The most impressive thing about Roblox is how many predatory parties they have managed to pack into one children's platform. The company itself with its microtransactions, cash hungry creators with lowest common denominator and/or sexualized content, creepy adults behaving badly, probably some hostile foreign governments in all likelihood. Maybe add in a 4chan integration next just to cover a wider spectrum of villainy.
There are parental controls that don’t seem to do much good at all. I set a filter so that my 6-year-old son would only see content that was rated for kids. The next thing I know I see he’s playing a prison riot simulator and having a shootout with the police. There were some appropriate games, but the screening just isn’t serious. When it’s game time, we pretty much stick to Mario and offline Minecraft.
Be sure not to pay for switch online. They bury a bunch of social media / data sharing opt-ins about halfway through the game, where parents will not discover them. (Look for Luigi to see if your kid opted in.)
I've implemented the per-day time limit and it's just broken? It's very hard to measure how much time has been spent on the day, their measure is often above the limit I set, and sometimes a low limit will trigger immediately.
It seems like the limit and time measurement is based on the US time zone alone, not the local time zone. We're in Australia and that's the only explanation I can think of.
If you're interested in a technical solution, Amazon Kids+ on Kindle seems to enforce time limits reasonably well, except for the camera.
Thanks :) I've gone back to just being vigilant, regular parenting; often joining the games myself. I can recommend 99 Nights In the Forest, nice simple survival-style game with very little in-your-face-monetization.
Also, disabling chat is insufficient because some Roblox experiences re-implement their own chat and ignore the parental controls setting.
I don’t think it’s serious in any platform of any scale. I remember having some pedo on AOL try to groom me as a 7(?) year old, except I was aware enough to punch out of the situation very quickly. The kind of thing basic keyword filters could have flagged and caught.
Similarly, I remember my families account being banned because I dared to say “Santa isn’t real” in a chat around the same timeframe.
Very serious administration for a billions dollar firm…
Hmm maybe the answer is that there should be no anonymous online platforms targeting children at all.
The problem is that verifying adulthood for the remaining online spaces risks making them non-anonymous as well.
A 6 year old with internet access? Allowed to play multiplayer online games? Please tell me I'm hallucinating.
We can’t all be Mennonites. I wasn’t much older than that when my family got dial up Internet, and somehow I made it.
You aren't, but you might have woken up from a decade long coma. This isn't new at all.
Surely it's rare? "Abnormal"?
No. Common.
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It’s almost like age-appropriate is subjective. Roblox is primarily concerned with child safety when it comes to communication, and less about dictating what’s appropriate and not appropriate for arbitrary ages.
> Roblox is primarily concerned with child safety
It's not. In every possible context, it's not concerned with that.
It absolutely categorically is.
Make sure you're up to date on this saga https://youtu.be/6dksQJulz4c and tell me again they care at all.
Oh it keeps getting better... https://kotaku.com/roblox-new-york-times-interview-baszucki-...
Tell me they care...
Isn't Roblox owned by a publicly traded company? No shit they aren't concerned with child safety, that would cut into profits, which would make shareholders deeply upset.
Won't anyone think of the poor shareholders?
4chan would be looking in the wrong direction since it has nothing for kids. Other games and game-like experiences are probably just as bad as Roblox and just haven't been brought out into the light. I personally remember Gaia Online being pretty bad back when I was a teen.
Sure, but how many kids are currently hooked on Gaia Online? (Or 20 years ago for that matter?)
I will happily complain about these other just as bad games when I discover them, don't you worry ;)
There are hostile foriegn governments in Roblox? What for?
Now they’re trying to normalize mandatory “turn on the camera to access porn” services. Really?!?
As a parent, all I want is for the fucking thing to let zero people that I have not approved communicate with my kid in any way. This especially includes people that made games and gambling dens.
Also, influencers.
Stop giving them internet-access devices.
Truly. My daughter and her friends play a lot on it but only a few games and I always have an ear out for which ones because it’s such a cesspool.
Roblox calling themselves the industry gold standard in online safety is about as ridiculous as Riot Games calling themselves the beacon of technical excellence in game development.
