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"According to the company, their monthly player base includes half of all American children under the age of 16." - Wikipedia 2 decades in the making, they are

"According to the company, their monthly player base includes half of all American children under the age of 16." - Wikipedia 2 decades in the making, they are really hitting their stride. But they are not doing enough to protect children from predators and that's a huge legal and regulatory risk.

Spivak 7mo ago
See this is why I think the whole age verification thing is backwards. If you want to create child friendly spaces then you need to verify someone's age is under 18, 16, 13 etc.. That's a way more real and tangible harm than a teenager looking at a nudie mag.
- intrasight 7mo ago
  For sure. But age verification protocols can handle such rules: App to IdP: is this person 13-15 IdP: yes
  - fakedang 7mo ago
    Is Persona an IdP or does it request you to verify with personal information every single time?
- fc417fc802 7mo ago
  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.)
  - snackbroken 7mo ago
    >Yeah I'm not seeing how this is supposed to work You could verify the ID of an adult who vouches for the child they are a legal guardian of. That way, if it turns out that Brayden(M12) is actually Linda(F45) you know who to send law enforcement to to ask some very pointed questions. That said, I don't think online ID verification is effective and even if it was, it wouldn't be worth the level of mass privacy invasion. If your goal is actually to help kids who are victims of abuse, your efforts are much better spent elsewhere. For example: making child abuse report hotlines/websites more easily accessible and widely known, fixing social services so that they actually provide better help when requested instead of making things worse, better education for children about what is and is not OK behavior even from "trusted" adults, and how to get help from someone who isn't a relative when you need it. "Stranger danger" hysteria catches all the outrage and public discussion, but is the least common source of abuse.
    - freedomben 7mo ago
      > fixing social services so that they actually provide better help when requested instead of making things worse Agreed, and I wish more people would realize this. When I was a kid, one of my friend's brothers was accused of molestation. The accused kid was around 8 or 9 and the victim was around 5 or 6. The social services came in and immediately got the mom fired from her job (she was a school teacher), put the family through tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, utterly disrupted the lives of the entire family, got the accused kicked out of school and put in a special school for troubled kids (which itself brought a whole host of issues), and nearly ripped the family apart. There was no evidence at all of the crime, other than the word of the accuser (a 5 or 6 year old child). Fast forward a few years later and the accuser apologized profusely and admitted that it had never happened. Oh and also the accused was at a friend's house at the time of the supposed molestation, and the friends' parents had told the investigators that. Law enforcement dropped the case having determined it not likely to be true and certainly nowhere near the evidence for prosecution (in fact, there was evidence that the event never happened), but social services proceeded with all of the above anyway. So yeah, there's a lot of work to do to make anybody want to trust them to help rather than make everything worse.
  - eloisant 7mo ago
    Enforce parental control (with a verified adult account for the parent) for all child accounts. The parent will input the real birthdate of their child, or it's their responsibility if the child encounters anything not age appropriate.
yieldcrv 7mo ago
> But they are not doing enough to protect children from predators and that's a huge legal and regulatory risk. I run a studio that makes Roblox experiences and this is Discord's problem, and will immediately become Telegram's problem the decade where parents and policy makers figure out its Discord's problem their kid went into an experience within Roblox so I can see that's the branding, the parent paid the kid's allowance in Robux, so I can again see that's the branding but this is largely a symptom of parents nationwide not paying attention whatsoever I've talked to many parents, aunts and uncles, they don't know they're the central bank of Roblox of a currency that can be accumulated and cashed out, let alone that its a distributed set of third party experiences. Roblox Corporation already has age gated talking ability on platform. What specifically should they be doing when everything happens in different communities and off platform?
- tadfisher 7mo ago
  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.
  - yieldcrv 7mo ago
    Parents haven't changed their behavior and the age gating is there now and the activity on Discord is still the problem Not an excuse, not pointing fingers, as a betting man thats the actual answer and any other bet would go to zero, its what happening
  - Aeolun 7mo ago
    This doesn’t really make sense though. If half of all American children are on your platform of course that’s a prime target. That’s a volume issue, not something inherent to the platform. I’m going to guess those numbers are still far lower than the number of times kids get messed up by a trusted adult.
nomel 7mo ago
> But they are not doing enough to protect children from predators My understanding is that the recent improvements are face scans, and communication limited to people within a few 4 year windows. They've also increased moderation of chat significantly, especially for the lower age windows. What low hanging fruit do you see? What's the "ideal" system? Seems like a hard problem, if any sort of cooperative communication/play is involved.
- intrasight 7mo ago
  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.
  - nomel 7mo ago
    > It would be an easy problem if the government put in place sensible reforms for age verification. What would these reforms look like?
    - intrasight 7mo ago
      For starters, get rid of Section 230. Then getting over the collective fear of the government having a role in our online identity. They provide foe our physical identity so I don't understand why we're afraid of them providing our digital identity too.
  - fwipsy 7mo ago
    I thought that sounded off, Wikipedia says it's half of all American kids.
    - Aeolun 7mo ago
      It’s certainly more than half of all my kids.Also more than half of the kids I know in Japan.
TacticalCoder 7mo ago
> But they are not doing enough to protect children from predators and that's a huge legal and regulatory risk. It's first and foremost a huge risk for kids. My solution is simple: my daughter (11 y/o) can play Roblox but she must be in a game with another friend (whom I know and whom I know her parents) and she must on a video/conf-call with that friend, using another device, while she plays Roblox. That way I hear everything they're saying. And they're ecstatic and having lots of fun. I check the chat once in a while: the rule is "not hiding the chat when parents look or no more Roblox". Keeps her mostly at bay from predators.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- Incipient 7mo ago
  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.
  - sanswork 7mo ago
    My son has had the local police do a presentation to his class/preschool/daycares about online safety every year since he was 4 so it's pretty drilled in by this point.
  - Aeolun 7mo ago
    Wut? If they’re using the internet they should be aware of that stuff. That’s what ‘just be kids’ means these days. Just being a kid isn’t a static state of being.
    - kulahan 7mo ago
      It's no longer safe for children to be unsupervised on the internet.
      - Aeolun 7mo ago
bmitc 7mo ago
It sounds like, from this thread, that it's Roblox themselves who are the predators.
dyauspitr 7mo ago
I hate it. What a waste of a perfectly good generation.
- taberiand 7mo ago
  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.
  - microtonal 7mo ago
    The generation that's going to enter adulthood in the age of unchecked climate change and AI taking over their careers? You forgot the part where they also became addicts to games that only exist to funnel money to tech feudalist overlords.

