Roblox given until October to comply with safety requirements

MANILA, Philippines — Gaming platform Roblox has until October this year to comply with the requirements of establishing its office in the country and enforcing age verification through the national ID in its system, Information and Communications Secretary Henry Aguda said on Monday. 

During the House committee on appropriations’ briefing on the proposed budget of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), Aguda told lawmakers that the agency gave Roblox five demands to adhere to since May this year.

He shared that three of the five requirements have already been met. 

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READ: Roblox agrees on child-safety measures with PH gov’t

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Aguda said that Roblox already agreed to segment its platform into three: Roblox for Kids, Roblox Select, and Roblox. He noted that the gaming platform followed the agency’s instruction on the segmentation when it was called out last May. 

Second, he said that Roblox already monitors chat activities of minors when it can detect conversations about sensitive topics such as sexual acts and other violent topics.

Lastly, he added that it made parental control as default in the gaming platform. 

“Ang sinabi namin kay Roblox, no later than October, they should comply. There were five demands we gave to Roblox since May pa,” Aguda said. 

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(We told Roblox to comply [with the remaining requirements] no later than October. There were five demands we gave to Roblox since May.)

As for the requirement to build its own office in the country, Aguda shared that Roblox hired around 300 persons through its partner company.

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He noted that it already built its office in Singapore with five employees, which was never done before.

READ: Meta to study PH national ID integration with its platforms

The fifth requirement is for Roblox to use the country’s national ID for the age verification of gamers. In the same hearing, Aguda noted that Roblox was the one who suggested using the national ID for verification of the application users.

He added that the e-verify solution of the national ID to make the age verification more accurate, where Roblox can easily verify the player’s age with the national ID without transferring personal information to the gaming platform. 

“I keep repeating Roblox kasi they can become the template for other social media platforms. Kung nagawa nila, yung iba dapat magawa rin,” he noted. 

(I keep repeating Roblox kasi they can become the template for other social media platforms. If they can do it, then others can do it, too.)

Meanwhile, Aguda said that Meta committed to the enforcement aspect, which is the attribution where authorities can easily flag those who violated guidelines in social media platforms such as Facebook. 

He said that Meta will bring its technical team to the country to study the integration of the national ID system to its platforms.

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He also acknowledged the concerns of Meta on the technical complexity of the integration, noting that it has not been done anywhere in the world.  /gsg