Roblox Says Policing Virtual World is Like 'Shutting Down Speakeasies' (reuters.com) 40
As online gaming platform Roblox confronts a lawsuit alleging it enabled a California girl's exploitation, its chief scientist said finding dangerous content in the company's virtual world is nothing like spotting it in video. From a report: "It's such a challenge to moderate 3D," said Morgan McGuire in an interview at the Reuters Momentum conference in Austin on Tuesday. He had no comment on the recent lawsuit but said Roblox was built with safety and civility at the forefront. San Mateo, Calif.-based Roblox is deploying bots to patrol user-generated games and press buttons to detect any dangerous content that players have disguised. "This is more like shutting down speakeasies," he said, referring to U.S. prohibition-era bars hiding from law enforcement. BBC reported this year that users had created explicit private spaces, known as "condos," where people's digital avatars could engage in virtual sex.
We want profit at as little expense as possible (Score:5, Interesting)
Kids didn't typically wander Into a speakeasy. Roblox is aimed at kids, primarily. It should all start with parental controls. As a parent who works with tech, I found these incredibly frustrating, and inadequate. No way to white-list particular games, no way to prevent strangers from sending friend invites, although we can block chat. And even when the available controls are used, the experience is terrible for the children. They see a list of games that are unfiltered, and there is no indication whether or not they will be allowed to play. Not until they try to join the server, wait for the loading screen and get an "insufficient permissions" error. This happens to a majority of the games. Most of these issues can be fixed with money. I don't have the impression that they care to do that. It's a wild west.
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Re:We want profit at as little expense as possible (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't blame the kids - I wanted to be cool at school and know the most outrageous things, or words, etc. and what they meant.
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Please submit a feature request (Score:2)
My impression is that Roblox does care about it - if for no other reason than that's where their money comes from. If parents don't think their kids are safe playing Roblox, they won't be playing Roblox anymore.
I had a short exchange with the Chief Scientist at Roblox the other day, and I think your specific feedback about allowing particular games and only showing those in the list would be helpful.
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Yes, the true problem is that Big Tech encourages the proliferation of "user engagement" with minimal staff intervention or safeguards, even if it encourages dangerous situations for kids. After all, it's much easier to throw one's hands up into the air than actually solve the problem.
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It's actually far, far worse than just some trolling in the game.
Users can create content in Roblox, typically games. They can then get paid when people play those games, sharing in ad revenue.
The workforce building those games are mainly children. The entire platform is a massive child labour exploitation scheme. A lot of the organization goes on in Discord servers and on other sites that Roblox doesn't police, not that they aren't fully aware of what is happening.
If the child labour aspect wasn't bad enou
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Is it just me or does that sound less like a speakeasy and more like British colonies? (Did British col
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It would certainly help for engaged parents, but it wouldn't really change what happens on average with average parents.
For that they need much more invasive and expensive policing.
Parents (Score:3)
LOL that's what I used to say. Then I had to poop (Score:2)
I used to post things like that in response to stories like this.
Then I had kids, an discovered that parents occasionally need to poop. Or wash the dishes. Or work. I was surprised to learn we can't actually be staring at our kid 24/7. the best we can do is know that the kid is watching PBS, or playing a game made for kids, with kid-appropriate features and controls. For example, Roblox, a game made for kids, has very aggressive limits on what can be said in chat. It feels like they've whitelisted a bunch
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To clarify:
As a parent, you almost HAVE to rely on Nickelodeon not showing an ad for the local strip club during an episode of Sponge Bob Square Pants. You can;t be staring at them 24/7, because you need to take a shower. So about the best you can do "is I know she's watching Nickelodeon, so that should be fine".
Similarly, Roblox is made for kids. They have a lot of restrictions for that reason, with different restrictions that apply to different age groups, and some specific settings that parents can choos
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And what would be the problem with that ad? If you think you can protect your kids from reality then you really should never have had any. All you can do is prepare them for reality and that includes exposure to it. It also includes that you talk to them honestly about a lot of things that may make you uncomfortable. Get over it. Either find the strength to do it or be a _really_ bad parent.
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No, but education is key. Have those hard to have conversations with your children. They need to understand that there are a lot of rotten people in the world. And I mean more than the don't talk to strangers thing (which is kinda dumb), Kids need to be taught about sexual exploitation in a very clear and present way, well before you think they are ready to hear it. They should be suspicious of everyone, all the time, but not paranoid and crippled by that like so many are
The same thing can happen in a city
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They should be suspicious of everyone, all the time, but not paranoid and crippled by that like so many are.
