Problems at Roblox(thebearcave.substack.com)
thebearcave.substack.com
Problems at Roblox
https://thebearcave.substack.com/p/problems-at-roblox-rblx
324 コメント
I feel like Hearthstone is a good example of the maximum amount of communication two strangers can have on the Internet. You can choose 6 pre-made things to say to your opponent; Thanks, Well Played, Greeting, Wow, Oops, Threaten. This might be too much; I have definitely seen people get mad from their opponent using the voice lines too much.
My thought is that this significantly reduces the richness of the in-game interactions (implies less engagement, implies less revenue), but doesn't need moderators to keep the game from being used for illegal sexual encounters, which is nice if your game targets kids.
My thought is that this significantly reduces the richness of the in-game interactions (implies less engagement, implies less revenue), but doesn't need moderators to keep the game from being used for illegal sexual encounters, which is nice if your game targets kids.
One of the challenges here is that the incentives are misaligned. It's well-understood in the cash-shop games industry that most of the revenue comes from "whales", users that buy large quantities. In a game targeted at children, who themselves don't have income/credit cards, it's unlikely that the "whales" are in the target demographic. Rather, it is likely most of the "whales" are adults who are spending large in order to use the in-game currency to exploit interactions with others.
Not only was this predictable, it seems nearly by design. I don't see how Roblox can ever fix this without fundamentally changing their business model. Their business model is essentially structured to enable commercial sexual exploitation of children over mobile platforms.
On my own network I used various means to make it impossible for anyone to use Roblox, music.ly, TikTok, et al. Services that are targeted specifically at children but provide a pathway for semi-anonymous communication are already ripe for exploitation by bad actors, the microtransactions aspect of Roblox just makes it even worse.
It's ironic, but platforms intended for adults tend to be safer for children, because they don't concentrate bad actors in the same way.
Not only was this predictable, it seems nearly by design. I don't see how Roblox can ever fix this without fundamentally changing their business model. Their business model is essentially structured to enable commercial sexual exploitation of children over mobile platforms.
On my own network I used various means to make it impossible for anyone to use Roblox, music.ly, TikTok, et al. Services that are targeted specifically at children but provide a pathway for semi-anonymous communication are already ripe for exploitation by bad actors, the microtransactions aspect of Roblox just makes it even worse.
It's ironic, but platforms intended for adults tend to be safer for children, because they don't concentrate bad actors in the same way.
Whilst the issues raised are serious and I don't want to detract from the severity of the allegations, but I really take issue with putting regular porn and furry porn in the same league as pedophilia.
Some of this blog post is over-reaching, which is a shame because the clear and significant problems need absolutely no embellishment.
Letting your child talk to strangers on the internet may not be the best idea. News at 11.
No moderation system is flawless. If you are going to let your kid talk to strangers on the internet, teach them safety like avoiding sexualized content.
I do find the digging in to the personal lives of the employees here pretty bad taste. Yes an adult can look at porn and have sexual relationships with other adults, whether they work at Roblox or Toys R Us.
No moderation system is flawless. If you are going to let your kid talk to strangers on the internet, teach them safety like avoiding sexualized content.
I do find the digging in to the personal lives of the employees here pretty bad taste. Yes an adult can look at porn and have sexual relationships with other adults, whether they work at Roblox or Toys R Us.
So, the issue here seems to be that we are relying on giant corporations to do the due diligence of who our kids are talking to, and they are failing, because they don't have enough incentive to put in the effort.
I wonder if there is an opportunity here to get a fully distributed effort going, based on web of trust.
Most users don't do web of trust verification even in apps which support it, like signal, because it's not worth the effort for general low stakes communication. But people are willing to put in a lot of effort to keep their kids safe. And the requirement here: "I want my kids only to message adults I trust, or kids that an adult I trust has verified are kids" is a good match for web of trust, because it's basically an emulation of how the mark 1 meatspace method of doing it worked. (yes, my use case here is for younger kids, older ones should be able to explore more and I haven't figured out how that would work).
