Roblox has started to implement age verification using an AI age estimation model to chat on their platform beginning 2026. The idea is to keep children from being in contact with adults, but in practice, this solution comes with way too many problems. 

1. It’s inaccurate. People may be estimated to be way older or way younger than they actually are. This can have the effect of unnecessarily restricting teens and adults, like for example, a 17 year old is estimated to be 14 and is restricted, or even worse, shoving children into adult servers because the model thinks someone who is 15 years old is actually 21. And the only way to correct Roblox’s mistake is by verifying with an ID, which opens up a whole new can of worms, especially with privacy and data breaches. 
2. Privacy. Roblox’s moderation is sketchy at best, how can we trust them with the biometric data of children? Their third-party partner, Persona, says the information will be deleted in a week, but companies like these break their promises all the time. 
3. It kills smaller games. The system segregates players based on their age group, which isn’t that much of a big deal for large games that have over a thousand players at any given moment, but spells disaster for many smaller games that don’t have such a big following. Their server sizes will shrink, and small games that require a minimum number of players per server will be unplayable. 
4. Data breaches. Would you be okay with a random hacker having a copy of your government ID? Hell no you wouldn’t. But if the Persona servers get hacked, that means thousands of IDs used for verification leaked. And things like this have happened before. The Tea App had over 55,000 IDs leaked. Discord had over 70,000 accounts compromised. This is an insane risk. People with your ID can open bank accounts and take out loans in your name that you will have to pay back yourself until you can prove fraud, or even use a copy of your ID if they get arrested. 
5. It might make the problem worse. Even if the entirety of the above problems were solved, the system itself on paper is just going to make the problem it is trying to solve worse. People already buy and sell Roblox accounts to obtain in-game currency and progress, now people will be buying and selling accounts that are verified a certain age. Let’s say an adult predator fakes their age as being 12, meaning he can talk to players who are 9 to 15 years old. These people may not know what that predator is doing is wrong. Now we have someone in game with good intentions who is 18 years old and verified in the 18-20 group. This person can only chat with people over 16 years of age. He can’t see what this predator is doing because according to Roblox, this predator’s under 16. This means that he can’t report what is going on. Predators formerly had to run the risk of being caught and called out by older players, but now, they can just be in a server with only children. 

So, why does this have to be the case? Well, Roblox has been taking a lot of negative press recently about their lack of action to protect their young users. But this measure is not the way to protect them. At best it’s simply performative, a way to pretend that they’re doing something right, and at worst it’s making the problem worse. So sign this petition to tell Roblox that there are better ways to fix their platform, like hiring more moderators or collaborating more with law enforcement. There’s a better solution. Use it.