Honestly I found the police inaction far more disgusting than Roblox's. That girl wouldnt have been abducted if police took the investigation seriously right then. The company has some...
It contained a link to a dormant website, and when they’d looked up whom it was registered to, they’d found a name: Arnold Castillo of Paterson, New Jersey.
Simon called Tucson police with the new information, but the report went nowhere. A spokesperson for the force says that there wasn’t enough evidence to launch a criminal investigation and that it was outside their jurisdiction. Simon says he hadn’t known who else to call.
Honestly I found the police inaction far more disgusting than Roblox's. That girl wouldnt have been abducted if police took the investigation seriously right then. The company has some responsibility, but that's not their main job, which is to generate wealth. Whereas the police, what else are they doing and supposed to be doing? If there wasn't enough evidence, go and get evidence that's your job. If you don't have jurisdiction well then go get federal help that's also your jobs. Disgusting.
This ideology of "companies exist to make money above all else" really needs to die. People need to stop making excuses for corporations who have exploitation as part of their business models....
The company has some responsibility, but that's not their main job, which is to generate wealth.
This ideology of "companies exist to make money above all else" really needs to die. People need to stop making excuses for corporations who have exploitation as part of their business models. Companies exist to serve people, not to abuse them. And in today's world of extreme wealth inequality, it's simply not possible to believe the lie that their actions are in everyone's best interests.
Roblox is a social service, weather they like it or not. Roblox has a duty to protect it's users that is more important than their profit goals. End of story. There is no room for debate here.
I completely agree with you 100%. The ideology that it's okay for companies to have their main responsibility be making money needs to die. My comment about their main responsibility, I assure...
I completely agree with you 100%. The ideology that it's okay for companies to have their main responsibility be making money needs to die.
My comment about their main responsibility, I assure you, was with an eye roll and makes me want throw up in my mouth. But I do feel that it reflects more of the current reality rather than their pretense that they're some sort of la di dah socially responsible children playground service. I think corporations need to be bound by law to act as responsible citizens, and that if they offer services they should be held to standards as a social service. But I only meant that of course in our current landscape they are not, and any politician or marketing person saying so are obviously lying through their teeth. Of course they're awful and terrible -- they shouldn't be, but they are. Their shareholders wouldn't agree that it's more important to be a good social service than to make money.
Fiduciary responsibility says otherwise. It needs to die but it's not just an ideology, it's law. Companies, as they are now, absolutely only exist to be profitable for their shareholders. That is...
Fiduciary responsibility says otherwise. It needs to die but it's not just an ideology, it's law.
Companies, as they are now, absolutely only exist to be profitable for their shareholders. That is their one and only responsibility. @chocobean isn't the standard bearer of this idea.
There's no such legal obligation. This is a prevalent economic philosophy called the Friedman doctrine but it's an economic doctrine, not law. The Fiduciary Duty of corporate officers requires...
There's no such legal obligation. This is a prevalent economic philosophy called the Friedman doctrine but it's an economic doctrine, not law. The Fiduciary Duty of corporate officers requires them to act in the best interest of the company, but this is not restricted to maximizing profit but can include things like long-term planning, sustainability, and care for the welfare of other stakeholders.
ultimately, it depends on what the shareholders want, and if they can convince lawyers that the board isn't acting strongly enough in that interest. That's part of what got Ford dinged long long...
this is not restricted to maximizing profit but can include things like long-term planning, sustainability, and care for the welfare of other stakeholders.
ultimately, it depends on what the shareholders want, and if they can convince lawyers that the board isn't acting strongly enough in that interest. That's part of what got Ford dinged long long ago.
Ultimately, shareholders don't care about the long term interest and apparently will pay a lot of money suing to convince otherwise if they feel its profitable
Fiduciary duty is a bullshit excuse. It's not a thing that actually exists as a written law written by legislature, it's an invention of the courts. And it's relatively recent, too; from what I'm...
Fiduciary duty is a bullshit excuse. It's not a thing that actually exists as a written law written by legislature, it's an invention of the courts. And it's relatively recent, too; from what I'm reading the cases involved started in the 80s. Regardless of the state of it's legal validity, it's immoral and wrong.
I hardly blame @chocobean for the idea; it's not their fault for bringing it up. But we cannot allow the world to burn just because it allows rich people to become just a hair more rich.
yes, which is all that matters to companies. If courts don't regulate it, there's no need to focus on that. Either that or the people themselves revolt, but I'm not holding my breath. And we've...
it's an invention of the courts
yes, which is all that matters to companies. If courts don't regulate it, there's no need to focus on that. Either that or the people themselves revolt, but I'm not holding my breath.
And we've seen much more necessary protections revoked this year alone. multiple times in the last 3 years in fact.
But we cannot allow the world to burn just because it allows rich people to become just a hair more rich.
It's not really "our" choice (you and me). But it is "our" (the people's choice), and so far society shrugs.
