Pod Insights Hard Fork We Asked Roblox’s C.E.O. About Child Safety. It Got Tense. About this episode This week the company announced that it would require users to undergo an A. I.-powered age estimation process in order to chat with others on the platform. Will this change reassure parents?
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0:32 Speaker 01 Casey? Yeah. 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 Katy 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.
1:15 Speaker 01 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 livestream of you going up in this rocket. And then here comes the sad part. The rocket exploded.
1:34 Speaker 01 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, you know, 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.
2:06 Speaker 01 And that's when I woke up.
2:13 Speaker 01 I'm Kevin Rus. I'm a tech columnist at The New York Times.
2:15 Speaker 02 I'm Casey Newton from Platformer.
2:17 Speaker 01 And you're listening to Hard Fork.
2:18 Speaker 02 This week, Roblox CEO Dave Bazooki 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.
2:40 Speaker 02 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?
2:54 Speaker 01 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.
3:15 Speaker 02 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.
3:56 Speaker 01 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.
4:06 Speaker 02 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 To be at least 13 to join, any one of any age can join Roblox for free. And so that is why, Kevin, if you are a pre-teen, there is a strong likelihood you're on Roblox. In fact, just shy of 40% of the platform's users are under 13.
4:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, and that brings me to the second thing I know about Roblox, which is that recently they have been in the news a lot for a number of pretty troubling child safety problems that they've been having. I've read stories and seen segments on the news about predators who are using Roblox to link up with young children, maybe lure them to another platform where they can ask them for pictures or engage them in sort of manipulative grooming behavior. There have been a lot of very upsetting stories about things like that happening on Roblox.
5:13 Speaker 02 That's right. Often, these same predators, Kevin, are paying children in Roblox, the currency of the platform, to entice them into compromising positions. It's really, really upsetting. And regulators and lawmakers are starting to take notice. So three states have filed lawsuits against Roblox over child safety issues this year: Louisiana, Kentucky, and Texas. Florida's attorney general launched an investigation into the company. And right now, there are more than 20 lawsuits accusing Roblox of enabling sexual exploitation filed in federal court this year. That was according to a story by your colleague Eli Tan in The New York Times. So how has Roblox responded? They've rolled out a number of safety features in response. They have parental controls.
5:58 Speaker 02 And this week, they announced their latest feature, which is requiring users to undergo age estimation if they want to chat. So if you want to chat with somebody, you're going to have to scan your face. Now, prior to this, though, Kevin, for many, many years, any adult has been able to contact any child on Roblox. And that seems like that has been the start of so many of these problems. And it has just raised the question, why has it taken the company this long to get this problem under control? So to talk about that change and the company's broader approach to child safety. We invited on Roblox co-founder and CEO Dave Bazooki. Dave has been at the company since the beginning. You'll hear him say in this interview, he was also one of the original moderators of the platform.
6:40 Speaker 02 That is something that he did when the company was quite small. Now, of course, his portfolio is a lot bigger and there is a lot more pressure on him.
6:48 Speaker 01 Yes, and I would say the stakes of what happens at Roblox are higher than just what happens to the children who use Roblox. I would say this is a story that has a lot of bigger implications for the rest of the internet. Right now, we're at a time where child safety online has become a huge topic for regulators and parents around the world. We've talked about a number of laws and bills that have been introduced to try to protect children and a number of features like age verification that states and companies have been rolling out or mandating to try to get a handle on some of these problems. All of this is swirling around Roblox right now. And so I think it's a really important time to talk to its CEO about how they are dealing with these challenges.
7:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, this wound up being a pretty tense conversation. I think you'll hear that in the interview, but we thought it was important to try to ask these questions of the CEO directly. We also range a bit further afield from child safety, including what he thinks about prediction markets on Roblox.
7:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, and just a little bit of context about that. This was something that we were talking about in the hallway before we started the interview. Dave said that he is a fan of polymarket, the prediction markets. And so just know that when he brings that up toward the end of this interview, that did not come out of nowhere. That was sort of an attempt to continue a conversation that we've been having before the mics were on.
