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A classmate made a (13+) Roblox account for our son (under 10yo) behind my back. I wanted to delete it, followed all the steps to contact the company via their

by marttt 3y ago

A classmate made a (13+) Roblox account for our son (under 10yo) behind my back. I wanted to delete it, followed all the steps to contact the company via their support form, and was replied quickly and politely: "We do not have an account deletion request feature for players. You can stop using your Roblox account at any time. Should you choose to use your account again in the future, it will remain accessible to you by simply logging in." [1] I really think this is deeply cynical, considering that Roblox is also targeting young children. With this decision, I feel like they're consciously hindering parents to protect their offspring from computer gaming addiction -- in 2023. This is extremely sad. Including a dead-easy-to-find "Delete Account" button should be tacit ethical behaviour and a sign of respect towards users for every web company in 2023. Let alone the ones that target young children and thus make money exploiting their brains which are still in developmental stage. I always hesitate (that is, almost always avoid) making accounts on sites that hide their account deletion buttons. These days, is an obvious sign of distrust towards the users and it feels like there is some stupid hoax. Obviously, I can block access to roblox.com on my browser (I did, for good!), /etc/hosts, wireless router, etc. But -- actually having to this kind of user-side fiddling in 2023 feels incredibly silly. Man up, Roblox devs. Add that button, for good. 1: Same message in full length posted to reddit by somebody else: https://old.reddit.com/r/roblox/comments/10409c0/roblox_making_it_very_hard_to_delete_ones_own/ https://old.reddit.com/r/roblox/comments/10409c0/roblox_maki...

berkle4455 3y ago
Are they also going to add a button to prevent a classmate from just creating another account (or doing it themselves on any computer except yours at home)? All you do is give it a username, password, and solve a captcha. I’m confused at what deleting an account would actually solve for the problems you’re encountering.
- marttt 3y ago
  Well, yeah. Obviously, all of this is true. I asked them to ban my son's school email (which the classmate used) for X years. In that case he would need to first create a dummy email for gaming, which, I hope, he is not capable of at this point. :) But the company refused. He seems fine with only playing Minecraft (which feels safer to me conceptually), though. Interestingly, our son talks quite a bit about gaming addiction (doesn't mean he can handle it easily, though :), so my reasoning about his brain maybe not being able to handle Roblox addiction seemed to hit home. I'm not paranoid about gaming, but, hoping to have learned from my own childhood, I do prefer to carefully and thoughtfully limit their choice of games, at least for now. Roblox seemed too intensive and flashy an experience to be on that plate (I'd say our son's classmate launched some 5 or 6 Roblox games in about one minute). Also, as soon as I saw that there's something called "robux" involved, it was an obvious no-no for us.

by marttt 3y ago

berkle4455 3y ago

Are they also going to add a button to prevent a classmate from just creating another account (or doing it themselves on any computer except yours at home)? All you do is give it a username, password, and solve a captcha. I’m confused at what deleting an account would actually solve for the problems you’re encountering.

marttt 3y ago
Well, yeah. Obviously, all of this is true. I asked them to ban my son's school email (which the classmate used) for X years. In that case he would need to first create a dummy email for gaming, which, I hope, he is not capable of at this point. :) But the company refused. He seems fine with only playing Minecraft (which feels safer to me conceptually), though. Interestingly, our son talks quite a bit about gaming addiction (doesn't mean he can handle it easily, though :), so my reasoning about his brain maybe not being able to handle Roblox addiction seemed to hit home. I'm not paranoid about gaming, but, hoping to have learned from my own childhood, I do prefer to carefully and thoughtfully limit their choice of games, at least for now. Roblox seemed too intensive and flashy an experience to be on that plate (I'd say our son's classmate launched some 5 or 6 Roblox games in about one minute). Also, as soon as I saw that there's something called "robux" involved, it was an obvious no-no for us.