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Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

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Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#161

Post by Froztnova »

wslh wrote: post #11

I want to share a small story a close friend told me. His son is eleven. Every Saturday he goes to tennis class. He's good at it, sure, but the important part is that he loves it. One Saturday, though, he refused to go. Why? Because there was a special Roblox event happening at the same time. His father tried reasoning with him, the kid, agrees, a bit reluctantly. But when the father walks into the bar, he sees a doz…

This feels like an incredibly normal thing though? Kids oftentimes want to do things that are highly stimulating and "fun" in substitute for things that are more rewarding, often to the point of obstinance.

And I don't want to defend Roblox, their laissez faire attitude towards predators abusing their platform is abhorrent and disgusting. But this anecdote is about as old as civilization.

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#162

Post by wartywhoa23 »

foobarian wrote: post #128
wartywhoa23 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd been riding bikes with my friends around the block since the age of 6. Parents didn't chase us around and minded their own business instead of nanomanaging us into absolute snowflakes that modern children have become. We played tag at building sites, jumping gaps meter wide and five deep, made explosives out of match sticks, bolts and nuts, and showed up at home just to check in and have a quick lunch. We did a b…

> made explosives out of match sticks, bolts and nuts I used to do similar crazy things, had this friend who liked to play a kind of a game of chicken with an M-80, see who will hold on to it the longest. He would've been 45 years old today. /s

My elder brother would've been 47 this year should he not die aged 2 of sudden acute disease that doctors of that day and place couldn't stop. What's your point?

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#163

Post by ecshafer »

tjungblut wrote: post #15

I'll probably get DV to oblivion for this, but I have to constantly wonder where those parents come from that need to forbid their children to roam freely on the internet. Didn't they grow up in an age unrestricted web either? By now we must have two generations of unhinged children grown up with unsafe World of Warcraft, MSN, Whatsapp and ICQ. Oh and the p0rn... I mean, seriously, do you guys have nothing else to do…

I grew up on the unrestricted internet, it doesn't mean I believe it was entirely good. I did (and DO!) many things that I realize are not beneficial, and do not want my children doing.

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#164

Post by hedora »

Spivak wrote: post #55
acedTrex wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats wrong with Minecraft, that seems like an odd inclusion in the list?

There is Minecraft the standalone game that you play either by yourself or on a private server with friends you know IRL. That's totally fine. Then there is the wider Minecraft community based on a constellation of public and semi-public servers. This is a lot more like Roblox.

Microsoft forces login these days for single player play, and jams ads, social networking crap.

As a parent, I don’t have time for this bullshit, and assume they have malicious intentions. Also, at least once, there was some warning about a profanity filter that my kid dismissed without reading. It’s tied to my MS account, and only a matter of time before that is tied to github and linkedin.

So the kid says “doodie head” one too many times, and what, I lose my windows login / bitlocker key, gh repos and professional network?

Screw it.

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#165

Post by deltoidmaximus »

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #100
Pet_Ant wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physical play is nigh impossible. It means getting other kid's parents to let them out. And then you need to spend your full-time supervising them. Can't just let them out with their bikes on the streets. I think the problem is that either you can give children freedom to explore the world, or you can make them accountable for their actions. Can't have both, and parents will protect their kids by not letting them get…

I'd been riding bikes with my friends around the block since the age of 6. Parents didn't chase us around and minded their own business instead of nanomanaging us into absolute snowflakes that modern children have become. We played tag at building sites, jumping gaps meter wide and five deep, made explosives out of match sticks, bolts and nuts, and showed up at home just to check in and have a quick lunch. We did a b…

> that parents are eager to outsource the upbringing to strangers in online games out of fear of strangers and dangers outside.

There's a lot of blame for parents, much of it deserved. But when you have CPS being called for kids playing in the woods or parents charged with manslaughter when some one else runs over their kid you realize this is now going against the grain to resist this stuff.