8:03 Speaker 02 All right. When we come back, we'll be joined by Roblox CEO Dave Bazooki.
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10:15 Speaker 02 Dave Mizuki, welcome to Hard Fork. It is great to be here. Thank you. You have joined us today to talk about this new age gating policy that Roblox is rolling out to protect kids. And I think we should start by just talking about the scope of the problem here. What has led you to this point? And how do you think of the problem of predators on Roblox?
10:34 Speaker 05 We think of it not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well. How do we allow young people to build, communicate, and hang out together? How do we build the future of communication at the same time? So we, you know, we've been, I think, in a good way, working on this ever since we started. And when we were, this was almost 18 or 19 years ago, when we first launched the company, we had just four of us sitting in a room. We were literally the moderators. Like, we would rotate all the time. And so fast forward to where we are today, it's just like, every week, what is the latest
11:14 Speaker 05 tech at the scale we're at? 150 million daily actives, 11 billion hours a month. Like, what is the best way to keep pushing this forward? And as you correctly know, we've just started adding that we're going to be using facial age estimation with AI to complement that.
11:31 Speaker 02 Right. So tell us a little bit about how this works. All users of Roblox now, if they want to communicate with others, they're going to have to kind of submit to a face scan?
11:40 Speaker 05 That's correct. And I think long term, face scan isn't the only signal. Like, mathematically, the more signals that are convoluted, the better the accuracy and the better we can get. So we already have signals. We have behavioral signals. We have photo ID upload signals. We have user suggested age. But we're complementing that with a facial age estimation signal that literally, you know, in an ephemeral way, use your phone, use your PC, scan an image, do a good AI estimation, image isn't stored, and start using that to complement all the other things we do. And we already do a pile of stuff. We have very, very good text filters. We have very, very good, there's no image sharing.
12:24 Speaker 05 We're doing a bunch of monitoring. But adding one more signal to that. Can really help us make cool decisions.
12:30 Speaker 01 I want to learn more about this face scanning technology. But first, I'm just struggling to understand like exactly how many of your users are which ages. Like my, my impression from the outside as a non daily active user of Roblox is that a lot of kids who are nine, 10, 11, 12 are on the app. What is, what is sort of the most popular age band of active users on Roblox?
12:53 Speaker 05 This is really interesting and I, I think this goes to what we've been saying for a while in that maybe for the last five to 10 years, people look at Roblox and say, well, these are kind of these primitive games and everyone on the platform is pretty young. We've seen that migrate over the last five years from predominantly under 13 to now, I believe we recently said self-reported almost two thirds over 13. And we can see those numbers growing and growing, like fastest growing segments on Roblox are 21 and up right now.
13:28 Speaker 01 Or at least people who say they're 21 and up.
13:30 Speaker 05 Yeah, that now I think those numbers have a fair amount of current efficacy. We're obviously balancing those with the age estimation because we want a tighter estimation. But just looking at the size of the cohorts and the growth rates, there's a fair amount of accuracy to that.
13:45 Speaker 02 You know, when the EU rolled out some age assurance technology earlier this year, we saw a lot of kids that just took a photo of a video game character and use that to pass the age checks. How confident are you that your systems can avoid that kind of?
13:57 Speaker 05 I think we have a lot of opportunity here in that we already have other signals that are maybe not as reliable, but when combined are very reliable. We also have the opportunity, this isn't just a one time thing. Roblox experiences are you're holding a phone. In, in many cases, we can use signals from your phone or the camera to animate your face, for example. So this isn't kind of a one stop shop thing. This is possibly checking as we go. If we see weird signals, do another age check as we go. So I'm pretty optimistic, kind of the more naive, like take a picture of that.
14:38 Speaker 05 We're, we're going to go way beyond that and it's going to get harder and harder to, to fingerprint in that way.
14:45 Speaker 02 So after you roll out these changes, you're going to sort of sort users into bands. And depending on, you know, if you're like 13, you know, you're only going to be able to talk to people within a few years of your age. For most of Roblox's history, though, that has not been the case. Any anonymous adult could talk to any anonymous minor. Why was that the case?
