Gaming platform to use facial age estimation to limit chats to similar age groups, as allegations of grooming grow
The online games platform Roblox is to start blocking children from talking to adult and much older teen strangers from next month as it faces fresh lawsuits alleging the platform has been exploited by predators to groom children as young as seven.
Roblox has reached 150 million daily players of games including viral hits Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot but has been hit by legal claims the system’s design has made “children easy prey for paedophiles”.
From next month it will start enforcing facial age estimation to allow children to chat with strangers only if they are in their broad age group.
Roblox said it would be the first online gaming or communication platform to require age checks for communication. Similar checks were introduced for users of pornography sites in the UK this summer under Online Safety Act measures to prevent under-18s from seeing explicit content.