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#166

Post by interloxia »

foota wrote: post #158

It's interesting to me to think about a possible system where people in say roblox can only chat with each other by exchanging physical keys somehow. This way, they would be able to chat with their peers from school etc., without the danger or need for as much supervision. I don't necessarily think this is technologically feasible or something that would be accepted, but I think it's an interesting idea.

They could sell custom ubikeys/whatever. Kids love Tonies. A custom USB stick/NFC/air tag would be "easy" and profitable.

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#167

Post by autoexec »

> Given a chance to display empathy for the victims of crimes his platform enabled, or to convey regret about historical safety lapses, or even just to gesture at some sense of responsibility for the hundreds of millions of children who in various ways are depending on him, the CEO throws up his hands and asks: how long are you guys going to be going on about all this stuff?

CEOs acting like selfish psychopaths indifferent to the suffering of others shouldn't really surprise anyone at this point. Why expect tech CEOs to act differently? Of course he's nothing but annoyed that people keep complaining about how his digital child casino allows pedophiles and corporate advertisers to prey on children without oversight, or about how he's exploiting children for labor, or about how he's psychologically manipulating kids to feel anxiety and FOMO so that he can sell them more Robux. If he were capable of empathy for the victims of his platform he wouldn't have designed his platform to create victims in the first place. He doesn't give a shit about the safety of children, he only cares about himself and how much money he's making.

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#168

Post by [deleted] »

coryrc wrote: post #73
Pet_Ant wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physical play is nigh impossible. It means getting other kid's parents to let them out. And then you need to spend your full-time supervising them. Can't just let them out with their bikes on the streets. I think the problem is that either you can give children freedom to explore the world, or you can make them accountable for their actions. Can't have both, and parents will protect their kids by not letting them get…

You can't let them out because they keep getting killed by automobiles. https://walksf.org/2023/06/28/pedestrian-deaths-reach-highes... https://www.statista.com/chart/17194/pedestrian-fatalities-i... https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/driveway-danger...

[deleted]

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#169

Post by Animats »

> Since 2018, at least two dozen people in the United States have been arrested and accused of abducting or abusing victims they met on Roblox, according to a 2024 investigation by Bloomberg.

So about three per year, out of 112 million users? That's a far better track record than the Boy Scouts of America or the Roman Catholic Church.

Roblox has a strange demographic problem. Their average user age is around 14. They keep trying to push that up, at least to high school age where there's more spending power. Or so said one of their annual reports. But they just can't retain the early teens into the high school years.

This is the same problem as Chat Control. You let people talk, sometimes they're going to talk about things they're Not Supposed To Talk About. The amount of censorship needed to prevent this goes way beyond Orwell ever dreamed of. Roblox claims a goal of cutting off wrongspeak within 100ms. They're trying pretty hard. That's a concern - an AI listening to everything you say and evaluating it for political correctness.

Kids have been able to access Pornhub, etc. for more than a decade, and not much seems to have happened. Teen sex is down, not up. The graphics in Roblox are so bad that sex there is silly, not obscene, anyway.

This belongs to a long series of non-problems, along with the Hayes Code, the 1950s Congressional hearings on comic books, the Meese Report, and such. Amusingly, we aren't hearing much from the religious right any more; they aligned with MAGA, and now they're stuck defending Trump's sex life.

If anything, the Roblox problem is a subset of the too much screen time problem.

Re: Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

#170

Post by LeifCarrotson »

Spivak wrote: post #55
acedTrex wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats wrong with Minecraft, that seems like an odd inclusion in the list?

There is Minecraft the standalone game that you play either by yourself or on a private server with friends you know IRL. That's totally fine. Then there is the wider Minecraft community based on a constellation of public and semi-public servers. This is a lot more like Roblox.

The Minecraft you know and love is a fantastic game, especially for kids. Top 10 all time, IMO, in terms of creativity and education and development. And you can easily set up a personal friends and family server/realm, and there are tons of free mods and maps.

The problem is that malicious actors can build Roblox in anything. It's not hard to get kids hooked and begging their parents for lucrative in-game gambling currency.

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