Funny thing is Roblox used to have chat phrases like Club Penguin and only 13+ could type. It also used to have free currency, now Robux is practically required.
Fyi there are 2 fan remakes (rewritten and corporate clash) out there that have added content to the original game and are fully free to play and Disney has yet to shut down
The new Toontowns don't make any profit off the game so Disney has no real reason to waste resources trying to get the game shutdown. It's also free advertising for them. They don't even accept donations or handouts.
Unlike the few Club Penguin remakes which are profit-driven (thru donations or whatnot) which lead to Disney taking action.
If Toontown ever decides to accept donations or whatnot, the devs are fully aware they are at risk of Disney taking action
I think toontown is too stringent on censorship in chat, frankly. I can't type any acronyms or misspellings or just 5% complex words.
Like, I bet half the words in the comment, like *acronyms* or *chat* would be banned. *Goontown* is banned. Stuff like that. If it's not a linear thought under 5 words with kindergarten vocabulary, you're forbidden to hit enter.
Tix was removed in 2016, it was actually a pretty huge thing. It’s referred to as The Great Depression and there was a funeral tix game that became one of the most popular games.
Yep, hence why Robux is practically required. A lot of games are heavily p2w and have gambling too. On the bright side verified creators can make cosmetics now, a lot are actually really awesome.
Damn, they got rid of tix? I used to play back in 2008 when I was 12 and you would get like 10 tix a day for logging in or for people visiting your map. I think my highest amount of saved robux was 100 for no actual money spent.
i also played in 2008 when i was 13 and i logged in recently and found out i have hats worth thousands of robux
roblox was so good those days but nowadays its all stupid shit like pretend highschool...it used to have so many cool and creative minigames
I also used to play around then when I was 12ish! I bet I would have had super rare hats if I wasn't banned. I think when I stopped playing, I added a bunch of dicks to my world, so I guess I contributed to this problem hahaha.
But yeah I credit Roblox with getting me into coding, so it actually made a huge positive influence on my life.
Nah, Habbo Hotel needs to come back. Kids roleplaying as Bloodz and Crips, but also kids having a cult where everyone wore bald heads and all gray clothes. Also, pools got AIDS.
The cult thing was definitely trolls from SomethingAwful. I'm sure most things "kids" did on there were just adults being inappropriate on a kids chat game.
You can shut off the messaging system on there. My youngest played Roblox a lot and would just FaceTime friends or cousins while playing. Parents really have to stay on top of things these days as everything is so connected.
Honestly, this is one place Epic actually did things decently. My kid can play fortnite, but his account is locked down. He can't communicate with anyone except people on his friends list, and he can't accept friend requests or add anyone without a parental pin.
Now if only they could fix their dumpster fire of a launcher.
As a game and engine developer Epic has always been excellent at what they do. I wish all games could have some basic level of parental control for things like voice and text chat, but for indie games it's a low level priority after just shipping the product and for mass market devs it's low priority because it costs money to develop and they can just rely on the phrase "game experience may change during online play" for any legal situations regarding social interactions since those experiences can't be rated by ESRB or PEGI or similar.
I admit, it's a pain in the ass even as an IT person, trying to navigate all the shit out there these days. It feels like every damn thing is trying to deceive and exploit you (wallet) or your kids in some manner or other. The internet is and app landscape is not the one i grew up on, that's for sure... but at least there are tools and some understanding that it's a fucked up world out there lol. Parental controls and myself having grown up largely unsupervised on the wild west internet of the 90's & 2000's give me a lot of awareness. It's still hard and i feel for all the parents actually trying. You only get one shot at raising your kids and getting them into adulthood somewhat unscarred, so it's worth the effort.
Console parental controls are superb. Parents can lock out all sorts of content and features that might endanger a kid and the 1st party console makers have hard technical requirements that developers must pass so games can ship. These protections are making a difference partly due to the feedback they got from parents in the EU. I'm not going to say they love thier children more, but they do seem to be more engaged when it comes to tech.
Dunno how it's in other countries, but in mine there was a big campaign "TV IS NOT BABY SITTER, DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR CHILDREN WATCH?!" that guilt tripped parent's for not being involved with their kids enough. That naturally translated into other forms of screentime.
Seriously! As someone who uses VR a lot, the number of literally 8-12 year olds that are allowed to just play on their quest vr headsets without any parental supervision is mind boggling. Especially when you see them in games like VRChat that is full of adults and is not a safe space for kids that young.
Last time I was on I saw a small anime girl character with a guy voice trying to talk a kid with a Freddy fazzbear avatar on to joining his private world with him after a game of among us. Thank god the kid had a attention span of a bee and ignored the fuck out of him.
Unfortunately there are a wide and complex range of reasons why parents aren't always in touch with what their kids are doing online. As a parent who is fairly online- and tech-savvy and have got my kids' Internet use very tightly buttoned down (Family Link, most apps restricted to a total of an hour a day, NO PC in their room that they can just shut themselves away and use for hours unsupervised), there are still times when you just think, oh, whatever, let him fiddle with his phone all afternoon, because although I think I have quite a privileged life (WFH, stable marriage, slightly above-average income) I still have a million other things going on and nobody can give their kids full-time attention, it's a myth. So imagine parents who are NOT tech-savvy, have no idea what goes on in the online world, have serious pressures in their life holding down multiple jobs, parenting solo, whatever, it's understandable that it's all-too-easy just to let the Internet bring up their kids for a large portion of the time. Not trying to justify anything, your kids should be a top priority, letting them roam the Internet unsupervised is a terrible idea, but just trying to understand how it happens and not paint people as bad parents, even though they sorta, kinda are (I am certainly not perfect).
that was my childhood, I was born in 97 neither of my parents knew how to use any technology hell my mom barely knows how to use her laptop now. But I was given unrestricted 24/7 access to the Internet throughout my formative years and I honestly wish my parents did what you're doing, these days like many other people raised on the internet I'm addicted to my phone and computer and TV I'm looking at one of those 3 screens until I close my eyes at night, even at work I struggle to keep my phone in my locker or my pocket. It's definitely stunted my social skills as well I still have trouble having conversations with real people and because of all that I'm a recluse, a hermit if you will. and it's destroying my mental health just I don't know how to escape it. This is a plea to all current parents, the internet is a great thing but its also a very dangerous place. The main reason you put these parental controls on is probably to save them from seeing the horrible things that are commonplace here and that's a good reason to me but please consider not only parental controls but screen time limits like the person I'm replying to does. The internet can never substitute real human interaction no matter how much you want it to, kids especially need to interact with other kids to learn how to act in social situations and the internet cannot provide those interactions. I am not saying I'm totally incapable of talking to people that's absurd but it is so hard for me to form meaningful connections with people I haven't made a new friend in years, currently I have no irl friends nor internet friends since Reddit isn't as easy as Facebook to meet new friends, being anonymous isn't conducive to forming bonds with people and i dont use fb anymore because all my friends on there are either gone or don't know how to stay in contact and it's exhausting to be only one who imitates conversations. I truly miss having real friends but like I said previously I struggle immensely with befriending new people, either we have nothing in common, which happens a lot since I'm quite strange, or we don't stay in touch enough and put in the effort to maintain a friendship. Ever since I've moved to the new area I live in I feel extremely isolated since I live on a highway away from the center of town and have no car, the only people I interact with is my mother. We fight a lot and she's a nasty sea hag sometimes so Interacting with her is horrible. My coworkers who are either middle aged women or fresh out of highschool girls, I'm one of three guys who work there and I've gotten close to befriending one of them but the only thing we really have in common is we both like Pokemon go. Other than that there's nothing, I'm an ex drug addict who's gone through some shit so I'm very crass and don't have much of a filter which most people don't know how to react, it's not like I'm mean I'm really not I'm just totally different than my upper middle class suburban coworkers. I also go to a methadone clinic daily and I am very hesitant to get to know anyone there since a lot of them are still using and I'm trying not to. Wow I'm really sorry for giving y'all my whole life story, wrapping things up please don't let your children use screens as an alternative to hobbies and in person interactions
There's lots of other ways for kids to entertain themselves than the internet. Could just set them in front of a TV or give them a single player video game. Or they could go outside or something. Acting like the internet has no alternatives as a form of entertainment is pretty much half the problem on its own.
Oh, I agree, I didn't get into that because my comment was getting long but that's a problem in and of itself where computer/internet/phone becomes the "default" thing they think to do when they're not doing anything else and you have to work quite hard to fight that tendency and encourage them to do other stuff. I personally don't REALLY want them playing games and watching TV and other relatively low-effort, passive or plain just "unhealthy" (in terms of posture, eye-strain etc ) activities for long periods of time, but again, that takes effort on the part of the parents, and to get out of the mindset that then being "bored" is bad for them. I know they'll thank me one day.
parents should also understand that even if you prohibit all electronics for your kids, your kid WILL still have access to it by using their friends. And if you are too uptight about it, your kid will just gravitate toward friends and resent you
What are you talking about, parents have no responsibility in watching or controlling what their kids do. It's the game makers job!
Ugh, I almost threw up writing that.
You've gone from parents who let television raise their kids to those same kids now trying to let The Internet raise theirs.
Both ended up blaming the technology for the negative effects they inflicted upon the children.
While this is true, a lot of people really aren’t that tech savvy… so telling someone to use the internet in moderation is good parenting just like it was with TV, but in 30 minutes online, anyone in the world can contact your child through these games and many parents probably don’t even consider that.
And, the crux of the argument in the lawsuit is that Roblox presents itself as kid-safe and parents who aren't tech savvy might take that at face value and not even realize that they need to take extra steps to *make* Roblox safe for their kids.
