Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. This is the story. And I
Speaker 1: want to start today's episode with a story that my
Speaker 1: friend told me about a big family drama over the holidays.
Speaker 1: You see, his daughter got locked out of her Roadblocks
Speaker 1: account and it threatened to derail the whole family's Christmas.
Speaker 1: This level of emotional attachment to a tech platform, it
Speaker 1: got me pretty fascinated. Why does Roadblocks mean so much
Speaker 1: to my friend's daughter and many many others like her.
Speaker 1: Roadblocks has become one of the most popular gaming platforms
Speaker 1: in the world. It has over ninety five million users,
Speaker 1: and players can also create their own games. The majority
Speaker 1: of users are under sixteen, and if you have kids
Speaker 1: in your life, there's a very good chance that they
Speaker 1: use Roblocks and that they're fanatical about it. Today we're
Speaker 1: talking to the man behind it all, David Bozuki, the
Speaker 1: co founder and CEO of Roadblocks, who recently said that
Speaker 1: gaming is still in its quote prehistoric era. If you
Speaker 1: care about how technology is driving culture and how culture
Speaker 1: is driving technology, you simply have to understand Roadblocks because
Speaker 1: it's this space where kids can play make believe but
Speaker 1: also explore real world situations. Virtually, just this month, users
Speaker 1: engaged in political activism on the platform by staging protests
Speaker 1: when some players created avatars of ice agents, others took
Speaker 1: to the suburban streets of one Roadblocks universe to protest.
Speaker 1: And then there are scenarios playing out on the platform
Speaker 1: that are all too real. As Bloomberg put it, quote,
Speaker 1: the Internet's biggest recreation zone for kids is fighting to
Speaker 1: keep predators away. So we'll also talk about what Roadblocks
Speaker 1: is doing to keep its huge user base of children
Speaker 1: safe and to address some criticisms that it should be
Speaker 1: doing more. David BAZOOKI, welcome to take stuff.
Speaker 2: Hey, thank you so much. It's great to be on
Speaker 2: the show with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you for being here. If you had to explain
Speaker 1: Roadblocks to someone who's never used it before, where do
Speaker 1: you begin.
Speaker 2: We've used so many terminologies of how we've talked about
Speaker 2: Roadblocks in the past, all the way from in the
Speaker 2: early days it was you make the game. We talked
Speaker 2: about an imagination platform. We've talked about a human co
Speaker 2: experience platform. But in reality it's an amazingly large, mostly
Speaker 2: gaming platform. Today almost one hundred million daily active users
Speaker 2: are on the site. Roadblocks doesn't make any of the
Speaker 2: games on our platform, and over time, the developers on
Speaker 2: the platform have gone from hobbyists to really entrepreneurs, some
Speaker 2: of whom are running studios making over fifty million dollars
Speaker 2: a year. So it is a user generated gaming platform
Speaker 2: or a human co experience platform.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's very interesting is we've seen
Speaker 1: this kind of phenomenon of the gamification of everything, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, do you have an operating definition of what
Speaker 1: a game is?
Speaker 2: When you say the gamification of everything? It's fun to
Speaker 2: think that we've actually gamified the creation of the games
Speaker 2: on Roadblocks, and in a sense, being a Roadblocks creator
Speaker 2: is an amazingly interesting game. A lot of our creators
Speaker 2: grew up on Roadblocks. They played Roadblocks, and when they
Speaker 2: were young they got interested in computer science or production
Speaker 2: or art or graphics or writing, and before you know it,
Speaker 2: many of the top one hundred creators on Roadblocks grew
Speaker 2: up on the platform and are now CEOs of amazingly
Speaker 2: large companies. There's also a lot of gamification and then
Speaker 2: a lot of other things we see in our pop culture. So,
Speaker 2: for example, when something gets interesting in pop culture, like
Speaker 2: whether it's squid game or something else, a lot of
Speaker 2: people want to interact with that content, not just by
Speaker 2: consuming it, but by doing it and jumping into it.
