Photo: International Business Times AU

“The new partnerships signify Roblox and Yubo’s willingness to work with the Australian Government in keeping kids safe online, but also demonstrates their commitment to continue investing and innovating in the safety of their platforms for the benefit of their users,” says eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant.

Research released today by the eSafety Commissioner shows 6 in 10 young people play multiplayer games. Of these, 17 per cent, or approximately 200,000 young Australians, experienced in-game bullying in a 12 month period.

“We welcome Roblox as the first multiplayer, online gaming platform to join our scheme. Given the high volume of global engagement, and the extent to which cyberbullying, and other safety issues, are affecting young people on gaming platforms, Roblox is setting the standard for others to follow.”

“Roblox’s efforts to continue evolving its safety standards by introducing innovative new features and protocols have been impressive,” says Inman Grant. A few of these Roblox features include parental controls, clear age visibility, stringent chat controls, and expansion of the moderation team to moderate behavior that is not tolerated on the platform.

Yubo, formally known as ‘Yellow’ is a social video app with over 15 million users globally, allowing teenagers to create communities of friends.

“I applaud Yubo for extensively reworking its safety features to make its platform safer for teens. Altering its age restrictions, improving its real identity policy, setting clear policies around inappropriate content and cyberbullying, and giving users the ability to turn location data off demonstrates that Yubo is taking user safety seriously” says Ms Inman Grant.

If an Australian child under the age of 18 is cyberbullied on either Roblox or Yubo, the eSafety Commissioner now has escalation paths to get the perpetrators or content removed, if the services fail to act within 48 hours.

“We are proactively encouraging gaming and social networking platforms to join our cyberbullying scheme, particularly those with a large youth user base,” says Inman Grant.