Roblox questioned on grooming safeguards amid PH scrutiny over youth safety

ROBLOX. Roblox Corporation's head of communications in APAC, Papri Dev, answers questions from the media at the Roblox Unblox event dealing with safety on the platform Rappler screenshot DILG Secretary Jonvic Remulla says they are currently looking into the possible connection between Roblox's chat functions, where groomers may lurk, and the Ateneo de Zamboanga incident Roblox Corporation faced questions during its 'Unbox Roblox' event in Manila regarding online grooming and child safety measures, amid ongoing investigations into youth safety following school shootings in the Philippines. Philippine lawmakers are investigating the potential links between online gaming platforms like Roblox and violent incidents, with concerns about groomers using these platforms to recruit young people. Roblox has implemented safety features and encourages parental involvement, but studies indicate that existing moderation systems may still allow harmful messages to escape, raising questions about the effectiveness of these safeguards. This is AI-generated. Read the article for full context. Report any errors. MANILA, Philippines – Roblox Corporation faced questions over online grooming, parental involvement, and the effectiveness of its child-safety measures at its first-ever “Unbox Roblox” event in Manila, as the platform faces renewed scrutiny in the Philippines over risks to children online. The said event is actually the first in the world, according to Papri Dev, the head of communications for the company in Asia-Pacific (APAC). The questions come amid an ongoing broader national investigation into the relationship between online spaces and youth safety following two deadly school shootings in the country. After the June 22 shooting at San Jose National High School in Tacloban City, which killed three students and injured about 20 others, Philippine lawmakers opened an inquiry that included online grooming and violent digital communities. The hearing uncovered that some terrorist groomers in a so-called “nihilistic violent extremism” (NVE) network were using online gaming platforms to recruit young people, with Roblox and Minecraft being named. While these two games were named as possibly hotbeds for NVE activity, the hearing didn’t explicity make a connection between the two CICLs (children in conflict with the law) and either Roblox or Minecraft. A different game called Gorebox, subsequently banned by authorities, was tied to one of the CICLs. In online games where there is a chat function, Education Secretary Sonny Angara specifically warned that children could believe they were talking to another child on Roblox when they were actually communicating with a groomer. A second school shooting occurred in Zamboanga City on Tuesday, August 18, where a student killed a Grade 10 student before taking his own life. Authorities are investigating the student’s digital activities, although there is currently no established link between the attack and Roblox. According to Inquirer, DILG Secretary Jonvic Remulla said at a Camp Crame briefing, that they will be doing a “forensic examination on the gadgets of the shooter.” He said they currently don’t know with certainty, but added “it is with a great degree of confidence” that the CICL was influenced by Roblox, because of the “manner in which he did it.” Remulla clarified that “Roblox in itself is not a dangerous game. It is the chat group that is inside it” where malign influences may happen. Coincidentally, the Senate’s Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations, and Gender Equality is set to conduct on Thursday, August 20, its second hearing on NVE, and school and online safety, Committee chair Senator Risa Hontiveros said, as part of her statement after the Zamboanga shooting: “Pangunahing layunin ng mga hearing na ito na matukoy kung ano ang kailangan nating baguhin sa paaralan at online environments ng kabataan upang kailanman ay hindi na ito maulit muli,” the senator said. (The top priority of these hearings is to identify what we need to change in our schools, and online environments of the youth so these [violent incidents] will never happen again.) Are the safeguards working? It is against this larger backdrop of scrutiny in the Philippines that Dev was asked how parents can know whether the platform’s safeguards are actually protecting children from grooming and other digital threats. Dev pointed to Roblox‘s new age-based ecosystem, including Roblox Kids for younger children and Roblox Select for users aged 9 to 15. She said users who do not complete facial age estimation cannot communicate with others, while younger accounts have chat restrictions. Roblox also encourages parents to link their accounts to their children’s accounts so they can monitor activity. But Dev emphasized that technology alone is not enough. “I think parents need to be involved as a part of the time that kids are spending on the platform,” she said, encouraging parents to use linked accounts and parental controls. She also urged parents to play Roblox with their children, arguing that co-play can give parents a better understanding of who their children interact with and what they encounter online. Roblox Corp. says its systems include automated moderation of text chat, age-appropriate access controls, and teams dedicated to identifying exploitative content. The company prohibits grooming and other predatory behavior under its Community Standards. The effectiveness of those new systems introduced in April 2026, however, remains an important question. A May 2026 study from the University of Arizona and Arizona State University that examined roughly two million Roblox chat messages captured between “different time periods in 2024 and 2025” (meaning these were before the new April 2026 changes) found examples of grooming-related and other unsafe messages that escaped existing moderation, while also identifying attempts by users to evade moderation. “Overall, our findings reveal a troublesome reality: numerous instances of unsafe chat messages related to grooming, sexualizing minors, bullying, and harassment, violence, self-harm, and sharing sensitive information, etc., escaped the current moderation,” the researchers said. “Our analysis of users whose messages were previously flagged revealed that they continue to send harmful messages by employing a wide range of techniques to evade the moderation system.” The researchers also cautioned that their work was an evaluation of moderation in selected public game servers, and doesn’t capture data in private servers. Dev said Roblox Corp. is also seeking greater involvement from Filipino parents through its global parent council and plans to work with local organizations on culturally relevant safety resources. – Rappler.com How does this make you feel? Loading