2 decades in the making, they are really hitting their stride. But they are not doing enough to protect children from predators and that's a huge legal and regulatory risk.
I run a studio that makes Roblox experiences and this is Discord's problem, and will immediately become Telegram's problem the decade where parents and policy makers figure out its Discord's problem
their kid went into an experience within Roblox so I can see that's the branding, the parent paid the kid's allowance in Robux, so I can again see that's the branding
but this is largely a symptom of parents nationwide not paying attention whatsoever
I've talked to many parents, aunts and uncles, they don't know they're the central bank of Roblox of a currency that can be accumulated and cashed out, let alone that its a distributed set of third party experiences.
Roblox Corporation already has age gated talking ability on platform. What specifically should they be doing when everything happens in different communities and off platform?
It doesn't matter that the illegal shit happens off-platform. It is not a good look to be the top of the funnel for traffickers, which is why they put in these invasive restrictions.
If you don't like it, then invest in "creating experiences" for platforms which don't target children. Because asking "what is Roblox supposed to do about their pedo problem" didn't and will never work to placate the people who actually fund the platform.
Not an excuse, not pointing fingers, as a betting man thats the actual answer and any other bet would go to zero, its what happening
I’m going to guess those numbers are still far lower than the number of times kids get messed up by a trusted adult.
the experiences I'm involved with just have their own things to purchase as part of the game loop. it's much more akin to a vending machine.
never involved with any brand, at least that wasn't roblox native, and by roblox native I mean influencers that may as well be a brand of their own.
if you followed the "metaverse" concept from earlier in the decade, there was Meta's attempt, there were crypto and NFT based attempts, although that's all said to have died, the metaverse is happening within Roblox. the point if that if you had a grasp of what the metaverse was supposed to be, you can use that understanding to understand what Roblox is
Not really if Roblox is the one connecting the pedos and kids in the first place and I don't see how that is remotely controversial.
my supposition is about an efficient use of energy. people are spending a lot of energy inefficiently by trying to associate this issue - legally - with Roblox. I'm saying that people are asking the wrong questions and getting answers to those wrong questions, all while the problem persists because its happening elsewhere while being conflated with Roblox. All while despite the legal limitations, Roblox already has implemented changes far above and beyond what's required, while the problem still doesn't go away for a very specific reason of it not occuring on Roblox.
> All while despite the legal limitations, Roblox already has implemented changes far above and beyond what's required, while the problem still doesn't go away for a very specific reason of it not occuring on Roblox.
I keep seeing people write this almost verbatim all over this thread.
where many people can't chat with each other at all, but they can click to an external link or view instructions in an experience to join discord?
in this case, how would you modify the user experience?
Could be. Could be something else.
>where many people can't chat with each other at all, but they can click to an external link or view instructions in an experience to join discord?
I already explained that they need to hire human monitors.
My understanding is that the recent improvements are face scans, and communication limited to people within a few 4 year windows.
They've also increased moderation of chat significantly, especially for the lower age windows.
What low hanging fruit do you see? What's the "ideal" system? Seems like a hard problem, if any sort of cooperative communication/play is involved.
It would be an easy problem if the government put in place sensible reforms for age verification.
What would these reforms look like?
Then getting over the collective fear of the government having a role in our online identity. They provide foe our physical identity so I don't understand why we're afraid of them providing our digital identity too.
Implying there's a simple solution that isn't being implemented because they weren't forced to by law. So what is that simple solution?
Children typically don't have any form of government issued ID. You can verify someone is a legal adult (you probably shouldn't, but the point is that you can) whereas you can't easily verify that someone online is a child.
I said it would be an easy problem for the software services if they had a proper age verification service that was government sanctioned.
You seem to have glossed over my second paragraph. How is this service supposed to work for children?
All humans must be assigned digital identity by the government. You won't be able to use a connected digital device without assigning it identity.
At this point I'm just waiting for someone to dig up a name associated with Roblox in the Epstein files, because that's the only way I can conceive of how they've managed to avoid getting shut down this long.
If we survive this era with an intact advanced civilization, I believe people will look back on this period and “games” as an insane thing to permit, let alone facilitate and perpetrate upon one’s own children, the next generation, the offspring necessary for survival of a life form, species, race, society, or culture.
1. They can just disable chat for non age verified accounts. Done. Problem fixed. Oh, but they'll lose money, won't they? That takes precedence over child safety.
2. The community is willing to help. You can find examples of independent actors uncovering tens of thousands of NSFW communities and accounts and submitting them to Roblox with detailed descriptions of the activities of each one, only for Roblox to perma-ban AND SUE the people doing the investigations, and not ban the offending accounts.
3. They can build an actual strong safety team. A $40B company can afford to throw a few million dollars per year to hire 200 people to do that same investigatory work. This is typical tech firm behavior, where they believe every problem can be automated away, and they're not willing to do the minimal amount of manual labor.
2. they do (to the extent they can)
3. obviously they have a safety team. they have a dedicated page about it:
2. Suing multiple youtubers who come to you with evidence of child abuse on your platform does not square with "they do" in any concievable universe [2] [3]
3. Oh, guess all is good then!
[1] https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/en-us/articles/43611824582292-... [2] https://www.altmanllp.com/personal-injury/sexual-assault-vic... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roblox%E2%80%93Schlep_controve...
> To use Communication features like Experience chat, Voice chat, and Party chat, all users must successfully complete an age check.
your words were "They can just disable chat for non age verified accounts". which they have. all "non age verified accounts" cannot use chat.
i have never attempted to assert that Roblox is a completely safe platform, or indeed that their safety team is as effective as it could be - however, your flippant statements were provably untrue with any research.
as for Schlep - while i applaud his stated aims, he was effectively "baiting" predators, offering to move conversations off-Roblox through platforms like Discord to bypass the moderation enforced by Roblox. in general, i fundamentally hate the idea of predator hunters; it seems so strange to monetize justice in this way, especially when it seems they care more about the content than the outcome of their "cases"
I assume I don't have to try too hard to convince someone on this forum how easy photo/video verification is to bypass. Look at Australia, it's happening en masse right now.
