Roblox will require a facial scan or government ID to have unfiltered chats

Roblox is introducing a way to let trusted friends chat more freely among themselves, but it will require that they use a new age estimation tool to verify that they’re over 13.

The platform is renaming Friends to Connections, and people can only use unfiltered text chat and the Party social feature with a more exclusive group of “Trusted Connections.” The new age estimator tool prompts users to take a video selfie, “which is analyzed against a large and diverse dataset to estimate their age,” according to a blog post from chief safety officer Matt Kaufman.

“If the system is not able to estimate the user’s age with high confidence, then the user’s age will remain unconfirmed and the user won’t be able to access Trusted Connections,” Kaufman says. If a user doesn’t pass the age estimation tool but they are actually over 13, they will be able to confirm their age via ID verification “and, in the future, verified parental consent.”

Roblox partnered with identity verification company Persona on the age estimation technology, Roblox’s Ryan Ebanks said in a call with reporters, and he says biometric data will …read more