RJust before last week's newsletter was published, a short selling firm called Hindenburg Research issued the following report. Highly critical report on Roblox. In it, they accuse public companies of inflating their metrics (and thus their valuations), and even more worryingly for the parents of the millions of children who use Roblox. He also called it a “pedophile's hellscape.'’ The report claims that there were some gruesome discoveries within the game. Researchers found chat rooms of people purporting to exchange images and videos of children, and users claiming to be children or teens offering such material in exchange for Robux, an in-game currency. I discovered it. roblox I strongly refuse The claims made by Hindenburg in his report.
For those unfamiliar with the title, Roblox is more of a platform than a game (or, as corporate communicators like to think of it, a metaverse). It claims 80 million daily users (though Hindenburg says this figure is inflated). Log in, customize your avatar, and from there you can dive into thousands of different “experiences” created by other users. From role-playing cities to pizza delivery mini-games to cops-and-robbers games to cops-and-robbers games and, unfortunately, much less, Public Bathroom Simulator (which the creators say was 12 years old before they realized bad people existed) It is a delicious dish that looks like the one that he made at the time of his death. Roblox games are created by players, so the site must be constantly moderated. The company's moderation team handles a huge amount of content every day.
It's important to recognize that Hindenburg has a vested interest in making Roblox a stock tank. Hindenburg has a short position in the company (meaning it stands to profit if the stock price falls). Several other companies I've seen their stocks crater after releasing a report on them. However, it is also possible to independently verify some of the claims made in the report. A very quick search of the platform reveals that these in-game chat groups that appear to be soliciting and trading images do indeed exist and are active. And the accounts with questionable usernames that reference child abuse and Jeffrey Epstein are genuine. Some of the specific games and accounts mentioned in Hindenburg's report last week have been removed by the company.
Roblox defended itself in a statement posted online, saying, “Every day, tens of millions of users of all ages have safe and positive experiences on Roblox, and we adhere to our community standards.” said. But any safety incident is terrifying. We take content and conduct that does not adhere to our standards on our platform very seriously. ” The company further added: “We are continually evolving and enhancing our safety approach to catch and prevent malicious and harmful activity, including text chat filters that block inappropriate words and phrases; , which includes disallowing image sharing between users on Roblox” (as further reported in this article in the Guardian).
Of course, this isn't the first sensational report about Roblox. In recent years, articles in CNN, the Observer, Wired, and many other publications have found that there is a large amount of inappropriate content on the platform, and that child predators are There are also some proven cases of using Roblox for crafting. Last July, More from Bloomberg In one such case, a man was sentenced to 15 years in prison for grooming a minor and having her cross state lines to perform sex acts as part of a broader investigation into the platform's apparent flaws in moderation and child safety. He was sentenced in 2018.
Many parents are worried about what to do. Roblox is part of the daily online lives of millions of children, even if the figure of around 80 million daily users is inflated, as Hindenberg claims. Anyone who has children of school age knows that it is very widely used. Is Roblox dangerous for kids? Should they stop playing it immediately?
Despite everything presented in this and other reports over the past few years, I believe it is entirely possible for children to play Roblox safely. Appropriate parental controls are in place to limit or eliminate the extent to which strangers can contact your child. When used correctly. If I had kids playing Roblox, I'd be checking all of these settings over and over again to make sure the “friends list” feature was set to include only real-life friends. We also recommend supervising young children to minimize the likelihood that they will encounter or actually seek out the many inappropriate games that seem to regularly elude Roblox's management efforts. I'm very reluctant to let you play this game without it.
Basic online safety education is critical for all children who use the Internet. Given the multiple convictions of child predators who used Roblox to access children, it is impossible to deny the presence of pedophiles on the platform, but it is difficult to objectively assess the extent of it. It's difficult. Some of what Hindenburg highlights in his report seems to me more likely to be the product of an adolescent fringe master than an actual child predator. Roblox is full of teenagers who have grown up with the game. When you see 900 variations of the username Jeffrey Epstein, you don't necessarily see 900 active child abusers, you see 900 stupid 14-year-olds trying to be funny. .
Full disclosure: I don't let my kids play Roblox, and I have no intention of starting them. I don't believe that a publicly traded company can be trusted to put the interests and safety of children ahead of profits. Moderation is expensive and difficult. No one in the big tech industry is any closer to building a system to prevent harmful material from appearing on these types of open platforms, or to prevent people from exploiting harmful material for their own purposes. No. Legitimate safety concerns aside, rather than trying to squeeze money out of kids to pay for endless in-game cosmetics and “experiences,” it's simply better to serve kids' imaginations and curiosity. There are hundreds of great games.
Only offline games can completely eliminate this risk of children being exposed to inappropriate content. After just a few hours of exploring Roblox, one thing is abundantly clear. It's not hard to find something very problematic.
what to play
Neva, a game about a warrior and a she-wolf, surprised me. I've played so many beautiful, artistic indie platformers that it’s hard to find one that really makes me feel something. But there I was ugly crying in front of the TV after a few nights with Neva. It takes place over four seasons. The wolf starts out as a cub that you have to protect, but later grows into a magnificent creature with horns that can protect you. Use an elegant combination of jumps, double jumps, dashes, and strikes to explore an incredibly beautiful but horribly corrupt natural world and make multiple attempts to conquer the demons that poison it. Worth a few hours of anyone's life.
Available: PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox
Approximate play time: 3-4 hours
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