I wonder if there is an opportunity here to get a fully distributed effort going, based on web of trust.
Most users don't do web of trust verification even in apps which support it, like signal, because it's not worth the effort for general low stakes communication. But people are willing to put in a lot of effort to keep their kids safe. And the requirement here: "I want my kids only to message adults I trust, or kids that an adult I trust has verified are kids" is a good match for web of trust, because it's basically an emulation of how the mark 1 meatspace method of doing it worked. (yes, my use case here is for younger kids, older ones should be able to explore more and I haven't figured out how that would work).
I once interned at an easily google-able Secondlife competitor. They fought against NSFW content for a long time, but then figured out how to fix it by:
1. Incentivizing users (with in-game currency) for reporting NSFW content, and 2. Restricting NSFW content to only people who bought an all-access pass (ID verified at time of purchase)
This opened up a new revenue stream for the company, and dealt with the NSFW content in one swoop.
1. Incentivizing users (with in-game currency) for reporting NSFW content, and 2. Restricting NSFW content to only people who bought an all-access pass (ID verified at time of purchase)
This opened up a new revenue stream for the company, and dealt with the NSFW content in one swoop.
This kind of insinuating nonsense is the worst of gutter journalism.
An employee ran a pornographic blog? Their twitter retweeted something a pedophile made? The head of content moderation is a furry?
So what?!
This guilt by association nonsense is the law of contagion! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_contagion
An employee ran a pornographic blog? Their twitter retweeted something a pedophile made? The head of content moderation is a furry?
So what?!
This guilt by association nonsense is the law of contagion! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_contagion
Good, there is a special place in silicon hell for those marketing the idea of scrip to kids.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrip
This company has a lot of bad karma to settle, and their profit model is unsustainable.
This company has a lot of bad karma to settle, and their profit model is unsustainable.
Wow, Roblox has text/voice chat! I've worked on a comment system before, it's basically impossible to block bad behavior using filters, AI, whatever, users find a loophole and continue with the behavior. Mods are super needed.
Text/voice chat + real money. It's a pedophile's paradise.
I admit I find the ferverent vociferations against ROBLOX as an entity somewhat disheartening; the game was cynosure to my childhood, providing precious experience to me in learning how to navigate social situations and cope with the rammifications thereof.
Pedophiles did, and do, exist, but this is a fact of life in any manner of social media or large community; discussing frankly how malevolent some may be is imperative, even if it does not preempt all danger posed. The alternative, stifling all manners of creative expression available to those who may otherwise be socially shunted, is untenable to me, as it does not line up with what my experience growing up using this technology taught me.
Nothing in life is without risk--exposure to this risk over a platform that's online, somewhat discoverable, and insulated is vastly preferable to keeping your kids blissful and unknowing of what would threaten them. Please do not attempt to parent in such a way that motivates your children to hide things from you and cut you out of the loop entirely.
Pedophiles did, and do, exist, but this is a fact of life in any manner of social media or large community; discussing frankly how malevolent some may be is imperative, even if it does not preempt all danger posed. The alternative, stifling all manners of creative expression available to those who may otherwise be socially shunted, is untenable to me, as it does not line up with what my experience growing up using this technology taught me.
Nothing in life is without risk--exposure to this risk over a platform that's online, somewhat discoverable, and insulated is vastly preferable to keeping your kids blissful and unknowing of what would threaten them. Please do not attempt to parent in such a way that motivates your children to hide things from you and cut you out of the loop entirely.
My thought: online games which children are playing, especially ~13 and younger, should NEVER have text chat typed on a keyboard. They should only allow symbolic communication like "emotes" and symbols, abstract and basic stuff. Moderation teams can not possibly ever keep up with the "arms race" of determined scammers and exploitative individuals. Just eliminate the entire class of problems upfront at the design stage. Save your company tons of money, too, both in staffing and in legal settlements.