I can't find it now, but I recall an article written by someone who worked with Disney on an online game for children called Hercworld. Apparently, Disney had a rule for interaction which became known as "the Disney standard" at this shop: no child shall be harassed even if they do not know they are being harassed.
If anyone deserved the title "Beacon of Technical Excellence in Game Development," I'd like to nominate Embark Studios
I've been saying we need a separate Internet for kids. Not just because of pedos, but because young adults don't have the same level of respect and filters that one should have when dealing with kids and it's exposing them to behavior they shouldn't. This is a great step.
> we need a separate Internet for kids
Good start. But this still leaves them at the mercy of these tech companies.
Kids—especially pre-teens—should not have social media. There is just way too much evidence that this has harmed and is harming an increasingly class-segregated generation.
Gas stations are careful about selling cigarettes to kids. We need these developers to have even a shadow of that concern.
Problem is some kids don't have alternatives to online. Just recently on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945114
Not saying you're wrong, but it's more complicated than you think in many cases. The rot goes deep into society as a whole, which tech corpos then exploit.
> some kids don't have alternatives to online
A phenomenon that's facilitated by their access to screens. (There is a horrifying class divide emerging in the West in the 1:1 relationship between kids' screen time and the parents' wealth.)
Today: Social media is harming our kids, ban it!
30 years ago: Video games are harming our kids, ban it!
60 years ago: Rock and roll is harming our kids, ban it!
There is little evidence to support social media causes harm. Even correlations are weak. As a large study on the subject put it, the association of well-being with regularly eating potatoes was nearly as negative as the association with [social media] use.
This looks like yet another moral panic.
today: kids should be out doing drugs and having sex, not sitting on social media all day
some low birthrate countries are basically saying that already...
>the association of well-being with regularly eating potatoes was nearly as negative as the association with [social media] use.
Maybe regularly eating potatoes is a lot worse for a person that most of us currently realize. (They do have an extremely high glycemic index and high levels of oxalic acid.)
Potatoes are harming the kids, ban it?
Seriously though, the correlation is just weak - far to weak to actually draw conclusions from let alone ban it.
Australia and Denmark are on track to ban social media for kids. I hope scientists are watching - it’ll be fascinating to get some actual data on what happens.
30 years ago: leaded gasoline and lead-containing paint is harming our kids.
I mean.. you do you, but the data seems pretty clear. Social media use among children significantly impacts mental health in a negative way, in well designed study after study. There's a good summary out of the HHS (at least until they take it down): https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/reports-and-publications/...
You have any pointers to well designed studies that show it's as innocent as a video game or rock and roll?
> The types of use and content children and adolescents are exposed to pose mental health concerns. Children and adolescents who spend more than 3 hours a day on social media face double the risk of mental health problems including experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety.3 This is concerning as a recent survey showed that teenagers spend an average of 3.5 hours a day on social media.4 And when asked about the impact of social media on their body image, 46% of adolescents aged 13-17 said social media makes them feel worse.5
Are those kids spending more than 3 hours a day already suffering from depression/anxiety? What would those adolescents say about the impact of their classmates/school on their body image?
> We have gaps in our full understanding of the mental health impacts posed by social media but at this point cannot conclude it is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents. We must better understand the answers to key questions, such as, which types of content are most harmful and what factors can protect young people from the negative effects of social media.
This seems to recognize a lot more nuance than "the data seems pretty clear"
(To say nothing of what even "social media" is. Is HN social media?)
That Surgeon General's Advisory also warns against video games.
As did the Surgeon General in 1980 who warned kids were addicted to video games body and soul.
wow, you're not kidding.
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/11/10/us/around-the-nation-surg...
Dude no, sorry, those things have nothing on Roblox, it’s the most toxic damaging thing ever.
No, we don't. You need to teach your kids the skills to deal with the realities of the modern world before giving them unrestricted access to the internet.
Yeah let me explain racism and all the swearing from these degenerates who can't behave themselves around children.
Sure, why not?
The alternative is for your children to learn about these things on their own, which isn't that bad either. Most kids turn out just fine that way.
> I've been saying we need a separate Internet for kids.
That is moronic. And destructive.
