Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Roblox players to start seeing video ads in its virtual realms

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 83 posts

Re: Roblox players to start seeing video ads in its virtual realms

#51

Post by dylan604 »

danhon wrote: post #45
edvards wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have ads everywhere. Teaching kids on how to handle ads is rather reasonable.

I mean, yeah. Teaching kids how to survive mass-shootings at school in this way is also reasonable. Seriously, this place sometimes.

honestly, as a parent, you should be having these conversations with your kids. it is a very sad reality that your kids have a greater than zero chance of being involved in a school shooting.

seriously, this place sometimes thinking everything in the world is the happy path. you have to be prepared for and have an ability to handle exceptions. we can't catch/throw our way through life. teaching kids to learn when someone is trying to manipulate them is not a bad thing. this place seems to think things are someone else's problems, but at some point, you have to realize there is no EU style legislation that will protect you from everything.

Re: Roblox players to start seeing video ads in its virtual realms

#52

Post by autoexec »

onemoresoop wrote: post #2

Yikes, ads for kids is atrocious

Roblox maybe advertising to kids very aggressively. Recently a redditor claimed that this was their child's assigned homework (https://i.redd.it/6o2r9jazhoxc1.jpeg)

It seems to come from MagiCore (magicoreacademy.com) who also offers this "Virtual Field Trip to Disney World" (https://magicorelearning.com/shop/product-line/virtual-field...) and while they claim to not be affiliated with Disney (who is usually very litigious about any use of their name/characters), they don't say anything like that about Roblox here https://magicorelearning.com/shop/florida-b-e-s-t-standards/...

Re: Roblox players to start seeing video ads in its virtual realms

#53

Post by Dylan16807 »

nineplay wrote: post #37
ethanholt1 wrote: post #12

Roblox has been on a constant downward trend. They’ve been doing some pretty awful stuff, including exploitation of children developers [0], unregulated market which encourages kids to gamble, lackluster moderation allowing kids to be harassed or worse, [both 1] and allowing manipulative and predatory games on their site [2]. [0] https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ?si=Cwfswyot9_FT29Fy [1] https://youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY?si=MbT…

> Exploitation of children developers That's a pretty extreme interpretation. Anyone who downloads the IDE can create and publish a game. If kids are using the tool, making fun games, and sharing them with other people, than I think that's a good thing. Roblox is making money off various sorts of in-app purchases, but you can make an account for free, you can play games for free, and you can create games for free. It…

The ability to do many things for free does not excuse the exploitation any time sales are involved.

You gloss over it as "making money off various sorts of in-app purchases", but roblox taxes a massive cut of transactions between users (more than half), on top of large upfront fees, and then pays out robux at 28-35% of what it costs to buy them.

Re: Roblox players to start seeing video ads in its virtual realms

#54

Post by autoexec »

edvards wrote: post #28
babypuncher wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make it OK.

We have ads everywhere. Teaching kids on how to handle ads is rather reasonable.

No one is teaching kids how to handle ads. There's no class at every level of schooling devoted to how advertisers are manipulating you. The schools themselves are often directly responsible for shoving ads at children far too young to have any defenses against it. Meanwhile ad companies pay for experiments on children to learn how to most effectively influence them. Fun fact, children as young as three can recognize brands https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/even-3-year-old-k...

Re: Roblox players to start seeing video ads in its virtual realms

#55

Post by autoexec »

skeaker wrote: post #46
edvards wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have ads everywhere. Teaching kids on how to handle ads is rather reasonable.

We shouldn't have to have ads everywhere. Ad-free societies can exist. Granted, the only one I've seen do it successfully was North Korea, and if that's what's required to get rid of ads, maybe it's not worth it... But man, videos of people just walking around in the city are crazy. Not an ad up anywhere, not a billboard on the skyline, not a logo on a building. Just that aspect of a complete lack of ads seems very p…

> Ad-free societies can exist. Granted, the only one I've seen do it successfully was North Korea,

I don't think you could call North Korea ad free when it's wall to wall propaganda. Just because there's only one "product" allowed to advertise, that doesn't mean people aren't being constantly manipulated by advertising.