Speaker 2: And so gamification could be thought of as taking a
Speaker 2: topic or subject that's interesting and allowing people to jump
Speaker 2: in and experience the adrenaline rush or the boredom or
Speaker 2: whatever other part of that content, whether it's you know,
Speaker 2: Stranger Things or the NFL universe or being part of
Speaker 2: a SpongeBob universe, you know, experience that rather than consume
Speaker 2: it linearly.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's funny how games have evolved, right, Like
Speaker 1: first games for kids, I mean computer games for kids,
Speaker 1: and then computer games were considered to be like drivers
Speaker 1: of violence, and then just for geeks. And now if
Speaker 1: you you know, exist in our culture. You see, you
Speaker 1: know Minecraft, the biggest movie of the year. Well you
Speaker 1: see that Muga, Robbie's follow up project to Bobby is
Speaker 1: going to be a movie based on the sims, Like,
Speaker 1: can you talk about it? Kind of your role as
Speaker 1: a participant observer in how games have come to dominate
Speaker 1: entertainment culture and beyond.
Speaker 2: I believe early on games were highly limited by the technology,
Speaker 2: and even the very first game that I might have played,
Speaker 2: which was Pong, in a sense was a reality simulation.
Speaker 2: It was a very crude, crude simulation. I didn't have
Speaker 2: an avatar, it wasn't in two D. I had a
Speaker 2: white you know, line on the screen. But I still
Speaker 2: playing Ping pong right in a way, and a lot
Speaker 2: of I believe what's interesting in games is literally a
Speaker 2: fantasy reality simulation that can be very connected with other people,
Speaker 2: can be very entertaining. You know, one of the top
Speaker 2: experiences on our platform right now is grow a Garden.
Speaker 2: This exploded on our platform last summer. Dressed to Impress
Speaker 2: exploded on the platform. What's really been fun for me
Speaker 2: is there not Neither one of those is a traditional game.
Speaker 2: They're definitely reality simulators. Several members of my family are
Speaker 2: very interested in farming, and me as a dad, gets
Speaker 2: to say the top experience right now in Roadblocks is
Speaker 2: about growing stuff in a garden.
Speaker 1: Talk a bit about that game, you know, how did
Speaker 1: it go viral and what does it say about the
Speaker 1: platform you've built?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so a couple things about how that thing went viral.
Speaker 2: Which is really kind of interesting. Really is we've worked
Speaker 2: really hard over the last I'd say year and a
Speaker 2: half to make our discovery system very fair, very organic
Speaker 2: and a just discovery system that if someone creates something
Speaker 2: that is retaining well causing viral growth, people are spending
Speaker 2: a lot of time in it, that experience will get
Speaker 2: more exposure and grow. Garden is a great example that
Speaker 2: creator created this idea of something that was new and interesting.
Speaker 2: It's asynchronous. Things happen when you're not playing. You can
Speaker 2: come back, which is really cool. They launched it with
Speaker 2: in the same way we launched Roadblocks with a little
Speaker 2: bit of paid traffic to get some initial users playing,
Speaker 2: but it got picked up by our discovery algorithms and
Speaker 2: over time went viral to the point where a couple
Speaker 2: weeks ago, I believe it hit eleven million concurrent players,
Speaker 2: which is close to the all time concurrent records for
Speaker 2: games anywhere around the world. So great idea, new idea.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of social media pick up influencers are
Speaker 2: playing and sharing on shorts or reels or TikTok, so
Speaker 2: you know, it's what we're hoping the environment could support.
Speaker 1: I've heard so many parents talking about how that kids
Speaker 1: are just obsessed with Roadblocks. What do you think it
Speaker 1: is about the platform that makes it so engaging for kids?
Speaker 2: I feel what makes roadblocks interesting is what universally, when
Speaker 2: I was young and we were running around outside fantasizing
Speaker 2: about being King Arthur and the Knights, that same level
Speaker 2: of collaborative being with your friends playing in some fantasy
Speaker 2: that may be somewhat real, maybe somewhat fantasy, but behind
Speaker 2: the scenes it's not solo. A lot of people are
Speaker 2: arguably just hanging out and chatting while they're playing the
Speaker 2: game in the background. So I do feel what really
Speaker 2: pulls in is being with friends and doing things together.
