This - definitely, any platform with a userbase that's substantially comprised of children and which offers free communication is going to be a complete disaster requiring ridiculous amounts of moderation and careful parental involvement.
It is clear that Roblox have failed to deliver the moderation capabilities necessary to market their platform as "safe," and are more interested in making money.
But the jabs at Robox employees for furry-adjacent follows on Twitter, and another for retweeting some fan art that happened to be from a problematic account, are totally random and unfounded - what's that got to do with anything?
And the half-baked "money laundering" investigation distracted from the issue at hand and deserved either a second post and more investigation, or none at all.
This essay, and this substack in general, really lack focus - they publish dramatic exposés which are just a hodgepodge of random "dirt" thrown together, some interesting and serious and mostly nothing.
> But the jabs at Robox employees for furry-adjacent follows on Twitter, and another for retweeting some fan art that happened to be from a problematic account, are totally random and unfounded - what's that got to do with anything?
It's one thing to watch/engage with this stuff privately in your personal life. It's quite another thing to have:
>> Roblox’s former social media manager ran a public pornographic blog with “furry porn” and photos of himself
And
>> Roblox’s official verified Twitter account retweeted content from “DukeButDuke” with #FanArtFriday.
This is not
> jabs at Robox employees for furry-adjacent follows
This is Roblox's public representatives at a high level in the company publicly promoting this stuff. Put another way, if you posted a blog article about furry porn and pictures of yourself nude, then prominently displayed it next to your public work profile, do you honestly think that your company would have no right to fire you? There's a reason lots of bloggers that work for big companies will put "this blog and these ideas have no affiliation with company X" disclaimers everywhere, and that's just for semi controversial blogging topics.
> And the half-baked "money laundering" investigation distracted from the issue at hand and deserved either a second post and more investigation, or none at all.
Half-baked? It's enough if casino sites exist for a serious violation of gambling and AML/KYC laws.
This is skin gambling, where in-game items are wagered by proxy, so the actual structure of the gambling is unfortunately somewhat nuanced.
I agree that it's unethical and Roblox failing to crack down on these sites by any means they can, again, represents a failing.
But I'd have liked to see a separate post with a deeper investigation into how the gambling sites are structured, and how the cash-out economy works.
Proxy-gambling using skins and secondary markets has been highly controversial since at least the CS:GO days and unfortunately it _isn't_ that clear that there's a serious violation of gambling and AML/KYC laws on the part of Roblox. Valve have been somewhat successful so far in defending themselves against the Washington gaming commission and many lawsuits surrounding CS:GO skin gambling.
But, Roblox have a direct cash-out program for in-game content developers which may change their situation.
I'd again, have loved to seen this investigated more in another blog post. This one was weirdly unfocused to me because it started with serious, well-founded allegations of inadequate moderation leading to harm to children, in contrast to "safe" marketing. Then it progressed to a random aside accusing a safety officer of being a furry (???). And then flipped to another aside about finding a gambling site.
