This month, a financial firm accused gaming platform Roblox of being a “pedophile hellscape” in an attempt to undermine the company’s finances. Although its shares quickly recovered, the allegations forced the Roblox Corporation to renew its efforts to ensure the safety of children.

We discuss child abuse cases on Roblox with a Bloomberg reporter. Olivia Carville.

Statement from Roblox:

“While we are deeply concerned about any incident that puts a child in danger, tens of millions of users have a safe and positive experience every day and are held to Roblox’s strict community standards. For example, of the more than 36.2 million reports submitted to NCMEC’s ​​CyberTipline in 2023, Roblox was the subject of less than 0.04 percent. We pride ourselves on our strict policies against inappropriate content, behavior and communication, and employ a team of experts consisting of thousands of moderators and automated detection tools to quickly take action to remove content that violates these policies when detected. For example, strict text chat filters block inappropriate words and phrases, we do not allow the sharing of images between users, and our filters are designed to block attempts to redirect users under 13 from the platform and prevent the sharing of personal information such as phone number or address. Security has always been critical to everything we do at Roblox, and we’ve invested heavily in it since our founding almost 20 years ago. We take our goal of creating a safe and civil platform very seriously and are constantly evolving and improving our approach to safety – in ongoing partnership with experts in child safety, media literacy and child development – ​​working to prevent and identify harmful activities.”

This segment will air on October 21, 2024. Audio will be available after the broadcast.