Speaker 1: In that respect, that what distinguishes it from social media.
Speaker 2: When I think of social media, social media has become
Speaker 2: a arguably a pretty broad term for various product features.
Speaker 2: There is definitely a class of products shorts, reels, TikTok, spotlight,
Speaker 2: other's short form video which is more solo. I'm interested
Speaker 2: in all of those products, and both has some of
Speaker 2: the questions, is it to addictive, some concern over people
Speaker 2: scrolling in the middle of the night, but also has
Speaker 2: some benefits in that I do think it is a
Speaker 2: way we get a lot of new information. And I
Speaker 2: obviously read the newspaper and go on x and other
Speaker 2: social media platforms, but I do get new information from
Speaker 2: there as well. There's a second what I would call
Speaker 2: class of social media, starting with Facebook or even friends there,
Speaker 2: which is sharing about my life, sharing pictures, celebrities sharing pictures.
Speaker 2: And then I would put Roadblocks in a third category,
Speaker 2: which is the connection category, being together in a virtual environment,
Speaker 2: initially pioneered by gaming and online gaming. And I think
Speaker 2: this category is a natural extension of the telegraph system
Speaker 2: and the phone system and the video system. The next
Speaker 2: extension of it is the three D connection system. And
Speaker 2: someday when we're doing another podcast, we maybe will be
Speaker 2: doing it in Roadblocks, and we'll be going for a
Speaker 2: walk in a city somewhere and having a chat and
Speaker 2: looking at the scenery. And I think that's just part
Speaker 2: of the inevitable march of how we communicate at a
Speaker 2: distance with technology. So I think there's benefits from all
Speaker 2: different types of social media. Roadblocks is very much in
Speaker 2: the gaming connection zone.
Speaker 1: There, so the platform for interaction and the interaction drives communication.
Speaker 2: Pulls people in and the notion of seeing the developer community,
Speaker 2: seeing both very experienced game creators as well as sixteen
Speaker 2: year olds, eighteen year olds, twenty two year old and
Speaker 2: in a way it gives an optimism that maybe I
Speaker 2: could do this as well. And also the way the
Speaker 2: Roadblocks developer community has panned out, we have seen not
Speaker 2: just the top developers, but the thousandth developer or the
Speaker 2: ten thousandth developer start to make meaningful wages. Actually, so
Speaker 2: it's something people feel that's accessible to them, and I
Speaker 2: do believe because of this, there's a lot of excitement
Speaker 2: around STEM learning. It's cool to learn computer science. We
Speaker 2: see a lot of people get pulled into computer science
Speaker 2: and production because they believe if they can do it.
Speaker 2: These are real educational experiences on Roadblocks now. So it's
Speaker 2: in that sense it's working out like we planned. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of education in the experiences themselves. But even
Speaker 2: more so, I think if we had gone on to
Speaker 2: say we want to make a educational experience around either
Speaker 2: art or design or computer science, arguably Roadblocks is very
Speaker 2: good at that in that it pulls in millions of
Speaker 2: people to learn computer science or art or design.
Speaker 1: How did it become such a huge success. I mean,
Speaker 1: you started in the two thousands and it's doing good,
Speaker 1: and you raise the money, and then I think fifteen
Speaker 1: years later you took it to an IPO, but there
Speaker 1: was a moment when it went from a successful private
Speaker 1: company to arguably one of the most influential tech companies
Speaker 1: in the world. Like, what do you attribute that sort
Speaker 1: of shift in penetration to.
Speaker 2: We've been at it for over sixteen or seventeen years,
Speaker 2: and along the way, one thing is we started very small.
Speaker 2: The very first few years of roadblocks, we were talking
Speaker 2: one thousand concurrent users rather than twenty one million concurrent
Speaker 2: So we are now at least twenty one thousand times larger.
Speaker 2: I would say on many occasions along the way, whether
Speaker 2: it's it's a board meeting or a staff meeting, what
Speaker 2: has led to this acceleration of growth in the last
Speaker 2: three months or what is the magic sauce we keep
Speaker 2: coming back to. It's thousands of things done right. It
Speaker 2: is a real well balanced mix of a lot of
Speaker 2: complex things. It is how good our game engine works,
Speaker 2: it's our infrastructure. How good is a tooling, How good
Speaker 2: is search and discovery? How good is the economy? Do
Speaker 2: we have enough servers? Are people connecting with their friends?