15:04 Speaker 05 I think we've always, from day one, really focused very heavily on quality of text filtering. And if anything, we've had very, very historically restrictive text filtering over time. One of the biggest complaints on Roblox, and arguably trading, in a good way, safety for growth, has been complaints of communication on the platform. Like, there's a lot of Roblox memes and themes. If you go back and dig into them, everyone's just saying hashtag, hashtag, hashtag. And there's been a lot of-
15:34 Speaker 02 Because that's how you blur out words that aren't supposed to-
15:36 Speaker 05 That's correct. So there's a lot of historical memes about historical hashtag, hashtag, hashtag. With AI, these filters have gotten better and better. The state of where we are now is primarily getting into the blocking of adversarial attempts to broach the filter and adversarial attempts to try to share PII, which we're getting better and better at as well. On the age estimation, it's just, I would say, recently come of age, to the point where we would complement it. But I would say our strategy is always complement with whatever technology is out there to put that together.
16:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, I don't know. When I read these lawsuits and these investigations into the company, it does not seem like predators are having that hard of a time getting around your filters. Like, you know, you read the allegations and it's, you know, people kind of, you know, change a few keywords, a few letters here, they're able to get what they need. So I'm curious like what's made you so confident that these are working?
16:32 Speaker 05 I don't want to comment on it. We do see the chat logs of those. And we can see interesting, and many times, ways of people trying to- I'd say, many times, people who are fairly sophisticated, and I'm not going to say all of them, many times, kids who are over 13, who actually, in any other app, are not running in a filtered situation.
16:56 Speaker 05 Unfortunately, figuring out how to jump to some other platform where they can communicate unfiltered, where they can share images, all of it. It's one of the primary things we're doing is trying to keep people on our platform. It's an interesting industry situation. I would say we're not waiting for the rest of the industry. We're like, we're always trying to stay ahead of it. We, on the California age appropriate design code, for example, we're like, we're already doing all of that stuff. And the same thing with age estimation. There's, we're not doing this because of any laws that are coming. We think it's the right thing to do.
17:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, you mentioned sort of kids leaving the platform and it does become clear in this lawsuits that Roblox is kind of, you know, where predators go to find kids, but then they do try to.
17:43 Speaker 05 I would say in the lawsuit or the press, yes, I would categorically reject the actual description of what you're saying. But yes, what you might read in the news would portray it that way.
17:56 Speaker 02 You don't think you have a problem with predators on the platform?
17:58 Speaker 05 I think we're doing an incredible job at innovating relative to the number of people on our platform and the hours in really leaning into the future of how this is going to work.
18:09 Speaker 02 So let me ask the question about the other platforms there, because I mean, I agree with you that this is not a story about one company. Like what we see is predators will come to a place like Roblox, then they try to get a child somewhere else. Like Discord is a platform that kind of comes up a lot. It seems to me like you could probably stop a lot of abuse if you prevented those platform shifts from happening. So like, what can you do in that regard? Like, you know, in my mind, if you see somebody chatting like, hey, like, what's your Discord username, you know, and it's an adult talking to a minor, that seems like it's a red flag. Maybe you're doing some of that kind of protection already.
18:41 Speaker 05 I would actually say that is a very simple red flag.
18:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
18:44 Speaker 05 Like, that sounds like text filter many prior generations. So I would say the techniques are much more sophisticated than that. We're constantly getting better than that. And sometimes it's adversarial. Like, we're getting into... You know, if we cryptographically, we're going to try to have an exchange of how to share your Snap handle or whatever handle, we see some of that starting, like, things we'll have to essentially prevent in the future.
19:14 Speaker 02 I don't understand, like, what do you mean, like, a cryptographic exchange?
19:17 Speaker 05 Imagine you and I were trying to share the name of an airport somewhere in the world, and we were getting blocked by all of the filters, we might actually start getting really creative, like, use the third letter of every fifth word to spell out the airport. And those are the kind of things we get into right now.
