Roblox Given Three Months to Fix Child Safety Failures in Australia
- Sagar Mankar
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Roblox has 3 months to fix major child safety gaps on its platform after Australia's eSafety regulator found that children's profiles and friend lists were publicly visible online.
The order comes from eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant.
Roblox will also need to bring in an independent third-party auditor to check whether its safety fixes actually work. This is the first time the regulator has forced a tech company to hire an outside safety auditor.
What did the testing actually find?
Earlier this year, eSafety (the national independent regulator for online safety) ran tests on Roblox and the results weren't great. Adults could still send connection requests to child accounts without any parental consent involved. Kids and adults could also interact freely on forums outside of actual games, again without a parent knowing or approving it.
On top of that, children's account names, interests, and connections were visible to basically anyone browsing the platform. For a service used by around 1.7 million Australian children, according to the eSafety commissioner, that's a lot of exposure.
Hasn't Roblox already made changes?
Yes. Back in December 2025, Roblox rolled out updates meant to stop children from chatting with adults so easily. Accounts for users under 16 were switched to private by default, and tools were added to block adults from contacting under 16 users without parental sign-off.
Direct chat was turned off until users completed age estimation checks. Parents also got the option to disable chat entirely for 13 to 15 year olds, while voice chat stayed off for that same age group, matching the rule already in place for users 12 and under.
So on paper, Roblox had been making moves. The problem is the eSafety testing this year showed some of these protections weren't holding up the way they should.
What has Roblox agreed to now?
Roblox has signed a legal agreement with eSafety promising to close these gaps. That includes stopping adults from reaching out to unknown children without parental consent and making sure children's account settings default to private.
A Roblox spokesperson said (via The Guardian) there had been "constructive dialogue with eSafety" and pointed to safety commitments the company has delivered over the past year.
Inman Grant said the company understands that "verifiable safety measures are critical to their long-term viability and success." As for the new auditor requirement, she explained it ensures Roblox cannot "mark their own homework."
Could Roblox get pulled into the under 16 social media ban?
Right now, Roblox is excluded from Australia's under 16 social media ban since it's classified as a gaming platform rather than a social media one. But Inman Grant hasn't ruled out changing that classification if Roblox's social features end up outweighing its gaming purpose down the line.
For now, Roblox has three months to prove it can actually deliver on its promises, or eSafety says it may take the matter to federal court.
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