The federal government is concerned about the extent to which pedophiles, white nationalists and violent extremists are using Roblox and other online platforms to target and recruit children, according to a recent Public Safety Canada brief obtained by The Logic through an access to information request.

Roblox, a gaming and social media platform popular with children as young as five, “is of particular relevance as an entry point where vulnerable children and youth are targeted by malicious actors,” reads the December 2025 report, which was prepared for Public Safety Canada by the Canada Centre, which leads the government’s anti-radicalization work.

The warning comes as the federal government considers banning children under the age of 16 from social media. While that ban, if implemented, is expected to target major social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, popular games aimed at children that include social media-like features are “a bit of a different animal,” Culture Minister Marc Miller told The Logic.

“The gaming industry is different than other platforms, and the more that they become sort of social media-ish, the more they expose themselves to responsibility and potentially regulation,” he said Wednesday. Miller is expected to table legislation aimed at improving online safety for children later this year. 

Roblox allows people to develop and play games in self-created worlds, or in those created by others. Launched in 2006, it has an average of 127 million daily users, according to the company’s 2025 annual report. 

The Public Safety Canada report explains that Roblox’s young user base, social media-like features and abundance of user-generated content “create unique vulnerabilities and risks” for young people. “As such, Roblox may impact youth radicalization in unexpected ways,” the report concluded.

“Safety is at the core of everything we do at Roblox, and we have zero tolerance for child endangerment or extremism on our platform,” Roblox chief safety officer Matt Kaufman told The Logic. “Roblox has a multi-layered safety system that includes advanced AI-powered detection, monitoring teams, 24/7 moderation and robust user reporting tools.” Kaufman also pointed to the recent announcement of Roblox Kids and Roblox Select, which he said were “designed to limit users under 16 to an age-appropriate set of experiences.”

The report also pointed to issues Roblox has had with content moderation, which it claims has made the platform a haven for extremist and violence-promoting communities. The report adds that there is an “evident risk” that children using Roblox can be lured to other platforms, including Discord and Snapchat, where they are also vulnerable to abuse. The report also found that extremist and violent groups were using Roblox to “identify and victimize new targets for child exploitation as part of their strategy.”

Roblox’s model as a facilitator, not a producer, of online games makes it particularly difficult to moderate, said Amarnath Amarasingam, an online extremism expert and associate professor at Queen’s University. “The problem with Roblox is, because it’s user-generated, it’s kind of like AI platforms, in that everything has the potential to be completely unique, and so you have nothing to compare to in order to moderate or take down in a proactive way,” he explained.

Amarasingam, who serves on the federal government’s online harms advisory group, said the impending legislation will likely cover video game platforms, including Roblox, as well as AI chatbots. 

Groups use Roblox to target and recruit children into violent, extremist movements. One such group, known as 764, is made up mostly of young people who commit and encourage acts of self-harm, violent crime and child sexual abuse.

Members of 764 are also known to target vulnerable children on Reddit and Minecraft, among other platforms, according to an August 2025 Public Safety brief, also obtained by The Logic through an access to information request. The group uses threats, harassment and extortion tactics to coerce victims to commit acts of violence and sexual exploitation, according to an April 2025 alert from the RCMP.

Roblox has been the subject of several lawsuits relating to its child safety measures, including an October 2025 suit in which an assailant on Roblox allegedly coerced a Houston-area teenage girl into sending him sexually explicit images and videos of herself. The State of Louisiana filed suit against Roblox in August 2025, alleging the company’s “monitoring software and human monitors are trained to not flag” predatory conduct. Earlier this week, Roblox reached a US$35.8-million settlement with attorneys general in West Virginia, Alabama and Nevada over harm caused to children on the platform. 

Australia’s online safety commissioner recently issued notices to executives at Roblox, as well as Minecraft, Fortnite and Steam, compelling them to explain how the platforms are identifying, preventing and responding to threats from sexual predators and violent extremists.

A handful of countries, including Algeria, Egypt and Turkey, have banned Roblox for its allegedly lax content moderation practices. 

In 2024, Roblox took measures to protect children on its site, including restricting many of its communication tools for those under the age of 13. More recently, the company has come under fire for deploying AI facial-recognition systems to limit interactions between adults and children, which were often easily circumvented by using photos.