The former pretty much ensures the latter. Also, your "Sex bad!" and "People bad!" stance will result in some really screwed up kids. The thing is most people are not "rotten" and most sex is not "bad". The instances where this is different are rare. So instead of creating some small neurotic paranoids, tell them that there are places of danger and people that are dangerous. Tell them these are rare, but that they could still run into them. Tell them that if they feel threatened, they should leave and polit
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The instances where this is different are rare. So instead of creating some small neurotic paranoids, tell them that there are places of danger and people that are dangerous. Tell them these are rare, .
This is putting your head in the sand for the pie in the sky. Its not dark to understand the ACTUAL REALITY of planet EARTH.
Its so "rare" I would bet every dollar I have evetr made at least 1 of your "neighbors" in a single block neighborhood beats his spouse or kids, another one is into heavy drugs, another gambles everything, and a bunch are screwing around on their partner. You want to HOPE for a world that isnt dark. Lying to your kids about it just makes them future victims.
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Ever heard about _talking_ to your kids and explaining the dangers of things to them and making sure they trust you enough to come to you if they run into crap online? This is _not_ about creating a nice little surveillance regime at home.
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I was surprised to learn we can't actually be staring at our kid 24/7.
You have illustrated my point beautifully, thank you.
Re: Parents (Score:2)
Spoken like someone who doesn't have children, or been around them as an adult, or even had simple conversations about children with family or friends who have children.
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Spoken like someone who doesn't have children, or been around them as an adult, or even had simple conversations about children with family or friends who have children.
Spoken like an irresponsible adult who likes to blame kids for their lack of ability to manage them.
Yes, I have kids.
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Parents should be held accountable for the content that their children have access to.
Turn the internet off, biometric controls on tv remotes, got it.
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Probably for the best.
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Games have chat features. Someone asks your child to install WhatsApp, then DMs a request for photos of your child having a bath. There's nothing special about bath-time so your child complies. Exactly, how do you stop access to that? Modern devices offer an 'everything' or 'almost everything' access. There's no way to prevent use of the camera (except precisely smashing it), prevent installation of apps, or whitelist-only DMs.
While we teach children (and adults) about "stranger danger", our brain do
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FAIL
I was talking about your children, see paragraph 1.
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Games have chat features. Someone asks your child to install WhatsApp, then DMs a request for photos of your child having a bath. There's nothing special about bath-time so your child complies. Exactly, how do you stop access to that?
The solution is quite easy. Do not let children have unfettered access to the internet. When they are using the internet, be in the same fucking room at least. OR and this one is a real thinker....don't have kids if you aren't prepared to deal with the consequences.
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Parents should be held accountable for the content that their children have access to.
That is the only thing that could work. But too many of today's parents deeply believe they and their offspring can do no wrong. So it always has to be somebody else's fault.
Big Difference (Score:2)
In the Virtual World, the admins have global monitoring at their fingertips. They can have people flipping through areas to observe and report. "Private" areas with only a few participants should be the highest priority for regular monitoring. Put moderators in an area for 5 minutes to listen in and look around and then auto transport them to the next space with an option to stay longer or go on break.
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Wow, that sounds dystopian. You can never say anything in confidence to your friends, EVER, because there might be some invisible minimum wage guy listening in.
Let them see it (Score:2)
Re:Let them see it (Score:4, Insightful)
Just a note of caution here. At three he does not really understand good vs bad, even if he can identify them by wrote.
You'll discover this about a year from now, when at four he has a lot greater dexterity and is much quicker about working out how to manipulate / move mechanic things. He will probably run into your office with a big stupid grin on his face and say "Hey dad, I did something bad" like its the funniest thing every. Then you'll be finding out hard hard it is to get jello out of your sock drawer..
Ask me how I know.. well don't
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You're interacting with him more than otherwise so it looks like a win from where I'm sitting.
back alleys (Score:2)
"We created so many back alleys for children that we cannot police them all!"
Or maybe you don't care because everything is working as designed, kids are getting swindled and Roblox is making money - just business as usual and intended. The funny thing about targeting kids is that there are always more of them next year, always someone new to burn.
The rest of the world is not responsible (Score:2)
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