19:37 Speaker 01 I have sort of a basic question, and forgive me if this betrays my naivete about Roblox and how the platform works, but like, why have a sort of open-ended text communication feature at all on a game that is very popular with young people? Like, I have a son, he's too young to play Roblox or any other game, but I can imagine saying as a parent of a slightly older child, like, "I just don't want my kid playing games that allow them to chat with other people in this way." There are lots of games out there that don't have that kind of feature. Why is this so core to the way that Roblox works?
20:09 Speaker 05 Well, I would highlight that, a couple things first. There's enormous benefits for having people be able to communicate, and we think we see those benefits. There's a lot of kids who find their peeps on Roblox. There's a lot of kids, when they're lonely or isolated, actually, I'm not going to use it as an excuse or anything, but I get a lot of calls from famous parents who said, "Look, my kid would be dead if it were not for finding a community on a platform like Roblox to stay connected with." And I would also say, we do take it as an enormous responsibility to design for, not
20:52 Speaker 05 the sophisticated parent who goes in and says, "Look, I'm going to turn off who you can chat to and all of that." We have to design for all parents and think through that. But we do believe we have enormously great technology up and down the stack. We think it's part of building an experience like this. You know, if you go out there in the gaming space, I think it is... Very common to support communication. I'm not going to list any other games. And typically, we are way beyond in, I'd say, our innovation level, responsibility level, on both the filtering, on the image sharing, on all of these things.
21:32 Speaker 01 Is it fair to say that you think that any platform of Roblox's size with the number of young users Roblox has would be experiencing similar safety challenges?
21:46 Speaker 05 I wouldn't categorize any of that. I would say we're at a scale that is somewhat mind-boggling, so I'm not going to run any, you know, excuse numbers of Roblox relative to any other platforms. But I would say at a scale of 11 billion hours is very different than a scale of 10 million hours. It's 1,000 times that size of it. And I would say the scale we're at is quite enormous. It's 150 million people every day. It's many more than that every month. And relative to an individual game, the scale's enormous. We
22:28 Speaker 05 have experiences on our platform right now which have 25 million people playing at the same time. And traditionally, in the gaming market, the record prior to that, I think, was 11 or 12 for all of Fortnite. And prior to that, big numbers are considered a million for a single game. Like, I remember when Minecraft hit a million users. So, think about that. A whole platform at some point in time, like Minecraft hitting 1 million users, a single game on Roblox hitting 25 million users.
23:02 Speaker 02 Right. But you guys want that scale, right? You court it. You send push notifications. You give people daily login rewards. Like, you want the millions and the millions to show up.
23:10 Speaker 05 I think we actually see there being an incredible opportunity if that scale is going through platforms with good systems. It's actually a big thing. And the scale already exists. Like, the gaming space, in a way, is 190. $90 billion. So we now have about three or 4% of that, I guess 3% coming through Roblox. So I would say we we like the scale. It creates an opportunity for individual game creators who might be making their game by themselves without part of systems like that to make it as part of a more overall overall system.
23:53 Speaker 02 Here's the dynamic that I think that people find frustrating. We have many large tech platforms right now. They seek this enormous scale. They reach previously unseen heights. And then they notice they have a problem and they go in and they try to solve it to some degree. And then they keep going further and then there's another problem. And I think to some degree, that dynamic is probably inevitable. But I think what a lot of people want, what a lot of parents want is some sense that people have a plan for what is going to happen when the 25 million people show up. Right. And I think they're looking to people like you to see around these corners and to not wait till 20 years in existence to say, maybe we should like sort these people into age bands before they start communicating with each other.
24:33 Speaker 05 Yeah, I would I would push back on that a bit and I can hear what you're saying. But I would actually say for people inside of our company, the way we think about it and the way we do look ahead of it, we're constantly looking ahead and we're not, you know, it goes back to the very first thing we did probably a month into the company. So a month into the company, fun little story. There is about 200 people on Roblox. And what should we do? Should we keep growing it or should we go build a safety system? And so 200 people in, let's stop everything.
25:14 Speaker 05 Let's go build a safety system and let's let the four of us go and become moderators. So behind the scenes, I do agree with you. Enormous responsibility, enormously important to preempt this. It's why a lot of the architectural and decisions we've been making have been made. But we're going to keep doing them, right? And you could imagine Roblox at 20x the scale, having 50% of the gaming market space all in a single place, like we'll keep innovating on top of that.