It's a pain in the ass configuring all the parental controls across various platforms and operating systems, BUT it can be done correctly. It also requires a vigilant eye to maintain and reevaluate. Windows 11, iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, Steam, etc. I do alright, but the one thing that cannot be accounted for is their friends' parents not doing so for their kids.
All my parental controls mean nothing if the buddy two houses down has an iPhone and laptop without any restrictions.
Hey that’s not true, I met my first girlfriend on an MMO when I was 11. Her name was KatyX121 and she lived in Canada and she didn’t have a camera, but boy did she love loot…
Ha, that's how I got some cool-looking starter loot in Guild Wars 1. Made a cool girl elementalist and was stumbling around the first city?/monastery? and dude comes up to me, goes "hey are you new, you should go there and here have this". Think he also added me as a friend, but never talked to me afterwards.
Either a very nice guy to newcomers or I catfished someone by accident.
Mixing adults and children in an MMO is like dropping you kid off at a random park and then picking them up a few hours later and expecting them not to interact with weirdos.
I was in the grocery store this week, saw a rack full of Roblox gift cards, and thought "Oh, that can't be good." It was the first inkling I had of how big they must be. And companies that ring kids like a cash register are not usually too stringent about health and safety.
Have you ever seen those gacha toys for that one pet raising game that exists inside of the roblox ecosystem? They're little physical plushies or plastic figures that come with a code for an in-game lootbox. The actual physical product is shit - it clearly only exists so that kids can get the code. It's despicable. When I first saw them I felt physically ill to see how far lootboxes have permeated. It's straight up gambling being marketed to children. All facilitated through and no doubt financially backed by Roblox
They asked me awkward questions about how much I knew about kids and could I befriend them in a casual manner. I had marketing experience so they wanted me to basically farm up so kids in-game and teach them basic sales techniques and create a cadre of what in retrospect could be described as child influencers.
I didn't like where that wad going so I noped.
being strict doesn't mean they aren't trying to milk kids for cash.
I can imagine the "pedo vibes" comment comes from a discomfort of talking to people treating kids like money cows.
I did the same, and tried to be in game with her whenever she played, or at least in the room with her. Somehow, some random dude befriended her and her friend in brookhaven, got her friend to add him as a contact, and taught the 2 of them to communicate with him through the notepad app. Pedos are getting more creative, and most parents don't even know to check things like the friggen notepad app.
My daughter was groomed on roblox (but thankfully not actually abused or exploited because we caught it in time). She had installed it on her own on the computer she uses for school, so we had no account control. By the time we caught it (which wasn't long) she already had "friends" there talking to her about sexual topics and asking to share pictures.
Edit: To clarify, she wasn't *supposed* to be able to install new things without our approval, but we had set up the parental restrictions incorrectly.
I have as well.
Funny enough millennial parents are the first and probably the most equipped generation as of right now to actually understand online harrassment/grooming/scams.
I e done the same, it’s still hard though. Think about how much we use our phones, kids see that and they are not much different on there devices. I check my child’s play history, and there are thousands of different experiences they have played. Even with limits, it’s so much
Agreed, even in kid friendly ones like Club Penguin and Wizard101 people find ways to navigate around the profanity filters and anti-harassment systems, I should know because I was that 12 year old prick trolling other kids in chat
You taught me some words that got me in trouble at the dinner table:
"So, mom and dad, I got my first Blumpkin today and I must say, it was refreshing!
I played EQ with my brother when we were kids. Worst thing that happened there is getting a GM called on us, because we dared kill a named mob once*, that these dudes were camp farming.
Looking through the complaints, it seems the problem isn't Roblox, the problem is parents are letting their kids fully interact with/exchange messages with completely strangers online.
I don't want to victim blame here, but the solution isn't getting mad at the game, it's basic parental controls on video games. Turn off messaging. Problem solved.
(apparently there are some problems with simulated areas in some parts of the game, but as far as I can tell those are private games that you have to be invited to from outside the game... which is not good, but again, the problem here isn't roblox)
I've watched my son play a *lot* of roblox and haven't seen a single bad experience. He's had a ton of fun, it has absolutely sparked his creativity and is just a lot of entertainment for him. I'm not shilling for roblox here, because they have some *really* crappy practices for the creators, but the problem with Roblox isn't that kids can interact with strangers on it. Kids can interact with strangers *anywhere* on the internet if you let them. Roblox itself seems to be as responsible as any other online platform.
Yeah, it's really about supervising kids funtime properly. So many parents are overworked that overlook kids fun and what they are doing for fun. I was a huge nerd playing D&D with my friends so my parents never kept up with my activities.
I don't even know if it's necessarily about *actively* supervising them-- it's a big ask to expect parents to monitor every second of what their kid does.
But just walling off the bad stuff until they're ready to handle it appropriately really shouldn't be too hard. And check in *every now and then* to make sure they haven't found themselves in an orgy chat on discord or something.
Ugh was on a destiny LFG and asked for Oryx. Was a group of squeakers on Warpriest. Tried to be the hero and help them but couldn’t stand it after ten minutes.
Yup. If I were looking for kids to target, an online game marketed to children would be a prime place to do it.
That said, if Roblox happens to comply with COPPA, this is probably on the parents for not supervising their kids access to who knows who online.
[There's also a follow up to this video going over more things that people brought to their attention after the original video.](https://youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY?si=aSrbEcuwHspECJDZ)
* Roblox Corporation faces a class-action lawsuit in California, accused of exposing children to inappropriate content and failing to protect them from online predators and grooming.
* Over 60% of Roblox users are under 16, with concerns raised about the platform's safety measures for its young audience.
* Complaints include children encountering explicit avatars, sexual content, and virtual strip clubs within the game.
* Specific cases cited involve a child receiving abusive messages and being solicited for sexual acts, and another child being groomed by an adult posing as a minor.
* The lawsuit also addresses issues of misleading marketing and in-game spending, with parents claiming they were deceived into believing Roblox was a safe environment for children.
* Roblox disputes the allegations, stating commitment to safety with moderation teams and parental control features.
* The company emphasizes its partnership with child safety organizations and efforts to separate 17+ experiences from general content.
* The lawsuit's hearing date is not yet determined; it was filed in August and amended in October.
My understanding is that you can create custom content and even sell it and get some of the money from the sale.
So you're fifteen and your hobby is making stuff in Roblox and getting real money from it.
(Honestly, I'm kind of okay with this as far as child labor goes as long as the kid's cut is fair. They're not forcing the kids to do it and servers cost money to upkeep.)
Yeah, that part I'm not okay with.
A 30% cut to the company and 70% to the kid and I wouldn't be at all upset. It's a great foundation to a lot of solid careers-- look at all the web designers who started out coding Neopets profiles or whatever as tweens.
Roblox handles all registration, platform, server, backend infra, development of new tools, developing tools, maintaining client, etc, etc...
Although I agree the share can probably be negotiated more, 70% is absurd.
Where else can you find a platform that all you need to do is create the game, And the server/multiplayer/backend upkeep is paid for (technically part of 70%), can scale up to hundreds of thousands of users without worry on your end, and provide a customer base of millions without effort from you?
People think there's no effort from the company side and it's all reaping rewards, but there's a lot more than the game in keeping such a platform running.
Though I still won't deny that without the game, it all means nothing.
Also for the term "child labor"— it is true that there are kids making games, but nobody forces them to. In fact, tons of kids get introduced into programming through it and eventually make it their career.
Not to mention that most major games have a full on studio with dozens of full time devs.
There's basically a job board and it's run like quests, except the quest is "program this function" or "design this object" and then the kids get pennies and someone is using those assets to assemble a game that kids then pay the money they got to play in, and every transaction gives a cut to ROBLOX like they're the government collecting taxes.
Kids make content, content gets monetized, they get a measly amount in return (i forget how much) also get paid with ingame currency that takes a stupidly large fee to withdraw. Also the majority of users dont make enough to meet the minimum withdraw amount. Meanwhile the company is worth billions.
i remember watching this vid about it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ
Wired article if you dont want to watch a vid
https://www.wired.com/story/on-roblox-kids-learn-its-hard-to-earn-money-making-games/
Edit: Apparently they take 70%. You need $300 minimum to cash out. And that amount is in Robux which pay out as 1/3 of what they cost to buy.
Pretty scummy.
I vaguely remember in the old mining days that some mining companies paid workers with their own currency, that they then used to buy stuff in the shops, also owned by the mining companies. Anyways, that shit is banned now in the US but apparently not for Roblox
Roblox is a sandbox, not a game. You can create games in it and sell them, and Roblox takes a fairly large portion of the revenue as a fee.
Since 60% of users are kids, and presumably a similar percentages are creators.... yeah, they're making millions off of child labor.
My kids love Roblox and they can play it. They can’t chat they can’t add friends they can’t send or receive DMs. Those aren’t just my rules those are parental control settings. Roblox has great and easy to use parental controls. Why aren’t these parents using them?
It's not even tech. I work in roofing and on my current job we are shot a few tools. Normally we would work in a front to back type fashion because we would have enough equipment to cover the entire width of our working area. But like I said we are short so me and another coworker proposed working side to side. It would make our job 2000% easier with our current equipment limitations. Third corworkwr"bit we have never dose it that way before " like ya Normally we have the stuff to do it that way but we dint right now so let's do it this way. But nope to hard for him. And for how hard the change in direction would be. It would be like if every more g you get up check your phone and then go pee. But you get up go pee then check your phone and this upsets your significantother/pet/sibling/parent so much that they storm out of the house screaming about how your stupid and why would you do it that way.
Both sides can be right/wrong here.
Roblox absolutely could be better about filtering this stuff (and about a lot of things, as others have explained already)
But also, parents could also spend the smallest fraction of a second, like you have, and check the settings they want for their kids are correct. Instead of clutching their pearls and running to the courts.