Speaker 2: So a platform like this is pretty broad technically, and
Speaker 2: whenever we've tried to do a statistical analysis or what
Speaker 2: is the one magic thing. It's always been a thousand
Speaker 2: small things.
Speaker 1: But in terms of an innovation that drove the platform,
Speaker 1: Roebucks were pretty important, right. I think I understand that
Speaker 1: the key to Roebucks was that they gave developers and
Speaker 1: creators are written incentive, but can you just take a
Speaker 1: step back and kind of explain what they are and
Speaker 1: how they impact your platform?
Speaker 2: So we wanted we wanted to create a perpetual motion
Speaker 2: machine or a closed loop system with feedback. And the
Speaker 2: way a closed loop system with feedback would be. I'm
Speaker 2: a developer, maybe I'm dude one I made work at
Speaker 2: a pizza place, and I say, what could I do
Speaker 2: where users could spend a currency we'll call it roebucks.
Speaker 2: I don't remember if I work at a pizza place,
Speaker 2: or someone had the ability to buy a scooter so
Speaker 2: instead of walking from place to place in their game,
Speaker 2: you could ride the scooter.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So okay, So that has to happen. Creators have to
Speaker 2: have interesting things to sell. The creators need to have
Speaker 2: a wallet where if a user spends roebucks on that scooter,
Speaker 2: it goes into their wallet. A creator needs to be
Speaker 2: able to translate those roebucks into money. You know, fill
Speaker 2: out your ten ninety nine, you're going to get some cash.
Speaker 2: You're going to get taxed on it. That's like real earnings.
Speaker 2: Users need to be able to buy roebucks, either through iOS,
Speaker 2: through the app store, through a credit card, now through
Speaker 2: a gift card, and there's got to be maybe a
Speaker 2: little feedback to reward those developers who are bootstrapping the system.
Speaker 2: So we had to experiences that we're starting to bring
Speaker 2: in the most roebucks, so there's a little bit of
Speaker 2: a feedback loop, and developers said, whoa, if I'm earning roebucks,
Speaker 2: I might get some discovery. So all of those things
Speaker 2: have to launch at the same time. Users purchasing roebucks,
Speaker 2: some discovery, closed loop feedback, developers cashing them out. That's
Speaker 2: all that we did. But we launched with all of
Speaker 2: those components, and on day one users were buying roebucks,
Speaker 2: Users started spending roebucks in some of the games. At
Speaker 2: the end of day one we had the top grossing
Speaker 2: roebucks game right there on the Discovery charts. Creators could say, oh,
Speaker 2: this is another interesting thing to do, and that launched
Speaker 2: that whole virtual economy that has been a big part
Speaker 2: of us ever since.
Speaker 1: After the break. How Roadblocks is responding to what Bloomberg
Speaker 1: is called it's pedophile problem. Stay with us. When I
Speaker 1: was reading my introduction to the one point where you
Speaker 1: were really nodding along was when I used that word prehistoric.
Speaker 1: Oh now you're giving me two thumbs up. Tell me why.
