Roblox has been under a lot of scrutiny these last few years amid concerns that the game has been exposing children to sexual predators, violent content, and hate speech, as the number of preteens on the platform has ballooned since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Three states in the US - Louisiana, Kentucky, and Texas - have filed lawsuits against the company, citing these concerns, and more than 20 lawsuits this year alone have accused the game of enabling sexual exploitation. Roblox was even labelled an "X-Rated pedophile hellscape" in a Hindenburg Research report.
With pressure at an all-time high, co-founder and chief executive David Baszucki sat down on the Hard Fork podcast with The New York Times to discuss these concerns and shed light on how they're being addressed, only to raise even more eyebrows.
The most bizarre comment came after tech journalist and former CNET senior writer Casey Newton asked what Baszucki thinks of the "problem of predators" on the platform, to which he responded, "We think of it not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well. How do we allow young people to build, communicate, and hang out together? How do we...
