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Roblox is minting teen millionaires

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Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#221

Post by embedding-shape »

pastage wrote: post #209
embedding-shape wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then of course he continues (although won't make for a good social media rage point so understandable you didn't provide full context): > Well, I actually think it's a brilliant idea if it can be done in an educational way that's legal. > no free Robux, no free prizes, just a game called the dress to impress predictor where it's not like trying to get kids money or anything like that. Still, probably what he sees…

We can mince his words. In the end anyone who organize gambling for profit is scum. If you do it for charity I know form experience it is massively profitable, but.. I am not sure it is worth it for society.

> I am not sure it is worth it for society.

As always, seems to depend on the scale.

Letting anyone in the world place bets on when the next nuke will hit a city? Probably pretty bad overall for society.

Doing raffles for some local tiny organization run by Ada and William so they can continue hosting a ten person event? Probably pretty good overall.

Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#222

Post by bstsb »

jameson wrote: post #105
bhawks wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roblox games are all multiplayer - you get a game server running in their POPs and a generous amount of persistent storage and memory. How is that not a developer operational cost? Creators don't have to pay any hosting - Roblox will serve their content even if a game doesnt monetize their users for free. The way this economical is thru the redistribution of games that do monetize their users

Wording Roblox trying to sell is deceiving. Compare with other platforms. Payout model is as simple as platform takes % or fixed fee, rest is dev to keep. There's no verbiage that says dev share is 67% but you they actually get paid less. What exactly goes behind the platform is platform's business, not the user. If developers are getting paid out $0.25 per dollar spent, that's the developers profit and rest is spent…

other platforms don't give you unlimited game servers, near-infinite scalability with no initial cost, a potential player base in the hundreds of millions, etc

https://create.roblox.com/docs/get-started/why-build-on-robl... https://create.roblox.com/docs/get-started/tools

Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#223

Post by nananana9 »

bstsb wrote: post #216
nananana9 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Kids under 9 can use chat with parent consent, for kids over 9 don't even need that. After 13, there's no option to even disable it for parents [1]. 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://…

your own source quotes as following: > 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…

I should've worded this better. By "non-verified accounts" I mean basically mean "accounts that haven't been verified by an ID check". This is the only means that I consider an actual verification, face/photo scan is a PR stunt and malicious compliance.

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.

Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#224

Post by freejazz »

Heliodex wrote: post #49
amiga386 wrote: post #38

Roblox turns a blind eye to child exploitation (whether being creeped on by adults, or being exploited by teens/adults to make games) and makes a fortune out of it. If it weren't online, it'd be illegal and people would be in jail. Also, Roblox's favourite thing - other than sitting back and rolling in the cash that their playerbase generated for them - is puff pieces in the news talking about how people who make gam…

The 2 videos linked here are nearing 5 years old now and have been refuted many times, including by some of the developers mentioned in the article. To condense it as much as possible: The 1st video hinges on a point where they find that developers earn a revenue cut of 24.5%, a number that isn't correct because 1. it's found by multiplying 3 arbitrarily chosen numbers together (the DevEx rate, the default sales fee,…

> Broadly, this is Discord's problem, not Roblox's.

I strongly disagree with that.

Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#225

Post by intrasight »

nomel wrote: post #55
intrasight wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is indeed a hard provlem. No low hanging fruit. There certainly not alone, but have a bigger issue with grooming and predation since half of all kids use their platform. It would be an easy problem if the government put in place sensible reforms for age verification.

> It would be an easy problem if the government put in place sensible reforms for age verification. What would these reforms look like?

For starters, get rid of Section 230.

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.

Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#226

Post by hjnilsson »

bstsb wrote: post #15

even tiny roblox games make money. i developed for a small game (~10m plays) a few years back and i still earn a decent residual from player revenue, even as the game slowly loses traction

Curious, how does the game monetise, do you have loot-boxes in-game or something? Or is it enough that people play it? What kind of game mechanics are possible to build around?

Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#227

Post by g947o »

mhitza wrote: post #184
g947o wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, just as a thought, if you have engaged with her like taking her outdoors or other activities, she wouldn't spend so much time or money on a stupid online video game.

Telling parents how to raise their children, while also making baseless assumptions of their life as well, is an approach with which you'll only antagonize people.

The parent comment does not appear to be supportive of what's happening regarding Roblox ("mindless").

If they are not interested in making the situation any different, but just want to vent, I think it's a waste of everybody's time.

> antagonize people

You can potentially antagonize anyone in any situation on an online forum even with the nicest words. I don't see how it matters. If the person is not receptive, I couldn't care less.

Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#229

Post by intrasight »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #67
intrasight wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is indeed a hard provlem. No low hanging fruit. There certainly not alone, but have a bigger issue with grooming and predation since half of all kids use their platform. It would be an easy problem if the government put in place sensible reforms for age verification.

> It would be an easy problem if the government put in place sensible reforms for age verification. 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…

I didn't say there was a "simple solution".

I said it would be an easy problem for the software services if they had a proper age verification service that was government sanctioned.

Re: Roblox is minting teen millionaires

#230

Post by freedomben »

nananana9 wrote: post #156
nomel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they are not doing enough to protect children from predators 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 communicatio…

Please don't make excuses for literal evil p*dophile megacorporations. There is plenty of low hanging fruit, and even if there wasn't, this issue is important enough that if they can't fix it they should go out of business. 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 he…

> Please don't make excuses for literal evil pdophile megacorporations.*

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.

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