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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

#241

Post by PunchyHamster »

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.

I think it's very technically possible with a lil bit of cooperation from industry: Private servers that use school creds to login. Now:

* kids play with other kids with same school, worst that can happen is learning some fun words from upper classmate * both teacher and parents can join and play or keep an eye on them * with a bit more it could be segregated to per class /grade server too

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

#242

Post by PaulHoule »

bdangubic wrote: post #199
watwut wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roblox is popular precisely because majority of kids play it for free without buying Robux.

nothing is free… :)

There are a lot of free-to-play mobile games (say Arknights) that you can play for free and have a pretty good time. I got lucky and got two “game breaking” characters playing for a reasonable time but if you have the idea that you absolutely have to have a specific character or collect all of them boy you can spend a crazy amount of money and those people pay for all the rest of us.

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

#243

Post by PunchyHamster »

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…

> That’s pretty much the antithesis of online gaming. You’re not ONLY playing with other kids you know.

That's how online gaming looked for us back then, played in school over LAN or in local small town's "ISP" (which was just a bunch of ethernet cables strung together between apartment blocks).

It was fucking great.

And if choice (with parents not wanting to risk wider internet) is "play with your classmates/grade" and "don't play", it's far better option

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

#244

Post by mghackerlady »

socalgal2 wrote: post #133
lenerdenator wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're people, but they're not politicians or regulators with the ability to do anything about it. At a certain point, you need to have a statute that says "thou shalt not offer cybersex and online gambling to children", and you need someone with the statutory authority to charge Roblox with doing so and penalize them after due process. Either we don't have that statute, or the people with the statutory authority do…

> you need someone with the statutory authority to charge Roblox Roblox didn't put up the content. Some user did. The user should be charged.

Right, but it's also the responsibility of Roblox to moderate and avoid those things from happening, especially when their product is both aimed primarily at children with a userbase of mostly children

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

#245

Post by darushimo »

jujube3 wrote: post #230
tantalor wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> author won’t stake out their position Casey Newton is a journalist - it would not be appropriate for him to have a "position" on this topic.

If it's inappropriate for him to have a "position," he should not be saying things like claiming "Roblox is a problem"

No, it’s not.

Just because proposing a solution would be helpful, that doesn’t require he propose a solution.

Related, sometimes articulating a question in the right way is the hard part.

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

#246

Post by coryrc »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #236
coryrc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Summer's highest case of kid accidents that ended in hospital in my country were the escooters, parents just buy whatever looks good in ad, not caring to train kid (technically moped license is needed) or even get one that's actually legal (with speed limit). End result - machine capable of going 50km/h or faster (think they caught one doing 90) in hands of young teen or outright kid. Hell, there was even a trucker t…

I also hear lots of scooter accidents, and that is way too fast. The overwhelming number of deaths is still cars.

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

#247

Post by wartywhoa23 »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #239
wartywhoa23 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problem with me as I am now would you solve if you had any power to prevent me from being a kid and doing pretty common things kids were doing then ? See, neither me nor any of my friends became terrorist bombers, heck, there is not even a single stuntman around us! On the contrary, that unimaginably dangerous activity in our childhood raised responsibility in us better than any supervision. We knew what we did.…

till you are with that kid that is a bit too brave and a bit too eager and they do drop in some hole and break a leg or worse. That's what parents are afraid of, they remember some "close" accident in their childhood and want to make their kids not get chance to do a mistake. Now ideally parents would just keep an eye on them, teach the kids, and maybe even "help" in potentially dangerous-yet-fun-for-kid stuff to mak…

In no way was I a neglected kid. Parents still spent a huge deal of time with me, dad taught me drawing, astronomy, English, played guitar for me, we listened to music together, played games, walked together, printed photos, rode snow slegde downhill in the winter. Me being allowed to spend time outdoors with my friends was perfectly a part of their caring, not an attempt to get rid of me.

This is in stark contrast with the way parents want their children to be near and observed, but separated with black mirrors.

Now, please don't think that I blame every modern parent out there. There are enough good parents around even today. What I talk about are the trends in general.

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

#248

Post by ch2026 »

crazydoggers wrote: post #202
ch2026 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Sco…

> admitting to contacting several kids a day for a year.

Have you ever played online games? "Contacting several kids a day" is how internet chat works. I'm sure if it was up to you kids would only be able to play single player games and stay inside, god forbid they get struck by lightning or eaten by a polar bear.

What do you want gaming to do? Have a checkbox where you swear you're not a pedophile or something? That's on-par for most of these idiotic suggestions of how people seem to fucking think the internet and gaming works, and what sort of actual solution is viable.

Roblox tracks all the chat and hands it over to law enforcement and NCMEC. They restrict chat for . They give ample parental controls to limit chat/friends/interactions. Now they're adding AI-powered age validation (which I think is a terrible idea) just to appease more people like you who can't think critically about the risk, nor apparently have the ability to teach your kids "hey maybe don't talk to creepy strangers who want you to send them images and give them your home address?"

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

#249

Post by beeflet »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #149
dimal wrote: post #90

Hmm. This was on the front page, generating lots of discussion. Now it’s hidden. What’s up HN? How is this not a relevant article here?

HN is heavily biased towards silencing any content that makes any subset of its readership uncomfortable. This policy exists under the mistaken (I hope) assumption that silence is not fundamentally biased, which is usually not the case. Posts about climate change, Israel/Palestine, uncomfortable concerns about the state of the industry etc will very often disappear quickly once they hit the home page. Of course silen…

The real-world conditions are beneficial to israel. I don't think yapping about it will resolve the conflict any more than it did for tibet.

What more can be said about the matter? Some pro-palestine organization will accuse Israel of genocide, and Israelis will continue bulldozing inch by inch.

As for "uncomfortable concerns about the state of the industry", those are on the front page and top of /active regularly

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

#250

Post by coryrc »

worldsavior wrote: post #193
coryrc wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schools are the problem. Hear me out. Schools group together only one age of kid for socialization and only 20-30 of them. If your kid is not into the same thing as enough of the other kids in that group, they will likely be ostracized, even unintentionally. So you must let your kid do the things their friends do. Broader society does not restrict the age of who you can socialize with. My friends vary in age quite a…

If the all class plays Fortnite and that is the only way they get socialized, his parents should consider moving him to another school. Many kids don't play this kind of stuff and actually prefer hanging out. This kind of approach is also invalid. So what everyone plays Fortnite? There are many places to get socialized with other kids. The kid likes basketball? Sign him up to a basketball team; he likes to play music…

Yes, it's quite easy to change to the school with the "correctly"-behaved children in the USA. It won't solve any of the other structural issues that grade-separation causes, but at least this one has an easy answer!
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