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Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. This is the story. And I

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Speaker 1: want to start today's episode with a story that my

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Speaker 1: friend told me about a big family drama over the holidays.

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Speaker 1: You see, his daughter got locked out of her Roadblocks

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Speaker 1: account and it threatened to derail the whole family's Christmas.

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Speaker 1: This level of emotional attachment to a tech platform, it

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Speaker 1: got me pretty fascinated. Why does Roadblocks mean so much

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Speaker 1: to my friend's daughter and many many others like her.

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Speaker 1: Roadblocks has become one of the most popular gaming platforms

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Speaker 1: in the world. It has over ninety five million users,

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Speaker 1: and players can also create their own games. The majority

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Speaker 1: of users are under sixteen, and if you have kids

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Speaker 1: in your life, there's a very good chance that they

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Speaker 1: use Roblocks and that they're fanatical about it. Today we're

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Speaker 1: talking to the man behind it all, David Bozuki, the

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Speaker 1: co founder and CEO of Roadblocks, who recently said that

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Speaker 1: gaming is still in its quote prehistoric era. If you

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Speaker 1: care about how technology is driving culture and how culture

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Speaker 1: is driving technology, you simply have to understand Roadblocks because

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Speaker 1: it's this space where kids can play make believe but

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Speaker 1: also explore real world situations. Virtually, just this month, users

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Speaker 1: engaged in political activism on the platform by staging protests

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Speaker 1: when some players created avatars of ice agents, others took

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Speaker 1: to the suburban streets of one Roadblocks universe to protest.

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Speaker 1: And then there are scenarios playing out on the platform

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Speaker 1: that are all too real. As Bloomberg put it, quote,

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Speaker 1: the Internet's biggest recreation zone for kids is fighting to

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Speaker 1: keep predators away. So we'll also talk about what Roadblocks

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Speaker 1: is doing to keep its huge user base of children

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Speaker 1: safe and to address some criticisms that it should be

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Speaker 1: doing more. David BAZOOKI, welcome to take stuff.

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Speaker 2: Hey, thank you so much. It's great to be on

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Speaker 2: the show with you.

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Speaker 1: Thank you for being here. If you had to explain

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Speaker 1: Roadblocks to someone who's never used it before, where do

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Speaker 1: you begin.

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Speaker 2: We've used so many terminologies of how we've talked about

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Speaker 2: Roadblocks in the past, all the way from in the

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Speaker 2: early days it was you make the game. We talked

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Speaker 2: about an imagination platform. We've talked about a human co

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Speaker 2: experience platform. But in reality it's an amazingly large, mostly

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Speaker 2: gaming platform. Today almost one hundred million daily active users

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Speaker 2: are on the site. Roadblocks doesn't make any of the

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Speaker 2: games on our platform, and over time, the developers on

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Speaker 2: the platform have gone from hobbyists to really entrepreneurs, some

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Speaker 2: of whom are running studios making over fifty million dollars

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Speaker 2: a year. So it is a user generated gaming platform

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Speaker 2: or a human co experience platform.

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Speaker 1: One of the things that's very interesting is we've seen

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Speaker 1: this kind of phenomenon of the gamification of everything, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, do you have an operating definition of what

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Speaker 1: a game is?

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Speaker 2: When you say the gamification of everything? It's fun to

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Speaker 2: think that we've actually gamified the creation of the games

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Speaker 2: on Roadblocks, and in a sense, being a Roadblocks creator

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Speaker 2: is an amazingly interesting game. A lot of our creators

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Speaker 2: grew up on Roadblocks. They played Roadblocks, and when they

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Speaker 2: were young they got interested in computer science or production

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Speaker 2: or art or graphics or writing, and before you know it,

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Speaker 2: many of the top one hundred creators on Roadblocks grew

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Speaker 2: up on the platform and are now CEOs of amazingly

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Speaker 2: large companies. There's also a lot of gamification and then

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Speaker 2: a lot of other things we see in our pop culture. So,

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Speaker 2: for example, when something gets interesting in pop culture, like

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Speaker 2: whether it's squid game or something else, a lot of

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Speaker 2: people want to interact with that content, not just by

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Speaker 2: consuming it, but by doing it and jumping into it.

