Roblox 'taken to task' but may not be included in social media ban, says eSafety commissioner

Australia's eSafety commissioner says her team has "taken Roblox to task" over its risk of exposing children to harm but warned the online gaming platform may not be included in the upcoming social media ban.

Julie Inman Grant made the comments following an ABC report revealing children had been exposed to child sex abuse material and extremist content on Roblox.

The social media ban will be implemented in December this year, but exactly which platforms will be included has been unclear.

Some parents have called for Roblox to be included in the ban, but Ms Inman Grant said the law only allows the ban to target platforms whose "sole or significant" purpose is social interaction. As a result, including Roblox could be "tricky" she said.

Roblox implemented further safety measures this year, including age-gating certain games on its platform, strengthening parental controls and AI content moderation.

In September, it announced it would extend age verification to everyone who uses the platform's communication features before the end of the year.

"We have taken Roblox to task and we have come to an agreement where they will employ new safety measures, including making accounts for users aged under 16 private by default and also introducing tools to prevent adult users from contacting teens without parental consent," Ms Iman Grant said.

"They will be also introducing facial age estimation, which is really important because the primary user base of Roblox is between the ages of five and 13, but it is now a co-mingled platform."

The changes were not being made as part of the teen social media ban.

Instead, Ms Inman Grant was able to extract the commitments from Roblox under her existing regulatory powers.

"We did initially threaten formal regulatory action and they said, no, we will work with you," she said.

Ms Inman Grant said the platform needed to make it possible for children on the platform to determine whether they were interacting with another child or with an adult, and guardrails around those interactions needed to be established.

"They need to implement these to our satisfaction by the end of this calendar year."

Which platforms are part of the social media ban?

Six platforms are confirmed to be included in the ban: Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter/X and Youtube.

However, in September the ABC revealed that the eSafety commissioner had written to 16 companies in total, including Roblox, advising them that the ban may be relevant for their platforms.

In an interview with Raf Epstein ahead of the ABC's Digital Dilemma broadcast tonight, Ms Inman Grant said her office would be announcing which platforms would be included in the ban, with details expected this month.

In order to be covered by the social media ban, a platform's sole or primary purpose must be to "enable online social interaction between two or more end-users," according to the law.

"As you would expect, a company like Roblox would say our sole or primary purpose is not social interaction, it's actually online gaming or online playing," she said.

"Being able to parse that in a way that will stand up and in a court of law is what is taking a little bit of time."

Roblox does not believe it should be included in the social media ban.

"Roblox is and always has been an immersive gaming platform, not a social media platform," the company has told the ABC.

"We completed the self-assessment process and communicated to eSafety that our position remains that we are an exempted online gaming platform."

Privacy and ID

Privacy was the most commonly raised concern with the social media ban in the ABC's Your Say survey, with people expressing hesitancy about using their drivers' license or other forms of ID to verify their age.

Ms Inman Grant sought to reassure people that this was not the only way they could verify their age and that a "waterfall" approach would be applied that considered "multiple data points", such as language and behavioural signals.

"There was a specific amendment that said that a person should not be forced to use government or digital ID and so a platform cannot make that the exclusive form of age assurance," Ms Iman Grant said.

"It can be used, but it can't be the only form of age assurance."

Ms Inman Grant said an important feature of the legislation was its "co-regulatory arrangement".

"The privacy commissioner will have separate powers and fighting ability around ensuring that the age assurance is used in ways that won't lead to a data breach," she said.

Ms Inman Grant also said social media companies must give kids the choice to deactivate their account rather than delete it completely.

"What deactivation would basically mean is that they'll require quite a bit of storage capability, but they'll be able to keep the handles, they'll be able to keep the stories, the memories, the photos," Ms Iman Grant said.

Further guidance will be released next week advising young people on how to prepare for the ban.