Roblox is limiting access to social hangouts and unrated games for children aged under 13

rockpapershotgun.com:

Roblox is making changes in an attempt to keep younger players safe in the online platform. Beginning later this month, children under the age of 13 will no longer be able to search, discover or play unrated experiences within Roblox, and will be unable to access social hangout experiences.

"Parents and young users need accurate information about the experiences they are playing. Moving forward, all creators must complete a questionnaire for each experience they want available for users under 13. This means that all unrated experiences will be filtered out of search and any public or recommended sorts for users under 13," says the announcement.

Creators have until December 3rd to fill out the questionnaire if they want their content rated for play for those under the of 13. After that point, the unrated content will be filtered out.

The changes to social hangouts will take effect earlier, on November 18th.

"We are also updating our policies to address user behavior that can potentially pose a risk to our youngest users," says the post, desperately trying to avoid using words like 'pedophiles' or 'predators'. "Starting November 18, experiences with certain types of interactive features, specifically social hangouts and free-form 2D user creation, will only be playable to users over the age of 13. Creators will always be able to play their own experience or any experience they have edit access to."

Earlier this year, a report by Bloomberg addressed the scale of child safety issues within Roblox, highlighting 13,316 instances of child exploitation reported on the platform in 2023. The following month, Hindenberg Research - an organisation which reports on businesses in order to profit from short-selling - published its own report labelling Roblox a "pedophile hellscape". Roblox responded to claims in both reports, saying Bloomberg's coverage featured "glaring mischaracterisations" and that it "rejects" Hindenberg's report.

It's arguably worth putting that number