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Speaker 2: And so gamification could be thought of as taking a

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Speaker 2: topic or subject that's interesting and allowing people to jump

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Speaker 2: in and experience the adrenaline rush or the boredom or

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Speaker 2: whatever other part of that content, whether it's you know,

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Speaker 2: Stranger Things or the NFL universe or being part of

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Speaker 2: a SpongeBob universe, you know, experience that rather than consume

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Speaker 2: it linearly.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's funny how games have evolved, right, Like

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Speaker 1: first games for kids, I mean computer games for kids,

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Speaker 1: and then computer games were considered to be like drivers

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Speaker 1: of violence, and then just for geeks. And now if

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Speaker 1: you you know, exist in our culture. You see, you

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Speaker 1: know Minecraft, the biggest movie of the year. Well you

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Speaker 1: see that Muga, Robbie's follow up project to Bobby is

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Speaker 1: going to be a movie based on the sims, Like,

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Speaker 1: can you talk about it? Kind of your role as

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Speaker 1: a participant observer in how games have come to dominate

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Speaker 1: entertainment culture and beyond.

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Speaker 2: I believe early on games were highly limited by the technology,

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Speaker 2: and even the very first game that I might have played,

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Speaker 2: which was Pong, in a sense was a reality simulation.

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Speaker 2: It was a very crude, crude simulation. I didn't have

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Speaker 2: an avatar, it wasn't in two D. I had a

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Speaker 2: white you know, line on the screen. But I still

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Speaker 2: playing Ping pong right in a way, and a lot

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Speaker 2: of I believe what's interesting in games is literally a

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Speaker 2: fantasy reality simulation that can be very connected with other people,

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Speaker 2: can be very entertaining. You know, one of the top

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Speaker 2: experiences on our platform right now is grow a Garden.

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Speaker 2: This exploded on our platform last summer. Dressed to Impress

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Speaker 2: exploded on the platform. What's really been fun for me

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Speaker 2: is there not Neither one of those is a traditional game.

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Speaker 2: They're definitely reality simulators. Several members of my family are

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Speaker 2: very interested in farming, and me as a dad, gets

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Speaker 2: to say the top experience right now in Roadblocks is

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Speaker 2: about growing stuff in a garden.

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Speaker 1: Talk a bit about that game, you know, how did

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Speaker 1: it go viral and what does it say about the

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Speaker 1: platform you've built?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so a couple things about how that thing went viral.

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Speaker 2: Which is really kind of interesting. Really is we've worked

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Speaker 2: really hard over the last I'd say year and a

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Speaker 2: half to make our discovery system very fair, very organic

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Speaker 2: and a just discovery system that if someone creates something

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Speaker 2: that is retaining well causing viral growth, people are spending

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Speaker 2: a lot of time in it, that experience will get

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Speaker 2: more exposure and grow. Garden is a great example that

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Speaker 2: creator created this idea of something that was new and interesting.

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Speaker 2: It's asynchronous. Things happen when you're not playing. You can

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Speaker 2: come back, which is really cool. They launched it with

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Speaker 2: in the same way we launched Roadblocks with a little

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Speaker 2: bit of paid traffic to get some initial users playing,

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Speaker 2: but it got picked up by our discovery algorithms and

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Speaker 2: over time went viral to the point where a couple

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Speaker 2: weeks ago, I believe it hit eleven million concurrent players,

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Speaker 2: which is close to the all time concurrent records for

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Speaker 2: games anywhere around the world. So great idea, new idea.

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Speaker 2: There's a lot of social media pick up influencers are

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Speaker 2: playing and sharing on shorts or reels or TikTok, so

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Speaker 2: you know, it's what we're hoping the environment could support.

