Markass
4mo ago
I am... skeptical, let's say... that the people "working for free to rid their platforms of predators" should be allowed to do that, because I suspect there are many, many more vigilantes (and aspiring vigilantes) out there doing real and serious harm, than actual child-snatching pedos.
The "vigilante" that Roblox recently banned is Schlep, and I take issue with him being described as a vigilante. It implies that he is imposing justice on the pedophiles himself, when he is not. All he is doing is collecting evidence and reporting them to law enforcement, as he should. He also reports them to Roblox, but Roblox has consistently refused to ban the predators from their platform, even after they've been arrested, until he makes widely publicized videos about them.
No, your quote says that the parents didn't know that they existed and that's why they didn't use them. And this matches my experience after reading through hundreds if not thousands of publicly available cases of minors being groomed on Discord. The majority of minors don't have parental controls enabled. I don't have any hard figures but my gut feeling is that roughly 0.01% of minors on Discord have an account that is actually under parental controls, if at all.
I think the main problem with them is that it's a completely opt-in system and the minor has to intentionally share a QR code with the parent in order to be connected. So even if we assume they voluntarily link the accounts or are forced by their parents to do it, at any time they can just create another account that is outside the purview of the parents, and they would be none the wiser.
Discord parental controls look to me to be something that Discord can point to and say "hey, we're safe for children!" rather than actually being safe for children.
Markass
4mo ago
So Roblox is getting a lot of press lately, and it's been very negative. They're ostensibly a place for kids, but it's been known for years that pedophiles and child predators are on their platform, they keep grooming and raping minors, and barely anything is done about them if ever. Lately they banned Chris Hansen 'To Catch A Predator' style stings, banned and sent a C&D to someone who has gotten multiple pedophiles arrested using those stings, and defended their ban by *checks notes* saying "vigilantes" are just as bad as predators. As a result, they're being sued by the Louisiana attorney general, and even Chris Hansen is getting involved (by making a documentary).
It's too early to tell what the outcome of all this will be, but some people are concerned about potential government overreach, especially with recent pushes for mandatory online ID verification (and we all know people doxing themselves like that never goes wrong) and other laws passed in the name of children's online safety (like the UK's Online Safety Act, which proved to be too burdensome for a hamster forum to continue operating). Especially because Roblox isn't the only platform with a predator problem that isn't getting better.
I think that ID verification is bad, but pedophiles are also bad. My take (if slightly conspiratorial) is that people in positions of power are deliberately letting the pedophile problem grow out of control so they can justify implementing draconian ID verification measures. The public sees this false dichotomy between letting pedophiles run rampant and ID verification, and chooses ID verification as the lesser of two evils, when that's far from the case. Roblox (and Discord) had people working for free to rid their platforms of predators, and all they had to do was let them be. Yet they deliberately went out of their way to ban anybody who got pedophiles arrested, meanwhile doing little to the pedophiles themselves. It's a huge WTF moment and makes you wonder what the end goal is.
Markass
4mo ago
The trans streamer incident was in 2022, one year after Null's article in 2021. I believe the 2021 article comes after a video game emulator developer named Byuu killed himself in June of that year. His death was weaponized by Hector Martin and blamed on the farms, despite ample evidence to the contrary, which resulted in Dreamhost dropping the site in 2021. Later in 2022, Byuu's death was one of the things referenced during Keffals' #DropKiwifarms to successfully pressure Cloudflare into dropping them too.
I have been a regular at kiwifarms, unfortunately, God, I have wasted my life.
I've written 10 threads there and I find the site is useful in knowing what NOT to do if you ever find yourself in trouble.
Markass
4mo ago
It doesn't seem like there is such a thread on the Kiwi Farms. I think the topic is sufficiently old (from the 00s apparently) that nobody has explored it yet.
Markass
5mo ago
But one of the main killers was from an Australian defamation suit.
Actually the Australian defamation suit had little to no impact at all. The main outcome was time and money lost by the defendant, who was somebody with almost no relation to the forum at all.
Payment networks have historically been the biggest problem to the Kiwi Farms..
(And despite that, they're still around anyway).
Only because Null is stubborn and refuses to give up. A lesser man would have shuttered the site long ago.
The second says:
I don't know how else to read this besides "'vigilantes' are similar to predators". It sounds like a defense attorney arguing that the cop who impersonated a drug buyer is just as bad as an actual drug buyer, on the sole basis of their actions being superficially similar.
Unless it updated recently to ban "vigilantes", this is quite a novel interpretation of the terms of service.
Liability for what? The "vigilante" they banned, Schlep, didn't do anything remotely near what NBC did to Bill Conradt. Schlep was just somebody who collected evidence and reported pedophiles to law enforcement.
Arguably, Roblox has just as much liability if not more for the pedophiles they do know about but never ban. Schlep and other so-called "vigilantes" have consistently reported them to Roblox, but they refuse to act in most cases, even if the pedophile has been arrested, and only rarely actually bans them if there is a highly publicized video made about them. Remember that Louisiana's lawsuit isn't the only one Roblox is facing as a result of their refusal to ban pedophiles.
Consider the fact that there is an arbitrary limit of 100 games that parents can block for their child before they can't block any more games. This isn't sufficient to prevent their child from being exposed to sex games because there are way more than 100 sex games on the platform and Roblox seemingly does nothing to ban them.
If the platform they visit actually bans pedophiles when they are reported, there will be much less of a predator problem compared to Roblox.
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