Speaker 2: In three D immersion, there's an amazing amount of technology
Speaker 2: still to be built. If we wanted to host a
Speaker 2: concert with a real time performer for one hundred thousand people,
Speaker 2: and we all wanted to be in that exact same stadium,
Speaker 2: dancing together, hearing everyone participating on a phone or a
Speaker 2: home theater or in VR, have it look photo realistic,
Speaker 2: like just like video, and have it sound great. That's
Speaker 2: a lot of technology. There's still some way to go,
Speaker 2: so and that's sense. The whole gaming market, Roadblocks included,
Speaker 2: is still in the Stone age. The spec is really
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand people, photorealistic, real time, high quality, and
Speaker 2: add AI on top of that, possibly regenerating the environment
Speaker 2: based on your or my prompts like turn this from
Speaker 2: a stadium into a medieval fortress. So we're ways away
Speaker 2: from that technology. I would say even today where we
Speaker 2: are with Roadblocks, what we're doing is somewhat innovative in
Speaker 2: that a lot of the video game market is still
Speaker 2: downloading things not being able to play immediately. So I
Speaker 2: think what we're going to see and what we're really
Speaker 2: pushing on is the notion of immediate play no matter
Speaker 2: what we're looking at. Another thing that's very prevalent in
Speaker 2: the video game industry is different games on mobile than
Speaker 2: on PC or console mobile tending to be lighter, high performance,
Speaker 2: but I do think over time we're going to see
Speaker 2: the same game run on both, which is going to
Speaker 2: require a lot of cloud technology. And so having AI
Speaker 2: available in any game, whether it's for NPCs or creation,
Speaker 2: that's a whole area that we don't even know what
Speaker 2: that's going to be.
Speaker 1: One of the most popular terms right now is vibe coding,
Speaker 1: basically describing to an AI what you want in natural
Speaker 1: language and then having it write code for you to
Speaker 1: make your wish come true. What role does vibe coding
Speaker 1: play on Roadblocks?
Speaker 2: We already have vibe coding in the extent that Roadblocks
Speaker 2: Studio has an AI assistant. You can go talk to
Speaker 2: studio and start building stuff. Our studio architecture will more
Speaker 2: and more become MCP client and server, So if you
Speaker 2: want to use your own AI command line and generate
Speaker 2: in studio, you'll be able to do that, So stay
Speaker 2: tuned on that. What I think we're going to ultimately see, though,
Speaker 2: is vibe coding inside Roadblocks games themselves, and ultimately the
Speaker 2: ability to vibe code not just the code in a
Speaker 2: Roadblocks game, but the whole Roadblocks game. What will be
Speaker 2: really a big day for Roadblocks is where one of
Speaker 2: the top one hundred games, rather than been written with
Speaker 2: luau and with three D graphics tools, is vibe coded.
Speaker 2: Just like I don't know how to code, I'm not
Speaker 2: an artist. I just talked about this game I wanted
Speaker 2: to imagine. I uploaded some clips of some hand drawings
Speaker 2: and a few ideas, and I got this game. But
Speaker 2: the other thing I think we'll see on the social
Speaker 2: side is collaborative vibe coding, people walking around together creating things.
Speaker 2: You'd say, make a castle, I might say, make it
Speaker 2: more green, more overgrowth on it. So I can see
Speaker 2: vibe coding collaboratively being something we'll see in Roadblocks.
Speaker 1: You have tens of millions of other people's children on
Speaker 1: your platform. How do you think about that responsibility and
Speaker 1: how do you deal with it?
Speaker 2: It's an enormous responsibility. We sometimes try to imagine what
Speaker 2: close to one hundred million peoples looks like. That's about
Speaker 2: a thousand soccer stadiums with one hundred thousand people in it.
Speaker 2: We had the early experience that even one bad situation
Speaker 2: is one too many.
Speaker 1: Obviously, you have to ask you about the Bloomberg story
Speaker 1: as well, which had the headline Roadblocks's pedophile Problem and
Speaker 1: mentioned that there were two dozen people who have been
Speaker 1: arrested based on interacting with children in harmful ways, in
Speaker 1: some cases even abducting them they met on roadblocks.
Speaker 2: How do you address this on roadblocks? We build safety
Speaker 2: in from day one. We don't allow the sharing of images,
Speaker 2: we don't allow unfiltered texts. We have access to all
Speaker 2: texts and all of those things. It creates a world
Speaker 2: where we have to try to keep people on roadblocks.