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Speaker 1: I've heard so many parents talking about how that kids

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Speaker 1: are just obsessed with Roadblocks. What do you think it

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Speaker 1: is about the platform that makes it so engaging for kids?

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Speaker 2: I feel what makes roadblocks interesting is what universally, when

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Speaker 2: I was young and we were running around outside fantasizing

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Speaker 2: about being King Arthur and the Knights, that same level

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Speaker 2: of collaborative being with your friends playing in some fantasy

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Speaker 2: that may be somewhat real, maybe somewhat fantasy, but behind

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Speaker 2: the scenes it's not solo. A lot of people are

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Speaker 2: arguably just hanging out and chatting while they're playing the

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Speaker 2: game in the background. So I do feel what really

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Speaker 2: pulls in is being with friends and doing things together.

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Speaker 1: In that respect, that what distinguishes it from social media.

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Speaker 2: When I think of social media, social media has become

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Speaker 2: a arguably a pretty broad term for various product features.

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Speaker 2: There is definitely a class of products shorts, reels, TikTok, spotlight,

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Speaker 2: other's short form video which is more solo. I'm interested

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Speaker 2: in all of those products, and both has some of

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Speaker 2: the questions, is it to addictive, some concern over people

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Speaker 2: scrolling in the middle of the night, but also has

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Speaker 2: some benefits in that I do think it is a

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Speaker 2: way we get a lot of new information. And I

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Speaker 2: obviously read the newspaper and go on x and other

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Speaker 2: social media platforms, but I do get new information from

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Speaker 2: there as well. There's a second what I would call

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Speaker 2: class of social media, starting with Facebook or even friends there,

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Speaker 2: which is sharing about my life, sharing pictures, celebrities sharing pictures.

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Speaker 2: And then I would put Roadblocks in a third category,

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Speaker 2: which is the connection category, being together in a virtual environment,

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Speaker 2: initially pioneered by gaming and online gaming. And I think

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Speaker 2: this category is a natural extension of the telegraph system

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Speaker 2: and the phone system and the video system. The next

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Speaker 2: extension of it is the three D connection system. And

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Speaker 2: someday when we're doing another podcast, we maybe will be

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Speaker 2: doing it in Roadblocks, and we'll be going for a

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Speaker 2: walk in a city somewhere and having a chat and

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Speaker 2: looking at the scenery. And I think that's just part

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Speaker 2: of the inevitable march of how we communicate at a

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Speaker 2: distance with technology. So I think there's benefits from all

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Speaker 2: different types of social media. Roadblocks is very much in

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Speaker 2: the gaming connection zone.

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Speaker 1: There, so the platform for interaction and the interaction drives communication.

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Speaker 2: Pulls people in and the notion of seeing the developer community,

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Speaker 2: seeing both very experienced game creators as well as sixteen

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Speaker 2: year olds, eighteen year olds, twenty two year old and

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Speaker 2: in a way it gives an optimism that maybe I

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Speaker 2: could do this as well. And also the way the

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Speaker 2: Roadblocks developer community has panned out, we have seen not

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Speaker 2: just the top developers, but the thousandth developer or the

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Speaker 2: ten thousandth developer start to make meaningful wages. Actually, so

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Speaker 2: it's something people feel that's accessible to them, and I

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Speaker 2: do believe because of this, there's a lot of excitement

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Speaker 2: around STEM learning. It's cool to learn computer science. We

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Speaker 2: see a lot of people get pulled into computer science

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Speaker 2: and production because they believe if they can do it.

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Speaker 2: These are real educational experiences on Roadblocks now. So it's

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Speaker 2: in that sense it's working out like we planned. There's

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Speaker 2: a lot of education in the experiences themselves. But even

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Speaker 2: more so, I think if we had gone on to

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Speaker 2: say we want to make a educational experience around either

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Speaker 2: art or design or computer science, arguably Roadblocks is very

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Speaker 2: good at that in that it pulls in millions of

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Speaker 2: people to learn computer science or art or design.

