Roblox Retaliates Against Child Abuse Survivor Who Exposed Platform's Predator Problem
Content creator's viral videos led to six arrests before company silenced him with legal threats
cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/35786061
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Can someone give me the out-of-the-loop on Roblox?
I understand that it's an online gaming platform where there have been accusations of things being unsafe for kids. While bad, this is something that has happened before. Anything specific here that this is in the news so much, or just that it's the biggest most current example?
The company was recently sued for creating a platform using almost exclusively child labor
The problem is while their target audience is kids, it is heavily monetized and created a market and economy around child created content. It is also impossible to moderate and became a cesspool of predators.
The game itself is comprised of an infinite number of mini games you can try, most of them created by children. Some of them are of a sexual nature and not safe for kids. This makes it really easy for a predator to set up environments where they can groom children.
The players can buy robux with real money and spend this to advertise the games they create, or buy customization items or game passes. They also earn robux when people play their games to incentivize them to create more content. Because of this the company is being sued for essentially child labor, where all their profits revolve around child created games
When I was younger I would also play modded games and create content. I dont think there's anything wrong with that. But the fact that the game monetized it to such an extent is wrong in my opinion. With the predator problem as well it makes it a really unsafe playform for children. As a parent I would never let my children play this.
Thank you very much! I mentioned it to my oldest son (who is now in his twenties) a couple years ago because my youngest son (who is autistic) seemed like he might be interested in the game. He very emphatically said it wasn't really what it looked like and that he would not recommend it. I didn't ask for more details, but I guess I get it!
It's also used as a recruiting platform by white supremacists.
Jesus. How is this thing still a thing? (I guess that's also part of the answer to my prior question...)
A complete lack of all moderation, an owner / management team who studiously ignores all the child abuse on their platform because it is profitable to them to ignore it, and a legislative and judicial system that is unwilling to prosecute businesses for anything in general and child abuse in particular.
It's a perfect microcosm of the American condition, really.
It is also the most popular game ever created, unfortunately. Just one of the user created games on it tops the list for daily active players of any game ever..
Leads me to a question, like someone from Russia where we have our problem of casual racism, but not quite the clean nature of the US one, we have racism very diverse and dependent on the context (some think A are better than B, some that they are equal, but A and B sleeping together warrant a murder, some that A are better than B, but them sleeping together is fine, some that A and B are equal, but should be eternally hostile and don't owe each other noble conduct, or maybe both inequality and segregation, but noble conduct is owed always ... we have multitude of kinds, and for multitude of separations, and in general it's not a clear and firm problem).
And by you using such a designation it seems you are from the US.
How do your non-supremacists (average people) react to a statement that they are exactly as good as black people? How do your supremacists react to such?
(Say, here the first kind would generally not understand why would you say that, or laugh and joke something about how in the ideal world you would be right ; and the second kind would generally respond with sarcasm.)
I'll be honest... your racism example was confusing as hell. I'm US and raised in the US south which is where our whole war over slavery started so could be argued the OG racist territory. Note: I'm speaking as a white male, so I'm speaking only as I know of the loudest demographic in the country, as well as only as I know of from my particular culture, if someone of other nationalities/races can speak up to if there's different I'm happy to learn. I'm also speaking of the predominant standard of my region, that's the other, it's definitely regional because as someone described the US, it's really just 50 war tribes in a trenchcoat. My location is about as close to the dead center of the continental nation as one gets so thanks to international airports we do have some world travel, we're in what's typically called one of the flyover states so it's honestly not a lot end up here that aren't planning on living here.
Early US racism might have been more like what you described, as the Irish and Italians weren't considered "white" but pretty much at this point it's very obvious racial traits where the racism exists. The average you see is Whites, Blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Middle Eastern, Hispanic. You notice there's not any distilling down to any of the more defined areas, Native Americans get lumped in even though you have Cherokee and Navajo, Asians are one even when I've heard that calling someone of Japanese decent Chinese is offensive as hell. But the average day to day around here is based on a quick visual identification. Honestly want to fuck with Americans, have someone from Mexico "who passes" (looks like) for white, then have them start speaking fluent Spanish with the rolling Rs that we definitely don't have the practice for and people will be baffled. Honestly the midwest and south has a lot of trouble with racism with Jews in history because while the racists say people should be racist to them... if you mix a few people of Jewish decent with a crowd, most of us would have no idea how to point out any of the features... I legit grew up thinking Nazi Germany was killing for religious purposes until I was 12 or so and thought to ask why they didn't hide it like early Christians... which I had to be explained that it was a racial thing.
So there's your baseline casual racism standard of the US, we just lump everybody into super easy to define categories. After that, your descriptions where I was baffled, the specific one that got me absolutely weirded out was every single one after "some think A are better than B." It's pretty much a how watered down is your racism here.