Yes, and this is precisely why we need to stop being so complacent about it! We need to call it out for the bullshit that it is and advocate for change.
Yes, and this is precisely why we need to stop being so complacent about it! We need to call it out for the bullshit that it is and advocate for change.
Despite my cynicism that we can get from here to there, on an ideological level I do agree with you. We could lose nothing of value if irresponsible companies like this were nuked from orbit and...
Despite my cynicism that we can get from here to there, on an ideological level I do agree with you. We could lose nothing of value if irresponsible companies like this were nuked from orbit and negligent company owners thrown in jail. We don't allow physical playground makers to install creep cams for pedos or bear traps for....Swift Baby Eaters, and in a better world we should not allow kid traps like Roblox to proft either.
It's well established that companies are beholden to their stakeholders. That's a wider group of people than shareholders, which includes people who own the company, yes, but also includes it's...
It's well established that companies are beholden to their stakeholders. That's a wider group of people than shareholders, which includes people who own the company, yes, but also includes it's employees, contractors, suppliers, and customers. A company is, at it's core, a social construct. That's why we use the same term for the people who are around us. And if a company does not serve the needs of the people involved, there is no reason for it to exist. Companies should never become a monolith in any sense of the word; they should not be the only one standing (a monopoly), nor should they be an unquestionable authority. They cannot be allowed to take too much power because that corrodes society and turns it towards authoritarianism, which brings along associated issues.
Because companies are social constructs, the people who get to determine if they have abusive relationships is everyone. People have a choice to buy their thing, and suppliers have a choice to sell their things to them. Employees have a much more fraught relationship, though, as their livelihoods are affected by their ability to work, and that's where unions come into play. In much broader strokes, we are given authority over companies in the form of effecting legislature that restricts their actions.
Right now the balance of power is very strongly imbalanced in the favor of shareholders. They have lobbied to stop legislation that would restrain them. They have formed monopolies and shrunk the competition. They have quashed worker's rights and the efforts to unionize. And as a result, we have seen people's wages stagnate and income inequality has grown to extreme highs.
Unfortunately that type of response from police isn't a shock. But, especially for parents whose kids may be on Roblox, the shoddy way it handles these issues may well be. I hope this news spreads...
Unfortunately that type of response from police isn't a shock. But, especially for parents whose kids may be on Roblox, the shoddy way it handles these issues may well be. I hope this news spreads to them so that they can at minimum have serious talks with their young kids about being safe online and change the default settings to something more safe and age-appropriate.
Oh I blame the parents as well. How is it that your teen gets gifts from an internet stranger on an ongoing basis and you haven't talked to them about grooming nor watching their internet use. I...
Oh I blame the parents as well. How is it that your teen gets gifts from an internet stranger on an ongoing basis and you haven't talked to them about grooming nor watching their internet use. I get that teens will do what they want in the end....but at the very least if she's convinced the romance is real, have the boy come meet up in person, not hop in an Uber to some warehouse with a mattress. Talk to them about how if the man turned out not to be a 6' blond hair and blue eyed adonis, or the meet up location turned out not to be the promised penthouse honeymoon suite, Uber yourself to a nice hotel that we'll pay for, give us a collect call, we'll pick you up no questions asked.
Chat filtering is woefully inadequate as protection mechanism: knowledge about how grooming works is far more important.
You're not strictly wrong, but it feels like you're bending over backwards to absolve Roblox of their share of responsibility here -- my read of this article is that they are woefully inadequate...
You're not strictly wrong, but it feels like you're bending over backwards to absolve Roblox of their share of responsibility here -- my read of this article is that they are woefully inadequate at preventing a whole swath of behaviors like this, and that's something they should be doing regardless of how good the parents are at educating their kids about grooming. Chat filtering IS woefully inadequate as a protection mechanism -- which is why a site with an audience that primarily consists of children under age 13 should have safer defaults and a huge number of other features for protecting child safety and a child safety team with a lot more power in the organization.
I think it's more a recognition that in a world where bad people do bad things it is the responsibility of the people who brought the child into the world to teach them how to be safe. It...
I think it's more a recognition that in a world where bad people do bad things it is the responsibility of the people who brought the child into the world to teach them how to be safe. It shouldn't have to be this way, I think we are all in agreement. But when we have to live in a world that allows child exploiters to draw breath, we also need to teach our children to not be exploited.
I'm certainly not disagreeing -- parents should teach their children about grooming and more generally about online safety. But we can't expect parents to be perfectly informed about the risks of...
I'm certainly not disagreeing -- parents should teach their children about grooming and more generally about online safety. But we can't expect parents to be perfectly informed about the risks of every specific website targeted at children, and they can have wildly different levels of safeguards for kids by default. We should still hold websites that profit off children accountable and require them to put in sufficient effort to build systems to protect them. Blaming it all on the parents ignores the fact that there is a company making money off creating a social platform for young children in the picture here, and it's absolutely not unreasonable to believe they have a responsibility to prevent children from being harmed on their platform to the best of their ability.
