MATT KAUFMAN & ROBLOX TRUST & SAFETY EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT

Classification: Executive Leadership Forensic Audit / Trust & Safety Operations
Subject: Matt Kaufman (Chief Safety Officer & Chief Systems Officer, Roblox Corporation)
Timeframe: 2017 – 2026
Key Topics: Safety Budget Deprivation ($1.80–$2.50/DAU), BPO 3–10s Review Quotas, Public Narrative vs Internal Memos, and the Schlep Whistleblower Suppression
Year: 2026

1. Executive Summary & Organizational Portfolio

Holding the dual titles of Chief Safety Officer (CSO) and Chief Systems Officer (CSO), Matt Kaufman sits at the operational nexus of Roblox’s trust and safety policy, automated moderation infrastructure, customer care, and third-party BPO vendor workforce management. Reporting directly to CEO David Baszucki, Kaufman has championed the public narrative that Roblox operates "the safest and most civil digital platform in the world."

However, forensic analysis reveals a systemic divergence between public marketing and internal operational realities:

Safety Unit Economics: Structural suppression of safety budgets to $1.80–$2.50 per DAU annually (vs $12–$18/DAU at Epic Games).
Inhuman BPO Review Quotas: Outsourced frontline moderators (Teleperformance, Cognizant, TaskUs, ModSquad) are held to handling times of 3 to 10 seconds per ticket across 800–2,500+ daily ticket quotas.
Whistleblower Suppression: Direct corporate authorization of the August 2025 Cease-and-Desist and lifetime ban against 22-year-old predator hunter Schlep and the subsequent live-stage banning of Chris Hansen at CrimeCon.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    MATT KAUFMAN — EXECUTIVE TRAJECTORY                      │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ • Pre-Roblox        : Executive roles at Crunchbase (Head of Product),     │
│                       Oodle, Edgio, and There.com (early virtual worlds).   │
│ • Sept 2017–Feb 2021: VP, Product – Platform (Roblox)                       │
│                       Oversaw core platform infrastructure, developer tools,│
│                       and identity/customer service systems.                │
│ • Feb 2021–July 2023: Chief Systems Officer (Roblox)                        │
│                       Managed enterprise IT, data infrastructure, customer  │
│                       operations, and platform engineering operations.      │
│ • July 2023–Present : Chief Safety Officer & Chief Systems Officer          │
│                       Direct executive command over Global Trust & Safety,  │
│                       Child Safety Policy, Frontline Content Moderation,    │
│                       Customer Care Operations, and Safety Engineering.     │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

2. Internal Directives: Safety Cost-Cutting & BPO Quota Sweatshops

A. Safety Budget Deprivation ($1.80–$2.50 / DAU)

Forensic financial analysis demonstrates that Trust & Safety budgets were kept tightly capped to protect platform EBITDA:

Platform	Annual Safety Spend per DAU	Moderation Workforce Modality	Age Verification Gate
Roblox Corporation	$1.80 – $2.50	~90% Third-party BPO ($1.50–$3/hr) + automated regex	Self-reported birthday; facial AI estimation (late 2025)
Epic Games (Fortnite)	$12.00 – $18.00	Hybrid in-house Trust & Safety + Cabined Accounts default	Supervised parental consent gates & voice buffers
Steam (Valve)	N/A (Curated)	Strict store curation + developer escrow bonding	Tiered wallet validation & payment identity anchors

B. The "3-to-10 Second Rule" in Outsourced BPO Centers

To process tens of thousands of chat logs and asset uploads every minute, Kaufman’s operations enforce strict Average Handling Time (AHT) rules:

Handling Speeds: Frontline BPO moderators are mandated to resolve user-flagged tickets within 3 to 10 seconds per ticket.
Daily Quotas: 800 to 2,500+ tickets per 8-hour shift, earning base wages of $1.50 to $3.00 per hour in the Philippines, India, and Colombia.
Failure Modes: Human moderators have zero time to analyze conversational context, allowing multi-stage predator grooming to pass completely undetected while arbitrarily banning harmless child slang.

3. Public Rhetoric vs. Leaked Internal Telemetry

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    THE MATT KAUFMAN DUALITY MATRIX                          │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ PUBLIC RHETORIC (CSO STATEMENTS)     │ FORENSIC REALITY & LEAKED EVIDENCE   │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
│ "Roblox is the safest and most civil │ • 65,000+ NCMEC Reports in 2025      │
│  online platform in the world. Safety│   (Up >9,500% from 675 in 2019).     │
│  is at our absolute core."           │ • 30+ US predator arrests linked     │
│                                      │   directly to Roblox grooming.       │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
│ "Multimodal AI evaluates and labels  │ • Leaked Word Scoring Matrix: regex  │
│  violating content in seconds."      │   scores reset per session; predators│
│                                      │   bypass filters via low-score chat. │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
│ "We empower parents with industry-   │ • Over 40M daily minor users bypass  │
│  leading controls and visibility."   │   parental locks via unlinked burner │
│                                      │   alt accounts within seconds.       │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
│ "Internal safety reports are acted   │ • Bloomberg July 2024: 20+ current/  │
│  upon immediately with zero tolerance│   former staff confirm safety warnings│
│  for predatory behavior."            │   were systematically dismissed.     │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

A. The Leaked Word Scoring Matrix

Internal moderation dossiers revealed that automated filters do not terminate accounts upon detecting suspicious keywords:

Grooming and adult-dating keywords carry numerical penalty points.
Accounts are only escalated if a numerical threshold is breached within a single session. Predator networks systematically reverse-engineered this threshold to communicate in short bursts without triggering bans.

B. White-Glove Whitelisting for Top-Grossing Developers

While ordinary child players receive automated bans, investigations by Bloomberg (July 2024) and Hindenburg Research (October 2024) proved that Kaufman's department maintains dedicated white-glove queues for top-earning developers, granting them leniency on TOS violations to protect platform revenue.

4. Retaliation Against Whistleblowers & Regulatory Fallouts

A. The Schlep Cease-and-Desist & The Chris Hansen Live Ban

Schlep Retaliation: When 22-year-old survivor Schlep handed evidence to law enforcement that led directly to 6 predator arrests, Kaufman's department responded with a permanent platform ban and a legal Cease-and-Desist, formalizing an "Anti-Vigilante Policy" to suppress external safety audits.
Chris Hansen CrimeCon Ban (August 2026): During a live demonstration at CrimeCon, veteran investigative journalist Chris Hansen was banned live on stage by automated systems while demonstrating active predator lures.

B. Response to Bloomberg Polk Award & U.S. Senate Inquiries

Kaufman publicly dismissed the 2024 Bloomberg Businessweek investigation as an "unbalanced depiction," despite the article winning the 2025 George Polk Award and documenting over 24 predator arrests.
Under bipartisan questioning from Senators Josh Hawley and Dick Durbin, Kaufman defended platform practices even as official NCMEC filings exceeded 65,000 exploitation reports in 2025.