Somehow we had second life before Roblox and as bad as some places there got it still was never as awful as Roblox.
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
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Its kinda sad, a child has just died, and some big corpo is right now would be thinking how they can use this as a way to extract more data out of everyone in order to make profits.
I don't think screening is the answer, but with Roblox and Discord, the follow-up on reports of predators is lacking and should be punished severely by the courts. I don't care if your profits go down a percentage point or two, you need to improve your product.
Grooming allegations notwithstanding, Roblox itself reminds me of those generic games you'd see a character playing in some TV show.
I think the same about the story of seasons games.
Roblox does not seem to care what they do as long as it makes money. This seems like a huge problem.
Discord on the other hand... I honestly don't care if they go out of business, I really don't like that platform. But how did they have any responsibility in this matter?
Discord has been taking down free bot systems that people have created to cross check user history and keep them away from minors by banning them from all servers that subscribe to the service. It was entirely opt in and discord obviously doesn't care that people are groomed they are in fact facilitating in and blocking any organized efforts to stop predators.
It argues that if Roblox and Discord had taken steps to screen users before allowing them on apps, or implemented age and identity verification and other safety measures, “Ethan would have never interacted with this predator, never suffered the harm that he did, and never died by suicide.”
They want these sites to screen every users ID on sign up. I’m sure the courts will love another, “for the children” security bill.
Roblox should be sued for alot of things, this is one of them.
Why? It's idiotic to force age verification and an ID to play games on the internet, and I'm assuming the kid didn't just click a button to turn off parental controls. He probably got his parents to do it. Liability shouldn't be pushed off to others every time something bad happens. This is the groomers fault. Not a game company or an internet provider or anyone else. Hell; why not sue Intel for making a processor that allowed the game to be played and discord to be used? Do you also expect every startup game company and Indy dev to have millions of dollars worth of chat security and oversight? Shit like this is nothing but a money grab.
This isn't an age verification problem, its a moderation problem. A massive one. There's hundreds of games that exist almost entirely for the purpose of grooming ppl (a common one is so called "bathroom simulators" iirc) and roblox frequently doesnt do anything about them until there's public outcry about ine particular game, no matter how many reports come in or how obvious it is.
Game companies shouldn't have to monitor and supervise children. Each kid already has adults legally responsible for them. It isn't a g companies job to do someone else's job for them, nor be financially responsible for criminals or parenting.
A game made for kids should not allow sexually explicit material on their platform. And, in fact, they don't, this kind of content is very clearly and explicitly against roblox's content policy but they fail to enforce it.
Parents fail all the time, that's when the government needs to step in and take action, in this case by making sure kids can safely play the game. And I disagree, Roblox's entire business revolves around children, they make money off them at every step and they even pay kids to make content for their platform; they should be and they are rightfully being held accountable for what happens on their platform.
Roblox said it is designed with “rigorous built in safety features” and is “continually innovating new safety features — over 100 this year alone — that protect our users and empower parents and caregivers with greater control and visibility.”
The fact that they are framing it in this manner "100 features in this year alone" (what does this even mean?) suggests that they don't care.
I couldn't even name a hundred safety features. Ten would be enough. Age gate, parental controls, moderators, a report function... What more does it need?
If you could pump out 100 features in 1 year, how little were they doing before??
The parental options don't do a fucking thing. The game's predatory by design (in every meaning of the word)..
"No one in the history of games has cared this much!"
But now they know blatant bullshit lies generally work pretty well on our population so expect more of this crap.
Sadly, the first thing the defending lawyers will point out is where were the parents in all this? Why was he able to turn off the parental controls, and why didn't the parents notice?
Maybe the first thing is that it's just the predators fault and anything beyond that is bullshit. Gonna sue the company that made the PC too? Maybe the electric company for providing the electricity to it?
"Roblox allowed Ethan to turn off the parental controls "
If true, this is very damning for Roblox.
Parents can't be everywhere all the time checking what they already set up, that's unrealistic.
I think it would be great if all end to end encryption would be intercepted by the government organisations and all chats would be monitored with AI and if needed action taken by humans.
I really hope this is a fucking joke
Yes of course. Just messing with you guys 🥸
username very relevant
The real cause of the suicide is when he realized he was going to work 40 hours every week for the rest of his life. They are saying it is "an unnamed arrested man" that did it, but this is hogwash and only an excuse to implant authoritarian identity collection of everyone on the internet so that the secret police can exterminate all persons with ideology counter to that of the regime.
That said, if Roblox and Discord were deleted from existence that would be A-OK with me spit fuck those guys !
Will be settled out of court.