25:48 Speaker 01 Last year, activist fund and short seller Hindenburg Research came out with a report arguing, among other things, the Roblox was, quote, "compromising child safety in order to report growth to investors." One of the things they pointed to was that there had been a decline in your spending on trust and safety. You have denied that. Why? What did they have wrong?
26:09 Speaker 05 So, fun. Let's keep going down this. And so first off, Hindenburg is no longer in existence, correct? So you should report on that. They went out of business for some reason. The other thing is, have you researched that information? Because you're asking me about this. I'm curious if you've done your own research.
26:34 Speaker 01 I have. I have done some research about.
26:36 Speaker 05 And what's your take on that?
26:38 Speaker 01 Well, I'm asking you.
26:40 Speaker 05 So this is really interesting because the, I think we're diving into a situation where we're getting better, better, better. But would you ask the same situation of someone who converted from maybe hyper manual labor, making cars by hand, to an assembly line? The assembly line might be infinitely better and at the same time not have so many people. So I think what they're referring to is moving more and more and more to AI. Arguably, is it better to have AI systems reviewing any, every image, every piece of text, all of that, or to keep doing that manually?
27:24 Speaker 05 So I think that was a misnomer. And I think if you interview anyone in our safety team or safety systems, that would be just part of making our systems better.
27:34 Speaker 01 So just so I have the clear response, the argument is that the shift has been from a more manual safety team and system to a more automated review process that may do a better job, even if it, you know, costs less to operate because.
27:49 Speaker 05 Yeah, I would actually lean in harder. The shift would be. Constantly moving to higher quality, more accurate and more diligent systems. Can we review more? Can we do more better? And say you and I, we're a system. What is the best way to review every single image going into Roblox at higher and higher quality? And say we figured out the best way to do that is to do it with better and better AI models. Would you pick that?
28:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:22 Speaker 05 Good. So you're aligning with what we did. High five.
28:25 Speaker 01 But I've also been covering social networks.
28:28 Speaker 05 Thank you for supporting. Thank you for supporting our Roblox decision matrix.
28:33 Speaker 01 I also remember 15 years ago.
28:36 Speaker 05 I'm so glad you guys are aligned with the way we won Roblox.
28:39 Speaker 01 Right. I also remember 15 years ago when Mark Zuckerberg was saying.
28:43 Speaker 05 Is this a stealth interview where actually you love everything we're doing? And you're here to stealthily support it?
28:50 Speaker 02 We were told you wanted to come in and talk about your new age gating technology. So, you know, we thought we'd get into it.
28:54 Speaker 01 Let me just finish this. I totally buy what you're saying about using the best technology on the market to keep people safe.
29:00 Speaker 05 And I want to highlight, I came here because I love your podcast and came to talk about everything. So if our PR people said, let's talk about age gating for an hour, I'm up for it. But I love your podcast. I came here to talk about everything.
29:14 Speaker 01 Got it. Oh, yeah. We're going to talk about steal a brain rot, too. That's part of my plan here, too. But but just to finish the thought, like I, you know, Casey and I both covered social networks back in the 2010s, when it was very popular for people like Mark Zuckerberg to say, oh, we're going to use AI to solve all of our content moderation. It's going to take down everything that's scammy or false. And, you know, we won't need these people anymore. And investors loved that. And then they tried to do that and they found that actually, oh, the systems weren't that reliable yet. And maybe they were taking down too much content or maybe they were missing stuff that was bad.
29:48 Speaker 05 I mean, look at all these social networking companies, like go to 2016, for example, which is a reliance on automation and whatever.
29:58 Speaker 05 We've seen a lot of things where not being on top of what's going on in your company and these algorithms leads to a lot of weird dystopian-ness as well. So I think we saw in 2016, those algorithms got a little kind of into an optimization loop on, you know, weird things as well. So I think anyways, yeah, I love your questions. I'm glad you guys are supporting how we're running Roblox.
