Roblox players to start seeing video ads in its virtual realms
reuters.com
reuters.com
[0] https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ?si=Cwfswyot9_FT29Fy
That's a pretty extreme interpretation. Anyone who downloads the IDE can create and publish a game. If kids are using the tool, making fun games, and sharing them with other people, than I think that's a good thing.
Roblox is making money off various sorts of in-app purchases, but you can make an account for free, you can play games for free, and you can create games for free. It's not much of a nefarious plot.
It sounds like you might be lacking some context on this. Here's an article with more details: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2022/jan/09/the-trouble-wi...
Good grief, the article profiles 3 young developers who had to deal with serious problems but still falls short of "built on child labo(u)r".
Just more clickbait garbage.
Just clickbait no issues there lol.
https://www.techwontsave.us/episode/96_how_roblox_exploits_c...
Children are wielding powerful content creation tools on TikTok and YouTube as well. And for every feel-good story about self-made young creators, there are thousands more telling of addiction, depression and anxiety for those caught in these spiraling for-profit walled gardens.
I’m all for teaching kids to be coders and makers, but I’m not sure Roblox is the poster child for it.
You gloss over it as "making money off various sorts of in-app purchases", but roblox taxes a massive cut of transactions between users (more than half), on top of large upfront fees, and then pays out robux at 28-35% of what it costs to buy them.
If anything, the robux -> profit conversion rate was much worse back in the day (iirc engaging in it at all necessitated purchasing the highest subscription level, the now-defunct `Outrageous Builders Club'), and it was far more common for kids to waste their parents' money on `limiteds'.
the most widely-implemented roblox cheat feature (short of actual lua execution) was a button that would reskin you and another player to naked tones, then teleport their model to a doggystyle position. we used to sit around during sleepovers and scroll the catalog looking for games titled [18+ s3x rp] to mess around in.
on the flip side, fiddling with .rblx studio taught me lua and rudimentary 3D modeling at a ludicrously young age, and I made similar online acquaintances who went on to do very well with their learned skills.
Still annoyed with Roblox for blocking the Linux (wine) version from working so I have to use my phone to play now. Yes I play Roblox at 45, I get to interact with the kid and keep an eye on what he's doing. Still prefer Minecraft though..
Ad supported content has been around for over a century, I think people get a little overworked sometimes about what a great evil it is.
When I look at my monthly video entertainment spend vs a cable bill from my childhood (let alone what it would be today), the quality and options available and the control over scheduling I have vs linear television, I’m not feeling very swindled.
Cable TV programming, by which I mean deciding what is broadcast on what channel when, has long (decades) been a question of identifying the audience for the ads coming in, working out what they want to see, showing it, and billing the advertiser. You may even create whole new channels for this target group. Most consumers get it backwards thinking ads exist to fund channels - channels only exist to show you ads.
Even back in around 2000 in the UK satellite market (which relied on modems in STBs phoning home as the backchannel) the granularity and segmentation of the data backing this was amazing. Unsurprisingly the people I knew in that universe went on to build the current web ad universe.
That's broad targeting. Miles away from hypertargeting/surveillance.
> back in around 2000 in the UK satellite market (which relied on modems in STBs phoning home as the backchannel)
That is a problem, but is also not cable TV.
Are cable modems phoning home?
For most of the existence of cable, there was no way for it to send a signal back. It is not fundamentally based on tracking. The targeting you described in detail is not tracking.
Especially since the correct answer is probably "some of them". I was hoping you could be more specific, since you're doing your best to give an impression of knowledge but not doing much to share it.
And your store loyalty remark was objectively being an ass, that comment adds no value to the conversation at all.
There is a distinct tendency on forums like this to believe if something isn’t widely discussed on the internet then it didn’t happen.
You should stop assuming the worst and being so obnoxious.
You don't think this applies to the store loyalty comment?
I'm not surprised, I wanted specifics instead of implications, jesus. I'm not saying anything "didn't happen", unless you're claiming cable had universal tracking from the start, in the 50s.
And
AGAIN
That doesn't affect my main point, which you keep ignoring.
You ignoring my main argument is far more obnoxious than anything I'm doing.
This is just wrong. You are misinterpreting what I'm saying to mean what you want it to say and not what it does say, then getting confused, angry and demanding answers. It's not a winning strategy.
EDIT: in the spirit of generosity I will add a detail you seem to be missing: those target groups can be very very very very small indeed.
For my main point, I just wanted you to address it at all, whether you agree or disagree, I wasn't demanding answers.
The thing I wanted an answer for was a separate point, which you laser-focused on to mock and not answer. That's not a winning strategy either. And I wouldn't be upset if you didn't want to bother with it very much, but you don't get to just mock it and say nothing else if you're trying to actually have a conversation.
