What Has Roblox's Teen Council Accomplished? Today, I've Got Some Answers
An actual conversation with the Roblox executive behind the company's "Teen Council" initiative and how it's changing the platform.
In October, I published a story with an admittedly harsh headline: “One Year Later, What Has Roblox’s Teen Council Accomplished?” It reflected an honest assessment based on the information in front of me, rooted in two (admittedly brief and via email!) interviews I’d had with the company about their Teen Council. This is not a company that deserves the benefit of the doubt. (I mean, did you read that New York Times interview?) There’s reason to be suspicious about Roblox’s motives with young people.
“Full transparency, after I read your article on the headline, I was a bit taken back,” said Roblox’s VP of civility and partnerships Tami Bhaumik in a recent video conversation with Crossplay. “Teen Council is something I’m really proud of and they have contributed so much.”
(This interview was conducted before the Times incident, by the way.)
“The original vision of the Teen Council,” said Bhaumik, “was for our product and engineering teams to be able to embrace them, to really listen to them, to hear their frustrations. What they loved about Roblox, what they hated about Roblox, their concerns. So that we could actually have an authentic voice representative of the people at the age groups that use Roblox.”
Much of what lead to my original assessment of the Teen Council was trying to understand: okay, it makes sense to have these people in a room, but to what end? What are you trying to accomplish? The cynical interpretation—an earned one—is that it’s a public relation-facing move by Roblox in the face of ugly news headlines.
Bhaumik called the 2024 edition of the Teen Council a “beta.”
“We didn’t know how it was going to go,” she said.
The teenagers in that “beta” were all from the United States, whereas the latest edition has voices from Canada and Mexico, as well. (One requirement, for now: they have be proficient in English.) For Bhaumik, it was a “hard and fast rule” that the council include a “diverse mix” of across gender, geographic, racial, and socioeconomic lines. To be a “snapshot of people who are really on the platform.”
The vast majority of participants were, importantly, Roblox creators. (That, too, has well-documented issues, but it won’t change that many millions of young people are likely to be learning game design within the Roblox ecosystem in the years to come.)
One reason Roblox recruited the Teen Council for feedback on updates to community guidelines to make it sound human. The hope was that more people would read them.
“Let’s face it, no one reads community guidelines,” she said. “It’s legalese. It’s so long.”
No lies detected.
(Honestly, this is a problem with parental controls, too. I don’t like the name “parental controls,” for one, and the descriptions of how they work are rarely in plain language.)
In other cases, it was to ask how their friends are breaking Roblox’s rules, which is something Roblox, or any platform, rarely admits openly. There are always loopholes.
“Our safety team is the largest group in Roblox,” said Bhaumik. “The user team is the second largest group in Roblox. There’s probably over 200 engineers and product people in that group. We had our Teen Council sit in on their user group session, and they got to spend an hour with them, basically telling them what they hated [and] how they evade our systems.”
In one meeting, the teens told Roblox’s engineers how some of their friends will play loud music so Roblox’s automated systems can’t understand what they’re saying. It’s not hard to imagine how, in the wrong hands, such a loophole could be abused.
“Normally, when I go into these meetings with product people, there’s not a sound,” said Bhaumik. “They’re not engaged. You should have seen these people. They were writing notes. They were typing every word that these teens said. There were things that they brought up that we weren’t even aware of how they evade our detection systems.”
Bhaumik said features coming to Roblox as a direct consequence of feedback like this, including a way for the platform to amplify a player’s voice and reduce other noises.
One feature that was counterintuitive to what Roblox expected: privacy. You can now be “online” in Roblox but your friends can’t tell if you’re online or what you’re playing. this kind of “hidden” feature is standard on other platforms but is very new to Roblox.
“That never would have occurred to us,” said Bhaumik. “Our Teen Council came out and said, ‘No, I just want to play. I just don’t want to play with my friends. It’s nothing about them. But I just want to, like, chill out and play.’”
“In one meeting, the teens told Roblox’s engineers how some of their friends will play loud music so Roblox’s automated systems can’t understand what they’re saying.”
Other places where Roblox and the council overlap are more banal. Attending conferences. Recording videos for the community. Filling out surveys made by Roblox.
The second Teen Council is in full swing. The first meeting happened recently, in fact.
“These teens are so outspoken,” said Bhaumik. “They are not afraid—they’re not like adults sometimes where they beat around the bush. They tell you exactly what they like and what they don’t like. They don’t mince words. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I guess it’s good. [laughs]”
Here’s the thing: I believe Bhaumik. It sounds like her program, and these kids, are helping. They are making Roblox a better place for your kids and my kids. Because even if you say “no” to Roblox in your house, the vast majority of households are not making the same choice. Roblox being safer is good, whether you approve of it or not.
The problem is two fold.
Roblox is, on many fronts, facing an unsolvable problem. Like all social networks, it chose scale. It’s trying to catch up on moderation. Even if Roblox put infinite resources into the effort, their scale betrays a solution that will prevent some unacceptable number of children from harm. Roblox will always have problems.
That disastrous NYT interview, even if most normie parents won’t see it, reinforces every cynical interpretation about Roblox. It sets back the efforts of people like Bhaumik, and undercuts people believing it’s being done in good faith.
Bhaumik promised to stay in touch as the second council does its work. Stay tuned.
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Also:
One of my neighbor’s kids will be a teenager soon. Will be curious to see what happens with her relationship with Roblox. Her usage has seemed down lately?
99 Nights in the Forest remains the main draw for my nine-year-old. The five-year-old has been happy acting as a support role for her big sister in the game.
IM sympathetic to Bhaumik. I've worked in corporate jobs where I'm trying to do right by a customer but upper management swoops in with a decision that undoes all the good will i was trying to generate.