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Speaker 1: How did it become such a huge success. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you started in the two thousands and it's doing good,

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Speaker 1: and you raise the money, and then I think fifteen

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Speaker 1: years later you took it to an IPO, but there

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Speaker 1: was a moment when it went from a successful private

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Speaker 1: company to arguably one of the most influential tech companies

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Speaker 1: in the world. Like, what do you attribute that sort

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Speaker 1: of shift in penetration to.

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Speaker 2: We've been at it for over sixteen or seventeen years,

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Speaker 2: and along the way, one thing is we started very small.

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Speaker 2: The very first few years of roadblocks, we were talking

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Speaker 2: one thousand concurrent users rather than twenty one million concurrent

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Speaker 2: So we are now at least twenty one thousand times larger.

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Speaker 2: I would say on many occasions along the way, whether

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Speaker 2: it's it's a board meeting or a staff meeting, what

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Speaker 2: has led to this acceleration of growth in the last

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Speaker 2: three months or what is the magic sauce we keep

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Speaker 2: coming back to. It's thousands of things done right. It

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Speaker 2: is a real well balanced mix of a lot of

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Speaker 2: complex things. It is how good our game engine works,

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Speaker 2: it's our infrastructure. How good is a tooling, How good

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Speaker 2: is search and discovery? How good is the economy? Do

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Speaker 2: we have enough servers? Are people connecting with their friends?

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Speaker 2: So a platform like this is pretty broad technically, and

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Speaker 2: whenever we've tried to do a statistical analysis or what

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Speaker 2: is the one magic thing. It's always been a thousand

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Speaker 2: small things.

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Speaker 1: But in terms of an innovation that drove the platform,

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Speaker 1: Roebucks were pretty important, right. I think I understand that

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Speaker 1: the key to Roebucks was that they gave developers and

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Speaker 1: creators are written incentive, but can you just take a

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Speaker 1: step back and kind of explain what they are and

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Speaker 1: how they impact your platform?

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Speaker 2: So we wanted we wanted to create a perpetual motion

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Speaker 2: machine or a closed loop system with feedback. And the

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Speaker 2: way a closed loop system with feedback would be. I'm

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Speaker 2: a developer, maybe I'm dude one I made work at

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Speaker 2: a pizza place, and I say, what could I do

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Speaker 2: where users could spend a currency we'll call it roebucks.

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Speaker 2: I don't remember if I work at a pizza place,

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Speaker 2: or someone had the ability to buy a scooter so

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Speaker 2: instead of walking from place to place in their game,

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Speaker 2: you could ride the scooter.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 2: So okay, So that has to happen. Creators have to

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Speaker 2: have interesting things to sell. The creators need to have

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Speaker 2: a wallet where if a user spends roebucks on that scooter,

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Speaker 2: it goes into their wallet. A creator needs to be

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Speaker 2: able to translate those roebucks into money. You know, fill

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Speaker 2: out your ten ninety nine, you're going to get some cash.

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Speaker 2: You're going to get taxed on it. That's like real earnings.

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Speaker 2: Users need to be able to buy roebucks, either through iOS,

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Speaker 2: through the app store, through a credit card, now through

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Speaker 2: a gift card, and there's got to be maybe a

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Speaker 2: little feedback to reward those developers who are bootstrapping the system.

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Speaker 2: So we had to experiences that we're starting to bring

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Speaker 2: in the most roebucks, so there's a little bit of

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Speaker 2: a feedback loop, and developers said, whoa, if I'm earning roebucks,

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Speaker 2: I might get some discovery. So all of those things

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Speaker 2: have to launch at the same time. Users purchasing roebucks,

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Speaker 2: some discovery, closed loop feedback, developers cashing them out. That's

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Speaker 2: all that we did. But we launched with all of

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Speaker 2: those components, and on day one users were buying roebucks,

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Speaker 2: Users started spending roebucks in some of the games. At

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Speaker 2: the end of day one we had the top grossing

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Speaker 2: roebucks game right there on the Discovery charts. Creators could say, oh,

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Speaker 2: this is another interesting thing to do, and that launched

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Speaker 2: that whole virtual economy that has been a big part

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Speaker 2: of us ever since.

