We Asked Roblox’s C.E.O. About Child Safety. It Got Tense.
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It's your day to play. It's your morning to make the most of.
It's your way to love.
It's your climate to consider.
It's your answer to what should I watch? It's your money to save.
It's your song to analyze line by line. It's your 10 ways to find a little calm. It's your world to understand. The New York Times. Find out more at nytimes.com slash your world. Casey, you were in my dream last night.
I was?
Yes. What was I doing? Now, normally I don't have sort of lucid, vivid dreams, but I've been taking melatonin, which will mess you right up. And last night I had a dream that starred you in a central role. So I'm not sure whether it was because we talked about space data centers last week, but for some reason this dream involved you and me deciding to go in a rocket. together into outer space sure and for whatever reason this was like a big national event and like all of the living presidents had like gathered to watch it were katie perry and lauren sanchez on the rocket with us no it was just the two of us and then at the last minute i chickened out and so you went up on the rocket by yourself and i was sitting there like with like george w bush and barack obama and bill clinton like watching the like sort of live stream of you going up in this rocket and
And then here comes the sad part. The rocket exploded. Oh, no. And I kid you not, I was sitting there in my dream watching this exploding rocket and like falling into like deep sorrow and grief about your death. And the TV news anchor who was like reading your obituary was sort of talking about, you know, how you were like the founder of Platformer and co-host of Hard Fork. And the punchline of this dream right before I woke up was that George W. Bush turned to me and said, hard fork.
Now that's a weird name for a tech podcast.
And that's when I woke up. I'm Kevin Roos. I'm a tech columnist at The New York Times. I'm Casey Newton from Platformer. And you're listening to Hard Fork.
This week, Roblox CEO Dave Bazzucchi on how the company is responding to widespread allegations that it has become unsafe for children and what level of responsibility the gaming platform has to protect them.
All right, Kevin. Well, now we'd like to turn our attention to a really serious topic, and that is what has been happening on Roblox, the very popular online gaming platform. Before we get into that, though, how much would you say you know about Roblox?
I know that it is a very popular gaming platform for young people, for children. I know that it... is breaking all kinds of records in terms of how many people are using it. And every time I see a number about how many users it has, it makes my head spin a little bit. And I think, wow, that seems really big. We should pay attention to it.
Yeah, you know, and this is an interesting one because Roblox was around for a long time before it got big. This is a company that was founded 20 years ago. The original product launched in February 2006, but its growth really accelerated during the pandemic when millions and millions of kids are stuck at home and they turn to Roblox to find things to do. That growth has continued since then. They've had a couple of viral hit games recently. Just in the past few months, they had one steal a brain rot. that broke a record for the largest number of concurrent players at 25.4 million. They had another hit game called Grow a Garden, and there was one day when 47.3 million people were concurrently playing games on the platform.
And that's just like a huge number of kids. Like, I think we should just, you know, underline that this is becoming kind of a de facto gathering place for young people, especially in this country.
Yes, today they have more than 150 million daily active users. And one thing that makes Roblox really unique, and this factors into the conversation that we're about to have, is that unlike an Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Discord, which required you to be at least 13 to join, anyone of any age can join Roblox for free. And so that is why, Kevin, if you are a preteen, there is a strong likelihood you're on Roblox.
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Chapters
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