Please don't make excuses for literal evil p*dophile megacorporations. There is plenty of low hanging fruit, and even if there wasn't, this issue is important enough that if they can't fix it they should go out of business.

1. They can just disable chat for non age verified accounts. Done. Problem fixed. Oh, but they'll lose money, won't they? That takes precedence over child safety.

2. The community is willing to help. You can find examples of independent actors uncovering tens of thousands of NSFW communities and accounts and submitting them to Roblox with detailed descriptions of the activities of each one, only for Roblox to perma-ban AND SUE the people doing the investigations, and not ban the offending accounts.

3. They can build an actual strong safety team. A $40B company can afford to throw a few million dollars per year to hire 200 people to do that same investigatory work. This is typical tech firm behavior, where they believe every problem can be automated away, and they're not willing to do the minimal amount of manual labor.

It is indeed a hard provlem. No low hanging fruit. There certainly not alone, but have a bigger issue with grooming and predation since half of all kids use their platform.

It would be an easy problem if the government put in place sensible reforms for age verification.

I realize people may find this controversial, but from personal experience with gaming, I see all of these types of games as “predators” in and of themselves when they are “monetized”, because they are deliberately and explicitly exploiting the addicting nature of games in general, by being and manipulating a freebase of dopamine and serotonin just like the gambling industry does/used to.

If we survive this era with an intact advanced civilization, I believe people will look back on this period and “games” as an insane thing to permit, let alone facilitate and perpetrate upon one’s own children, the next generation, the offspring necessary for survival of a life form, species, race, society, or culture.

The ideal system as far as I'm concerned is one that regulates Roblox out of existence for a variety of sins.

At this point I'm just waiting for someone to dig up a name associated with Roblox in the Epstein files, because that's the only way I can conceive of how they've managed to avoid getting shut down this long.

Interesting. If you don't mind me asking. If I understand the business correctly, the brands are inquiring to design specialized worlds in Roblox so kids can play in them and look at ads?

This is the actual excuse Roblox used when confronted with actual evidence of child sex trafficking originating on their platform, at the same time balking at implementing age gates and chat restrictions. So of course they caved and implemented age gates and chat restrictions when their "central bank" (a.k.a. concerned parents) learned about Roblox's "issues" from YouTube exposés and other concerned parents.

It doesn't matter that the illegal shit happens off-platform. It is not a good look to be the top of the funnel for traffickers, which is why they put in these invasive restrictions.

If you don't like it, then invest in "creating experiences" for platforms which don't target children. Because asking "what is Roblox supposed to do about their pedo problem" didn't and will never work to placate the people who actually fund the platform.

Please check this box to confirm that you do _not_ possess a government issued photo ID ...

Sorry, in order to use this service you will need to visit your local police station and have them verify that you are in fact a child ...

Yeah I'm not seeing how this is supposed to work. I don't think age verification solves very many real world problems. (It does mitigate some, such as alcohol consumption. Just not most.)

For sure. But age verification protocols can handle such rules:

App to IdP: is this person 13-15

IdP: yes

The generation that's going to enter adulthood in the age of unchecked climate change and AI taking over their careers?

I say let them enjoy themselves while they still can.

I feel like for a 11yo, you can't even explain the risks. Not just for lack of true comprehension, but also just kids shouldn't have to worry about that stuff, and just be kids.

Getting them to accept the normalisation of surveillance while they're young?

And then people wonder why authoritarianism is on the rise...

This is ridiculous. She 11, take the damn tablet away from her.