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Speaker 1: After the break. How Roadblocks is responding to what Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: is called it's pedophile problem. Stay with us. When I

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Speaker 1: was reading my introduction to the one point where you

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Speaker 1: were really nodding along was when I used that word prehistoric.

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Speaker 1: Oh now you're giving me two thumbs up. Tell me why.

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Speaker 2: In three D immersion, there's an amazing amount of technology

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Speaker 2: still to be built. If we wanted to host a

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Speaker 2: concert with a real time performer for one hundred thousand people,

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Speaker 2: and we all wanted to be in that exact same stadium,

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Speaker 2: dancing together, hearing everyone participating on a phone or a

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Speaker 2: home theater or in VR, have it look photo realistic,

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Speaker 2: like just like video, and have it sound great. That's

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Speaker 2: a lot of technology. There's still some way to go,

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Speaker 2: so and that's sense. The whole gaming market, Roadblocks included,

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Speaker 2: is still in the Stone age. The spec is really

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Speaker 2: one hundred thousand people, photorealistic, real time, high quality, and

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Speaker 2: add AI on top of that, possibly regenerating the environment

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Speaker 2: based on your or my prompts like turn this from

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Speaker 2: a stadium into a medieval fortress. So we're ways away

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Speaker 2: from that technology. I would say even today where we

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Speaker 2: are with Roadblocks, what we're doing is somewhat innovative in

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Speaker 2: that a lot of the video game market is still

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Speaker 2: downloading things not being able to play immediately. So I

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Speaker 2: think what we're going to see and what we're really

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Speaker 2: pushing on is the notion of immediate play no matter

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Speaker 2: what we're looking at. Another thing that's very prevalent in

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Speaker 2: the video game industry is different games on mobile than

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Speaker 2: on PC or console mobile tending to be lighter, high performance,

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Speaker 2: but I do think over time we're going to see

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Speaker 2: the same game run on both, which is going to

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Speaker 2: require a lot of cloud technology. And so having AI

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Speaker 2: available in any game, whether it's for NPCs or creation,

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Speaker 2: that's a whole area that we don't even know what

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Speaker 2: that's going to be.

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Speaker 1: One of the most popular terms right now is vibe coding,

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Speaker 1: basically describing to an AI what you want in natural

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Speaker 1: language and then having it write code for you to

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Speaker 1: make your wish come true. What role does vibe coding

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Speaker 1: play on Roadblocks?

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Speaker 2: We already have vibe coding in the extent that Roadblocks

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Speaker 2: Studio has an AI assistant. You can go talk to

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Speaker 2: studio and start building stuff. Our studio architecture will more

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Speaker 2: and more become MCP client and server, So if you

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Speaker 2: want to use your own AI command line and generate

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Speaker 2: in studio, you'll be able to do that, So stay

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Speaker 2: tuned on that. What I think we're going to ultimately see, though,

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Speaker 2: is vibe coding inside Roadblocks games themselves, and ultimately the

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Speaker 2: ability to vibe code not just the code in a

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Speaker 2: Roadblocks game, but the whole Roadblocks game. What will be

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Speaker 2: really a big day for Roadblocks is where one of

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Speaker 2: the top one hundred games, rather than been written with

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Speaker 2: luau and with three D graphics tools, is vibe coded.

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Speaker 2: Just like I don't know how to code, I'm not

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Speaker 2: an artist. I just talked about this game I wanted

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Speaker 2: to imagine. I uploaded some clips of some hand drawings

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Speaker 2: and a few ideas, and I got this game. But

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Speaker 2: the other thing I think we'll see on the social

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Speaker 2: side is collaborative vibe coding, people walking around together creating things.

