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Infrastructure at Roblox

corp.roblox.com

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Re: Infrastructure at Roblox

#31

Post by landl0rd »

Aurornis wrote: post #12
pkulak wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If kids pay 5-10 bucks every once in a while to support their entertainment and pay engineering salaries… is that the worst thing in the world? I’d rather my kids play Roblox than scroll Instagram. One of those is “free”.

> If kids pay 5-10 bucks every once in a while to support their entertainment and pay engineering salaries If this was a game that had a subscription fee or where you had to buy the new version every year, that might be true. These games don’t work like that, though. They rely on maximizing the take from each individual player. They’re designed so that the sky is the limit. You pay 5-10 bucks here, then you’re entice…

If toy stores had a subscription fee or where you had to buy a new access pass every year, that would be fine.

They don't work like that, though. They rely on maximizing the take from each individual child. They're designed so that the sky is the limit. You pay 5-10 bucks here, then you're enticed to pay 5-10 bucks for another toy, then you're scrounging or begging for another 5-10 bucks for the next toy.

Re: Infrastructure at Roblox

#32

Post by jjani »

op00to wrote: post #11
pkulak wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If kids pay 5-10 bucks every once in a while to support their entertainment and pay engineering salaries… is that the worst thing in the world? I’d rather my kids play Roblox than scroll Instagram. One of those is “free”.

I recently attended a class with my kid on internet safety taught by an attorney specializing in defending children accused of crimes, especially those involving computers. Roblox is like the #1 cesspool for bad shit going down with kids on the internet. Social media is bad as well, and my kids do neither. No, Roblox is not the end of the world, but there’s no real compelling reason to open up to it. They play with t…

I'm sure it's the #1 platform involved in "defending children accused of crimes involving online platforms" in whatever US state that attorney operates in. But even that sounds better than the lifelong dopamine system disabilities that the likes of TikTok causes. Every other adult I talk to about social media admits having had to very deliberately uninstall/disable TikTok, else they just couldn't detach themselves from the screen. Now imagine what it does to kids. And how big of a % of users ends up like this compared to the % of all Roblox users traumatized by it.

Before anyone comes in accusing me of unfairly pointing fingers when Meta (Instagram reels) and Google (Youtube shorts) are just as bad, truth is the latter two just haven't managed to make their algorithms half as addictive. I'm sure they'd love to, there's nothing inherently better about them, but so far they haven't cracked it.

Re: Infrastructure at Roblox

#33

Post by Manuel_D »

notnmeyer wrote: post #13

kids should _not_ be playing roblox unsupervised (or at all?). it’s full of inappropriate and seemingly unmoderated content, while simultaneously being built to extract microtransactions. amazing infra challenges, just a shame is a cesspool.

While true this statement generalizes to any internet connected service. 2000s internet had loads of wild content, anyone remember LiveLeaks?

And Roblox has decent parental controls. You can disable any chat outside a curated group of friends, and not sign up for micro transactions.

Re: Infrastructure at Roblox

#34

Post by Manuel_D »

op00to wrote: post #11
pkulak wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If kids pay 5-10 bucks every once in a while to support their entertainment and pay engineering salaries… is that the worst thing in the world? I’d rather my kids play Roblox than scroll Instagram. One of those is “free”.

I recently attended a class with my kid on internet safety taught by an attorney specializing in defending children accused of crimes, especially those involving computers. Roblox is like the #1 cesspool for bad shit going down with kids on the internet. Social media is bad as well, and my kids do neither. No, Roblox is not the end of the world, but there’s no real compelling reason to open up to it. They play with t…

The #1 by raw numbers, or normalized for userbase?

Re: Infrastructure at Roblox

#35

Post by Rotdhizon »

UnlockedSecrets wrote: post #15
op00to wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently attended a class with my kid on internet safety taught by an attorney specializing in defending children accused of crimes, especially those involving computers. Roblox is like the #1 cesspool for bad shit going down with kids on the internet. Social media is bad as well, and my kids do neither. No, Roblox is not the end of the world, but there’s no real compelling reason to open up to it. They play with t…

As someone with no experience of roblox but has heard this a few times, what exactly about it makes it 'such' a bad thing??

