Roblox CEO Interview Sparks Child Safety Concerns Yet Again

• Roblox CEO interview puts safety stance under sharper focus.
• David Baszucki defends the platform’s growth amid widespread bans.
• Key questions emerge about responsibility, scale, and oversight.

The Roblox CEO interview on the Hard Fork podcast of The New York Times spread like wildfire, as the questions quickly turned tense. When Casey Newton and Kevin Roose questioned CEO David Baszucki, his answers left people uncertain about the platform’s safeguards.

“You don’t think you have a problem with predators on the platform?” asked the podcasters, but David sidestepped. He said, “I think we're doing an incredible job at innovating relative to the number of people on our platform and the hours, in really leaning into the future of how this is going to work.”

Roblox CEO’s child safety debate seems to catalyze the effect of the company facing widespread bans and lawsuits across the globe. However, when talking about new child safety measures, Baszucki said, “We're not doing this because of any laws that are coming, we think it's the right thing to do.” This has left many people baffled, wondering about the platform’s motive.

Baszucki also portrayed maintaining safety at Roblox's scale as a growth opportunity. According to him, Roblox has about 3% of the $190 billion gaming business, which gives individual creators the chance to grow within a bigger system. Baszucki’s interview gained strong responses from people all over, with NME describing his tone as “bizarre” for downplaying predatory behavior as an innovation challenge. 

Baszucki, Roblox is Focusing On Pushing Forward?

The features used in the Roblox ecosystem have given birth to lots of predatory and grooming issues. However, Yahoo! News reported citing the podcast answer of CEO Baszucki praising the platform for building widespread communication channels. “At the scale we’re at, 150 million daily actives, 11 billion hours a month, like what is the best way to keep pushing this forward?” he said. These numbers show how big a platform Roblox is and how relevant the questions are in discussing Roblox’s child safety concerns.

When asked about last year's Hindenburg investigation, which accused Roblox of failing to protect young users, Baszucki became defensive. "Fun, let's keep going down this," he said. "First off, Hindenburg is no longer in existence… You should report on that. They went out of business.”

“Will Roblox fix its safety problems by the time my three-and-a-half-year-old asks to play?” podcaster Kevin Roose asked CEO Baszucki in what many have now labeled a Roblox interview about child safety turning point. To this, Baszucki replied, “A parent is the ultimate arbiter of responsibility,” noting the urgent need for parent supervision. “Roblox is an amazing platform right now for your kid,” he further added, while also sharing a possibility of going deeper and “do whatever it takes to get… over the hump.”