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Speaker 2: You'd say, make a castle, I might say, make it

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Speaker 2: more green, more overgrowth on it. So I can see

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Speaker 2: vibe coding collaboratively being something we'll see in Roadblocks.

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Speaker 1: You have tens of millions of other people's children on

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Speaker 1: your platform. How do you think about that responsibility and

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Speaker 1: how do you deal with it?

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Speaker 2: It's an enormous responsibility. We sometimes try to imagine what

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Speaker 2: close to one hundred million peoples looks like. That's about

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Speaker 2: a thousand soccer stadiums with one hundred thousand people in it.

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Speaker 2: We had the early experience that even one bad situation

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Speaker 2: is one too many.

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Speaker 1: Obviously, you have to ask you about the Bloomberg story

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Speaker 1: as well, which had the headline Roadblocks's pedophile Problem and

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Speaker 1: mentioned that there were two dozen people who have been

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Speaker 1: arrested based on interacting with children in harmful ways, in

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Speaker 1: some cases even abducting them they met on roadblocks.

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Speaker 2: How do you address this on roadblocks? We build safety

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Speaker 2: in from day one. We don't allow the sharing of images,

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Speaker 2: we don't allow unfiltered texts. We have access to all

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Speaker 2: texts and all of those things. It creates a world

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Speaker 2: where we have to try to keep people on roadblocks.

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Speaker 2: We don't want them going to any other device or

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Speaker 2: any other platform where. Unfortunately, if a young person has

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Speaker 2: access to a phone, there's many other areas where they

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Speaker 2: can start sharing pictures of themselves, or start trying to

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Speaker 2: share their phone number or address. So over the years

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Speaker 2: we've accepted that challenge. I would say there's never an

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Speaker 2: excuse even for one bad incident. There are many things

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Speaker 2: that get reported that were unfortunately not able to comment

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Speaker 2: on where they were initially meeting. But I do feel

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Speaker 2: over time we're going to show the leadership that for

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Speaker 2: young people, they stay on roadblocks no matter what. For

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Speaker 2: thirteen through seventeen year olds, you're going to see some

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Speaker 2: very innovative things where, unlike on other platforms, most fourteen

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Speaker 2: year olds can talk to anyone else on the platform,

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Speaker 2: and that's a very vulnerable age. You're going to see

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Speaker 2: us start to be thoughtful about how they communicate with others.

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Speaker 1: Can you just describe how the actual social interaction works?

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Speaker 1: And I guess my second question would be, is it

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Speaker 1: an aspiration to make it all but impossible for adults

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Speaker 1: to speak to children ultimately on the platform?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? You know how Tesla weimo has to be twenty

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Speaker 2: to you know, ten times safer than the real world.

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Speaker 2: I'm optimistic that we will be multiples and multiples of

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Speaker 2: that relative to the real world. And it's not inconceivable

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Speaker 2: to build AI both for text or for voice that

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Speaker 2: no matter who I'm talking to. There's no way to

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Speaker 2: share personal information, and so I do feel we're going

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Speaker 2: to make this more and more just a solve problem.

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Speaker 1: Because a paradigm today is like two avatars might interact

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Speaker 1: and one maybe a grown up, one maybe a child,

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Speaker 1: and a grown up maybe able to say to the

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Speaker 1: child avatar, hey meet me on discord or something. That's

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Speaker 1: why the.

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Speaker 2: Kere we would Actually it's very The good news is

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Speaker 2: it's very very hard to meet on discord today, So

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Speaker 2: we filter use their names, we filter addresses. What we

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Speaker 2: do find is in certain age range. Even though that's

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Speaker 2: very very hard to share a snap name or a

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Speaker 2: Discord handle, some kids who are in a vulnerable state

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Speaker 2: try to figure out how to share, some way to

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Speaker 2: get off of roadblocks. And I think over time, even

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Speaker 2: when two people are trying to find out how to connect,

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Speaker 2: you'll see us making that very difficult, if not impossible.