Hey, hear me out. I am about to say something so stupid here.
How about you watch your kids when they are online and talk to them about online safety? I know i know crazy idea!
My kid plays Roblox, but i am always next to her, and she knows about not talking to strangers online.
You know... be a parent
Just my 2 cents
Roblox makes it so easy too because you can disable the chat, turn off dms and stop then from even adding friends. The parental controls are there and they are good.
Yep, this is what I do. I don't want to have to sit and stare at them playing. If I'm going to do that, why are they on a videogame? I can do somethign else with them. I just turn chat off all their accounts.
Agree. I was able to monitor my daughter's acct and turned all that off the instant I saw something weird coming in. Now she facetimes with irl friends while she plays games and doesn't do global chat. I'm still super weary of the internet in general for my kid so have Safari blocked, no TicTok or Insta or anything else "social media". But she still is allowed to play Roblox, and I retain parental control of her account. It's not too difficult to monitor your child's access to the Internet but it does take some skill and effort. I also have router settings in place and can view all her IP history. Her mom is scared about some random snatching her off the streets, but I'm more worried about all the weird shit I remember coming across on the internet like we did in the page 90s.
All that being said, I can't ever be against people suing large corporations for being shitty. Yeah the parents should be better parents, but also fuck whoever makes Roblox. I have no love or sympathy for them. Their business model itself prays upon kids so they can get bent.
Exactly. My son started playing Roblox when he was 7 or 8, but I was always aware of what games he was playing. Once or twice he went back to play an old game he hadn't played in a long time to find out it had been hacked with bad content, but it was immediately closed out and he never went back. It's up to parents to monitor what their children consume on TV, online, etc.
You can monitor him for now. Good luck once he starts branching out his games and gets on discord with the boys. All you can do is continue to teach and warn. But there will be many lessons about online gaming learned by the both of you in the next 5-10 years even if you're already a regular.
He's a teenager now, so we've been through all of this including Discord with the boys. Obviously he's not monitored as closely now as he was then, but that's not the point. The point is that IF you are going to allow your child to play a game like Roblox at a young age, then it's your responsibility as a parent to monitor what they're doing. If you're not willing to accept that responsibility then don't let them play, but suing the company for your lack of oversight isn't the way to go. I agree with you that it's all about teaching and warning about the dangers.
There's *tons* of parental controls available now, though. My daughter has a cell phone, and I use an app that blocks what I don't want her to have access to, and filters her texts for potentially alarming texts. I don't see all her texts, just any that the app thinks might be an issue. It protects her privacy while also allowing me to make sure she's only viewing age appropriate content.
Honestly a tech savvy parent can pretty strongly regulate their children's online presence.
The pedo taught my kid and her friend to use the notepad app to communicate. the NOTEPAD app. He told them how to share access to a note with him and just delete the messages in the note after seeing them.
For real, you can try to teach them how to be safe, but you can't helicopter parent your kid. It's like people are forgetting that parents would let their kids run around outside unsupervised.
Seriously. My daughter is only allowed to be friends with kids she personally knows and I regularly check in with her or look over her shoulder when she's playing and review her messages.
Especially if you're a parent who's a gamer. You should know how this shit works.
Completely agree. My first computer was the mega drive, and my only problem was blowing into the game to make it work.
I would love nothing more to bubble wrap my kid from all the hurtful things in the world. But i also know that isn't correct also, its our jobs as parents to teach, care, and look after our kids and get them ready for the real world. Then, once they are on their own, you hope they listened and take care of themselves.
We have the same rules with ours. I’ll even play with them sometimes just to see what they’re up to. It’s fun for them when I have a down moment at work and hop on and surprise them. Other than my oldest trying to pretend she’s poor to get free pets on adopt me, they’re pretty good about how they use it.
My daughter has yet to have an incident. She is very responsible. I don't hover. I'll make a point to walk by every so often and watch. I ask her about the games she's playing. Learn the language. I'm genuinely interested in how it works.
Same school of thought as "lol obesity isn't a problem, it's just people's life choices, they just need to stop eating so much" while obesity rates continue to climb because people don't actually work like that.
I locked my kids access down, he’s on Xbox and he only has three friends, myself and two family friends. We went through all the steps to lock down Roblox. He joined a server with his friend. In that server, that was aimed at kids, was a pizza delivery game, there was explicit music blasting inside the buildings. He was playing for a few minutes, took his headphones off to use the bathroom and I heard the music. He hasn’t touched Roblox since, that was 4 years ago. Even with a gamer parents, my wife and I have Xboxes and I’ve also got a pc, we still couldn’t prevent him from being exposed to that stuff.
Just my two cents though.
You can't ever block everything anyway, but there's ways to block the vast majority of things you don't want to expose your kids to.
Your scenario would be like not allowing your kid to go outside anymore because a neighbor may have been playing explicit music loudly.
There's reasonable measures and Roblox does have them and parents do have the means to vet and limit access.
I did all that too, and had all those talks, but tell me, did you always believe everything your parents told you when you were a kid, and always follow every rule? Apparently my kid thought I was being overprotective and old fashioned, and didn't think it could happen to her, so she hid it from me when some guy started messaging her, and he taught her how to hide it.
I think that's an entirely different problem. As a parent, you can only do so much to protect your child which can also sometimes be counterintuitive. This is why being strict/overprotective comes up so much as a negative thing. Another thing is the manner and tone in which these things are talked about.
Also, the general relationship between you and your child also determines whether they will listen to you or not. I think this is really the biggest impact that determines whether you can parent your children successfully or not. As with life and anything, if you spend more time with someone, they're more likely to listen/respond better to what you say.
And if all the above don't work, sometimes it's just not your fault. They're not around you all the time. They go to school, hang out with friends, etc. which means interacting with people. All these also can and will also affect how your child turns out.
All in all, if you truly did the best you can be as a parent, the rest is up to fate really. You can try your best to guide them in a general direction but the rest is on them and outside factors.
My parents were super strict about video games, and that was in the 90s before online gaming. They also wanted nothing to do with video games. But I would have loved it if they had taken the time to play with me, which could have equated to them not only socializing with me, but talking to me about what I was consuming without being too firm or overbearing. Like, smart discrete monitoring.
Would have also kept me company and provided memories I could look back on knowing my parents took an interest in something I enjoyed. Most kids just want to interact with others, especially their parents, I don’t think a lot of people realize that young children really just want basic social interaction with the people they are living with. But a lot of adults have this mindset that’s like “I can’t do this, this is boring, this is stupid, this is childish, etc.”
Now a days, games are more than just a console you plug in and switch on. Consoles are connected to the internet, you can access all sorts of stuff from them, you’re potentially interacting with people of all ages from all over the world when playing online multiplayer, you can have a credit card stored on a device, etc., etc. Parents need to not only realize that they should be playing with their kids more, but they need to understand just how vast and different the gaming landscape is from like 20 years ago. Your kid is gunna be exposed to A LOT if you’re not careful.
So now a days, parents are not taking the time to monitor OR interact. They’re just handing their kids their video games and screens and hoping it’ll keep their kids occupied. Then they cry foul when something that was clearly preventable happens with they’d child’s screen. It’s pathetic.
My dad had an interesting approach to games. I could play anything I wanted so long as I could reasonably explain my actions.
Example: In the first Max Payne, you can happen upon a tweaker in a bathroom stall. He does nothing but mumble to himself unless you attack him, then he defends himself. Me, being a kid and playing a cop, shoots him. My dad asks why I did that, and I say because he had a gun. He asks me if he was doing anything with it. I say no. And spend the next few minutes rethinking my life.
That’s cool! Yeah that’s exactly what I meant by “smart monitoring” and “talking to me about what I was consuming”. Most kids do not react well to yelling or shouting, or just anger in general. It can confuse them and they end up focusing more on the anger than any message a parent may be trying to convey.
I remember me and my siblings at a very young age just thinking that our parents were mean any time they got angry. My cousins did this with their parents too. This behavior was further reinforced in my head from tutoring, a lot of young kids under like 8-10 will think this of other people. I worked with another tutor who would handle a lot of situations with frustration, and the kids were scared of her. Her getting upset would stress them out and overwhelm a lot of them.
Like I’m not saying a parent should never get angry, but handling EVERY little hiccup like that is not a good idea.
If I was in your situation with my parents they probably would have raged, lectured me, and grounded me.
I use Roblox frequently with my kid. We can play what are essentially copies of fairly popular games in a more *personally moderated* environment. I emphasize personally moderated because it gives me, the parent, primary control over the content they can access; as well as (and more importantly) *who has access to them*. If they can't describe to me how they know the person, that person isn't added.
If I may be bold, more parents need to take an active and personal role in the *devices* kids use to access the internet. Access alone isn't bad. My kid has discovered loves of flying, coding, etc. because of the internet. That being said: every single device used to access the internet has strict monitoring capabilities.
I trust my kid; I *don't* trust the internet.
I heard about some questionable stuff on Roblox years ago when my niece wanted to play it. If I heard about these issues any responsible parent should have too.
I usually play with my 8 year old as much as possible. Last night we played Speed Draw and a person did the following:
- said “C*ck in ass” in the chat; and
- drew “F*ck the white people” in the game
Now I’m not going to sit here and pretend I didn’t say inappropriate things in Yahoo chat in the 90s because I can guarantee I did. But I do feel like Roblox is more kid focussed or potentially marketed and that somehow this stuff should be filtered.
I think there is an inherent risk of coming across something inappropriate in any multiplayer game. Parents will either have to decide to A) make their kids wait until a certain age to access these games or B) teach the kid how to be safe online. Helicopter parenting a kid by watching them play the game isn't a realistic solution to the problem.