Most age verification systems guard against children pretending to be adults. If we're talking about social media, this is a fairly low stakes thing, and false positives aren't too critical - sure, a teen will bypass the Instagram age-check and use Instagram, big deal.
Here you're trying to guard against the exact opposite - adults pretending to be children. Not only are the stakes way higher as there's no legitimate reasons to try and bypass the system, you also don't have access to the only reliable method - government ID checks.
Edit: I can concede the point about Schlep, as what he does is dangerous and I could see someone "follow in his footsteps" and ge thurt. However you have to keep in mind that he's never the first to talk to these people -- there's so many of them that he's literally had dozens of them approach him. I was mainly thinking of Ruben Sim, who compiled a large database of NSFW accounts without any real world interaction, and was banned and sued for it.
i'm not a Ruben Sim fan. while his list of "ERPing" accounts is a good idea, and it's amazing to see real games implement blocks on these players, i find his opinions on the furry community strange and a bit obsessive
Kids don't have ID. How would that work?
I think one approach would be that all communication features could be opt in, by parents. but, that doesn't actually "solve" anything, since predators just make child accounts for themselves, and opt in.
sounds like your solution would have to be "no children communicate on the internet".
[1] https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/en-us/articles/4407282410644-I...
I hate Roblox with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns, and wish they and their business model to be utterly destroyed.
But allowing our emotions to override our objectivity is not the solution. It's important to be as fair and objective as possible if we want our arguments to be taken seriously.
Epstein would blush
App to IdP: is this person 13-15
IdP: yes
Sorry, in order to use this service you will need to visit your local police station and have them verify that you are in fact a child ...
Yeah I'm not seeing how this is supposed to work. I don't think age verification solves very many real world problems. (It does mitigate some, such as alcohol consumption. Just not most.)
You could verify the ID of an adult who vouches for the child they are a legal guardian of. That way, if it turns out that Brayden(M12) is actually Linda(F45) you know who to send law enforcement to to ask some very pointed questions.
That said, I don't think online ID verification is effective and even if it was, it wouldn't be worth the level of mass privacy invasion. If your goal is actually to help kids who are victims of abuse, your efforts are much better spent elsewhere. For example: making child abuse report hotlines/websites more easily accessible and widely known, fixing social services so that they actually provide better help when requested instead of making things worse, better education for children about what is and is not OK behavior even from "trusted" adults, and how to get help from someone who isn't a relative when you need it. "Stranger danger" hysteria catches all the outrage and public discussion, but is the least common source of abuse.
Agreed, and I wish more people would realize this. When I was a kid, one of my friend's brothers was accused of molestation. The accused kid was around 8 or 9 and the victim was around 5 or 6. The social services came in and immediately got the mom fired from her job (she was a school teacher), put the family through tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, utterly disrupted the lives of the entire family, got the accused kicked out of school and put in a special school for troubled kids (which itself brought a whole host of issues), and nearly ripped the family apart. There was no evidence at all of the crime, other than the word of the accuser (a 5 or 6 year old child). Fast forward a few years later and the accuser apologized profusely and admitted that it had never happened. Oh and also the accused was at a friend's house at the time of the supposed molestation, and the friends' parents had told the investigators that. Law enforcement dropped the case having determined it not likely to be true and certainly nowhere near the evidence for prosecution (in fact, there was evidence that the event never happened), but social services proceeded with all of the above anyway. So yeah, there's a lot of work to do to make anybody want to trust them to help rather than make everything worse.
The parent will input the real birthdate of their child, or it's their responsibility if the child encounters anything not age appropriate.
It's first and foremost a huge risk for kids.
My solution is simple: my daughter (11 y/o) can play Roblox but she must be in a game with another friend (whom I know and whom I know her parents) and she must on a video/conf-call with that friend, using another device, while she plays Roblox. That way I hear everything they're saying.
And they're ecstatic and having lots of fun.
I check the chat once in a while: the rule is "not hiding the chat when parents look or no more Roblox".
Keeps her mostly at bay from predators.
And then people wonder why authoritarianism is on the rise...
> And then people wonder why authoritarianism is on the rise...
It's on the rise because of utter failure of progressive govt to do what people want them to do. People want country to be more prosperous, not to have bleeding heart activists import immigrants or other leftist bullshit. Authoritarian turn is knee jerk reaction to that beacuse they are only ones promising the country for the citizens of the country. If you want less of that, make left that cares about country's people
I'm not saying kids should have no privacy, but I think privacy is overrated and the real problem is parents being overly controlling
Maybe it's a cultural difference, but after age ~8-9 or so, we would just roam around our town/village without our parents knowing where we were. You just had to be back home at 17:30 for dinner.
Yes, there was some mischief (we were kids), but you had to own up to it if you got caught and there weren't smartphone cameras around everywhere, so if you did something dumb, it would not be on the internet the next day.
The problem with modern games and social media is that they are like giving crack to a 10 year-old. They are made for dopamine hits that leads to addiction. Kid's brains are not fully developed until well after 18, so they have limited capability to recognize and deal with addiction.
People want country to be more prosperous, not to have bleeding heart activists import immigrants or other leftist bullshit. Authoritarian turn is knee jerk reaction to that beacuse they are only ones promising the country for the citizens of the country.
Oh my...
I say let them enjoy themselves while they still can.
You forgot the part where they also became addicts to games that only exist to funnel money to tech feudalist overlords.