The tech industry specialises in a tone-deaf executives. The people who run these billion dollar companies are often so removed from the real world, the daily reality of all us peons, that they can seem like a different species. To take one recent example, imagine you got laid off by Microsoft, and then one executive tells you to console yourself with AI, while the CEO says you lost your job because of "the enigma of success in an industry that has no franchise value."
It's like Bizarroland sometimes, and the latest entry comes from Roblox CEO David Baszucki, who on a recent episode of the Tech Stuff podcast (first spotted by Private Eye magazine) has returned to a pet topic: online dating. Baszucki first started banging this particular drum (in public anyway) at last year's Roblox developer conference, and the necessary context here is that Roblox's user base skews incredibly young, with roughly 40% of users under the age of 13.
Baszucki promises that any such dating service would require age verification, but there are reasons to be skeptical of such measures, and Roblox has in the past faced allegations that it's being used to groom children: in one especially horrific case, it was used by a pedophile to groom, abduct, and sexually assault a 15 year-old girl. It's true that Roblox is continually improving its rules and safety features, but there is no-one on the planet who thinks adding dating to this platform will go well, or could possibly be made safe. Except, y'know, the CEO of Roblox Corporation.
Baszucki's dating comments come in the context of his explanation of the safety features the platform already has, and those that are in the pipeline for age groups like 13-17 year-olds ("a very vulnerable age"). He also addresses his recent comment that any parent uncomfortable with Roblox simply "don't let your kids be on Roblox":
"I was hoping my answer would get construed as 'anytime a parent is uncomfortable with anything'," says Baszucki. "Like I'm looking outside at a lake right now, and if I saw my two year-old… I'm not comfortable having them at the end of the dock without a life jacket on. I'm a parent, I have four kids, I would always want parents to, if they're not comfortable, follow their intuition."
The dating stuff arrives in the wider context of Baszucki's definition of Roblox as a "wellness platform" as much as a gaming platform, and buckle up: Here's how Roblox is going to help solve social problems.
"Young people who have gotten disconnected at school, young people who are going through a mental health crisis, young people who are going through something," says Baszucki, "finding people on Roblox to connect with… I mean it sounds gratuitous for me to say it but parents say 'my kid is alive because they found people on Roblox.'
"So I think there's a loneliness epidemic going on in the world, I think I'll go out on a limb and I'll say for, in quotes, '21 and up, ID verified, opted-in [users]' some day we'll have dating on Roblox and I think a lot of people who might be afraid to go on a real-life date might find it easier to have a virtual date to start and then, if they connect, move to the physical world. A wellness platform… I think of as a platform to help loneliness and bring connection."
Baszucki seems to have enormous faith that Roblox can eventually reach a place where things like grooming can become a "solved problem" through technology, particularly AI moderation tools.
"My job at a higher level is driven by a certain level of morality and ethics," says Baszucki, "I don't literally consider my job the user count on Roblox, but I do consider this as an inevitable form of technology where we've been given the opportunity to shepherd it in with civility and with optimism. That's an exciting job: 'This kind of technology's coming, AI is coming, can we do this in a way that is more civil and higher quality than any other company could?' That gets us all up in the morning. So I'd say if we do that and we build this technical vision, we are going to see more users doing that stuff almost as a byproduct."
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