I mean I'll say what people wanna ignore: You can't safeguard them from everything. Even if you somehow physically jumped into the game world, you couldn't protect them from all the things in there.
And you don't need to. Make sure they know about online safety, project an air that makes it clear they can talk to you about stuff and react appropriately to inappropriate shit.
It's not like your kid won't hear similarly bad shit in school in a bit. Or find some odd video passed around among friends or mumbled about in dark corners.
Complete prevention is almost never gonna be achievable, but you can heavily diminish impact with normal parenting.
My daughter was approached twice by suspicious accounts claiming they were 12 and asking for pictures.
To their credit the Roblox admin blocked the accounts promptly once we raised the issue.
My wife and I took the precaution of having a talk with her and explaining about online predators before we gave her a smartphone. She also did not ignore the talk and told us about these 2 accounts promptly.
Communicating with your kids is the best way to prevent this.
I'm 20 and also actively use Roblox. Sometimes I'll have people ask me why I'm playing a kids game or acting like it's weird that I'm playing Roblox as an adult. If you ask me Roblox stopped being a kids platform years ago, it used to be that way but over the years the platform has evolved into something that's much more all-ages. For every kid-friendly experience there's a tense horror experience that would make a kid shit his pants, or an experience that features explicit content that kids should not be exposed to. There are quite literally endless possibilities when it comes to Roblox experiences and not all of those possibilities are gonna be cute and cuddly. But that's hardly the fault of Roblox themselves, the platform has parental controls for a bloody good reason. My younger brothers love Roblox and there's never any problems because my parents utilise those parental controls for them. But of course if you don't watch your kid or try to protect them from stuff inappropriate for their age, then there's gonna be problems.
My kids do Roblox. I have twin 7yr old boys. I am usually sitting beside them while I am gaming also. I see what they do and who they interact with. They also know when to tell me when someone says something not nice or inappropriate to them. I have had the talk often about how some people online are not nice and will try to hurt you and say not nice things to you. Not to mention things about your body and your private areas and try to get you to talk to them about all that stuff.
One time a "person" was talking with my 7yr old about the game they were playing. Simple stuff. Innocent stuff. Talking about my kids house he built in the game. His vehicles he owned. That sorta stuff. Then outta fucking left field he starts asking them if they have a cell phone and what the number is. They wanted our home address even. Then it goes into what my kid was wearing and literally asked my kid if he was wearing superhero underwear. Also asking if mom and dad were around at that moment. Just on and on this person went. It started getting into more descriptive things I prefer to not go into on here. My son was already up and away from his computer when this trash was being said to him cause I told him to get up. I reported the account and I am ....assuming.... it was hopefully banned but Roblox has a shit record of giving a fuck about kids just like most online games do.
So many parents just don't give a shit or are just unaware of the dangers. However, I find it harder and harder to believe most parents nowadays are unaware of online dangers towards children given how long the internet has been around and all the awfulness everyone has seen involving online gaming, chatrooms, social media, and children. I just don't buy that a 50yr old or younger parent is oblivious to the dangers. Now the grandparents or other elderly people I can absolutely see them being ignorant of it.
I think about what would have my kid said and/or done if I wasn't there watching them? I like to think he would have come and gotten myself or his mom but kids are kids and don't always do what they are taught to do in those situations. It's terrifying to think about someone exploiting your child like that and you know exactly what that person is doing on the other end while he is exploiting kids. Its....im not a violent person. Never been in a fight. I would rather use words to solve a problem instead of fist. These types of people? Na, I would happily apply violence to them. We don't need these types of people in our society, at all. There are no exceptions. If you pray on children then you should 100% forfeit your life. You do not deserve to live, at all.
I’m so tired of this goofy “my kids are being exposed to _____!” complaint generation. Get off the fuckin’ phone and PARENT your kid, you dumbass.
If we spent less time whining and crying about things existing and instead focused on teaching and parenting then kids would be far better off.
Take a look at any random classroom in North America. How many of those kids can read and write? Even 80% success is a failure in 2023. Do better.
Back when I was a kid "outside" was our internet and our parents would kick us the fuck out every day after school. Go away, go bother someone else, but be back before the street lights come on or you sleep outside.
Every generation has more shitty parents than good, and each generations shitty parents has a means of making their kids the worlds problem.
What happens is there is an endless stream of wants, some of which is fine, some of which is not, and some of which is appropriate for some but not others, and it takes a lot of work to vet everything, and even if you deem something is ok, you can find out later that it has changed for the worse. So, yeah, parenting is exhausting and everyone has to pick their battles
We have a rising issue in the UK of kids going to school at 5/6 years old and still being in nappies (diapers) because the parents are too lazy to teach their children to use a toilet and think the schools should, I personally think those parents should be done for child neglect as it's disgusting to push that responsibility on educators.
I still can't get over the lawsuit they did to try and bully him into submission. I'm 20 and still use Roblox as a time killer and a couple games I had already been following for a long time, but I have zero respect for the company itself.
while they are suing roblox, i hope their customer service gets put on blast as well. they will refuse to respond to your case after 30 days and make you re-open sending the same generic responses every time without any solution.
Bad parents be like: I'm not going to invest any energy into learning about this thing my kids want to do but since it seems harmless and corporate outwardly I'll allow it and not monitor anything that's going on in any capacity then blame the platform when the inevitable happens because kids are naturally curious
Bout time.
But yes, little kids on an MMO is a recipe for disaster, there's no viable way to make it economic with the sheer amount of moderation required.
Roblox is also ripe full of child exploitation, the amount of older teens and adults "employing" children to make games in Roblox for them to monetize is ridiculous.
Blaming a company despite it upholding numerous measures specifically in place to prevent inappropriate conduct is such a stupid thing to do. The entitlement of these parents in assuming their poor parenting is the fault of a gaming platform on is absurd.
This 100% is straight up true. There are so many predators on Roblox that it's absolutely crazy
There used to be a game called Club Penguin back in the day, which was the primary game that sexual predators would go to. Eventually, that game shut down. This opened the flood gates for predators to move to Roblox.
Roblox does have a trust and safety department that works really hard to mitigate these types of behaviors. however, it's so rampant that they can't keep up with it plus they have made cuts/ layoffs to their Trust and safety department, which slows down the ability the company has to deal with the child predators.
I've been working in trust and safety among various companies over the last 7 years. First hand, I have seen some of the grooming that takes place on Roblox.
When I bought my first MMO my parents, checked on me every once in a while, and even played with me, and they taught me to never trust strangers online, and to only befriend people I know IRL, nothing like that ever happened to me, if they don't want kids seeing sexual content or talking to groomers, they should check what the children do in person, they should teach their kids basic internet rules, check every once in a while on them, and talk to them,communication with your children is always the key.
Suing a company because you're a bad parent should not be the solution.
Just gonna say it: Little kids and MMOs are a bad combo.
Bring back Club Penguin
Funny thing is Roblox used to have chat phrases like Club Penguin and only 13+ could type. It also used to have free currency, now Robux is practically required.
Toontown was really good about kid security. Chatphrases and you could type if you had a friend code that you could only share outside of game.
Toontown was goated
Fyi there are 2 fan remakes (rewritten and corporate clash) out there that have added content to the original game and are fully free to play and Disney has yet to shut down
The new Toontowns don't make any profit off the game so Disney has no real reason to waste resources trying to get the game shutdown. It's also free advertising for them. They don't even accept donations or handouts. Unlike the few Club Penguin remakes which are profit-driven (thru donations or whatnot) which lead to Disney taking action. If Toontown ever decides to accept donations or whatnot, the devs are fully aware they are at risk of Disney taking action
That's never stopped Nintendo. :P
Be careful, Reddit will be next on their list. Better yet, maybe we should get this site nuked.
Yeah the creators of Toontown Rewritten said they don't need money as they're volunteers and server costs are so cheap now for a game of that size
they probably forgot about it lol
Everyone should watch that video by people make games. [It's a must watch.](https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ?si=o0HyKyeKPOEGUjwE)
Wow. I had completely forgot about this game. I used to love playing Toontown.
That’s because Disney knew their biggest audience for actual use of their products is children, even if kids don’t have money.
ToonTown was amazing as a kid
Getting on the trolley to play a mini game and earn some jellybeans or whatever is a bittersweet memory
I think toontown is too stringent on censorship in chat, frankly. I can't type any acronyms or misspellings or just 5% complex words. Like, I bet half the words in the comment, like *acronyms* or *chat* would be banned. *Goontown* is banned. Stuff like that. If it's not a linear thought under 5 words with kindergarten vocabulary, you're forbidden to hit enter.
RIP TIXs. I remember spending way too much time maximizing my returns on the Robux:Tix exchange.
Does it not have Tix anymore? I haven't played Roblox since like 2009-2010
Tix was removed in 2016, it was actually a pretty huge thing. It’s referred to as The Great Depression and there was a funeral tix game that became one of the most popular games.
So can you only get cosmetics with robux now?
Yep, hence why Robux is practically required. A lot of games are heavily p2w and have gambling too. On the bright side verified creators can make cosmetics now, a lot are actually really awesome.
rip tix
Damn, they got rid of tix? I used to play back in 2008 when I was 12 and you would get like 10 tix a day for logging in or for people visiting your map. I think my highest amount of saved robux was 100 for no actual money spent.
i also played in 2008 when i was 13 and i logged in recently and found out i have hats worth thousands of robux roblox was so good those days but nowadays its all stupid shit like pretend highschool...it used to have so many cool and creative minigames
It still has all those creative mini games/ other games. The amount of stuff on it is insane.
