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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

#81

Post by ACCount37 »

acedTrex wrote: post #39
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.

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

Minecraft by itself is benign, but online servers? Oh boy.

Full tilt P2W servers, ran by low key cybercriminals, with I Can't Believe It's Not Gambling mechanics targeting children. And Mojang itself is adding fuel to the fire by selling paid mods - for Bedrock only, which is the version most children play.

Then there's the usual boon of online gaming - getting to interact with the shadiest characters you've ever met online.

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

#82

Post by ryanjshaw »

massysett wrote: post #17
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.

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 saves up for special outfits (eg halloween) or creatures in her favorite game about birds. No different from the hobbies many adults have - except I use it as a teaching opportunity about saving, buyer’s remorse etc., again while she’s still young and listening.

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

#84

Post by fatbird »

tjungblut wrote: post #15

I'll probably get DV to oblivion for this, but I have to constantly wonder where those parents come from that need to forbid their children to roam freely on the internet. Didn't they grow up in an age unrestricted web either? By now we must have two generations of unhinged children grown up with unsafe World of Warcraft, MSN, Whatsapp and ICQ. Oh and the p0rn... I mean, seriously, do you guys have nothing else to do…

My wife was a teacher and sexual health educator for most of her career (grades 8-12).

When I was getting sex ed, part of the teacher's responsibility was grounding us in basic facts to dispel word-of-mouth myths that were patently absurd to anyone with any experience (like "sneezing after sex prevents pregnancy").

My wife's tasks was to explain that the hardcore porn they'd all seen was unrealistic in the same way that action movies completely misrepresent fights and stunts, and the real world doesn't work that way. Her problem was that she was arguing with video evidence that it could. The kids aren't unhinged, but they're definitely misled in a completely different way than we were.

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

#85

Post by lossolo »

dimal wrote: post #63

We have a culture where we’ve been told for decades that market forces and the profit motive are sufficient for running a society. That the market will find a way to give everyone what they need efficiently without problems. We’ve dispensed with ethics as a basis for human interaction, and the results are exactly what one would expect: a dystopia. And the people making the most money off this system insist that it’s…

It's hyper individualism that is fueling this type of capitalism, the notion that you owe nothing to anyone and other people in society are not your concern, society itself is not your concern, it’s only about what you want etc. It's like a pond, if you follow hyper individualism, you will extract as many fish from the pond as you can, without caring what happens next or others using the pond, and the fish will not be able to reproduce for future generations, others will not be able to get as many fish as they need etc. It needs to be balanced. As you say, there is something in between that can work, we do not need to choose only between extremes.

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

#86

Post by ngriffiths »

geephroh wrote: post #46

If you haven't listened to the interview[1], it's is absolutely bananas. Baszucki might want to think about dialing back on the ketamine a bit. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/podcasts/hardfork-roblox-...

Am I the only one who was really underwhelmed? I saw that it was supposedly a very tense trainwreck situation and sure, it gets sarcastic and stuff, but most of it was

Interviewer: "so I heard you were/are doing a bad job with moderation"

CEO: repeats banal PR talking point for the 10th time

Repeat.

I mean, at no point did the CEO say anything interesting about the moderation problem or what they are doing. The interviewers seem too skeptical to be genuinely interested. He explains to them that cost =/= quality and that 2016 =/= 2025 for what feels like an eternity. I was bored.

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

#87

Post by parasubvert »

dimal wrote: post #63

We have a culture where we’ve been told for decades that market forces and the profit motive are sufficient for running a society. That the market will find a way to give everyone what they need efficiently without problems. We’ve dispensed with ethics as a basis for human interaction, and the results are exactly what one would expect: a dystopia. And the people making the most money off this system insist that it’s…

> We have a culture where we’ve been told for decades that market forces and the profit motive are sufficient for running a society. That the market will find a way to give everyone what they need efficiently without problems.

I don't really think that culture has existed lately, it kind of died out with the 2008 financial crisis. Now it's about naked use of power, whether political or economic.

The problem with constraints on individual freedom (which is essentially what happens when you constrain capitalism) is that no one agrees on what they should be, and therefore a segment of society will not be happy with them, and claim them as tyrannical oppression. Sometimes this is hysterical nonsense, sometimes it has a point.

Ultimately the antidote to unfettered capitalism is sensible policy crafted through political compromise. But largely Western politics itself has skewed towards extremes lately, few have the patience or understanding for this process, they want a quick fix.

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

#88

Post by sergent_moon »

bstsb wrote: post #65
mock-possum wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just another surface for predators to access underage targets. I guess one thing with Minecraft specifically is there’s a veneer of positive / educational content to smuggle that access beneath - schools have lessons that include Minecraft play, you don’t get that with Fortnite or Roblox, so it seems more ‘innocent.’ Fortnite is about killing eachother, Roblox is about literally anything, Minecraft is about… well, mi…

where would creeps even contact kids on Minecraft? the only officially sanctioned servers are on Bedrock and tightly moderated, everything else is plastered with Microsoft-sanctioned warnings about unmoderated play

And the one things kids avoid, without prejudice, is unmoderated play.

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

#89

Post by parasubvert »

soperj wrote: post #78
dimal wrote: post #63

We have a culture where we’ve been told for decades that market forces and the profit motive are sufficient for running a society. That the market will find a way to give everyone what they need efficiently without problems. We’ve dispensed with ethics as a basis for human interaction, and the results are exactly what one would expect: a dystopia. And the people making the most money off this system insist that it’s…

I don't think any actual socialist would ever argue for an oppressive Soviet state either. They'd want stuff like public firefighters, health care, sewage, roads, etc. What is capitalism in service of society?

Social sector (non profits) have an important place in capitalist society as there are plenty of non-market / non-profit missions that are important.

Unfortunately nuance is kind of lost in today's politics.

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