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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.
Roblox has posted two separate responses to the vigilante bannings and none of them come close to saying they're just as bad as the predator. Not even the PCGamer article you're linking to even intimates that. It makes sense that people breaking the terms of service should be banned regardless of what their intention was behind it and anyway if they let this go on, knowing about it, doesn't that open them up to liability in the same way that NBC was potentially going to be held liable for the guy who killed himself on To Catch a Predator before they settled?
I'm not sure about the ID thing, the reason, I've been led to believe, why it's hard for Roblox to police who is actually underage or not is because of COPPA where they can't legally ask for more information from a user that has identified as under 13 unless they get their parents permission. Also, the online Safety Act shutting down that hamster forum was because it has additional requirements not related to age like submitting some kind of safety report on their website and making sure there was no possibly illegal content on the site or be subject to a fine and they opted to shut down rather than risk having to possibly be subject to a fine (or deal with writing a report, maybe).
Recently, when I saw this first come up on reddit there was a comment that talked about how robust the child safety controls are for Roblox, now. You can filter content by maturity or by sensitive topics (political/culture war things), you can hide microtransactions, only allow certain players you designate to join their server and not allow them to join other servers, DMs are not possible to anyone under 13, you can limit their playtime, you can also go through and look at what your kid has been playing, who they've been playing with, their recent public and private chat history. This is just from making a Roblox account and linking it to your kids' account.
I'm not saying there's not a problem but the predators go to Roblox because it has their prey. So, naturally, it has a predator problem. But there's probably (potentially) going to also be a similar problem for any kid that goes on the internet without any supervision or guidance at all.
You have to get halfway through the Discord article before you get this section:
"Yes Discord does provide parental controls that would have prevented these incidents, but we didn't use them so it's still Discord's fault!"
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.
Bro come on. At some point a parent has to take responsibility here. Why would anyone let their kids just hop onto these websites without doing basic due diligence or educating them on the reality of predators?
If a platform provides robust parental controls then they've done enough, full stop. The baton of responsibility is passed.
My parents (admittedly over 60 now) can't reliably open a browser on a laptop. They certainly have no idea what a QR code is. The idea that parents will be able to find the parental controls, understand what they're doing, and set them independently is unlikely in many cases, so they have to trust their children. In ten years it may be quite different but right now I think that's still the reality and realistically Discord has to bear that in mind.
If your parents are over 60, they are presumably no longer expected to be taking a hand in managing your online activities? (if not, better not tell them about The Motte!)
I'd think that this level of technical incompetence would be a pretty big outlier for anyone much younger than that (ie. current parents of young children) -- anyone I know born after 1970ish can certainly find and navigate parental controls if they have to.
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What is the alternative to an opt in system? In this specific case we're taking about the ability to add friends. Is no one allowed to add friends on discord until they prove they are a legal adult? Is that accomplished by setting a drop down box in their profile or must they upload a government issued ID?
How about parents take responsibility for their kids instead of imposing restrictions on all the rest of us because of their laziness.
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