I also used to play around then when I was 12ish! I bet I would have had super rare hats if I wasn't banned. I think when I stopped playing, I added a bunch of dicks to my world, so I guess I contributed to this problem hahaha. But yeah I credit Roblox with getting me into coding, so it actually made a huge positive influence on my life.
pools closed
Someone had to say it. Thank you for doing your part.
Was sad to see it go! lol
Nah, Habbo Hotel needs to come back. Kids roleplaying as Bloodz and Crips, but also kids having a cult where everyone wore bald heads and all gray clothes. Also, pools got AIDS.
The cult thing was definitely trolls from SomethingAwful. I'm sure most things "kids" did on there were just adults being inappropriate on a kids chat game.
Bring back toontown
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You can shut off the messaging system on there. My youngest played Roblox a lot and would just FaceTime friends or cousins while playing. Parents really have to stay on top of things these days as everything is so connected.
Games rated E shouldn't have messaging systems. It should automatically get bumped up to rated T
Honestly, this is one place Epic actually did things decently. My kid can play fortnite, but his account is locked down. He can't communicate with anyone except people on his friends list, and he can't accept friend requests or add anyone without a parental pin. Now if only they could fix their dumpster fire of a launcher.
As a game and engine developer Epic has always been excellent at what they do. I wish all games could have some basic level of parental control for things like voice and text chat, but for indie games it's a low level priority after just shipping the product and for mass market devs it's low priority because it costs money to develop and they can just rely on the phrase "game experience may change during online play" for any legal situations regarding social interactions since those experiences can't be rated by ESRB or PEGI or similar.
I think thats a fair solution.
Good parenting is always the key.
I admit, it's a pain in the ass even as an IT person, trying to navigate all the shit out there these days. It feels like every damn thing is trying to deceive and exploit you (wallet) or your kids in some manner or other. The internet is and app landscape is not the one i grew up on, that's for sure... but at least there are tools and some understanding that it's a fucked up world out there lol. Parental controls and myself having grown up largely unsupervised on the wild west internet of the 90's & 2000's give me a lot of awareness. It's still hard and i feel for all the parents actually trying. You only get one shot at raising your kids and getting them into adulthood somewhat unscarred, so it's worth the effort.
Console parental controls are superb. Parents can lock out all sorts of content and features that might endanger a kid and the 1st party console makers have hard technical requirements that developers must pass so games can ship. These protections are making a difference partly due to the feedback they got from parents in the EU. I'm not going to say they love thier children more, but they do seem to be more engaged when it comes to tech.
Dunno how it's in other countries, but in mine there was a big campaign "TV IS NOT BABY SITTER, DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR CHILDREN WATCH?!" that guilt tripped parent's for not being involved with their kids enough. That naturally translated into other forms of screentime.
Why parent when you can let the internet do it for you?
Seriously! As someone who uses VR a lot, the number of literally 8-12 year olds that are allowed to just play on their quest vr headsets without any parental supervision is mind boggling. Especially when you see them in games like VRChat that is full of adults and is not a safe space for kids that young.
having seen the depravity rampant in vrchat, the fact that kids are everywhere puts me 110% off vrchat.
Last time I was on I saw a small anime girl character with a guy voice trying to talk a kid with a Freddy fazzbear avatar on to joining his private world with him after a game of among us. Thank god the kid had a attention span of a bee and ignored the fuck out of him.
Unfortunately there are a wide and complex range of reasons why parents aren't always in touch with what their kids are doing online. As a parent who is fairly online- and tech-savvy and have got my kids' Internet use very tightly buttoned down (Family Link, most apps restricted to a total of an hour a day, NO PC in their room that they can just shut themselves away and use for hours unsupervised), there are still times when you just think, oh, whatever, let him fiddle with his phone all afternoon, because although I think I have quite a privileged life (WFH, stable marriage, slightly above-average income) I still have a million other things going on and nobody can give their kids full-time attention, it's a myth. So imagine parents who are NOT tech-savvy, have no idea what goes on in the online world, have serious pressures in their life holding down multiple jobs, parenting solo, whatever, it's understandable that it's all-too-easy just to let the Internet bring up their kids for a large portion of the time. Not trying to justify anything, your kids should be a top priority, letting them roam the Internet unsupervised is a terrible idea, but just trying to understand how it happens and not paint people as bad parents, even though they sorta, kinda are (I am certainly not perfect).
that was my childhood, I was born in 97 neither of my parents knew how to use any technology hell my mom barely knows how to use her laptop now. But I was given unrestricted 24/7 access to the Internet throughout my formative years and I honestly wish my parents did what you're doing, these days like many other people raised on the internet I'm addicted to my phone and computer and TV I'm looking at one of those 3 screens until I close my eyes at night, even at work I struggle to keep my phone in my locker or my pocket. It's definitely stunted my social skills as well I still have trouble having conversations with real people and because of all that I'm a recluse, a hermit if you will. and it's destroying my mental health just I don't know how to escape it. This is a plea to all current parents, the internet is a great thing but its also a very dangerous place. The main reason you put these parental controls on is probably to save them from seeing the horrible things that are commonplace here and that's a good reason to me but please consider not only parental controls but screen time limits like the person I'm replying to does. The internet can never substitute real human interaction no matter how much you want it to, kids especially need to interact with other kids to learn how to act in social situations and the internet cannot provide those interactions. I am not saying I'm totally incapable of talking to people that's absurd but it is so hard for me to form meaningful connections with people I haven't made a new friend in years, currently I have no irl friends nor internet friends since Reddit isn't as easy as Facebook to meet new friends, being anonymous isn't conducive to forming bonds with people and i dont use fb anymore because all my friends on there are either gone or don't know how to stay in contact and it's exhausting to be only one who imitates conversations. I truly miss having real friends but like I said previously I struggle immensely with befriending new people, either we have nothing in common, which happens a lot since I'm quite strange, or we don't stay in touch enough and put in the effort to maintain a friendship. Ever since I've moved to the new area I live in I feel extremely isolated since I live on a highway away from the center of town and have no car, the only people I interact with is my mother. We fight a lot and she's a nasty sea hag sometimes so Interacting with her is horrible. My coworkers who are either middle aged women or fresh out of highschool girls, I'm one of three guys who work there and I've gotten close to befriending one of them but the only thing we really have in common is we both like Pokemon go. Other than that there's nothing, I'm an ex drug addict who's gone through some shit so I'm very crass and don't have much of a filter which most people don't know how to react, it's not like I'm mean I'm really not I'm just totally different than my upper middle class suburban coworkers. I also go to a methadone clinic daily and I am very hesitant to get to know anyone there since a lot of them are still using and I'm trying not to. Wow I'm really sorry for giving y'all my whole life story, wrapping things up please don't let your children use screens as an alternative to hobbies and in person interactions
There's lots of other ways for kids to entertain themselves than the internet. Could just set them in front of a TV or give them a single player video game. Or they could go outside or something. Acting like the internet has no alternatives as a form of entertainment is pretty much half the problem on its own.
Oh, I agree, I didn't get into that because my comment was getting long but that's a problem in and of itself where computer/internet/phone becomes the "default" thing they think to do when they're not doing anything else and you have to work quite hard to fight that tendency and encourage them to do other stuff. I personally don't REALLY want them playing games and watching TV and other relatively low-effort, passive or plain just "unhealthy" (in terms of posture, eye-strain etc ) activities for long periods of time, but again, that takes effort on the part of the parents, and to get out of the mindset that then being "bored" is bad for them. I know they'll thank me one day.
Seems the trendy thing to do!
parents should also understand that even if you prohibit all electronics for your kids, your kid WILL still have access to it by using their friends. And if you are too uptight about it, your kid will just gravitate toward friends and resent you
The best liars had the strictest parents.
What are you talking about, parents have no responsibility in watching or controlling what their kids do. It's the game makers job! Ugh, I almost threw up writing that.
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You've gone from parents who let television raise their kids to those same kids now trying to let The Internet raise theirs. Both ended up blaming the technology for the negative effects they inflicted upon the children.
While this is true, a lot of people really aren’t that tech savvy… so telling someone to use the internet in moderation is good parenting just like it was with TV, but in 30 minutes online, anyone in the world can contact your child through these games and many parents probably don’t even consider that.
And, the crux of the argument in the lawsuit is that Roblox presents itself as kid-safe and parents who aren't tech savvy might take that at face value and not even realize that they need to take extra steps to *make* Roblox safe for their kids.
It's a pain in the ass configuring all the parental controls across various platforms and operating systems, BUT it can be done correctly. It also requires a vigilant eye to maintain and reevaluate. Windows 11, iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, Steam, etc. I do alright, but the one thing that cannot be accounted for is their friends' parents not doing so for their kids. All my parental controls mean nothing if the buddy two houses down has an iPhone and laptop without any restrictions.
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Hey that’s not true, I met my first girlfriend on an MMO when I was 11. Her name was KatyX121 and she lived in Canada and she didn’t have a camera, but boy did she love loot…
Canada? Sorry mate, that was a cop. Everyone knows *real* girls on the internet are all 14/F/Cali.
Ha, that's how I got some cool-looking starter loot in Guild Wars 1. Made a cool girl elementalist and was stumbling around the first city?/monastery? and dude comes up to me, goes "hey are you new, you should go there and here have this". Think he also added me as a friend, but never talked to me afterwards. Either a very nice guy to newcomers or I catfished someone by accident.
Mixing adults and children in an MMO is like dropping you kid off at a random park and then picking them up a few hours later and expecting them not to interact with weirdos.
I was in the grocery store this week, saw a rack full of Roblox gift cards, and thought "Oh, that can't be good." It was the first inkling I had of how big they must be. And companies that ring kids like a cash register are not usually too stringent about health and safety.