Spivak 7mo ago

See this is why I think the whole age verification thing is backwards. If you want to create child friendly spaces then you need to verify someone's age is under 18, 16, 13 etc.. That's a way more real and tangible harm than a teenager looking at a nudie mag.

intrasight 7mo ago
For sure. But age verification protocols can handle such rules: App to IdP: is this person 13-15 IdP: yes
- fakedang 7mo ago
  Is Persona an IdP or does it request you to verify with personal information every single time?
fc417fc802 7mo ago
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.)
- snackbroken 7mo ago
  >Yeah I'm not seeing how this is supposed to work You could verify the ID of an adult who vouches for the child they are a legal guardian of. That way, if it turns out that Brayden(M12) is actually Linda(F45) you know who to send law enforcement to to ask some very pointed questions. That said, I don't think online ID verification is effective and even if it was, it wouldn't be worth the level of mass privacy invasion. If your goal is actually to help kids who are victims of abuse, your efforts are much better spent elsewhere. For example: making child abuse report hotlines/websites more easily accessible and widely known, fixing social services so that they actually provide better help when requested instead of making things worse, better education for children about what is and is not OK behavior even from "trusted" adults, and how to get help from someone who isn't a relative when you need it. "Stranger danger" hysteria catches all the outrage and public discussion, but is the least common source of abuse.
  - freedomben 7mo ago
    > fixing social services so that they actually provide better help when requested instead of making things worse Agreed, and I wish more people would realize this. When I was a kid, one of my friend's brothers was accused of molestation. The accused kid was around 8 or 9 and the victim was around 5 or 6. The social services came in and immediately got the mom fired from her job (she was a school teacher), put the family through tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, utterly disrupted the lives of the entire family, got the accused kicked out of school and put in a special school for troubled kids (which itself brought a whole host of issues), and nearly ripped the family apart. There was no evidence at all of the crime, other than the word of the accuser (a 5 or 6 year old child). Fast forward a few years later and the accuser apologized profusely and admitted that it had never happened. Oh and also the accused was at a friend's house at the time of the supposed molestation, and the friends' parents had told the investigators that. Law enforcement dropped the case having determined it not likely to be true and certainly nowhere near the evidence for prosecution (in fact, there was evidence that the event never happened), but social services proceeded with all of the above anyway. So yeah, there's a lot of work to do to make anybody want to trust them to help rather than make everything worse.
- eloisant 7mo ago
  Enforce parental control (with a verified adult account for the parent) for all child accounts. The parent will input the real birthdate of their child, or it's their responsibility if the child encounters anything not age appropriate.

