// BBC WORLD NEWS — MONDO
Australia says platforms like Steam and Roblox have 'significant' child safety gaps
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant says gaming platforms must "lift their game" on child safety
Australia's online safety regulator has found "significant gaps" in how popular gaming platforms protect children online.
In a new report it found inconsistent approaches in how Steam, Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft implement child safety measures as research shows nine out of 10 children aged 8 to 17 in Australia have played online games.
"Australian children have a right to play online without being exposed to predators, sexual extortionists, violent extremist content or other harmful material," eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said.
Roblox said it "prioritises the safety of our Australian community, especially the youngest users". The other platforms have been contacted for comment.
Weak safety on platforms allow "predatory adults" to make contact with children before grooming them, Inman Grant said, for sexual exploitation or radicalisation.
The report found that Valve - the US gaming giant that owns Steam and Steam Chat - was the only provider that did not use a type of technology widely used by the industry to detect and remove known harmful content.
Valve also did not "proactively" use tools to detect child sexual exploitation or violent material in chats, with current systems mainly flagging scams, the report found.
Roblox, along with Valve, were noted in the report as using only internal datasets to train language detection systems and for not regularly retraining these models.
"We expect these services to lift their game to identify and combat serious harms such as child sexual exploitation, sexual extortion and material and activity which promotes, incites or instructs violence," Inman-Grant said.