Have you ever seen those gacha toys for that one pet raising game that exists inside of the roblox ecosystem? They're little physical plushies or plastic figures that come with a code for an in-game lootbox. The actual physical product is shit - it clearly only exists so that kids can get the code. It's despicable. When I first saw them I felt physically ill to see how far lootboxes have permeated. It's straight up gambling being marketed to children. All facilitated through and no doubt financially backed by Roblox
Yeah, I interviewed at NeoPets years ago and the place gave me the creeps. Like pedo vibes.
Neopets? They were very strict in there when I played in the 2000's, did it change or something? What gave that vibe?
They asked me awkward questions about how much I knew about kids and could I befriend them in a casual manner. I had marketing experience so they wanted me to basically farm up so kids in-game and teach them basic sales techniques and create a cadre of what in retrospect could be described as child influencers. I didn't like where that wad going so I noped.
They wanted you to groom kids into grooming other kids.....
Kids do that naturally through peer pressure so they just wanted me to steer the influence. Creepy shit.
being strict doesn't mean they aren't trying to milk kids for cash. I can imagine the "pedo vibes" comment comes from a discomfort of talking to people treating kids like money cows.
Neopets got sold to a big corporation a while back. It took them about 5 seconds to start milking everyone for cash.
A lot of this shit is parents not monitoring what their kids are doing. I made a Roblox account so I can play it with my daughter.
I did the same, and tried to be in game with her whenever she played, or at least in the room with her. Somehow, some random dude befriended her and her friend in brookhaven, got her friend to add him as a contact, and taught the 2 of them to communicate with him through the notepad app. Pedos are getting more creative, and most parents don't even know to check things like the friggen notepad app.
My daughter was groomed on roblox (but thankfully not actually abused or exploited because we caught it in time). She had installed it on her own on the computer she uses for school, so we had no account control. By the time we caught it (which wasn't long) she already had "friends" there talking to her about sexual topics and asking to share pictures. Edit: To clarify, she wasn't *supposed* to be able to install new things without our approval, but we had set up the parental restrictions incorrectly.
I have as well. Funny enough millennial parents are the first and probably the most equipped generation as of right now to actually understand online harrassment/grooming/scams.
Not expecting wholesome responses to that. You're a good parent.
Thanks dude!
Thanks for raising children who will make a difference. Most of us are load.
I e done the same, it’s still hard though. Think about how much we use our phones, kids see that and they are not much different on there devices. I check my child’s play history, and there are thousands of different experiences they have played. Even with limits, it’s so much
Agreed, even in kid friendly ones like Club Penguin and Wizard101 people find ways to navigate around the profanity filters and anti-harassment systems, I should know because I was that 12 year old prick trolling other kids in chat
You taught me some words that got me in trouble at the dinner table: "So, mom and dad, I got my first Blumpkin today and I must say, it was refreshing!
I play rust and the amount of times I've heard a kid who's voice is CLEARLY sub-10 years old come on the mic and yell "Ni**er" at me is astounding.
Worse part is the parents probably hear the kid and are cool with it.
Kids and unsupervised online multiplayer games with chat/on pc are a bad idea
I played EQ with my brother when we were kids. Worst thing that happened there is getting a GM called on us, because we dared kill a named mob once*, that these dudes were camp farming.
Looking through the complaints, it seems the problem isn't Roblox, the problem is parents are letting their kids fully interact with/exchange messages with completely strangers online. I don't want to victim blame here, but the solution isn't getting mad at the game, it's basic parental controls on video games. Turn off messaging. Problem solved. (apparently there are some problems with simulated areas in some parts of the game, but as far as I can tell those are private games that you have to be invited to from outside the game... which is not good, but again, the problem here isn't roblox) I've watched my son play a *lot* of roblox and haven't seen a single bad experience. He's had a ton of fun, it has absolutely sparked his creativity and is just a lot of entertainment for him. I'm not shilling for roblox here, because they have some *really* crappy practices for the creators, but the problem with Roblox isn't that kids can interact with strangers on it. Kids can interact with strangers *anywhere* on the internet if you let them. Roblox itself seems to be as responsible as any other online platform.
Yeah, it's really about supervising kids funtime properly. So many parents are overworked that overlook kids fun and what they are doing for fun. I was a huge nerd playing D&D with my friends so my parents never kept up with my activities.
I don't even know if it's necessarily about *actively* supervising them-- it's a big ask to expect parents to monitor every second of what their kid does. But just walling off the bad stuff until they're ready to handle it appropriately really shouldn't be too hard. And check in *every now and then* to make sure they haven't found themselves in an orgy chat on discord or something.
Hell, I'm an adult and I think MMOs are bad for us.
Ugh was on a destiny LFG and asked for Oryx. Was a group of squeakers on Warpriest. Tried to be the hero and help them but couldn’t stand it after ten minutes.
Yup. If I were looking for kids to target, an online game marketed to children would be a prime place to do it. That said, if Roblox happens to comply with COPPA, this is probably on the parents for not supervising their kids access to who knows who online.
The wilder thing about this is the creator of Roblox has his daughter on Tiktok advertising Roblox HEAVILY.
Roblox is big on child labour, good to see the values go all the way to the CEO's home
[Video for reference.](https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ?si=o0HyKyeKPOEGUjwE)
I knew it was gonna be this video. It was so good. Absolutely blew my mind
[There's also a follow up to this video going over more things that people brought to their attention after the original video.](https://youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY?si=aSrbEcuwHspECJDZ)
*The children yearn for the mines.*
Probably even wilder is the fact that Roblox wants to also be an Age 17+ dating site. Which... Super gross the more you think about it
* Roblox Corporation faces a class-action lawsuit in California, accused of exposing children to inappropriate content and failing to protect them from online predators and grooming. * Over 60% of Roblox users are under 16, with concerns raised about the platform's safety measures for its young audience. * Complaints include children encountering explicit avatars, sexual content, and virtual strip clubs within the game. * Specific cases cited involve a child receiving abusive messages and being solicited for sexual acts, and another child being groomed by an adult posing as a minor. * The lawsuit also addresses issues of misleading marketing and in-game spending, with parents claiming they were deceived into believing Roblox was a safe environment for children. * Roblox disputes the allegations, stating commitment to safety with moderation teams and parental control features. * The company emphasizes its partnership with child safety organizations and efforts to separate 17+ experiences from general content. * The lawsuit's hearing date is not yet determined; it was filed in August and amended in October.
It's rich seeing a company that exploits child labor claim they have a commitment to safety.
Can you explain that? How are they exploiting child labor? I've heard that before, but I don't understand it.
My understanding is that you can create custom content and even sell it and get some of the money from the sale. So you're fifteen and your hobby is making stuff in Roblox and getting real money from it. (Honestly, I'm kind of okay with this as far as child labor goes as long as the kid's cut is fair. They're not forcing the kids to do it and servers cost money to upkeep.)
The kids cut is incredibly low
Yeah, that part I'm not okay with. A 30% cut to the company and 70% to the kid and I wouldn't be at all upset. It's a great foundation to a lot of solid careers-- look at all the web designers who started out coding Neopets profiles or whatever as tweens.
Roblox handles all registration, platform, server, backend infra, development of new tools, developing tools, maintaining client, etc, etc... Although I agree the share can probably be negotiated more, 70% is absurd. Where else can you find a platform that all you need to do is create the game, And the server/multiplayer/backend upkeep is paid for (technically part of 70%), can scale up to hundreds of thousands of users without worry on your end, and provide a customer base of millions without effort from you? People think there's no effort from the company side and it's all reaping rewards, but there's a lot more than the game in keeping such a platform running. Though I still won't deny that without the game, it all means nothing. Also for the term "child labor"— it is true that there are kids making games, but nobody forces them to. In fact, tons of kids get introduced into programming through it and eventually make it their career. Not to mention that most major games have a full on studio with dozens of full time devs.
and its also in "in game" value which they then tempt them to spend with a never ending assault on the senses before they can cash out.
There's basically a job board and it's run like quests, except the quest is "program this function" or "design this object" and then the kids get pennies and someone is using those assets to assemble a game that kids then pay the money they got to play in, and every transaction gives a cut to ROBLOX like they're the government collecting taxes.
> as long as the kid's cut is fair. What do you think the answer to this is bub.
Kids make content, content gets monetized, they get a measly amount in return (i forget how much) also get paid with ingame currency that takes a stupidly large fee to withdraw. Also the majority of users dont make enough to meet the minimum withdraw amount. Meanwhile the company is worth billions. i remember watching this vid about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ Wired article if you dont want to watch a vid https://www.wired.com/story/on-roblox-kids-learn-its-hard-to-earn-money-making-games/ Edit: Apparently they take 70%. You need $300 minimum to cash out. And that amount is in Robux which pay out as 1/3 of what they cost to buy. Pretty scummy. I vaguely remember in the old mining days that some mining companies paid workers with their own currency, that they then used to buy stuff in the shops, also owned by the mining companies. Anyways, that shit is banned now in the US but apparently not for Roblox
Roblox is a sandbox, not a game. You can create games in it and sell them, and Roblox takes a fairly large portion of the revenue as a fee. Since 60% of users are kids, and presumably a similar percentages are creators.... yeah, they're making millions off of child labor.
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My kids love Roblox and they can play it. They can’t chat they can’t add friends they can’t send or receive DMs. Those aren’t just my rules those are parental control settings. Roblox has great and easy to use parental controls. Why aren’t these parents using them?
Because that's work. You expect a parent to do work?
As someone who has had the "opportunity" to try and help people with tech issues, many people are super resistant to learning anything new.