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Speaker 1: But the way the interaction paradigm is like two adveratars

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Speaker 1: or in a virtual world and they have like a

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Speaker 1: chat box, or how do they actually practically talk to

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Speaker 1: each other?

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Speaker 2: For younger people only text in a full three D space.

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Speaker 2: We don't support one on one or private chat so

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Speaker 2: it's all out in the town square in a sense,

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Speaker 2: and other people can see that. And on top of that,

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Speaker 2: all of that text is running through a very deep

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Speaker 2: set of filtering at the same time. And it's one

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Speaker 2: of the biggest complaints really of our platform for younger people.

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Speaker 2: They see a lot of hashes, basically because it's us

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Speaker 2: being very conservative in how we filter.

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Speaker 1: As you look at what's going on more broadly in

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Speaker 1: society and culture, you feel like parents are waking up

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Speaker 1: to and getting very concerned about real world harms happening

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Speaker 1: to their children based on virtual environments. Do you see

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Speaker 1: that as as a longer term risk to Roadblocks.

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Speaker 2: Well, we see it in a way as an opportunity,

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Speaker 2: and I would say we're thankful that we started with

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Speaker 2: younger people on the platform because it arguably is a

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Speaker 2: much more difficult area to challenge. Improving our work with

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Speaker 2: law enforcement and I believe over time getting the reputation

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Speaker 2: that roadblocks is a dangerous place for bad actors. We

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Speaker 2: do a lot of work with all the three letter

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Speaker 2: agencies and want to make roadblocks that kind of dangerous

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Speaker 2: place for anyone who's thinking about that. We're moving more

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Speaker 2: and more proactive so we now nudge people on our

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Speaker 2: platform when they're maybe not being so nice or bullying

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Speaker 2: a little or whatever, and those nudges do give people

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Speaker 2: an early indication of what we just won't tolerate on

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Speaker 2: the platform.

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Speaker 1: There was a BBC interview you gave and I think

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Speaker 1: you know you suggested if parents are worried about the

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Speaker 1: children roadblocks, maybe they just shouldn't have their children roadblocks,

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Speaker 1: and you've got some pushback for that.

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Speaker 2: I love that question. It was part of a bigger

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Speaker 2: conversation track. We were talking about how hard I believe

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Speaker 2: it is to be a parent and what does a

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Speaker 2: parent do when they're intuitively not comfortable with something. I

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Speaker 2: was hoping my answer would get construed as any time

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Speaker 2: a parent is uncomfortable with anything, like if I'm looking

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Speaker 2: outside at a lake right now, and if i saw

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Speaker 2: my two year old, like I'm not comfortable having them

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Speaker 2: at the end of the dock right now without a

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Speaker 2: life jacket on. I'm a parent, I have four kids.

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Speaker 2: I would always want parents to if they're not comfortable,

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Speaker 2: follow their intuition.

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Speaker 1: You've described Roadblocks as a wellness platform, even more so

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Speaker 1: than it is a gaming platform. What do you mean

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Speaker 1: by roadblocks as a wellness platform.

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Speaker 2: Young people who've gotten disconnected at school, young people going

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Speaker 2: through a mental health crisis, young people who are going

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Speaker 2: through something finding people on roadblocks to connect with. I mean,

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Speaker 2: it sounds gratuitous for me to say it, but parents

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00:27:49,520 --> 00:27:53,639
Speaker 2: saying like, my kid is alive because they found people

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00:27:53,680 --> 00:27:57,879
Speaker 2: on roadblocks. So I think there's a loneliness epidemic going

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00:27:57,920 --> 00:28:01,240
Speaker 2: on in the world. I think. I mean, I'll go

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00:28:01,280 --> 00:28:04,520
Speaker 2: out on a limb and I'll say four like in

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00:28:04,760 --> 00:28:10,800
Speaker 2: quotes twenty one and up id verified opted in someday

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00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:14,080
Speaker 2: we'll have dating on roadblocks, And I think a lot

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00:28:14,160 --> 00:28:17,400
Speaker 2: of people who might be afraid to go on a

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00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:21,440
Speaker 2: real life date might find it easier to have a

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00:28:21,520 --> 00:28:25,560
Speaker 2: virtual date to start, and then if they connect, move

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00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:28,280
Speaker 2: to the physical world. So I think, you know, in

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00:28:28,359 --> 00:28:31,080
Speaker 2: a wellness platform, I think of as a platform to

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Speaker 2: help loneliness and help bring connection.