Speaker 2: We don't want them going to any other device or
Speaker 2: any other platform where. Unfortunately, if a young person has
Speaker 2: access to a phone, there's many other areas where they
Speaker 2: can start sharing pictures of themselves, or start trying to
Speaker 2: share their phone number or address. So over the years
Speaker 2: we've accepted that challenge. I would say there's never an
Speaker 2: excuse even for one bad incident. There are many things
Speaker 2: that get reported that were unfortunately not able to comment
Speaker 2: on where they were initially meeting. But I do feel
Speaker 2: over time we're going to show the leadership that for
Speaker 2: young people, they stay on roadblocks no matter what. For
Speaker 2: thirteen through seventeen year olds, you're going to see some
Speaker 2: very innovative things where, unlike on other platforms, most fourteen
Speaker 2: year olds can talk to anyone else on the platform,
Speaker 2: and that's a very vulnerable age. You're going to see
Speaker 2: us start to be thoughtful about how they communicate with others.
Speaker 1: Can you just describe how the actual social interaction works?
Speaker 1: And I guess my second question would be, is it
Speaker 1: an aspiration to make it all but impossible for adults
Speaker 1: to speak to children ultimately on the platform?
Speaker 2: Yeah? You know how Tesla weimo has to be twenty
Speaker 2: to you know, ten times safer than the real world.
Speaker 2: I'm optimistic that we will be multiples and multiples of
Speaker 2: that relative to the real world. And it's not inconceivable
Speaker 2: to build AI both for text or for voice that
Speaker 2: no matter who I'm talking to. There's no way to
Speaker 2: share personal information, and so I do feel we're going
Speaker 2: to make this more and more just a solve problem.
Speaker 1: Because a paradigm today is like two avatars might interact
Speaker 1: and one maybe a grown up, one maybe a child,
Speaker 1: and a grown up maybe able to say to the
Speaker 1: child avatar, hey meet me on discord or something. That's
Speaker 1: why the.
Speaker 2: Kere we would Actually it's very The good news is
Speaker 2: it's very very hard to meet on discord today, So
Speaker 2: we filter use their names, we filter addresses. What we
Speaker 2: do find is in certain age range. Even though that's
Speaker 2: very very hard to share a snap name or a
Speaker 2: Discord handle, some kids who are in a vulnerable state
Speaker 2: try to figure out how to share, some way to
Speaker 2: get off of roadblocks. And I think over time, even
Speaker 2: when two people are trying to find out how to connect,
Speaker 2: you'll see us making that very difficult, if not impossible.
Speaker 1: But the way the interaction paradigm is like two adveratars
Speaker 1: or in a virtual world and they have like a
Speaker 1: chat box, or how do they actually practically talk to
Speaker 1: each other?
Speaker 2: For younger people only text in a full three D space.
Speaker 2: We don't support one on one or private chat so
Speaker 2: it's all out in the town square in a sense,
Speaker 2: and other people can see that. And on top of that,
Speaker 2: all of that text is running through a very deep
Speaker 2: set of filtering at the same time. And it's one
Speaker 2: of the biggest complaints really of our platform for younger people.
Speaker 2: They see a lot of hashes, basically because it's us
Speaker 2: being very conservative in how we filter.
Speaker 1: As you look at what's going on more broadly in
Speaker 1: society and culture, you feel like parents are waking up
Speaker 1: to and getting very concerned about real world harms happening
Speaker 1: to their children based on virtual environments. Do you see
Speaker 1: that as as a longer term risk to Roadblocks.
Speaker 2: Well, we see it in a way as an opportunity,
Speaker 2: and I would say we're thankful that we started with
Speaker 2: younger people on the platform because it arguably is a
Speaker 2: much more difficult area to challenge. Improving our work with
Speaker 2: law enforcement and I believe over time getting the reputation
Speaker 2: that roadblocks is a dangerous place for bad actors. We
Speaker 2: do a lot of work with all the three letter
Speaker 2: agencies and want to make roadblocks that kind of dangerous
Speaker 2: place for anyone who's thinking about that. We're moving more
Speaker 2: and more proactive so we now nudge people on our
Speaker 2: platform when they're maybe not being so nice or bullying
Speaker 2: a little or whatever, and those nudges do give people
Speaker 2: an early indication of what we just won't tolerate on
Speaker 2: the platform.
Speaker 1: There was a BBC interview you gave and I think
Speaker 1: you know you suggested if parents are worried about the
Speaker 1: children roadblocks, maybe they just shouldn't have their children roadblocks,
Speaker 1: and you've got some pushback for that.