The internet, social media, boy scouts, relatives, and everything else has these problems. It is why kids need parents.
Shocked to hear the responses on here. This is disgusting, regardless of the blogs writing style or your opinion on furry porn, some of the allegations are pretty gross. If your platform aims to attract children as their primary user base, this crap should not be happening as often as it does on their platform.
Disney Toontown solved this problem 20 years ago. You give people a pre-populated list of things they can say, and that's it. There's literally no other way to protect kids on these services.
Roblox is extremely predatory outside of child grooming scenarios as well due to the fact that every game includes dark patterns in order to get them to spend money in order to progress because they won't get moderated. I imagine it would cause addictive behaviour.
There's a lot of "so and so did bad things" and "Roblox terminated his account".
Maybe they should be faster but I wonder if ultimately the solution that some folks would want is just no communication for kids apps ... I've got mixed feelings about that.
Maybe they should be faster but I wonder if ultimately the solution that some folks would want is just no communication for kids apps ... I've got mixed feelings about that.
My kids play Minecraft but they are not allowed to join servers with strangers. I set up some servers where they have freedom to do what they want but the only people they are allowed to play with are their friends from school and family.
who could've foreseen that a microtransaction-based multiplayer user-generated content platform designed for children (with the ability to cash out in-game currency to real money(?!)) could've led to these sorts of problems
If this is true, I think I'll talk to my boss tomorrow about getting Roblox banned on our student systems.
My young son started telling me about his friend from Florida that he started talking to. I am from Canada and across the country so questioned if the person he was talking to was a real child or some pedophile. Thankfully he video called her soon after and it was another 10year old girl and they just liked to play online but it definitely worries and and I’m not sure how Roblox can tackle the issue.
Old news people. This pops up every time the short sellers are on the prowl.
Is no one talking about the valuation? OP says $38B, looks like about $20B today down from $60B in December [1].
Is this all potential upside from their token and service fees, or what?
1. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RBLX/key-statistics
Is this all potential upside from their token and service fees, or what?
1. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RBLX/key-statistics
Roblox is a cesspool. It's like 4chan ran a games platform.
I don’t quite understand what produces the value of these Roblox items? As far as I’ve seen anyone can download the toolkit and build their favorite hat.
As for the weird rapey song, it actually originates from a youtube channel that makes comedy videos.
It's based on a creepy/horror game called Baldi's Basics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlouAA8mRZo Obviously very NSFW
In context, the song is just adult humor. But, yeah, definitely does not belong in a children's game.
It's based on a creepy/horror game called Baldi's Basics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlouAA8mRZo Obviously very NSFW
In context, the song is just adult humor. But, yeah, definitely does not belong in a children's game.
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Sadly my nine year old daughter is addicted, and have trying "soft" measures to get her away from it (like buying a Switch and Animal Crossing) but all her friends are on Roblox. Has anyone seen any good videos for kids that explain the negatives of Roblox, and tried any successful methods with their children?
Welcome to the metaverse.
Wherever you can, tell parents to flat-out block Roblox.
Edit: Because people are asking how it works.
Roblox is a lot about bragging rights for individuals. You gain skins, trade for rare items, buy Robux for real money that can be used to buy items. Players flock around those that that have rare or expensive items. My daughter had a "super super happy face". I just googled, and it is current selling for $350. It makes them feel wanted and important. So just like fornite and skins in other games.
The groomers feed the celebrity, sense of community and so on to engage in chat. It starts as in-game chat, which you can never see the history of, before moving to DMs. The chat has tricks to get around removed words, so they all communicate in some sort of code that they all pick up along the way. Then they are able to divert them to other platforms where there are fewer controls. My daughter was made to create instagram account and an a porn one. Then they follow up on other platform calls (or phone calls) and follow the usual grooming techniques.
The trick is to identify the marks by how they behave in the game, and in the more popular, and social ones, I think that it is quite easy (in retrospect).