From next month it will start enforcing facial age estimation to allow children to chat with strangers only if they are in their broad age group.

Roblox compared its new system to school cohorts such as elementary, middle school and high school. It will be introduced first in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, where children will be blocked from privately chatting with adults they do not know in real life from next month, and in the rest of the world in early January.

Users will be placed into the following groups: under nine, nine to 12, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, 18 to 20, or 21 and over. Children will be able to chat only with others in their age group and similar ones. For example, a child with an estimated age of 12 will be able to chat only with under-16s. Images and video used for the checks would not be stored, Roblox said.

  • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    If Lemmy was a child’s game and it was full of pedophiles actively grooming them then yes we would need to shut it down. Your analogy misses the point completely.

    We’re are dealing with a child’s game where pedophiles are actively going after youth right now as we type.

    They should be shutdown and charges pressed against the developers for allowing this. This is the only way forward at this point.

    Your point about taking away chat ruining the game is also nonsensical. Only some RP would be affected and could be gotten around easily with a dialogue tree.

    • nomorebillboards@lemmy.world
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      19 minutes ago

      Word games? Multiplayer competitive games?

      It’s not just a roleplaying game.

      Despite being pretty important to the gameplay, should the developers of other games primarily played by underaged people be forced to ban chat? Like other bigger multiplayer games like Fortnite, Among Us, Valorant, CSGO, etc.

      • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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        4 minutes ago

        Ahh I see your confusion. First of all we are dealing with a specific game used in a specific way.

        If culturally pedophiles would do scrabble tournaments for kids then people would react and say we should stop scrabble tournaments because pedophiles have captured them.

        This is not saying adults can’t play Scrabble, just that scrabble tournaments run by pedophiles aren’t cool.

        Roblox is being used as a similar tool.

        Good news is there are lots games like Roblox with better graphics and gameplay that are not infested with pedophiles trying to groom kids.

        So you are not being deprived of anything, unless of course you are a pedo that wants to groom kids on Roblox.