yieldcrv 7mo ago

> But they are not doing enough to protect children from predators and that's a huge legal and regulatory risk. I run a studio that makes Roblox experiences and this is Discord's problem, and will immediately become Telegram's problem the decade where parents and policy makers figure out its Discord's problem their kid went into an experience within Roblox so I can see that's the branding, the parent paid the kid's allowance in Robux, so I can again see that's the branding but this is largely a symptom of parents nationwide not paying attention whatsoever I've talked to many parents, aunts and uncles, they don't know they're the central bank of Roblox of a currency that can be accumulated and cashed out, let alone that its a distributed set of third party experiences. Roblox Corporation already has age gated talking ability on platform. What specifically should they be doing when everything happens in different communities and off platform?

tadfisher 7mo ago
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.
- yieldcrv 7mo ago
  Parents haven't changed their behavior and the age gating is there now and the activity on Discord is still the problem Not an excuse, not pointing fingers, as a betting man thats the actual answer and any other bet would go to zero, its what happening
- Aeolun 7mo ago
  This doesn’t really make sense though. If half of all American children are on your platform of course that’s a prime target. That’s a volume issue, not something inherent to the platform. I’m going to guess those numbers are still far lower than the number of times kids get messed up by a trusted adult.

nomel 7mo ago

> But they are not doing enough to protect children from predators My understanding is that the recent improvements are face scans, and communication limited to people within a few 4 year windows. They've also increased moderation of chat significantly, especially for the lower age windows. What low hanging fruit do you see? What's the "ideal" system? Seems like a hard problem, if any sort of cooperative communication/play is involved.

intrasight 7mo ago
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.
- nomel 7mo ago
  > It would be an easy problem if the government put in place sensible reforms for age verification. What would these reforms look like?
  - intrasight 7mo ago
    For starters, get rid of Section 230. Then getting over the collective fear of the government having a role in our online identity. They provide foe our physical identity so I don't understand why we're afraid of them providing our digital identity too.
- fwipsy 7mo ago
  I thought that sounded off, Wikipedia says it's half of all American kids.
  - Aeolun 7mo ago
    It’s certainly more than half of all my kids.Also more than half of the kids I know in Japan.

TacticalCoder 7mo ago

> But they are not doing enough to protect children from predators and that's a huge legal and regulatory risk. It's first and foremost a huge risk for kids. My solution is simple: my daughter (11 y/o) can play Roblox but she must be in a game with another friend (whom I know and whom I know her parents) and she must on a video/conf-call with that friend, using another device, while she plays Roblox. That way I hear everything they're saying. And they're ecstatic and having lots of fun. I check the chat once in a while: the rule is "not hiding the chat when parents look or no more Roblox". Keeps her mostly at bay from predators.

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
Incipient 7mo ago
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.
- sanswork 7mo ago
  My son has had the local police do a presentation to his class/preschool/daycares about online safety every year since he was 4 so it's pretty drilled in by this point.
- Aeolun 7mo ago
  Wut? If they’re using the internet they should be aware of that stuff. That’s what ‘just be kids’ means these days. Just being a kid isn’t a static state of being.
  - kulahan 7mo ago
    It's no longer safe for children to be unsupervised on the internet.
    - Aeolun 7mo ago

bmitc 7mo ago

It sounds like, from this thread, that it's Roblox themselves who are the predators.

dyauspitr 7mo ago

I hate it. What a waste of a perfectly good generation.

taberiand 7mo ago
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.
- microtonal 7mo ago
  The generation that's going to enter adulthood in the age of unchecked climate change and AI taking over their careers? You forgot the part where they also became addicts to games that only exist to funnel money to tech feudalist overlords.