30:25 Speaker 01 But you're confident that the tech technology has gotten good enough that you can use it to do moderation at a platform of Roblox's scale?
30:35 Speaker 05 The scale we're at is absolutely mind-boggling right now, like absolutely mind-boggling. And every system, image review, text review, all of that constantly getting better and better, so.
30:49 Speaker 02 I mean, look, I can tell you're getting a little bit frustrated here.
30:53 Speaker 05 I'm actually not frustrated. I just, I'm so excited to talk. I thought we were going to be talking about fun, funny things and the industry and all of that. So I'm not frustrated. I'm just kind of figuring out how much fun time I have with you guys and how much fun time we have versus kind of this super focus.
31:13 Speaker 02 Got it.
31:14 Speaker 05 But I'm happy to talk about whatever you guys want.
31:15 Speaker 02 Well, let me just maybe just try one last thing here, because this is what I really want to understand. It is very difficult to do content moderation at scale. We have learned that from every single company. And I think that platforms provide various benefits to society. I'm on a lot of them every day. Okay? So I feel like we're kind of on the same page there. And I think being a CEO of one of these companies can sort of feel like being the head of the Department of Homeland Security, where it's like the best thing that happens during your tenure is that nothing happens, right? Nothing explodes.
31:47 Speaker 05 I want to push back on that. And the reason I want to push back on that is that implies kind of a looking over your shoulder, defensive, oh shit posture.
31:57 Speaker 05 That's actually not the optimal posture to build an amazing company. The optimal posture to build an amazing company is, oh my gosh, we are uniquely responsible. For a lot of people 12 and under, there's so much constant learning, constant innovation, that if we can do this right, like the future is really, continues to be big and bright. And I feel we're uniquely in an opportunity to do excellent work in this six through 12 zone, where many, many other platforms, you know, bounce off of it because they just can't do it. They're not, they're just not doing it right. So that is not how we run
32:40 Speaker 05 the company. We view it as a high responsibility situation, but an incredible opportunity if we can do it right.
32:49 Speaker 02 So then my question is, how do you measure success? Like, how do you, as the CEO, as you, you know, look at everything you're doing, feel like replying the right number of resources and they, they have the right error rates? And we're, we're at a place where I'm comfortable telling parents, bring your kids to Roblox.
33:06 Speaker 05 I'm, we see all of those metrics internally all the time. They're not publicly shared. We, we're watching filter rates, we're watching this rate, we're watching all of that rate. Those metrics constantly get better as we add more and more AI on top of it. As you said, we're constantly running at a higher, higher scale as well. My kids are on Roblox. We have thousands of people in the company. Their kids are all on Roblox. But I would say, and I've said it on other things, if a parent is the ultimate arbiter of responsibility,
33:47 Speaker 05 and if a parent out there, for any reason, is not comfortable their kid going to the park, not comfortable their kid playing with a certain toy, not comfortable being on Roblox, who am I to say, right? And so I do leave that to the parent's responsibility. I just, I just operate as an example. Like, what would I do with my own kids?
34:14 Speaker 01 When we come back, more of our interview with Roblox CEO Dave Bazooki.
34:49 Speaker 04 It's time to innovate at the speed of AI without compromising control. That's OutSystems. Take a look at what happened with one global retailer during a period of massive expansion. They used OutSystems to build AI agents to automate invoicing and translation processes, shifting 95% of their daily store operations to a new digital app, saving thousands of hours of manual work. OutSystems gives you the flexibility to deploy how you want and the governance to do it safely. Own your agentic future. Learn more at outsystems.com/NYT. That's outsystems.com/NYT.
35:24 Speaker 00 AI spend is growing fast, but most businesses still can't see exactly where that money is going. Ramp gives businesses visibility and control across AI providers with real-time guardrails by team and model, helping ensure spend goes to the highest ROI areas. Stop guessing where your AI spend is going. Get started with Ramp. And if you're new to Ramp, you can get $250 off at ramp.com/hardfork. Go to ramp.com/hardfork. Ramp.com/hardfork.