Children are human beings, and are supposed to get a chance to grow naturally into being community members. That is an incremental process. Not everybody does all the parts in the same order, nor at the same rate. And you don't suddenly snap from being a "child" into being an "adult", and reboot all your human connections in that moment.
You don't mature at all without interacting with some adult role models (not just seeing them from afar, and not just seeing the parts people want to show you). No, your parents are not enough. You also need to interact with slightly older, and substantially older, non-adults. The tight age cohort isolation produced by schools is already destructive enough to social development.
Children are also entitled to have access to information and activities, just like everybody else. And, no, not all of that would somehow get duplicated into your child ghetto.
And it means absolutely nothing that people "used to do that just fine without the Internet". That was before everything was done via the Internet.
> Not just because of pedos, but because young adults don't have the same level of respect and filters that one should have when dealing with kids and it's exposing them to behavior they shouldn't.
Get a fucking grip. Kids can handle knowing about behavior you don't like. They can handle knowing about really bad behavior. They can handle seeing what older people do,and what the consequences are. In fact, that is essential to the development of their own values and capacity for self-governance.
If you raise somebody in a box until the age of 18, don't be surprised if they can't deal with the outside world when you force them out of it.
Your opinion is unsettling. You seem to conscientiously ignore the vulnerability of young children. To the contrary you advocate for the violation of their innocence. For the love of all that is good I hope your opinion remains a lonely minority.
I am going to assume it's the ignorance of a twenty something who is far away from becoming a parent.
Try sixty-something with an adult child.
There is a disease going around among the "youngsters" who are parents these days. I'd call it overprotectiveness, but it doesn't actually protect anybody, just stunts them and actually makes them vulnerable. What it is is what's known as a purity spiral, a dangerous form of groupthink in which people compete to be the most extreme.
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Nah dude. Stay away from other people's kids, it's not a new rule.
See also the hard-to-separate growing cohort of people who never leave their parents homes long after becoming adults, not because there are no opportunities to pursue, but because they only know how to do things they are given express permission and direction to do because that's all they've known.
Lol you think your average internet gamer is a ROLE MODEL. My god what a joke. I've never heard worse things in my life than in a call of duty lobby and we don't need children exposed to that level of hatred when they're still innocent.
Why do you hang out there then? And why is it the first thing you think of when you think about a giant worldwide information network?
I try not to think of everybody who plays video games as an arrested adolescent in Mom's basement, but it's kind of hard. Especially with the "Lol" stuff.
I agree that separating kids from adults is an improvement, but I disagree this is a "great step" due to the mechanism. Using a child's biometrics is a horrible step. Why can't this just be done with parental controls? We should not normalize games collecting biometrics on children. I don't expect them to keep the data safe or to not abuse the data.
Yeah parental controls is probably the optimal solution. Biometrics makes me uncomfortable as well. They say they're deleting it immediately but do you trust them? I know better than to trust in anything being deleted.
They only claim to delete the picture an video, so I don’t the biometric will be deleted since it’s not mentioned
while yes, they probably should, however, it wouldn't protect them from pedos.
We had AOL back in the day, but...
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Remember, Roblox is toxic and exploits young people.
- Roblox Isn't a Game | Psychology Today // https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/video-game-health/20...
- Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers - YouTube // https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ
- Roblox Pressured Us to Delete Our Video. So We Dug Deeper. - YouTube // https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMF6xEiAaY
Roblox is Darker Than You Think (ft. Ruben Sim) - YouTube // https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av03P5D11PQ&t=55s
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So besides scanning your child's face they also want access to their phone contacts.
You can thank the Australian government for this change in direction.
This is deeply concerning. No parent should be letting their kids faces be scanned with this. They claim to “delete” the image a videos after the scan, but make no mistake, the signature is saved and will be used to track the child online for the rest of their life. We need to have better protections around biometrics. Surveillance is not the solution we want.
This is a threat model that needs to be discussed more. When you share personal information in a way linked to your identity, you should be aware that that link will exist forever. Can you trust custodians of your data forever?
> the signature is saved and will be used to track the child online for the rest of their life
Source:
Discord leak
It'd be nice if they'd do some simple common sense things - like give you a report of which games were being played and provide parental controls around which games can be played. It shocks me (but not really) that they haven't done this.
