Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has issued a ‘legally enforceable’ transparency notice to the owners of Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite and games platform Steam, asking them to report how they are ‘identifying, preventing and responding’ to concerns about predators using online gaming spaces to ‘spread violent propaganda and radicalise young people’ and to ‘groom children’.
As outlined, the transparency notice compels these companies to identify how they’re mitigating risks for young people online, including how their systems, staff and design choices inform a unified approach that is impactful and aligns with the Australian Government’s Basic Online Safety Expectations.
eSafety Commissioner issues transparency notices to online gaming plaforms – quick links
Why the eSafety Commissioner is targeting Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, and Steam
In recent years, online gaming platforms, including Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite have become the subject of parental concerns, by nature of many young children using them as platforms for conversing with friends and entertaining themselves.
The mainstream conversations around them have grown recently, particularly in regards to online chat functionalities. This has been buoyed by a variety of concerning cases overseas, where young people have seemingly been groomed online, exposed to violent content, or encouraged to meet with people in real-life settings.
According to the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, recent serious cases of online harms, including grooming, sexual extortion, and youth radicalisation via online games and gaming platforms have inspired deep concerns within the eSafety department, and for parents.
‘What we often see after these offenders make contact with children in online game environments, they then move children to private messaging services,’ Grant said in a statement issued on the eSafety website.
‘Gaming platforms are amongst the online spaces most heavily used by Australian children, functioning not only as places to play, but also as places to socialise and communicate. Our own research into children and gaming showed around 9 in 10 children aged 8 to 17 in Australia had played online games.’
‘Predatory adults know this and target children through grooming or embedding terrorist and violent extremist narratives in gameplay, increasing the risks of contact offending, radicalisation and other off-platform harms.’
Grant outlined ‘numerous media reports’ of grooming in online spaces, as well as nefarious parties using them to spread extremist ideologies. Noting that children risk exposure to this behaviour and these viewpoints while gaming online, Grant stated that platforms must take ‘every possible step to protect [children] and continue to improve safeguards’.
What eSafety transparency notices compel companies to undertake
‘These companies must take meaningful steps to prevent their services becoming onramps to abuse, extremist violence, radicalisation or lifelong harm,’ Grant said.
As shared, each company must submit a report on how they’re working to prevent harms, and how their design systems are in line with Australia’s Online Safety Codes and Standards. Under current law, companies providing an online service must implement certain systems to safeguard against transmission of illegal and restricted material.
Notably, Roblox has already pledged to making changes to better adhere to this system, with an array of new protections, including new account designations, put in place to ensure children can have a safe experience while gaming online.
Roblox Corporation issues statement on eSafety notice
In a statement sent to ScreenHub, the Roblox Corporation welcomed eSafety’s investigation, confirming compliance and outlining its stance:
‘We welcome engagement with eSafety on this important topic. Roblox has policies that strictly prohibit content or behaviour that incites, condones, supports, glorifies, or promotes any terrorist or extremist organisation or individual, which we work tirelessly to enforce. We swiftly remove such content and take immediate account level action when we find it.’
‘We also use advanced AI technology to review all images, text, and avatar items prior to publishing, in order to prevent known extremist iconography from being published. We encourage anyone who sees anything concerning on Roblox to report it to us. Our team works regularly with law enforcement, civil society groups, and other organisations with specific subject matter expertise in countering those who would seek to promote violent extremism.’
‘While no system is perfect, our commitment to safety never ends, and we will continue to collaborate closely with eSafety on our shared goal of keeping Australian children safe.’
Epic Games issues statement on eSafety notice
Epic Games, the studio behind Fortnite, has sent the follow statement to ScreenHub for context on its own activities and preventative measures: ‘Epic’s rules prohibit extremism, child endangerment, dangerous or illegal activities and threats of real world violence. We review all islands before they are published.’
‘Epic’s text chat filters remove mature language including hate speech, and our systems automatically report potentially high-harm interactions in text chat with players under 18 so we can take action. Fortnite has built-in protections for younger players including high-privacy default settings for players under 18 and voice and text chat are off for players under 16 until a parent consents. Using Epic’s Parental Controls, parents can customise their family’s experience including choosing who their child can communicate with.’
New systems put in place by the Roblox Corporation, Epic Games, and other companies named in the eSafety transparency notices will be directly tested, and then publicly reported on by the eSafety team. This will ensure parents can make more informed decisions about the content available to their children.
Notably, compliance with the newly-issued transparency notices is mandatory, so companies must comply with the edict of the eSafety Commissioner. Any companies which fail to respond may be charged up to AU$825,000 per day of non-response.