35:56 Speaker 06 Ripple has been powering modern finance for a decade. It's not our first trip around the blockchain, and it won't be our last. We're leading the charge to bridge the gap between existing financial systems and the future of finance. You can have it all: legacy, stability, and digital innovation. Systems that work with your other systems. Because with the right partner, the question isn't crypto or traditional finance. The question is simply, why choose? A new standard of modern finance. It's happening with Ripple. For informational purposes only. Availability of products can vary and may be provided by different Ripple entities.
36:36 Speaker 01 Do you think that screen time for children is getting a bad rap? I mean, this is a constant thread of conversation among the parents. I know everyone's constantly worrying, oh, am I giving my kid too much screen time? Are they doing enough offline activities with their friends? Are they getting sucked into these addictive online experiences with these AI companions? What is your view on screen time for children?
37:01 Speaker 05 So when my son was really young, we had pretty radical screen time limits. And you can imagine, as your parent, you have your second, third, and fourth kid. You loosen up on that. I'm actually kind of supportive of it in a way. And I think, I do think there's a bunch of contributing factors. Like, what is the ratio of blue light to non-blue light? How much of the screen time is solo consumption versus group consumption? What time of the day is the screen time? So I would say 2:00 AM, heavy blue light, solo consumption, short-form video.
37:44 Speaker 05 That's arguably a different type of screen time than noon with your friends for a while, playing hide-and-go-seek. But I do think this is something worth thinking about.
37:58 Speaker 02 Well, anything that we did not get to today that you want to make sure that we talk about, any project that you're working on that is exciting for you at the moment?
38:07 Speaker 05 Oh, wow. I thought we were going to talk about polymarket and dropping things into Roblox, like earnings calls.
38:14 Speaker 02 Where are you on polymarket?
38:16 Speaker 05 So I assume you are both big fans.
38:20 Speaker 02 We've talked a lot about prediction markets on the show.
38:22 Speaker 01 Yep.
38:23 Speaker 05 So I had a really, I don't know if you had the experience, independent of political party or anything, just a real-time science experiment. On election night, I had four screens, like journalists of all journalists. And like, how do I quickly go from journalist to journalist? And then with my family, we were watching Polly Market as well. And we were comparing Polly Market to the comments of all the journalists. And I do think Polly Market was coming through like 30 to 45 minutes ahead of them. And like, it was an interesting thought experiment to see like, okay, we're at 86% here, whether you like or dislike the way it was going.
39:08 Speaker 05 And then see various journalists like say different things.
39:13 Speaker 02 Yeah. So you think this is becoming a really interesting signal to understanding what's happening in the world right now?
39:19 Speaker 05 I think mathematically, there's the notion that prediction markets, if they're liquid and transparent, capture in a way all of the world's information and every signal, you know? And if there is, if there is one election counter way out in the corner in some weird county that knows it's going to go this way, if they could go bet $10,000, like that's going to nudge the thing and make the information more perfect. So I'm a huge fan of that.
39:51 Speaker 01 Would you ever put a prediction market inside Roblox? Like let kids bet with their Roblox and, and you know, say, I bet he's going to steal a tung tung tung Sahur.
40:01 Speaker 02 Or I bet he's not going to dress to impress.
40:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
40:04 Speaker 05 We would, I think we would have to do that. Once again, I'll share some of the complexity. Every single country in the world has different legislation around loot boxes and kid gambling. And so we would have to be, it sounds very fun and obvious. Like I love that.
40:22 Speaker 02 Oh, to be clear, I think this is a horrible idea.
40:25 Speaker 01 I was just interested if you were thinking about it.
40:27 Speaker 05 Well, I actually think it's a brilliant idea if it can be done in an educational way that's legal. And so I imagine a no, no free Roblox, no free prizes, just a game called the Dress to Impress Predictor, where it's not like trying to get kids money or anything like that. I would be a big fan of it.
40:49 Speaker 02 Interesting.
40:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, start them young. That's what I always say when it comes to gambling.
40:53 Speaker 02 When I was in-
40:54 Speaker 01 You're never too young.