They are held back by the exact same technical obstacles that prevented Google from adding the ability to disable YouTube Shorts on your child’s account.
> ability to disable YouTube Shorts on your child’s account
Can I disable it on my account!?
If you have a parental account this is all available for a while now: You can see which games your child plays, full chat history, and who they chat with.
And you can block them from interacting with specific games or users.
Does that help with any of this?
https://hindenburgresearch.com/roblox/
"Following years of scandals, we performed our own checks to see if the platform had cleaned up its act. As a test, we attempted to set up an account under the name ‘Jeffrey Epstein’…only to see the name was taken, along with 900+ variations. Many were Jeffrey Epstein fan accounts, including “JeffEpsteinSupporter” which had earned multiple badges for spending time in kid’s games. Other Jeff Epstein accounts had the usernames “@igruum_minors” [I groom minors], and “@RavpeTinyK1dsJE” [rape tiny kids]. We attempted to set up a Roblox account under the name of another notorious pedophile to see if Roblox had any up-front pedophile screening: Earl Brian Bradley was indicted on 471 charges of molesting, raping and exploiting 103 children. The username was taken, along with multiple variants like earlbrianbradley69. After we found a username, we listed our age as “under 13” to see if children are being exposed to adult content. By merely plugging ‘adult’ into the Roblox search bar, we found a group called “Adult Studios” with 3,334 members openly trading child pornography and soliciting sexual acts from minors. We tracked some of the members of “Adult Studios” and easily found 38 Roblox groups – one with 103,000 members – openly soliciting sexual favors and trading child pornography."
No but look how hard they try and now they have a feature they can wiggle around with if something bad happens. It's theater as always with stuff like this. There is just no way of doing it without real inconvenience for every user. Inconvenience really hurts the bottom line...
Fort Gayers want their limelight back
There's no cheap way of doing it without inconvenience for every user. Rather than age checks, they could just remove the CSAE distribution groups, appropriately moderate abusive conduct, and so on. HN has basically no restrictions whatsoever, and it's hardly a hive of scum and villainy: it's not fundamentally difficult to accomplish this, you just have to put the work in.
HN doesn’t have a young, ignorant community to exploit.
It’s mostly the positive-direction moderation that makes HN immune to the infiltration.
What do you expect, Roblox and other large internet services to hire commandos?
If the FBI gave a shit about these groups being squashed, and people being roped, they would be.
Fuck Roblox, but point the finger on ineffective tracking of child exploitation networks where it belongs.
I've been on the Internet for 20 years and have seen ... a lot of it.
I have a hard time believing groups of 103,000 members on one of the largest game platforms are "openly trading child pornography"
So go look.
Check Telegram, Matrix, and anywhere on the internet basically,
for more of the same.
You can find people openly trading CP anywhere on the Internet, huh?
Anywhere that allows throwaways to be easily created, and offers file hosting at little or marginal cost, really.
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As other kids say, two things can be true at the same time. And not lasting five minutes in a CoD lobby is going to be my new heuristic for picking friends. I don’t really need to know someone who isn’t bothered by that shit.
We’ll get downvoted but fully agreed. Because HN isn’t a place for constructive communication that lies outside the approved groupthink.
Now I kinda want to know what they said, since the comment was removed before I could read it
So open it.
Open what? How? It just says "[flagged]" for me and there is no way that I can see to actually read it. Even clicking directly on the comment doesn't show it. Unless there is some magic way to do it that I'm not aware of.
Change ShowDead flag in your user settings,
and/or click the timestamp permalink.
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Why would someone in their sound minds allow their kids to do some sort of facial age estimation made by a third-party vendor? Sounds like a great privacy-protection idea (/s).
You see, these companies leverage the lack of regulation regarding platforms. I'm not sure how one company would fight predatory users, but shifting the blame to parents or doing some techno-stuff to save the day won't do it.
We can already imagine a lot of problems with this approach – what if the vendor forgets to delete these pictures? It can be maliciously, or by sheer stupidity. What if the pictures leak at some point? Again, not every system is 100% safe from bad actors.
Last but not least – do we know if this age estimation algorithm works 100% of times? Are there studies that prove that predators won't find ways to crack this?
Also, kids in the same age group might also misbehave.
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