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00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:37,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, because part of your job is continuing to attract

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00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:41,280
Speaker 1: new thirteen year olds. The other part of your job

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00:28:41,360 --> 00:28:44,440
Speaker 1: is retaining thirteen year olds who becoming seventeen year olds

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00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:47,160
Speaker 1: who are becoming twenty four year olds. Right, So how

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Speaker 1: do you balance those two things?

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Speaker 2: You know, my job at a higher level is driven

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00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:57,520
Speaker 2: by a certain level of morality and ethics. So I

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00:28:57,520 --> 00:29:01,760
Speaker 2: don't literally consider my job the use count on roadblocks,

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00:29:02,400 --> 00:29:06,680
Speaker 2: but I do consider this is an inevitable form of technology,

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00:29:07,240 --> 00:29:09,880
Speaker 2: and we've been given this opportunity to shepherd it in

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00:29:10,160 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 2: with civility and with optimism, and that's an exciting job. Like, Okay,

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00:29:15,400 --> 00:29:18,920
Speaker 2: this type of technology is coming, AI is coming. Can

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Speaker 2: we do this in a way that's more civil and

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00:29:22,680 --> 00:29:26,600
Speaker 2: higher quality than any other company could? Like that gets

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00:29:26,680 --> 00:29:28,880
Speaker 2: us all up in the morning. So I would say,

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00:29:28,920 --> 00:29:32,680
Speaker 2: if we do that and we build this technical vision,

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00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:35,920
Speaker 2: we are going to see more of those users doing

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00:29:35,960 --> 00:29:37,920
Speaker 2: that stuff, almost as a byproduct.

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Speaker 1: I remember second life from back in the day, but

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Speaker 1: it's almost like a third life. We can call it

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00:29:43,320 --> 00:29:46,280
Speaker 1: maybe second life.

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Speaker 2: I'm personally not that hot on the term second life

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Speaker 2: because I think, you know, we only have one life,

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00:29:53,320 --> 00:29:56,080
Speaker 2: and it's it can both be a physical life and

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Speaker 2: it can have a phone. Part of your life is

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00:29:58,360 --> 00:30:00,080
Speaker 2: on the phone, and part of it's a digital life.

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Speaker 2: But I like the notion that we have one life.

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Speaker 1: David, thank you so much for taking the time today.

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Speaker 1: It was great to have you on tech stuff.

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Speaker 2: Really enjoy this conversation, really enjoyed it. I appreciate it

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Speaker 2: being here.

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Speaker 1: For tech Stuff. I'm Os Valoschin. This episode was produced

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Speaker 1: by Eliza Dennis and Adriana Tapia. It was executive produced

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00:30:41,120 --> 00:30:44,760
Speaker 1: by me, Karen Price and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and

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00:30:44,840 --> 00:30:49,200
Speaker 1: Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcast. Jack Insley mixed this episode

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00:30:49,360 --> 00:30:53,080
Speaker 1: and Kyle Murdoch Rodolphine Song join us on Friday for

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00:30:53,120 --> 00:30:55,600
Speaker 1: the weekend tech Caroen and I will run through all

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00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:58,520
Speaker 1: the headlines you may have missed, and please do rate

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00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:00,800
Speaker 1: and review the show and shout to us with your

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00:31:00,800 --> 00:31:20,760
Speaker 1: feedback at tech Stuff Podcast at gmail dot com. Hm