40:55 Speaker 02 When I was in elementary school, we did do a straw poll on who would win the 1988 presidential election.
40:59 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah?
41:00 Speaker 02 Yeah. So some of these old ideas come back eventually.
41:03 Speaker 01 And we bet on pogs.
41:06 Speaker 05 But the straw poll was not a prediction market.
41:09 Speaker 02 Right.
41:09 Speaker 05 And if you gave every kid 10 cents of lunch money.
41:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
41:13 Speaker 05 And who had like, some of them got to buy an extra snack and some lost it, you could get a completely different result than the straw poll you would get in any fifth grade classroom.
41:25 Speaker 02 Interesting to think about.
41:27 Speaker 01 Okay, we're out of time, but Dave, can I just make one selfish request of you?
41:32 Speaker 05 Yes.
41:32 Speaker 01 So my kid right now is about three and a half years old. Presumably sometime, maybe four, five, six years from now, he's gonna ask me, can I play Roblox?
41:44 Speaker 02 It's gonna be about a year from now.
41:45 Speaker 01 Probably a year from now. Will you fix the problems with safety on your platform by the time that my kid is old enough to ask me that question?
41:54 Speaker 05 I'm gonna go more out of the box in that I, we are, Roblox is an amazing platform right now for your kid. And I'm happy to go deep with you, possibly non-disclose you, show you metrics, all of that, to do whatever it takes to get you over the hump.
42:11 Speaker 01 Okay.
42:11 Speaker 02 All right, there it is.
42:12 Speaker 01 There it is. Thanks, Dave.
42:13 Speaker 02 Thank you, Dave.
42:14 Speaker 05 Thank you, guys.
42:52 Speaker 04 Companies are pouring money into AI, but few leaders can explain how those AI investments work with the systems you already have. You know, the ones that actually run your business? Without systems, you don't have to start over with AI. You can choose the projects where AI will have the most impact. And Outsystems gives you the platform to make it agentic on your terms, with complete control every step of the way. So you can trust AI with the mission-critical systems that run your business. Own your agentic future. Learn more at outsystems.com/NYT. That's outsystems.com/NYT.
43:27 Speaker 00 AI spend is growing fast, but most businesses still can't see exactly where that money is going. Ramp gives businesses visibility and control across AI providers with real-time guardrails by team and model, helping ensure spend goes to the highest ROI areas. Stop guessing where your AI spend is going. Get started with Ramp. And if you're new to Ramp, you can get $250 off at ramp.com/hardfork. Go to ramp.com/hardfork. Ramp.com/hardfork.
43:59 Speaker 06 Ripple has been powering modern finance for a decade. It's not our first trip around the blockchain, and it won't be our last. We're leading the charge to bridge the gap between existing financial systems and the future of finance. You can have it all: legacy, stability, and digital innovation. Systems that work with your other systems. Because with the right partner, the question isn't crypto or traditional finance. The question is simply, why choose? A new standard of modern finance. It's happening with Ripple. For informational purposes only. Availability of products can vary. May be provided by different Ripple entities.
44:34 Speaker 02 Hard Fork is produced by Rachel Cohn and Winnie Jones. We're edited by Jen Poyant. Today's show was engineered by Chris Wood. Original music by Diane Wong, Rowan Nemusso, Alyssa Moxley, and Dan Powell. Video production by Sawyer Roque, Pat Gunther, Jake Nickel, and Chris Schott. You can watch this whole episode on YouTube at youtube.com/hardfork. Special thanks to Paul Schuman, Hui Wing Tam, Dahlia Hadad, and Jeffrey Miranda.
45:02 Speaker 01 As always, you can email us at [email protected] .
45:33 Speaker 04 It's time to innovate at the speed of AI without compromising control. That's Outsystems. Take a look at what happened with one global retailer during a period of massive expansion. They used Outsystems to build AI agents to automate invoicing and translation processes, shifting 95% of their daily store operations to a new digital app, saving thousands of hours of manual work. Outsystems gives you the flexibility to deploy how you want and the governance to do it safely. Own your agentic future. Learn more at outsystems.com/NYT. That's outsystems.com/NYT.
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