If however, you think that Roblox is a bit creepy, weird, and not appropriate for your kids, then keep them as far away as possible - your instinct is right (it is probably worse than that). Roblox may not be a "paedophile hellscape" (I think that it is), but it is definitely an onramp for sexual exploitation. There are paedophile rings that target certain types of people and behaviours and groom them. My daughter was caught up in such a ring (12 y/o UK. Ring traced to Indonesia). Nothing in Roblox addresses (or can even) the underlying mechanics and social engineering that is going on. The linked OP contains a lot of related links and material. Go and read it.
My previous post on the subject https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32015542
Well maybe, but I have absolutely no doubt the engagement hours are still massive. Roblox is one of the main online destinations for kids these days, above even minecraft servers it seems.
The "paedophile hellscape" seems like a short-seller slur to me. No doubt there is some element of this on such a big platform, but it seems vastly overblown to me. I have yet to see anything really suspicious, with kids of my own, and also using roblox/roblox studio in coding clubs.
The payout % for creators, well that could be labelled a hellscape perhaps...
It really is. I don't play many video games these days, much less block-like games, so I always saw Roblox as a successful long-running title and not much more...up until I saw their public peering arrangements [0] and had my mind blown. Even if they massively inflate their playerbase, they're still huge - you don't just build out a multi-terabit network on a whim, and network operations aren't exactly the strong suit of most investors, so it's unlikely they would fake network capacity or build it out for show.
I wish we could properly compare Minecraft vs Roblox traffic, but the distributed nature of Minecraft multiplayer makes this quite difficult. A quick search on Google Scholar isn't showing much in the way of network volume, so it seems to be an unexplored/unexamined area.
I have to agree on the other half of the headline, although if they're already unprofitable then there is a legit question of whether or not they can afford the amount of human oversight that every large platform (let alone a kid-oriented one) is going to require.
I'm not trying to suggest that you ban your children from the platform or anything, but this is really reminding me of all the deniers and apologists I've seen for Amazon and their working conditions in online discussion spaces (including on HN), in spite of the massive amounts of media harping on it. (I used to work in an FC.)
1) Their research and conclusions are incorrect.
2) Their research is correct and Roblox's ARPU is significantly higher than reported.
There should at least be a call for law enforcement investigation.
In terms of the other questionable stuff (inappropriate, offensive, racist, and generally hateful stuff) I mean it's again a platform inhabited by edgy kids and teenagers. I'm not very concerned about that content. Roblox does moderate and ban users and content all the time. Beyond that? It's on parents to restrict if they don't want their kids exposed to the reality of people, especially kids, being assholes on the internet. [2]
[1] https://www.missingkids.org/content/dam/missingkids/pdfs/202...
[2] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...
This is either:
the Nazi bar problem brought to its logical conclusion.
Greed and ignorance.
Or somebody high up in the company is really into this stuff...
Or something else I can't even fathom.