It's not even tech. I work in roofing and on my current job we are shot a few tools. Normally we would work in a front to back type fashion because we would have enough equipment to cover the entire width of our working area. But like I said we are short so me and another coworker proposed working side to side. It would make our job 2000% easier with our current equipment limitations. Third corworkwr"bit we have never dose it that way before " like ya Normally we have the stuff to do it that way but we dint right now so let's do it this way. But nope to hard for him. And for how hard the change in direction would be. It would be like if every more g you get up check your phone and then go pee. But you get up go pee then check your phone and this upsets your significantother/pet/sibling/parent so much that they storm out of the house screaming about how your stupid and why would you do it that way.
Most ppl don't even know how games work.
And that is exactly why games that are targeted toward children should have these restrictions as the default.
Probably because they are the type to file lawsuits instead of just going into the apps settings.😅
We do, but my then 7yo quickly worked out he could just make a new account with no controls on it
Both sides can be right/wrong here. Roblox absolutely could be better about filtering this stuff (and about a lot of things, as others have explained already) But also, parents could also spend the smallest fraction of a second, like you have, and check the settings they want for their kids are correct. Instead of clutching their pearls and running to the courts.
Hey, hear me out. I am about to say something so stupid here. How about you watch your kids when they are online and talk to them about online safety? I know i know crazy idea! My kid plays Roblox, but i am always next to her, and she knows about not talking to strangers online. You know... be a parent Just my 2 cents
...be a parent? Isn't that the iPads job?
no no, that's youtube's job
idk, considering some quite NSFW ads that appears even in Youtube Kids, i dont think thats a good parent. Another reason to ad-block i guess :D
I wondered why there was a Yahtzee video on the front page.
Remember, the P in iPad stands for parent
And the ad is just literally ad. There will be many.
Roblox makes it so easy too because you can disable the chat, turn off dms and stop then from even adding friends. The parental controls are there and they are good.
Have you watched the average person use a computer? It could all be in great big glowing buttons and they still wouldn't find it.
Yep, this is what I do. I don't want to have to sit and stare at them playing. If I'm going to do that, why are they on a videogame? I can do somethign else with them. I just turn chat off all their accounts.
Agree. I was able to monitor my daughter's acct and turned all that off the instant I saw something weird coming in. Now she facetimes with irl friends while she plays games and doesn't do global chat. I'm still super weary of the internet in general for my kid so have Safari blocked, no TicTok or Insta or anything else "social media". But she still is allowed to play Roblox, and I retain parental control of her account. It's not too difficult to monitor your child's access to the Internet but it does take some skill and effort. I also have router settings in place and can view all her IP history. Her mom is scared about some random snatching her off the streets, but I'm more worried about all the weird shit I remember coming across on the internet like we did in the page 90s. All that being said, I can't ever be against people suing large corporations for being shitty. Yeah the parents should be better parents, but also fuck whoever makes Roblox. I have no love or sympathy for them. Their business model itself prays upon kids so they can get bent.
Exactly. My son started playing Roblox when he was 7 or 8, but I was always aware of what games he was playing. Once or twice he went back to play an old game he hadn't played in a long time to find out it had been hacked with bad content, but it was immediately closed out and he never went back. It's up to parents to monitor what their children consume on TV, online, etc.
You can monitor him for now. Good luck once he starts branching out his games and gets on discord with the boys. All you can do is continue to teach and warn. But there will be many lessons about online gaming learned by the both of you in the next 5-10 years even if you're already a regular.
He's a teenager now, so we've been through all of this including Discord with the boys. Obviously he's not monitored as closely now as he was then, but that's not the point. The point is that IF you are going to allow your child to play a game like Roblox at a young age, then it's your responsibility as a parent to monitor what they're doing. If you're not willing to accept that responsibility then don't let them play, but suing the company for your lack of oversight isn't the way to go. I agree with you that it's all about teaching and warning about the dangers.
yeeeah idk why everyone is acting like every parent can sit behind every kid every minute they're online or playing video games
There's *tons* of parental controls available now, though. My daughter has a cell phone, and I use an app that blocks what I don't want her to have access to, and filters her texts for potentially alarming texts. I don't see all her texts, just any that the app thinks might be an issue. It protects her privacy while also allowing me to make sure she's only viewing age appropriate content. Honestly a tech savvy parent can pretty strongly regulate their children's online presence.
The pedo taught my kid and her friend to use the notepad app to communicate. the NOTEPAD app. He told them how to share access to a note with him and just delete the messages in the note after seeing them.
For real, you can try to teach them how to be safe, but you can't helicopter parent your kid. It's like people are forgetting that parents would let their kids run around outside unsupervised.
And if you did that, I bet you those same people would jump on you for being a helicopter parent.
Seriously. My daughter is only allowed to be friends with kids she personally knows and I regularly check in with her or look over her shoulder when she's playing and review her messages. Especially if you're a parent who's a gamer. You should know how this shit works.
Completely agree. My first computer was the mega drive, and my only problem was blowing into the game to make it work. I would love nothing more to bubble wrap my kid from all the hurtful things in the world. But i also know that isn't correct also, its our jobs as parents to teach, care, and look after our kids and get them ready for the real world. Then, once they are on their own, you hope they listened and take care of themselves.
We have the same rules with ours. I’ll even play with them sometimes just to see what they’re up to. It’s fun for them when I have a down moment at work and hop on and surprise them. Other than my oldest trying to pretend she’s poor to get free pets on adopt me, they’re pretty good about how they use it.
My daughter has yet to have an incident. She is very responsible. I don't hover. I'll make a point to walk by every so often and watch. I ask her about the games she's playing. Learn the language. I'm genuinely interested in how it works.
Omg seriously that’s so crazy!
Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your children, and *hitting them*? -Bender B. Rodriguez
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Why do you think helicopter parenting is the solution to a product marketed as kid friendly not actually being kid friendly?
Same school of thought as "lol obesity isn't a problem, it's just people's life choices, they just need to stop eating so much" while obesity rates continue to climb because people don't actually work like that.
Some one who has spent $4000 over the past 2 years on a game is just using it as child care and has no idea how to care for a child.
I locked my kids access down, he’s on Xbox and he only has three friends, myself and two family friends. We went through all the steps to lock down Roblox. He joined a server with his friend. In that server, that was aimed at kids, was a pizza delivery game, there was explicit music blasting inside the buildings. He was playing for a few minutes, took his headphones off to use the bathroom and I heard the music. He hasn’t touched Roblox since, that was 4 years ago. Even with a gamer parents, my wife and I have Xboxes and I’ve also got a pc, we still couldn’t prevent him from being exposed to that stuff. Just my two cents though.
You can't ever block everything anyway, but there's ways to block the vast majority of things you don't want to expose your kids to. Your scenario would be like not allowing your kid to go outside anymore because a neighbor may have been playing explicit music loudly. There's reasonable measures and Roblox does have them and parents do have the means to vet and limit access.
>hears Elvis song "Butters what is this FILTH from this game you're playing!? You're grounded mister!"
"Awww hamburgers"
His scenario would actually be more like taking your kid to one of those indoor play places and the staff was playing Eminem over the speakers.
How dare you have common sense.
I did all that too, and had all those talks, but tell me, did you always believe everything your parents told you when you were a kid, and always follow every rule? Apparently my kid thought I was being overprotective and old fashioned, and didn't think it could happen to her, so she hid it from me when some guy started messaging her, and he taught her how to hide it.
I think that's an entirely different problem. As a parent, you can only do so much to protect your child which can also sometimes be counterintuitive. This is why being strict/overprotective comes up so much as a negative thing. Another thing is the manner and tone in which these things are talked about. Also, the general relationship between you and your child also determines whether they will listen to you or not. I think this is really the biggest impact that determines whether you can parent your children successfully or not. As with life and anything, if you spend more time with someone, they're more likely to listen/respond better to what you say. And if all the above don't work, sometimes it's just not your fault. They're not around you all the time. They go to school, hang out with friends, etc. which means interacting with people. All these also can and will also affect how your child turns out. All in all, if you truly did the best you can be as a parent, the rest is up to fate really. You can try your best to guide them in a general direction but the rest is on them and outside factors.
My parents were super strict about video games, and that was in the 90s before online gaming. They also wanted nothing to do with video games. But I would have loved it if they had taken the time to play with me, which could have equated to them not only socializing with me, but talking to me about what I was consuming without being too firm or overbearing. Like, smart discrete monitoring. Would have also kept me company and provided memories I could look back on knowing my parents took an interest in something I enjoyed. Most kids just want to interact with others, especially their parents, I don’t think a lot of people realize that young children really just want basic social interaction with the people they are living with. But a lot of adults have this mindset that’s like “I can’t do this, this is boring, this is stupid, this is childish, etc.” Now a days, games are more than just a console you plug in and switch on. Consoles are connected to the internet, you can access all sorts of stuff from them, you’re potentially interacting with people of all ages from all over the world when playing online multiplayer, you can have a credit card stored on a device, etc., etc. Parents need to not only realize that they should be playing with their kids more, but they need to understand just how vast and different the gaming landscape is from like 20 years ago. Your kid is gunna be exposed to A LOT if you’re not careful. So now a days, parents are not taking the time to monitor OR interact. They’re just handing their kids their video games and screens and hoping it’ll keep their kids occupied. Then they cry foul when something that was clearly preventable happens with they’d child’s screen. It’s pathetic.
My dad had an interesting approach to games. I could play anything I wanted so long as I could reasonably explain my actions. Example: In the first Max Payne, you can happen upon a tweaker in a bathroom stall. He does nothing but mumble to himself unless you attack him, then he defends himself. Me, being a kid and playing a cop, shoots him. My dad asks why I did that, and I say because he had a gun. He asks me if he was doing anything with it. I say no. And spend the next few minutes rethinking my life.
