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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

#201

Post by cogogo »

bmurphy1976 wrote: post #6

It's a nightmare managing all this stuff. Roblox, Minecraft, Meta Quest services, Fortnite, the list goes on and on. These companies are not helping us either. Thankfully my son and his friends have somehow iterated away from Fortnite. It's no longer cool so they just stopped playing it. That's one less thing I have to worry about.

Agree massive headache. Our kids go to the boys and girls club after school where they were playing roblox during computer time. Some parents apparently complained and it’s now banned. Not sure of that is local or nation-wide. They were kind of annoyed but they seem to understand why. I am definitely worried about giving them the tools they need to navigate the online jungle when they are older.

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

#202

Post by crazydoggers »

ch2026 wrote: post #180
Animats wrote: post #169

> 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…

> 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. Yep. I’ve not witnessed something so wildly over exaggerated since D&D was responsible for widespread satanic cults in the 80’s.

You’re comparing a hysteria over D&D where no one was actually harmed to actual child sexual abuse being allowed on an online platform?

One of the comments above has a video of a guy arrested and admitting to contacting several kids a day for a year.. that doesn’t sound like just some sort of over exaggerated panic.

> 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.

It wasn’t immediate obvious when those were occurring only years later.. so most likely we are seeing the tip of the iceberg.

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

#203

Post by robot-wrangler »

darth_avocado wrote: post #178
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.

That’s pretty much the antithesis of online gaming. You’re not ONLY playing with other kids you know. Edit: There’s two problems that need to be solved. Parents need to not offload all their responsibilities to a multibillion dollar corporation and hope it works 100% of the time. And corporations need to prioritize safety more than they do now. It dumbfounds me how many times I get called the N word on Xbox and nothi…

What important aspects of gameplay are destroyed by age-restricting DMs?

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

#204

Post by iamnothere »

feydaykyn wrote: post #159
parasubvert wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbh making Roblox illegal feels like the same moral panic that our parents had around metal music, hip-hop, and arcades. My kid plays Roblox, I prevent her from talking to others, and I police the Robux purchases. It really is a fun platform. The problem is for parents that aren't technical, or are negligent and don't know how to police it.

Don't be so dismissive! In practice... - You cannot prevent your child to login and play at least 15mn (without manually resetting the password in the kid account) - combine this with the fact you cannot prevent changing the password reset email on the child account, and in practice you cannot prevent your child from using roblox - You cannot prevent gift card to be used - There's no way to trace gift cards usage at…

I mean to a degree this is true of any kid who is that determined to go against their parents’ wishes. You can’t prevent a kid from making friends with the bad kids while at school, you can’t prevent a kid from playing the asphyxiation game, you can’t prevent a kid from sniffing solvents (they’re everywhere). At some point you just have to do your best and hope things turn out ok.

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

#205

Post by Fuzzwah »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #82
massysett wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I let my kid play Roblox for a couple of weeks and I was absolutely horrified by all the inducements to seek Robux. So I removed it from her iPad, which is locked down. She gets along just fine without Roblox.

I play Roblox with my daughter from time to time and we have lots of fun. I’ve explained the dangers to her (strangers messaging, gambling style games, etc), and I see it as an opportunity to teach her while she still listens to me. When she’s older and I’m not privy to everything she does on a computer I don’t want her stumbling across these things uninformed. A portion of her pocket money goes to Robux, which she s…

I've had a similar approach. My kids computers are setup next to mine and I keep an eye on what they're playing.

I've instigated a purchase wait period of at least 3 days. Very often they themselves realize that the thing that they wanted to spend their pocket money on was a brief desire.

I was super proud when I heard my son say "meh, this is pay to win" as quitting a random roblox game he was trying out.

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

#206

Post by autoexec »

fhd2 wrote: post #37
bmurphy1976 wrote: post #6

It's a nightmare managing all this stuff. Roblox, Minecraft, Meta Quest services, Fortnite, the list goes on and on. These companies are not helping us either. Thankfully my son and his friends have somehow iterated away from Fortnite. It's no longer cool so they just stopped playing it. That's one less thing I have to worry about.

What's wrong with Minecraft? I'm not exactly a Microsoft fan, but am pretty impressed with how little control they have so far exerted over Java Edition, they even made modding easier recently by removing obfuscation. You can run your own server as much as you want with no fees, obligations or anything. And unless the kids know a server address, they can't easily join some third party server with weird stuff going on…

Minecraft is infested with ads including massive in-game ads and advertisers are all over servers, popular online influencers, etc.

https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/lacoste-x-minecraft

https://minecraft.wiki/w/Universal_Studios_Event

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/how-the-hell-do-you-throw-a-m...

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

#207

Post by ed-209 »

Putting aside my personal concerns and frustrations with the state of parental controls (it’s hell), what does the author propose here?

By his own admission the controls which companies have been pressured to implement thus far are incomplete / can be bypassed.

There is of course only one, complete solution that comes to mind - universal digital ID for all humans on the internet - which is a different kind of nightmare. But we can’t have that conversation because the author won’t stake out their position there.

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

#208

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #173
acedTrex wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I was fine with Minecraft until the kids started wanting to install all kinds of mods, which as far as I know are random executables you download from shady websites.

As someone who grew up on Industrial Craft 2, you can really miss out on a lot of incredible, free, content if you write off minecraft mods entirely.

And many of those mods at worse might have a donation link if any kind of monetary discussion at all.

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

#209

Post by ash_091 »

interloxia wrote: post #166
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.

NFC tags in custom "avatars" unique to and customizable by each kid, turning friends into collectables? I would've been all over that in my early teens.

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

#210

Post by zzzeek »

iamnothere wrote: post #101
zzzeek wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Acetylene is being marketed to children as something fun to play with ?

They literally said dangerous products couldn’t be sold to consumers in general. Obvious nonsense or chainsaws would require a license. I am pushing back against the safetyist notion that unsafe products cannot or should not be sold to the public.

A correctly manufactured chainsaw can be used safely by adults. Products like "MoonSoll and Magic Chems Fuel Bottles" [1], "Tesla Powerwall 2 AC Battery Power Systems" [2] and literally tens of thousands of other products listed at [3] have been determined that they can not be used safely by adults, and are literally taken off store shelves until the issues can be resolved. It is a normal, everyday occurrence that manufacturers are very motivated to not sell products that cannot be used safely, Hacker-Newsesque semantic nitpicking notwithstanding. If similar liabilities applied to software like Roblox (think "kids committed suicide due to interactions on Roblox" being held equivalently to "kids have been suffocated by this defactive crib"), there would not be a Roblox without effective moderation.

[1] https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2026/Demlar-Recalls-MoonSoll-an...

[2] https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2026/Tesla-Recalls-Powerwall-2-...

[3] https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls

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