Dave Baszucki: evaluation

Transcript context

…Now, as you probably know, Indonesia and Australia have already done bans for under 16. Do those bans cover Roblox or not? First off, one thought about Roblox and the way we operate is with an enormous respect for the laws and cultures of individual countries. We have a platform that is very dynamic, is very configurable, both on our policies, on different age ratings, and we really do our best to respect and work with policymakers on what they’ve chosen to do in their country. Fortunately, in Australia, what we’ve seen, and I think legislators in the US and around the world are starting to see, is it’s not just one big clump. It’s not just social networking, social media, gaming, and AI chatbots. These are each very different types of products that can’t just be thrown into a single bill or a single law. Social media is typically shorter-form video consumed by oneself, has discovery algorithms. Social networking, I think of it more as sharing FOMO-inducing pictures with my friends. Gaming is typically, especially on Roblox, much more something you do with your friends. More like when I was on the telephone when I was a kid, and we didn’t have online gaming platforms. Then we have a whole new angle coming, which is AI chatbots, which also have to be very thoughtfully designed because they can be very powerful. We may have AI chatbots contributing to education someday, and at the same time, we’ve heard some stories in the newspaper. I think more and more countries are starting to tease these apart. In the case of Australia, we’ve enjoyed working with them in configuring Roblox in an appropriate way for their country. Say to the extent their ban becomes binding, and so far it seems it is not so binding, are you worried that social media activity switches onto, say, Roblox, which is not, I believe, covered by the ban, and that it puts this weight on your service, which is a kind of everything app, that it really wasn’t designed to bear, and that eventually you become a target too for this ban?…

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