Roblox has a seemingly impossible to solve problem with child predators. Kids have the oddest talent of being able to stumble into the most unknown, niche games where these people lurk. Roblox now has voice chat as well and you have grown adults talking to teenagers in private, unsupervised and away from parental attention.

Roblox currently has a massive event going on that was hit with a huge controversy. They picked over 1000 games to be advertised and someone accidentally (or not) picked a child romance themed game to put on the list. Without explicitly having sex, people have figured out how to game the system by letting players use emotes to do normal things but really they are intended to role play sexual activities (pushup emote while over another player laying flat on a bed for example). There's a specific term for these games but I can't recall it at the moment. It was called something like "condo games", the genre that refers to these romance games. The people who make these games do it intentionally, some of them make literally dozens/hundreds of these games, all aimed at children. Some of the game developers absolutely need to be investigated by law enforcement. Look up the video on youtube called "How One Developer RUINED Roblox's Biggest Event Overnight" and skip to around 2 minutes and he explains this in detail. This developer made children themed romance games that gained a quarter BILLION plays.

As an adult that does occasionally enjoy some Roblox experiences, there's no problem for me. Stick to the front page, featured stuff and you're fine. The problem is solely with kids/teens going where adults don't realize and getting caught up with this predators.

Re: Infrastructure at Roblox

#36

Post by Manuel_D »

Rotdhizon wrote: post #35
UnlockedSecrets wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with no experience of roblox but has heard this a few times, what exactly about it makes it 'such' a bad thing??

Roblox has a seemingly impossible to solve problem with child predators. Kids have the oddest talent of being able to stumble into the most unknown, niche games where these people lurk. Roblox now has voice chat as well and you have grown adults talking to teenagers in private, unsupervised and away from parental attention. Roblox currently has a massive event going on that was hit with a huge controversy. They picke…

If tens of million of people are using a service, statistically at least a few of them are going to be bad actors. The stuff you're describing doesn't really seem much different that any popular internet spaces in the 2000s. People were "cybering" in World of Warcraft. 4chan was raiding habbo hotel and club penguin with Nazi memes. Kids were chatting with strangers on AIM and ventrilo. If anything, these services probably had considerably worse moderation given the language processing rooms we have today.

I'm not seeing any evidence that the bad actors are a proportionally larger problem, or just the fact that more people on the internet. E.g a city with 1 murder out of 100k and another with 100 murders out of 10M are just as safe.

Re: Infrastructure at Roblox

#37

Post by Manuel_D »

lokar wrote: post #22
op00to wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently attended a class with my kid on internet safety taught by an attorney specializing in defending children accused of crimes, especially those involving computers. Roblox is like the #1 cesspool for bad shit going down with kids on the internet. Social media is bad as well, and my kids do neither. No, Roblox is not the end of the world, but there’s no real compelling reason to open up to it. They play with t…

AIUI, they let stranger adults give kids in game currency. What do you think that leads to?

The same was true in World of Warcraft. What did that lead to?

Re: Infrastructure at Roblox

#38

Post by Brajeshwar »

notnmeyer wrote: post #13

kids should _not_ be playing roblox unsupervised (or at all?). it’s full of inappropriate and seemingly unmoderated content, while simultaneously being built to extract microtransactions. amazing infra challenges, just a shame is a cesspool.

My two daughters play Roblox.[1] Their parental control has improved a lot. However, I find that it is more about training and helping your kid understand how to be careful online than interacting with a 'better' Online Entity. Today, it is Roblox; there will be a lot of others. I know it will never be a solved problem, but help them understand very early on what to do and what not to do.

We usually do routines - while in the car, at home - "What are our online protocols?", "What if someone, even if they seem like a tiny kid, asks you for anything personal?" "If someone told you that it is one of our family or relatives, what are the challenge words and codes?" etc.

1. https://story.oinam.com/2017/date-roblox/

Re: Infrastructure at Roblox

#40

Post by ocdtrekkie »

charcircuit wrote: post #19
UnlockedSecrets wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with no experience of roblox but has heard this a few times, what exactly about it makes it 'such' a bad thing??

13 years old and above can talk and dm with any other account also 13 years old and above. Unless a parent account disables it.

I once overheard our nine year old explaining to a friend how to lie about their birthdate to create a YouTube account. Age checks are not meaningfully a working thing.
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