> EDIT: in the spirit of generosity I will add a detail you seem to be missing: those target groups can be very very very very small indeed.
If you make an entire channel, it is not very very very very small!
Unless you're talking about something very different from traditional channels, which again follows my point that it didn't work that way for decades, and satellite didn't have the bandwidth to do that.
"Scrip" here is something that takes real effort to get, and is sort of money, but rips you off when you use it. Not something completely unconnected to the real world.
You can't, but what you can do is try to understand where your cognitive biases are, learn the ways advertisers manipulate you and accept that knowing about those techniques do not make them ineffective, actively search for ways you've already been manipulated by advertising, work to develop your critical thinking skills, and above all understand that your children have zero defenses against advertising and that they are specifically and aggressively targeted by advertisers for that reason.
Children should be protected from as much advertising as humanly possible for as long as humanly possible and you should start teaching them about the fact that they are being lied to and manipulated by advertising as soon as possible and help them to develop some of the skills that might help them, however much of that will be literally impossible for them until their minds are more developed. You child can recognize and form preferences for brands long before they learn to identify ads when they see them.
Even teenagers are terrible at it. https://www.marketingdive.com/news/study-82-of-middle-school...
But you are very correct with your experience with Runescape, I can only guess at the age you got into it. I certainly would have loved the game in my mid teens, and it would have been a good playground. I'll likely be keeping an eye out for similar playgrounds as my kids get older. I do want them to have some of the villainy experience in settings where the consequences are small to none. Do it too young, that is where the warping tends to happen.
I think its a cool platform for burgeoning game developers. Anyone can publish a game, we put together a little obby just for the fun of it. We're back to the days where a couple of creative, motivated people can make a fun game, share it with people, and possibly make a pile of money.
> The company in November began testing the video ads — that will be served to users who are 13 years and older
Maybe by kids you meant 13-17...but I feel like teenagers are not exactly a demographic that never sees targeted ads (e.g. through social media, on YouTube, etc.).
(Full disclosure, I work for Roblox, but not on anything related to ads. Obviously representing just myself and not my employer.)
That is definitely true, but my opinion would be that they need "less ads", and not "more". That's a phase of life when most people are very suseptible to societal messaging, and form their self-image (partly?) based on it.
Not all ads are created 100% equal of course, so one can only hope these ads are nice to the users.
Since DSA targeting ads to minors is forbidden in the EU though.
No, they absolutely see them, but teenagers should still be protected from them, because they're not mature enough to even know when they're being manipulated. https://www.marketingdive.com/news/study-82-of-middle-school...
[1] 50% of kids are on TikTok. https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2023/03/new-data-pro...
[2] 80% have access to tablets. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/04/tablets-more-...
> If you choose Ask App Not to Track, the app developer can’t access the system advertising identifier (IDFA), which is often used to track. The app is also not permitted to track your activity using other information that identifies you or your device, like your email address.
Advertisers
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/102420#:~:text=If%20you%20ch....
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timbajarin/2022/07/26/apples-do...
This is just another step of "think of the children"
(Assuming >= 8 yo or so) With this reality, I think reducing ads, but also getting them to understand ads, is a better approach than a silly dream of never letting them see an ad.
It's pretty easy to approach this positively, to help them learn. You make a game of pointing out the manipulation, have them identify it, and they learn to see them for what they are. You can do the same for news, where they (very) quickly learn to identify half truths, lying by omission, etc. Kids are pretty great at this sort of thing.
I personally think kids should know that people are often trying to trick them. But, that's something they'll eventually figure out it, with your help or not.
Seriously, this place sometimes.
seriously, this place sometimes thinking everything in the world is the happy path. you have to be prepared for and have an ability to handle exceptions. we can't catch/throw our way through life. teaching kids to learn when someone is trying to manipulate them is not a bad thing. this place seems to think things are someone else's problems, but at some point, you have to realize there is no EU style legislation that will protect you from everything.
I don't think you could call North Korea ad free when it's wall to wall propaganda. Just because there's only one "product" allowed to advertise, that doesn't mean people aren't being constantly manipulated by advertising.
Today we see that ad companies never get enough, so they need very strong corsets for conduct.
It seems to come from MagiCore (magicoreacademy.com) who also offers this "Virtual Field Trip to Disney World" (https://magicorelearning.com/shop/product-line/virtual-field...) and while they claim to not be affiliated with Disney (who is usually very litigious about any use of their name/characters), they don't say anything like that about Roblox here https://magicorelearning.com/shop/florida-b-e-s-t-standards/...