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We probably all know or at least heard a game called "Roblox". While most people called roblox a game, is actually an online hosting platform where developers can create and share their creations to users.
Roblox (formerly named DynaBlocks) was created in 2004 by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel. While roblox started small in player base and as a company, it started to take off in 2010s and grew even further in 2020 when people were isolated during the pandemic
Roblox of course have a lot of their own controversies like child safety issues and how moderators that were supposed to protect these kids from bad actors weren't doing their jobs correctly. After years of multiple issues that occured in the platform, Roblox decided to announce their most controversial update yet.
Roblox finally rolled out age check requirement to chat in 7 January 2026, and it got SEVERE backlash from the community. This new update required you to complete "Facial Age Estimation" to use chat and voicechat. This new feature will procces how old you are based on your facial feature with AI, and after that you will be put on a specific age groups and then deleted every face images immediately after it's done. While Age-based chat makes it easy for users to communicate with others in similar age groups, it also make it impossible to communicate with older users in different age groups and it can be really difficult for developers to moderate their own games if they can't see what the younger audiences who make up the majority of roblox player base.
The Community also were skeptical that Roblox actually going to delete all the face images
after the verifications is completed. roblox has made so many bad choices that a significant portions of the community has completely lost their trust. Not only that, Roblox and Persona (third-party identity verification service used by Roblox) has a history of data breaches which just make it a privacy hazards for those who wants to remain anonymous.
In the end, roblox is not going to revert the new changes they have made even after many criticism from their own people. While recently roblox is more open and announced that the reason that they implemented an age verification is to ensure compliance with child safety law in the US.