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Discussion (61 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
The problem is almost every game on Roblox is social and the matchmaking isn't mature enough to ensure players in a lobby can all communicate.
My favourite is "generic roleplay gaem". The main fun is inciting riots against the leader or forming alliances to do raids. I could join a game and within half-an-hour I'd be engaged in drama, since Roblox incentivizes ephemeral lobbies with random people meaning I don't need a lengthy time commitment to form an alliance.
But I can no longer do that because I am 25 years old and the lobbies are too young. Heck, I'd rather play that game with only other users over 18+ because I could swear and be more toxic. But the matchmaking system literally makes that impossible.
I've had the same Roblox account for 18 years and have spent tens of thousands of Robux on the platform. I let Roblox scan my passport even, so they know who I am. Even though I own nearly 1000 Steam games, Roblox still filled my desire for low-commitment social games I could jump into on my phone or computer if I had a few hours of downtime. Now it is effectively unplayable.
I'm in favour of child safety. But these measures were implemented poorly and needed to be paired with matchmaking to not destroy the platform.
I see these as orthogonal issues.
Your mathmaking gripe sounds legitimate, and is probably driven by Roblox's low 21+ user numbers. That would be expected to change over time. At the same time, I'm not seeing a great argument for why these folks (EDIT: Roblox) should continue to have unfettered access to kids under 14.
My main problem is the kid is playing a game with significant social-media (and gambling) components. That's orthogonal to the question of who is playing with whom, which I agree, is theoretically solvable with better filters.
Roblox doesn’t deserve to be a business and I hope the lawsuits and equity markets solve that in a hurry.
> Users only speak to other players ±1 age group
I.e., 18-20 can speak to 16-17 AND 21+, but 21+ can only speak to 18+
We have 18-year olds in high school in America. The headline risk from a 40-something sleeping with a high-school student is probably something Roblox wants to get ahead of.
But no alcohol.
Thanks for making me feel old I guess.
You could create the best possible face verification system that processes everything completely locally, uses CPU security features to make sure the photos stay exactly where they're supposed to, etc etc. You could design the best possible chat age segregation system that makes sure nobody can ever get groomed over chat again. You can get so deep that you forget you're forcing children to take pictures of themselves, and fail to consider the wider effects this will have on the safety of those kids in general.
How's Jimmy supposed to know that taking a picture of himself for roblox.com is okay, but taking a picture for somescamwebsite that he found in a Roblox game is absolutely not okay? This solution creates a much worse problem. Sane parenting would tell kids to never take pictures of themselves or put it on any website, but now we're clearly shifting the role of parenting to tech companies and we are going to see bad consequences of this.
But we don’t live in that world.
Also, the are trying to prevent adults from pretending to be kids, which is much harder than preventing kids from accessing adult sites.
Do you have a source from the New York Times? (EDIT: Nvm.)
Second EDIT: the CEO reminds me of the energy vampire from What We Do in the Shadows.
The Internet Comment etiquette episode on Roblox Is both hilarious and so concerning.
https://youtu.be/ROG5V0tSuA0?si=iHjWlBy1dE1NtlsK
Whether it actually turns out that way is another question.
Quarterly thinking is the bane of the health of corporate America.
It's completely understandable that the company, which profits off children, putting in measures making it harder to profit off children, would lower both its long and short-term valuations.
It's easy to talk big, it's hard to beat the supposedly stupid, myopic market.
The story under the story seems to be Roblox has lost plausible deniability.
With increasing–and, in my view, inevitable–calls for age gating social media, these data mean between a third and three quarters of Roblox's users could soon be banned from monetisation or banned entirely from their platform.
Isn't Roblox inherently for children, hence they'd want to ban the adults?
Two thirds of Americans believe in "setting limits on how much time minors can spend on social media" [1]. Where we have limited polling, a similar fraction support "banning social media use for all kids under 14" [2].
Joe Camel [3] was also intended for children.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/31/81-of-us-...
[2] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/poll-most-mass-voters-su...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Camel
If one is a psychopath and needs an analogy rather than "harming childrens' mental development for profit is morally and ethically evil": this is essential the same as setting catch quotas on fisheries, to maximize long term value at the expense of short term profit.
I am Jacks lack of surprise.
I am curious why does Roblox even exist?
This shouldn’t even be a business, let alone a public company.
I wish games can just stay games like Valve does and not grow and grow and grow into public companies.
Valve is a very interesting example to use here, I don't think of them as a game company anymore. They run Steam but I can't remember the last game they actually released?
https://steamdb.info/app/1422450/charts/
But yeah, their games are just as filled with lootbox, crates, skin garbage as other low effort money grabs; saving grace being its all cosmetics only (and they’re private about their financials).
These corporations don't give a sh...
Only thing you can do is to petition your lawmakers to ban whole platform.
Safety measures will always be a joke. Open chat/voice chat, "Hi, connect to my discord" -> all safety measures bypassed.
But at the end of the day, this a parenting problem.
Obviously some companies have sketchier pasts and are feeling the pressure more, but this is a very broad trend of restricting online access and communication.
My bigger point is there are increasingly very few spaces for teenagers to socialize and interact (and at least in the US, very few offline), and what sort of long-term ramifications this is going to have. If the net outcome of this is kids return to playing outside and unfettered access to parks and neighborhoods as far as their bikes will take them, I think that's great, but I suspect those will also continue to be heavily locked down.
Moderating user generated games is a kafkaesque joke. It’s not just text, audio, or video. It’s all of those combined in an interactive environment which can include trigger conditions - and one category of games is escaping from mazes.
Since it’s kids, you will end up with maps based on actual schools, combined with violence, on your mod que.
The list of horrifying stuff that happens frequently is quite long, and it’s unfortunate how unaware most people seem to be about it.
At least so many people wouldn’t be surprised.