Re: Roblox players to start seeing video ads in its virtual realms

#56

Post by autoexec »

nineplay wrote: post #32
milesvp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refuse to let my kids play Roblox. "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy ...". That place is full of kids scamming each other, and I've not heard many good things about the company either. I was once trying to tell my child about this in a public setting, and a nearby older kid was just smirking knowingly about all the things I was talking about. Gambling, theft, foul language. Frankly, it…

We use Roblox for family game night. It might not be as bad as you think. I think its a cool platform for burgeoning game developers. Anyone can publish a game, we put together a little obby just for the fun of it. We're back to the days where a couple of creative, motivated people can make a fun game, share it with people, and possibly make a pile of money.

We don't need roblox for that and never have needed them for that.

Re: Roblox players to start seeing video ads in its virtual realms

#57

Post by autoexec »

lyk2005 wrote: post #24
milesvp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refuse to let my kids play Roblox. "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy ...". That place is full of kids scamming each other, and I've not heard many good things about the company either. I was once trying to tell my child about this in a public setting, and a nearby older kid was just smirking knowingly about all the things I was talking about. Gambling, theft, foul language. Frankly, it…

How do you partake in the real world without it warping your personality? Being scammed of your virtual items is not that different to being scammed of real money once you are an adult. Growing up with multiplayer games, Roblox can be categorized as an immersive sim with a virtual adult world inside of it that can teach kids a great deal about life. I myself got interested in money from Runescape, where I was scammed…

> How do you partake in the real world without it warping your personality?

You can't, but what you can do is try to understand where your cognitive biases are, learn the ways advertisers manipulate you and accept that knowing about those techniques do not make them ineffective, actively search for ways you've already been manipulated by advertising, work to develop your critical thinking skills, and above all understand that your children have zero defenses against advertising and that they are specifically and aggressively targeted by advertisers for that reason.

Children should be protected from as much advertising as humanly possible for as long as humanly possible and you should start teaching them about the fact that they are being lied to and manipulated by advertising as soon as possible and help them to develop some of the skills that might help them, however much of that will be literally impossible for them until their minds are more developed. You child can recognize and form preferences for brands long before they learn to identify ads when they see them.

Even teenagers are terrible at it. https://www.marketingdive.com/news/study-82-of-middle-school...

Re: Roblox players to start seeing video ads in its virtual realms

#59

Post by autoexec »

endtime wrote: post #14
onemoresoop wrote: post #2

Yikes, ads for kids is atrocious

FTA: > The company in November began testing the video ads — that will be served to users who are 13 years and older Maybe by kids you meant 13-17...but I feel like teenagers are not exactly a demographic that never sees targeted ads (e.g. through social media, on YouTube, etc.). (Full disclosure, I work for Roblox, but not on anything related to ads. Obviously representing just myself and not my employer.)

> Maybe by kids you meant 13-17...but I feel like teenagers are not exactly a demographic that never sees targeted ads (

No, they absolutely see them, but teenagers should still be protected from them, because they're not mature enough to even know when they're being manipulated. https://www.marketingdive.com/news/study-82-of-middle-school...

Re: Roblox players to start seeing video ads in its virtual realms

#60

Post by Dylan16807 »

fidotron wrote: post #20
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cable TV ads aren't a hypertargeting/surveillance nightmare.

They are, and have been for years. Cable TV programming, by which I mean deciding what is broadcast on what channel when, has long (decades) been a question of identifying the audience for the ads coming in, working out what they want to see, showing it, and billing the advertiser. You may even create whole new channels for this target group. Most consumers get it backwards thinking ads exist to fund channels - chann…

> identifying the audience for the ads coming in, working out what they want to see, showing it, and billing the advertiser. You may even create whole new channels for this target group.

That's broad targeting. Miles away from hypertargeting/surveillance.

> back in around 2000 in the UK satellite market (which relied on modems in STBs phoning home as the backchannel)

That is a problem, but is also not cable TV.

Are cable modems phoning home?

Post reply on HN