A) Basic small casual racism: I'm probably guilty of it, as you saw above I talked about the base line how we see race in the country. That's speaking from my viewpoint, mostly born of ignorance of not knowing other cultures. I think pretty much everyone is guilty of it accidentally, the important part is to learn and actively try to not be. View everyone as equal, don't have a problem with relationships. The spicy areas of this category is the stereotyping, some more hurtful than others IE: Angry fat white dude, Asians can't drive, etc.
B) Getting to full on racism: There might be some cases of some of the "Race A and Race B are equal but them sleeping together warrant a murder" might exist, but I'll call it now I've yet to meet it. Probably because if they're of another race and racist, I'm the white guy... and the white racism is fucking bad. At least in my area, the ONLY reason you'll have a white person who says another race is equal but sleeping with one of them is murder is because it's even with the Confederates and KKK trying to bring back government sponsored racism it's still not socially okay to say you're racist. Hell, it's not socially acceptable then and a guy will get side eyed real hard if he starts saying his daughter won't sleep with a (insert race here). This territory ranges from the people who are mad they can't say the "n-word" (a derogatory term used by early Americans about blacks... which were brought over as slaves) to full on angry uncle at the Thanksgiving table who's saying the country is going to shit because of all the immigrants. At this point it's getting into the white supremacist territory, but they're the ones that will yell loud but if you actually confront them they'll shut the fuck up.
C) Here be KKK/Confederates/Nazis: I can't speak to any of the other groupings in the US and how murders go, but if the US is going race based murder happy, the predominant group will be the whites, and the KKK/Neo-Confederates REALLY want a race war going. These are the people who believe the myths they sold themselves when they lost the war 160 years ago (and our countries greatest mistake in our history is not hanging every one of their generals on public display as traitors until the body rotted off) and range from wanting to bring back "Jim Crow Laws" (Jim Crow being another pejorative for black people) that segregates people... at the time supposedly "separate but equal" (it wasn't) where even down to the water fountain you had "Whites" and "Coloreds" all the way to the full extreme "The US should be a White Christian nation!" zealots or desire to bring back the confederacy.
The biggest trouble is people thinking that how it does in fact blend, group A likes to think group B and C are the small crazy kooks that there aren't many of in this country, if you live in the south and believe this, your head is in the fucking sand, and frankly they've infested the rest of the country. Group B is still on the whims of societal pressure, so if society swings back to it they'll at minimum be supporting those that wear bedsheets and burn crosses. Group C... well we're only just a little over 100 years since the Tulsa Race Massacre, California started cracking down on gun control because of Reagan in 67 signing in the Mulford Act because the Black Panthers were walking armed copwatching because cops had a bad problem with excessive force (sure glad that's been fixed /s) then marched on the capitol... The Mulford Act was supported by the National Rifle Association who weirdly got angry when a bunch of white dudes marched on a capitol in Michigan in 2020... weird. And naturally the Civil Rights Era where the end of Jim Crow laws came... and the flip of the south reliably voting Democrat to Republican because the Republicans enacted the Southern Strategy by specifically fanning the flames to the white racists that the federal government was overreaching by enacting the Civil Rights making blacks equal.
There's one American stereotype I guess... we aren't a subtle or nuanced people. It's either no hate, kinda hate, or full on hate.
Well, yeah, what I meant is that "separate but equal" and a few other variants are really, sincerely, existent here. Which is why people in Russia of the village bum kind sometimes like Confederates, but if they'd meet a white person from the US really thinking shit of descendants of people their ancestors had enslaved, and thinking they are worse, there'd be livid fury. But it's overall different, even neo-Nazis here are usually about hostility to people of some groups, and about "purity of race" and "it's our land, let them go back to
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", but the "some being better than others" and the "right to enslave and treat badly" things look completely wild from here even for many neo-Nazis.So - what happens if you say publicly to a crowd of "old white dudes", preferably of the middle-upper social layer, that white people are absolutely just as good as black people?
How did we go from "Mortal Kombat bad!!!" to "white-supremacist pedophiles are good for business," in 30 years? I hate this fucking world so much.
Industry growth. Turns out it's a lot easier to "think of the children" when the industry is small and niche than it is when it's making investors billions of dollars a year. Turns out capitalism makes problems harder to solve once the problem itself makes money (see also: tax preparation)
That's also why the moral panic people switched from trying to censor games through government to trying to do it via finance (e.g. Collective Shout lobbying banks, credit cards, and payment processors).
Though if your question is about why the contrast between moral panic over game content and the lack of moral panic over actual victimization — I think that's always been the case, unfortunately. People seem more fearful of their children losing their morals than they are of people with no morals harming their children.
vrchat is also like this + furries, they also kinda groom them into furries by not allowing them into their exclusive clubs and kinda bullying them into being one, saw a video on it, discord cults too