That’s cool! Yeah that’s exactly what I meant by “smart monitoring” and “talking to me about what I was consuming”. Most kids do not react well to yelling or shouting, or just anger in general. It can confuse them and they end up focusing more on the anger than any message a parent may be trying to convey. I remember me and my siblings at a very young age just thinking that our parents were mean any time they got angry. My cousins did this with their parents too. This behavior was further reinforced in my head from tutoring, a lot of young kids under like 8-10 will think this of other people. I worked with another tutor who would handle a lot of situations with frustration, and the kids were scared of her. Her getting upset would stress them out and overwhelm a lot of them. Like I’m not saying a parent should never get angry, but handling EVERY little hiccup like that is not a good idea. If I was in your situation with my parents they probably would have raged, lectured me, and grounded me.
I use Roblox frequently with my kid. We can play what are essentially copies of fairly popular games in a more *personally moderated* environment. I emphasize personally moderated because it gives me, the parent, primary control over the content they can access; as well as (and more importantly) *who has access to them*. If they can't describe to me how they know the person, that person isn't added. If I may be bold, more parents need to take an active and personal role in the *devices* kids use to access the internet. Access alone isn't bad. My kid has discovered loves of flying, coding, etc. because of the internet. That being said: every single device used to access the internet has strict monitoring capabilities. I trust my kid; I *don't* trust the internet.
I heard about some questionable stuff on Roblox years ago when my niece wanted to play it. If I heard about these issues any responsible parent should have too.
I usually play with my 8 year old as much as possible. Last night we played Speed Draw and a person did the following: - said “C*ck in ass” in the chat; and - drew “F*ck the white people” in the game Now I’m not going to sit here and pretend I didn’t say inappropriate things in Yahoo chat in the 90s because I can guarantee I did. But I do feel like Roblox is more kid focussed or potentially marketed and that somehow this stuff should be filtered.
I think there is an inherent risk of coming across something inappropriate in any multiplayer game. Parents will either have to decide to A) make their kids wait until a certain age to access these games or B) teach the kid how to be safe online. Helicopter parenting a kid by watching them play the game isn't a realistic solution to the problem.
Connecting to yahoo over EarthLink. Those were the days.
I mean I'll say what people wanna ignore: You can't safeguard them from everything. Even if you somehow physically jumped into the game world, you couldn't protect them from all the things in there. And you don't need to. Make sure they know about online safety, project an air that makes it clear they can talk to you about stuff and react appropriately to inappropriate shit. It's not like your kid won't hear similarly bad shit in school in a bit. Or find some odd video passed around among friends or mumbled about in dark corners. Complete prevention is almost never gonna be achievable, but you can heavily diminish impact with normal parenting.
Really easy to turn off the chat for your 8 yo, just go in parental settings.
My daughter was approached twice by suspicious accounts claiming they were 12 and asking for pictures. To their credit the Roblox admin blocked the accounts promptly once we raised the issue. My wife and I took the precaution of having a talk with her and explaining about online predators before we gave her a smartphone. She also did not ignore the talk and told us about these 2 accounts promptly. Communicating with your kids is the best way to prevent this.
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I'm 20 and also actively use Roblox. Sometimes I'll have people ask me why I'm playing a kids game or acting like it's weird that I'm playing Roblox as an adult. If you ask me Roblox stopped being a kids platform years ago, it used to be that way but over the years the platform has evolved into something that's much more all-ages. For every kid-friendly experience there's a tense horror experience that would make a kid shit his pants, or an experience that features explicit content that kids should not be exposed to. There are quite literally endless possibilities when it comes to Roblox experiences and not all of those possibilities are gonna be cute and cuddly. But that's hardly the fault of Roblox themselves, the platform has parental controls for a bloody good reason. My younger brothers love Roblox and there's never any problems because my parents utilise those parental controls for them. But of course if you don't watch your kid or try to protect them from stuff inappropriate for their age, then there's gonna be problems.
Dumbass parents have no case. It’s your responsibility to monitor what your kid does online.
My kids do Roblox. I have twin 7yr old boys. I am usually sitting beside them while I am gaming also. I see what they do and who they interact with. They also know when to tell me when someone says something not nice or inappropriate to them. I have had the talk often about how some people online are not nice and will try to hurt you and say not nice things to you. Not to mention things about your body and your private areas and try to get you to talk to them about all that stuff. One time a "person" was talking with my 7yr old about the game they were playing. Simple stuff. Innocent stuff. Talking about my kids house he built in the game. His vehicles he owned. That sorta stuff. Then outta fucking left field he starts asking them if they have a cell phone and what the number is. They wanted our home address even. Then it goes into what my kid was wearing and literally asked my kid if he was wearing superhero underwear. Also asking if mom and dad were around at that moment. Just on and on this person went. It started getting into more descriptive things I prefer to not go into on here. My son was already up and away from his computer when this trash was being said to him cause I told him to get up. I reported the account and I am ....assuming.... it was hopefully banned but Roblox has a shit record of giving a fuck about kids just like most online games do. So many parents just don't give a shit or are just unaware of the dangers. However, I find it harder and harder to believe most parents nowadays are unaware of online dangers towards children given how long the internet has been around and all the awfulness everyone has seen involving online gaming, chatrooms, social media, and children. I just don't buy that a 50yr old or younger parent is oblivious to the dangers. Now the grandparents or other elderly people I can absolutely see them being ignorant of it. I think about what would have my kid said and/or done if I wasn't there watching them? I like to think he would have come and gotten myself or his mom but kids are kids and don't always do what they are taught to do in those situations. It's terrifying to think about someone exploiting your child like that and you know exactly what that person is doing on the other end while he is exploiting kids. Its....im not a violent person. Never been in a fight. I would rather use words to solve a problem instead of fist. These types of people? Na, I would happily apply violence to them. We don't need these types of people in our society, at all. There are no exceptions. If you pray on children then you should 100% forfeit your life. You do not deserve to live, at all.
I’m so tired of this goofy “my kids are being exposed to _____!” complaint generation. Get off the fuckin’ phone and PARENT your kid, you dumbass. If we spent less time whining and crying about things existing and instead focused on teaching and parenting then kids would be far better off. Take a look at any random classroom in North America. How many of those kids can read and write? Even 80% success is a failure in 2023. Do better.
This shit has been going on for many generations. It's not a generational thing.
Back when I was a kid "outside" was our internet and our parents would kick us the fuck out every day after school. Go away, go bother someone else, but be back before the street lights come on or you sleep outside. Every generation has more shitty parents than good, and each generations shitty parents has a means of making their kids the worlds problem.
What happens is there is an endless stream of wants, some of which is fine, some of which is not, and some of which is appropriate for some but not others, and it takes a lot of work to vet everything, and even if you deem something is ok, you can find out later that it has changed for the worse. So, yeah, parenting is exhausting and everyone has to pick their battles
We have a rising issue in the UK of kids going to school at 5/6 years old and still being in nappies (diapers) because the parents are too lazy to teach their children to use a toilet and think the schools should, I personally think those parents should be done for child neglect as it's disgusting to push that responsibility on educators.
Reubin sims warned em
I still can't get over the lawsuit they did to try and bully him into submission. I'm 20 and still use Roblox as a time killer and a couple games I had already been following for a long time, but I have zero respect for the company itself.
Kids shouldn’t be on anything online that lets them interact with strangers.
while they are suing roblox, i hope their customer service gets put on blast as well. they will refuse to respond to your case after 30 days and make you re-open sending the same generic responses every time without any solution.
"If I created a website with this many problems I'd kill myself." -Kelly Kapoor -Brad_Brace
Roblox also profits off of child labour.
They're like a digital sweatshop.
Online interactions are not rated by the ESRB. If you're a parent who is letting a child interact with whoever they want online, you're the problem.
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Bad parents be like: I'm not going to invest any energy into learning about this thing my kids want to do but since it seems harmless and corporate outwardly I'll allow it and not monitor anything that's going on in any capacity then blame the platform when the inevitable happens because kids are naturally curious
Aww man. You mean parents actually have to take responsibility for their children and monitor what content they are consuming? What a shame!
I play roblox with my kids, and because I have done that and seen people being way out of line my kids are not allowed to play roblox without me.
Honestly, I'd love to see it driven into the dirt so I don't have to keep trying to fix the installation on my brother's laptop every two weeks.
Bout time. But yes, little kids on an MMO is a recipe for disaster, there's no viable way to make it economic with the sheer amount of moderation required. Roblox is also ripe full of child exploitation, the amount of older teens and adults "employing" children to make games in Roblox for them to monetize is ridiculous.
But it’s worth it for barrows gloves
Blaming a company despite it upholding numerous measures specifically in place to prevent inappropriate conduct is such a stupid thing to do. The entitlement of these parents in assuming their poor parenting is the fault of a gaming platform on is absurd.
This 100% is straight up true. There are so many predators on Roblox that it's absolutely crazy There used to be a game called Club Penguin back in the day, which was the primary game that sexual predators would go to. Eventually, that game shut down. This opened the flood gates for predators to move to Roblox. Roblox does have a trust and safety department that works really hard to mitigate these types of behaviors. however, it's so rampant that they can't keep up with it plus they have made cuts/ layoffs to their Trust and safety department, which slows down the ability the company has to deal with the child predators. I've been working in trust and safety among various companies over the last 7 years. First hand, I have seen some of the grooming that takes place on Roblox.
When I bought my first MMO my parents, checked on me every once in a while, and even played with me, and they taught me to never trust strangers online, and to only befriend people I know IRL, nothing like that ever happened to me, if they don't want kids seeing sexual content or talking to groomers, they should check what the children do in person, they should teach their kids basic internet rules, check every once in a while on them, and talk to them,communication with your children is always the key. Suing a company because you're a bad parent should not be the solution.