Problems at Roblox
Roblox is horrendous. It is as dangerous as any dark corner of the Internet, except that it <i>appears</i> child-friendly to parents. It _seems_ to have controls, and _seems_ to restrict bad behaviour, but it does not, and cannot. My daughter was roped into an online paedophile ring when she was 12. The initial contacts and grooming were made through Roblox... almost right under our noses. Every time we, as parents, looked at what she was doing, it <i>seemed</i> okay. We could have dug deeper, but did not. Luckily we caught it before it progressed too far, but some damage was done.<p>Wherever you can, tell parents to flat-out block Roblox.<p>Edit: Because people are asking how it works.<p>Roblox is a lot about bragging rights for individuals. You gain skins, trade for rare items, buy Robux for real money that can be used to buy items. Players flock around those that that have rare or expensive items. My daughter had a &quot;super super happy face&quot;. I just googled, and it is current selling for $350. It makes them feel wanted and important. So just like fornite and skins in other games.<p>The groomers feed the celebrity, sense of community and so on to engage in chat. It starts as in-game chat, which you can never see the history of, before moving to DMs. The chat has tricks to get around removed words, so they all communicate in some sort of code that they all pick up along the way. Then they are able to divert them to other platforms where there are fewer controls. My daughter was made to create instagram account and an a porn one. Then they follow up on other platform calls (or phone calls) and follow the usual grooming techniques.<p>The trick is to identify the marks by how they behave in the game, and in the more popular, and social ones, I think that it is quite easy (in retrospect).