The County of Los Angeles filed suit today against social media gaming platform Roblox alleging that the platform failed to protect children from predatory behavior. The lawsuit alleges that while Roblox markets itself as a safe digital space for creativity, it is in reality an unsafe online environment that has become a breeding ground for predators.
As much as I think this is all terrible and that Roblox SHOULD answer for some of this shit, the fact of the matter is, PARENTS ARE NOT TEACHING KIDS HOW TO BE SAFE IN THE INTERNET. They just throw a fucking tablet or phone or console or PC screen in front of their eyes and refuse to do ANYTHING resembling parenting, and when their kid inevitably gets groomed they blame the platform and ask for daddy government to do their parenting for them and ask for things like age verification, which at least on Discord is literally being used to profile people criticizing the Trump administration and ICE.
Set parental controls, teach kids to not trust strangers and give them basic internet safety tips, and none of this shit will ever happen. Don’t sign away the rights of other adults because you’re a terrible fucking parent.
Yeah, agree with everything you said. I let my kids play Roblox. I play with them sometimes, been playing some silly Shawarma game, it freaks them out.
So far, the biggest thing we talk about is this desire of every game to enter your wallet, and I tell them that a game shouldn’t be asking you for money, and now they both get annoyed at games that ask for money. I like to think I’ve created a safe environment for them to play in, and when the environment becomes something else, they ask me about it.
So mainly right now the worst that happens is the game is bullshit and they get mad, and I say hey, this game is bullshit (in more PG language), and we move on.
I firmly believe that prohibition just leads to curiosity. I think it’s impossible to insulate them from shit these days, so I’ll be part of their exposure, and hopefully I can help them learn.
Social media has muddied the water since I was a kid but I was raw dogging the Internet mostly unsupervised since I was in 5th grade and ran into all sorts of shit. Knowing not to give up any personal information about myself was all I really needed to feel safe. It was never something I even considered doing. I still don’t have any social media with my identity other than a very outdated and minimal LinkedIn. Not sure how a kid could take that advice seriously from their parents who’ve been blasting anything and everything about them all over social media since they were born though.
Unfortunately, it always has been like this for everything
[Sad astronaut gun meme]
Facts. Feels good to subsidize parents and have their shitty kids be the reasons to take my rights.
This is what they are suing about.
What rights do you think are being “signed away” in this lawsuit about Roblox not providing functional parental controls and moderation?
I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what is actually happening here.
Probably talking about invasive shit like what discord just did.
Which they are already doing in the shittiest way possible, and is only a small part of the problem the lawsuit notes.
Which is why I’ve been asking, they can’t answer because they dont know what they are talking about, they are concerned about a single (almost tangential) element of the problem - which Roblox already is doing, and only because they keep getting sued for catering to predators.
Because those parents are pushing for age verification stuff, that has already been confirmed by hackers to be sent straight to the DOJ and ICE to make a database and link people’s internet profiles to their real names. With possibly the intention to either arrest people for criticizing ICE, or deporting people they DEEM to be illegals.
Thats not the only means of age verification.
Do you know how they are doing verification currently? Because I bet you won’t like it.
Mandatory facial verification, processed by AI. This was the response made by Roblox to them being sued over having nonfunctional controls for parents, and doing nothing about the predators on their platform.
So I’ll ask again - what rights do you think are being taken away here?
Edit: Just going to add this bit here.
Tech journalist and former CNET senior writer Casey Newton asked what Baszucki (CEO) thinks of the “problem of predators” on the platform
The response:
This is not an “age verification” thing. This is a platform catering to predators.
Did you not read the Twitter thread? The facial verification is done by OpenAI and shared with Palantir, the DOJ, and ICE. Yes, including Roblox’s. What makes you think the DOJ would NOT try to build a profile on someone going through age verification who’s brown enough to be considered an “illegal” and possibly detain or deport them if they criticize ICE?
Did you not read the part where I pointed out that it was Roblox who implemented that by choice?
That this is how Roblox decided to try and avoid lawsuits for catering to predators?
That these measures, as noted in the suit, do absolutely nothing and are easily defeated?
That the issue goes far beyond their own decision to implement this form of age verification?
I have the same question and you still have not answered, youre answering a question that I didnt ask that is unrelated.
What rights are being signed away by this lawsuit?
Edit: about/avoid autocorrect shenanigans.
Calling Roblox’s actions voluntary is misleading to the point of maliciousness.
They did it to avoid suits, which is what I said.
Suggesting its anything other than avoiding consequences (to their profits) is misleading to the point of maliciousness.
Parents’ refusal to parent is why regulation is essential.
You’re not allowed to take someone else’s rights because someone else is a fucking irresponsible idiot. That’s not how this works.
People made that exact same argument over seat belt laws. The only difference now is that the car crashes are happening digitally.
Seat belts are different because if someone is in a car is not wearing one and carrying passengers, that person will become a 200 pound pinball in case of a crash and crush everyone else to death. Do YOU want to sign away your ability to criticize Trump and ICE because some dipshit parent didn’t do what they’re supposed to fucking do and got their kid groomed?
Spoken like someone who hasn’t read up on how social media algorithms work, nor their effects on people’s cognitive abilities. Have you seen the photos of parents with their dead kids at the various court hearings lately?
Slippery slope fallacy. We use ID to regulate all manner of things here in the US, and I’m still able to obtain them. And yes, given the gravity of the harm being caused to young people by social media, I’m happy to provide my ID in order to lock them out of it until they’re adults, at least until a better and easier solution to the problem materializes.
It’s not a fallacy, you fucking idiot, IT IS LITERAL FUCKING REALITY. They got fucking CAUGHT RED HANDED by a bunch of hackers using OpenAI to give the IDs from Discord to ICE, to either silence critics or kidnap more people.
Get your head out of the damn sand. You’re not helping. Every single attempt to age check is the government simply trying to tie your online identity to your real identity to punish you eventually, and this administration does not give a rat’s ass about the constitution. At some point they WILL attempt to arrest or deport people for online speech.