of the things that we're doing as part of the rollout of Roblox Kids and Select is we're looking at we're only making the content which we have the highest confidence in available to our younger users. And so what does that mean? The way I would describe it is imagine you buy a new house or you rent a new apartment or condo. When you walk through it, right before you sign your name on it, you can walk through and be like, hey, everything looks great. But after you've lived in it for a little bit, you're like, wow, that door doesn't actually shut all the way. And wow, hot water. It doesn't come out of that faucet over there. It's not something you would have seen when you walk through the house. And I think what we're saying for our content, we're a large user generated content platform, is we want to make sure that the content that we have available to our, our youngest users has been sort of lived in for a while, that it's been on the platform for a while, that we know who the developer is, that it wasn't somebody who just popped up yesterday and created content. We want to have a high degree of confidence in who the developer is, whether the content had been viewed by other people, adults, older users, and whether people have flagged any issues. And that all of our safety moderation systems, whether they're human or automated, have had time to really look at that content. So with the launch of Roblox Kids and Roblox select accounts, we're saying only the content that has gone through all of these additional checks will be available to our younger users. And I think that this is an important step for Roblox because I think people have to remember and we need to recognize that we are a user generated content platform. It's what makes Roblox amazing. The majority of our top content was made by kids who started playing on Roblox when they were much younger. And we want to keep that ethos of a user generated content platform where people are learning STEM skills and creating and sharing with their friends. We want to maintain that while also making sure that the content that's available to our youngest users is passed through a bunch of safety checks to make sure that we really understand the ratings of it and that it does adhere to our content policies.
- [14:29]
A
Matt, my last question around the changes relates to parental controls. Last time I signed up for an account on Roblox as a very, very young person, the parental controls were loose. Has anything changed there?
- [14:43]
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Yeah, well, I mean, I would encourage you to sign up as a parent now to see all of the stuff that we've added over the last year or so, and we continue to add things. Our goal is to make the parental controls as easy as possible for parents to use. One thing I would note is that when we think about parental controls, we obviously want to make it easy for parents to tune who their kids are able to talk to or not able to talk to at all. But obviously our youngest users can't talk to anybody. We want to make it easy for parents to decide what content their kids have access to. Whether there's a piece of content that maybe we didn't think it was appropriate, but the parents think it is, or vice versa, where the parents are like, hey, I just disagree with this type of content. I don't want my kid to have access to it. I want to turn that off. We want to make that really easy. I would say, though, and we invest a lot in this. The most important thing for parents when it comes to parental controls is to be engaged with their kid and just talk to them about what they're doing. The most important parental control doesn't require you to sign up or do anything. It's just talking to your kid. It's talking to your kid about, like, what games are you playing, who are you playing those games with? Like, what do you like about it? Like, what was exciting, what was something that maybe you didn't like, and really having that conversation with kids. And so when I think about where we're going with parental controls in the future, we're going to try and do more to foster that conversation between parents and their kids about what they're doing on Roblox.
- [16:11]
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If I were to summarise everything that I think that I've heard you say, for parents who are saying, all right, there's been a lot of information. I really just want to get my head around exactly what this means. I'm going to do my best to do a quick summary. Correct me if I'm wrong. So the first thing is that there's now going to be three different types of account rather than essentially what has been a singular Roblox account. There's going to be Roblox Kids for children aged, let's say five to eight. Then there's going to be Roblox select, which will be for 9 to 15 year olds. And then there'll be the regular Roblox account for children 16 and over. Age checking is going to happen primarily using technology and verifying that a person is a real person.
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1.
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One thing that has been threaded through this conversation, and I feel like it's a slight contrast to the discussion we had a couple of months ago when I met you in the Brisbane Hotel with David Pazucki. Was, and I might not be saying this word perfect, but David said something along the lines of, we want Roblox to be a platform that parents can leave their kids with without having to worry about what they're doing. We want Roblox to be safe for kids without parents having to be over their shoulder. But you've said consistently throughout this conversation, parents need to be involved. Parents actually need to know what's going on. So parents need to make sure that it's not their face that's signing their child into Roblox. Like, my daughter constantly grabs the iPhone, sticks it in front of her mum's face, my wife's face, and all of a sudden she's into whatever she wanted to be using. And a lot of parents are just like, yeah, sure, I'll look at the camera. Okay, done. Off you go. Give me five minutes, I need some space. So we've got three accounts for the Roblox kids. What you're saying is that the content rating is highly vetted, both by real people, but also by technology to make sure that the quality of the content is appropriate for young children five to eight. You're saying that chat is off? That's the default option. But from what I understand, you're also indicating that with parent intervention, parents can turn chat on so that kids can talk to selected people. Have I got that right?
- [18:10]
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Parents will be able to turn chat on so that the siblings can talk to each other. But parents would have to approve that in Roblox Kids and Roblox select as you get older.
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Yeah. So Roblox select is the 9 to 15.
- [18:24]
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Yeah. As you get older, like if you're 13, you'll be able to chat with others of your similar age. And everything is filtered and we don't allow sharing of images or video or pii and all of that stuff. But Roblox select starts introducing more features as users get older. We want Roblox to be safe. It's very important that parents have trust that Roblox is doing what we can and whatever we can to keep kids safe. That is our number one priority. But like I said, we also think it's important that we create a space where kids and parents can have a conversation about what they're doing online. And I don't think that's just about roadblocks. I mean, I would suspect that that's given. I mean, you're obviously the expert here and we would certainly defer to you on this. But I would think that the advice to parents that you should be talking to your kids about what they're doing online and have a conversation about who they're hanging out with and other stuff like that applies broadly and not just to Roblox.
- [19:20]
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It doesn't really matter what platform you're on. If you're not involved in your children's lives, specifically their online life, they can be, will be confronted by all kinds, all manner of challenges. The real, the real secret to success here is less about the platform and more about parental involvement. However, my pushback is parents shouldn't have to be constantly involved. Platforms have a responsibility. Roblox has undeniably broken trust over the years with parents as children have been exposed to and damaged by content that's been there. These changes, Matt, are oriented towards repairing that trust. I've not been a friend of Roblox for some time because of the damage that's occurred. I can't help myself. Even though I'm not a big believer in big tech and they're the better angels of their nature, a conversation like this tells me that Roblox is, in word right now, committed to making changes. And I guess as this rolls out, we'll have to see how that that plays out.
- [20:19]
B
Indeed, when we think about creating safety on Roblox, the first thing we ask ourselves is would this be something that we would expect that would be okay for our kids if we weren't there? We want to make sure that we're making decisions that work not just for our own kids, but work for the globe and work for kids in Australia and your kids.
- [20:39]
A
Matt, really appreciate your time, really appreciate you sharing what you've shared and hopefully this leads to some continued improvement so that parents can feel good about their kids being online. Thank you so much for chatting with me today.
- [20:52]
B
Thank you, Justin. I appreciate your time.
- [20:54]
A
Matt Kaufman has served as the Chief Safety Officer at Roblox since 2023. Really appreciate Matt's sincerity and the things that he's shared in today's conversation. Hopefully it's been helpful for you. As we've discussed the changes that are landing at Roblox literally as we speak, Roblox kids for 5 to 8 year olds, Roblox select for kids aged 9 to 15, and then regular Roblox accounts for 16 and overs. We will link to some details about those changes in the show notes, as well as some other info about Roblox that we hope will be useful as you talk to the kids about how all this works out. The Happy Families Podcast is produced by Justin Rulon from Bridge Media. Nim Hammons provides our admin and other support, and for more information to make your family happier, please Visit us@happyfamilies.com.