Roblox Corp is appealing a ruling in Turkey that led to its ban over child safety concerns last month, according to a statement from the company.
“Roblox respects the local laws and regulations in Turkey and we are cooperating with local authorities to restore our community’s access to the platform and prioritize the safety of the Roblox community,” the company said.
Turks lost access to the site because of games featuring sexual content and violence that could be accessed by kids as young as eight, according to a court filing obtained by Bloomberg News. The company needs to go to the court and prove it has addressed its concerns if it wants to resume operations in the country, Turkey’s minister of transport and infrastructure, Abdulkadir Uraloglu, said in an interview last week.
“Roblox should say: ‘I have done my duty regarding the justifications for the court ruling’,” Uraloglu said. “Then Turkey would unblock.”
Roblox, one of the world’s largest video-game platforms, lets creators make their own games that are played by millions of users. Since early August, Turkey’s 47 million video-game fans have been unable to access the service. Online posts alleging Roblox is unsafe for kids spurred a court order leading to the ban, according to the prosecutor’s filing.
“Within these games there are virtual sex parties that encourage all kinds of sexual violence,” officials said in the Aug 1 filing. “There are violent games that order children to ‘kill’ each other.” The filing also referenced the fact that adults can enter the game, register as children and instant message kids.
Child-safety advocates and law enforcement have long held concerns about Roblox, where 40% of the platform’s 79 million users are preteens. Since 2018, US police have arrested at least two dozen people accused of abusing or abducting victims they’d met or groomed using Roblox, according to a investigation published by Bloomberg in July.
Moderators on the platform have struggled to keep up with its rapid growth, Bloomberg reported at the time. Roblox’s chief safety officer, Matt Kaufman, denied that the company has systemic problems with child endangerment.
In August, Turkish Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said in a statement on X that “the state is obliged to take the necessary measures to protect our children”.
The move followed a Turkish government ban on Instagram after a senior aide to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticised the social platform for “censorship” of posts related to the death of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh. Instagram was reinstated nine days later, in mid-August.
As online games expand rapidly in Turkey, the threat of child grooming increases, especially when paired with a lack of digital safety guidance, according to Iain Drennan, executive director of WeProtect Global Alliance, which seeks to mobilise the government and private sector to protect children from exploitation.
“There is no single solution or silver bullet,” Drennan said in an interview. Protecting children “requires a holistic, joined up and global response” because “predators will find gaps to exploit and abuse children that transcend countries and platforms”.
Kirra Pendergast, founder of Safe on Social, an online safety consultancy, said child abuse concerns raised by Turkish prosecutors “are not isolated to Roblox” and that countries and operators need to take a holistic approach. Sexualised content and predatory behaviour occurs across all major social media platforms and banning one may just shift children – and predators – elsewhere, she said. – Bloomberg
