Roblox has introduced new child safety tools aimed at protecting teens on its platform, including a new age verification system, an overhaul to the friends list, and more.
As revealed in a news post on the Roblox website, the platform's new tools are aimed at "advancing [its] safety and civility vision"; Roblox describes the tools as "an expansion of [its] safety platform" and "a significant step forward" in terms of its user experience.
First up, the new Trusted Connections system, which will depend on Roblox's age verification estimation (more on which in a moment), will allow users aged 13 or over who know each other in real life to connect and talk "without filters".
Roblox users aged between 13 and 17 can add each other as Trusted Connections through age verification, and if they want to add users aged 18 or over, they'll have to do so via Trusted Connections. Those under 13 can't use this new system.
The new age verification system will work via "age estimation technology" that will require users to "take a video selfie", then submit it to Roblox. That selfie will be "analyzed against a large and diverse dataset" to estimate users' age, and data is...