Speaker 2: I love that question. It was part of a bigger
Speaker 2: conversation track. We were talking about how hard I believe
Speaker 2: it is to be a parent and what does a
Speaker 2: parent do when they're intuitively not comfortable with something. I
Speaker 2: was hoping my answer would get construed as any time
Speaker 2: a parent is uncomfortable with anything, like if I'm looking
Speaker 2: outside at a lake right now, and if i saw
Speaker 2: my two year old, like I'm not comfortable having them
Speaker 2: at the end of the dock right now without a
Speaker 2: life jacket on. I'm a parent, I have four kids.
Speaker 2: I would always want parents to if they're not comfortable,
Speaker 2: follow their intuition.
Speaker 1: You've described Roadblocks as a wellness platform, even more so
Speaker 1: than it is a gaming platform. What do you mean
Speaker 1: by roadblocks as a wellness platform.
Speaker 2: Young people who've gotten disconnected at school, young people going
Speaker 2: through a mental health crisis, young people who are going
Speaker 2: through something finding people on roadblocks to connect with. I mean,
Speaker 2: it sounds gratuitous for me to say it, but parents
Speaker 2: saying like, my kid is alive because they found people
Speaker 2: on roadblocks. So I think there's a loneliness epidemic going
Speaker 2: on in the world. I think. I mean, I'll go
Speaker 2: out on a limb and I'll say four like in
Speaker 2: quotes twenty one and up id verified opted in someday
Speaker 2: we'll have dating on roadblocks, And I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people who might be afraid to go on a
Speaker 2: real life date might find it easier to have a
Speaker 2: virtual date to start, and then if they connect, move
Speaker 2: to the physical world. So I think, you know, in
Speaker 2: a wellness platform, I think of as a platform to
Speaker 2: help loneliness and help bring connection.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because part of your job is continuing to attract
Speaker 1: new thirteen year olds. The other part of your job
Speaker 1: is retaining thirteen year olds who becoming seventeen year olds
Speaker 1: who are becoming twenty four year olds. Right, So how
Speaker 1: do you balance those two things?
Speaker 2: You know, my job at a higher level is driven
Speaker 2: by a certain level of morality and ethics. So I
Speaker 2: don't literally consider my job the use count on roadblocks,
Speaker 2: but I do consider this is an inevitable form of technology,
Speaker 2: and we've been given this opportunity to shepherd it in
Speaker 2: with civility and with optimism, and that's an exciting job. Like, Okay,
Speaker 2: this type of technology is coming, AI is coming. Can
Speaker 2: we do this in a way that's more civil and
Speaker 2: higher quality than any other company could? Like that gets
Speaker 2: us all up in the morning. So I would say,
Speaker 2: if we do that and we build this technical vision,
Speaker 2: we are going to see more of those users doing
Speaker 2: that stuff, almost as a byproduct.
Speaker 1: I remember second life from back in the day, but
Speaker 1: it's almost like a third life. We can call it
Speaker 1: maybe second life.
Speaker 2: I'm personally not that hot on the term second life
Speaker 2: because I think, you know, we only have one life,
Speaker 2: and it's it can both be a physical life and
Speaker 2: it can have a phone. Part of your life is
Speaker 2: on the phone, and part of it's a digital life.
Speaker 2: But I like the notion that we have one life.
Speaker 1: David, thank you so much for taking the time today.
Speaker 1: It was great to have you on tech stuff.
Speaker 2: Really enjoy this conversation, really enjoyed it. I appreciate it
Speaker 2: being here.
Speaker 1: For tech Stuff. I'm Os Valoschin. This episode was produced
Speaker 1: by Eliza Dennis and Adriana Tapia. It was executive produced
Speaker 1: by me, Karen Price and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and
Speaker 1: Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcast. Jack Insley mixed this episode
Speaker 1: and Kyle Murdoch Rodolphine Song join us on Friday for
Speaker 1: the weekend tech Caroen and I will run through all
Speaker 1: the headlines you may have missed, and please do rate
Speaker 1: and review the show and shout to us with your
Speaker 1: feedback at tech Stuff Podcast at gmail dot com. Hm