Roblox has hardly been out of the news of late, as one state after another takes legal action against the gaming platform over its woeful lack of protection for children. Described in 2024 as a “pedophile hellscape for kids,” the app is well known for having had almost nothing in place to prevent anonymous adults being able to chat directly with children and doing little to stop children from accessing extremely adult-themed games, and a Roblox exec once proudly boasted of how it exploits children’s labor for its profits. Given this reputation, the company has attempted to respond to criticism with the appointment of Dr. Elizabeth Milovidov, who previously worked on child safety at Lego Fortnite. It seemed like good news. However, a recent interview with Vulture went extraordinarily badly, with the new appointee showing no awareness of the issues affecting Roblox, at one point implying the very real cases of abuse were “not true,” and then just openly confessing she had no idea of what to do.
At first glance, this appointment seemed like the first sensible move by Roblox in a very long time. The company’s culture of outright denial and petulant press releases has done nothing to assuage parents’ fears, and the number of states and counties suing the application for child endangerment is growing every month, with more than a hundred ongoing lawsuits from parents accusing the game of having caused harm to their children. The appointment of an apparent expert who has not only a Ph.D. in the online commodification of children, but also years of experience working as both an independent and in-house advisor on child safety, seemed like at least a tacit acknowledgement that there is a problem that needs to be taken more seriously. But by the end of Variety‘s interview it’s impossible to hold on to any hope for that.
Blame the parents
In the last few months, Roblox has—after nearly two decades—put in place some manner of age verification tools and parental controls. After it was widely discussed in 2024 that there was nothing at all stopping adults from chatting with children under 13, and very little to stop children from accessing adult content, slowly the company has introduced the beginnings of some safety content. Age verification is now required to be able to use some features, and under-13 accounts can now be linked to parents’ accounts and moderated. However, there remains nothing at all for over-13s, and what’s there is easily spoofed. And it still remains the case that any child of any age can create an account without needing an email address or phone number in less than a minute. What’s there is widely considered inadequate, and has done nothing to quell the spate of lawsuits.
It’s hard to know just how much of the current legal response around the U.S. is genuine and how much is posturing, and it’s important to maintain a cool head about the scale of the issues. Roblox has over 140 million users worldwide, and 73 percent of them are under 18. The cases that are highlighted are extremely serious, and there’s no question that Roblox has put desultory effort into addressing the concerns, but it’s also not an epidemic. The issue is that people want Roblox to at least look like it’s taking the issue seriously. And more than anything else, we ought to maintain the expectation that the people Roblox hires to address these issues should be up to the task.
Car crash interviews can go two ways. You have the likes of Roblox CEO David Baszucki’s conversation with The New York Times late last year, in which the horrific floundering began with Baszucki describing the “scope of the problem” of predators using Roblox to access children as “not necessarily as a problem, but an opportunity as well,” and ended with the very unserious man sarcastically yelling “High five!” and going off on the most extraordinarily immature tantrum. Then you have the likes of Dr. Milovidov’s interview with Vulture‘s Nicole Carpenter, where some of the most ignorant answers are delivered with undeserved over-confidence, no matter how hard the excellent Carpenter calmly tried to press for some sense. I strongly recommend reading the full interview for yourself.
After Milovidov lists what she appears to believe are relevant credentials (her Ph.D., that her dissertation was 400 pages, how she likes Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica), the lawyer delivers what will prove to be her only answer to every question: she created a parent council, and parents should play with their children. Her appointment, we’re told up-front, is “very daring” of Roblox, because “I am very impartial. I’m not afraid to say, ‘Listen, I’m here for the parents.’” So what is she hearing from parents, Vulture asks. Well, some are saying they’re “kind of” afraid to let their kids play, but others have told her, “Yeah, we’ve heard this, but we know it’s not true because we were there playing with our kids.”
It’s the most astonishing claim, putting these arguments that lack of moderation, inadequate age verification, and poor parental controls aren’t actually an issue all in the mouths of anonymous parents, even as children have been kidnapped and sexually abused by predators they encountered on Roblox. These anonymous parents know there’s no real cause for concern, and they’re the ones who play with their kids, so actually it’s fine.
Nicole Carpenter doesn’t let this slide. Asking if Milovidov is genuinely claiming these problems aren’t real, the new appointment prevaricates in a way beyond parody.
I would say that, in general, Roblox is a platform online. The internet is the internet, right? We have to realize that once we give a child any sort of Wi-Fi access, the world is an open place, right? I remember doing digital parenting sessions and telling parents, “Look, I’m wearing my Apple Watch. Can you believe I can be bullied on my Apple Watch?” You can be bullied in Google Documents. It’s not about banning these things. It’s about balance and boundaries. Now that we’ve introduced them, they’ve seen the water; we can’t just say, “You’re never going to go there.”
I try to maintain a modicum of journalistic professionalism when writing these pieces, but I just opted to label this piece as “Commentary” rather than “News” so I can write: I’m sorry, what? This person has been put into a position to try to address the ongoing and serious situation of predators using the software that pays her wages to abuse children, and her response to being asked if the issue even exists is to say, “You can get bullied in Google Documents.” Remember, she’s very impartial, she’s not afraid to be there for the parents.
Blame the parents
With this in mind, what follows is an incredibly frustrating read, as Carpenter rephrases essentially the same question about why Roblox is not taking responsibility and is putting the onus so much on parents, but gets nowhere. Milovidov, when her replies are coherent, insists the solution is that parents monitor their children’s play. And agreed! That’s the ideal situation. But what about how Roblox allows any child to secretly create an account without even needing an email address? “We’re trying to balance the privacy concerns of users and families with trying to wall things down a bit more. It’s a challenge. When I was writing the parents’ guide for Instagram, I was also telling parents about finsta—fake Instagram accounts. I mean, these things exist in almost every setting. The idea, again, is to talk with your children and say…”
It’s just so poor. So embarrassingly poor. What on Earth did fake Instagram accounts have to do with anything? And how did a question about what happens when children take advantage of Roblox’s useless lack of protections end up being the parents’ fault again?
After multiple attempts, Carpenter puts the case of the two girls kidnapped in Florida to her, and asks if this is something parents should just be expected to get past. Milovidov’s reply is to say that actually, the kids moved on to another platform after meeting their abductor on Roblox, and anyway, what about that time two British schoolgirls joined ISIS? This sounds like parody, right? Here’s the actual text:
“I agree with you. I hear you. I don’t think they need to get past anything. I think they need to do critical thinking. Look at what the articles say. The fact is they may have spoken to this person or met them [on Roblox], but then they were coerced. They went off to a different platform. It reminds me of, a few years ago, there were two young British schoolgirls who went off to fight for ISIS. They were taken away.”
She concludes this response, in a shock twist, by saying the answer is to play Roblox with your children. Seemingly in desperation, Carpenter just flat-out asks, “How is Roblox keeping kids and bad actors from moving off the platform?” And the reply is the final nail in the coffin.
“I’m not a super-tech person…”
Why not? How can you possibly do your job if you don’t understand even the most basic aspects of how the game uses tech to do the thing you’re there to do? Milovidov waffles about AI and Morse code, and then says that it’s the children who need to block stuff. And then…
“But as far as moderation goes, I’ve seen this firsthand. You hear on the news about the one that might have gotten through, and the critical harm team is like, ‘Our systems are catching lots more.’ That makes me feel a little better.”
Well, doesn’t everyone just look silly now? You only hear about the times the children are kidnapped and abused, and not all the times they’re not! Don’t we all seem so incredibly petty for being so selective about it?
Blame the parents
The interview concludes with what I found most disturbing about all of this. Carpenter asks the incredibly sensible question about what success looks like to Milovidov. And she genuinely doesn’t know. She jokes that it’s a question a boss would ask, talks about the bloody parent council again, says parents should be telling other parents how they play Roblox with their kids, and stop all their “freaking out.” Carpenter, in reaction to such dismal fluff, pushes again.
I would say—okay, Nicole. You’re going there. That’s the short term. Let’s do that in a year. You’re holding my feet to the fire here. Part of my parental advocacy strategy is the parent council doing media and engagement outreach and then digital literacy. I don’t want to just do that, because I wrote the digital-citizen handbook guide for the European Council of Europe—47 member countries. Ask me how many people are reading it? Yeah, exactly.
What I want to do is find a way to do some sort of micro-learning and digital literacy that way. If you have any super ideas, Nicole, I’m all ears. Really, you’re out here with me.
How? How can someone be in this job and be so utterly thrown by such an obvious question? Nonsense waffle about something utterly irrelevant, and then “I dunno! You got anything?”
How can this be the best Roblox can do? How can someone come out declaring themselves a risky appointment because they’re not afraid to speak their mind and speak for parents, and then insist that there are no problems, and even if there were, it would be the parents’ fault for not playing Steal A Brainrot with their kid for two hours a day?