Exactly this. It is the same reason that we have laws about checking IDs to sell alcohol/cigarettes/whatever to people at the registers. We don't say "well, the parents should have told them to...
it's absolutely not unreasonable to believe they have a responsibility to prevent children from being harmed on their platform to the best of their ability.
Exactly this. It is the same reason that we have laws about checking IDs to sell alcohol/cigarettes/whatever to people at the registers. We don't say "well, the parents should have told them to not buy alcohol" and leave it at that, we put some responsibility on the venue providing the service.
We're talking about an international billion dollar company. Setting aside the deplorable inaction of the Tucson cops, Roblox are much better positioned for generally preventing misuse of their...
We're talking about an international billion dollar company. Setting aside the deplorable inaction of the Tucson cops, Roblox are much better positioned for generally preventing misuse of their own product than a web of disjointed local, national and international police forces.
We've known for years how exploitative Roblox's business model is of children - even this article mentions the young victim "working" for her kidnapper. The company generate a ridiculous amount of profit off the backs of its young users. Yet, also going by the article, they're seemingly too cheap to hire an amount of moderators sufficient for keeping up with the amount of data exchanged on the platform. No one is going to convince me they can't afford it, and if you read through the article at the many statements the company has made, they always skirt around this one issue. They're creating better "tools" and nominating new "positions" and, just like many other of the more massive online platforms, are going to keep disclaiming responsability because it's not feasible to hire more people and profit a little less? I find that super gross myself.
It’s easy to assume that they don’t have other urgent problems when we know hardly anything about them. What else are they supposed to be doing? We have no idea. That’s usually the case for...
It’s easy to assume that they don’t have other urgent problems when we know hardly anything about them. What else are they supposed to be doing? We have no idea. That’s usually the case for organizations we happened to read about in the news today.
How sites that aim to be a place for anyone under the age of 13 is baffling to me. COPPA has existed for a long time. Roblox has been criticized for these types of activities many times. I...
How sites that aim to be a place for anyone under the age of 13 is baffling to me. COPPA has existed for a long time.
Roblox has been criticized for these types of activities many times. I understand the concept of a website not immediately being responsible for user-generated content. But when your website is inclusive of young children, I think that concept should be re-evaluated.
Honestly I found the police inaction far more disgusting than Roblox's. That girl wouldnt have been abducted if police took the investigation seriously right then. The company has some responsibility, but that's not their main job, which is to generate wealth. Whereas the police, what else are they doing and supposed to be doing? If there wasn't enough evidence, go and get evidence that's your job. If you don't have jurisdiction well then go get federal help that's also your jobs. Disgusting.
This ideology of "companies exist to make money above all else" really needs to die. People need to stop making excuses for corporations who have exploitation as part of their business models. Companies exist to serve people, not to abuse them. And in today's world of extreme wealth inequality, it's simply not possible to believe the lie that their actions are in everyone's best interests.
Roblox is a social service, weather they like it or not. Roblox has a duty to protect it's users that is more important than their profit goals. End of story. There is no room for debate here.
I completely agree with you 100%. The ideology that it's okay for companies to have their main responsibility be making money needs to die.
My comment about their main responsibility, I assure you, was with an eye roll and makes me want throw up in my mouth. But I do feel that it reflects more of the current reality rather than their pretense that they're some sort of la di dah socially responsible children playground service. I think corporations need to be bound by law to act as responsible citizens, and that if they offer services they should be held to standards as a social service. But I only meant that of course in our current landscape they are not, and any politician or marketing person saying so are obviously lying through their teeth. Of course they're awful and terrible -- they shouldn't be, but they are. Their shareholders wouldn't agree that it's more important to be a good social service than to make money.
Fiduciary responsibility says otherwise. It needs to die but it's not just an ideology, it's law.
Companies, as they are now, absolutely only exist to be profitable for their shareholders. That is their one and only responsibility. @chocobean isn't the standard bearer of this idea.
There's no such legal obligation. This is a prevalent economic philosophy called the Friedman doctrine but it's an economic doctrine, not law. The Fiduciary Duty of corporate officers requires them to act in the best interest of the company, but this is not restricted to maximizing profit but can include things like long-term planning, sustainability, and care for the welfare of other stakeholders.
I stand corrected then.
ultimately, it depends on what the shareholders want, and if they can convince lawyers that the board isn't acting strongly enough in that interest. That's part of what got Ford dinged long long ago.
Ultimately, shareholders don't care about the long term interest and apparently will pay a lot of money suing to convince otherwise if they feel its profitable
Fiduciary duty is a bullshit excuse. It's not a thing that actually exists as a written law written by legislature, it's an invention of the courts. And it's relatively recent, too; from what I'm reading the cases involved started in the 80s. Regardless of the state of it's legal validity, it's immoral and wrong.
I hardly blame @chocobean for the idea; it's not their fault for bringing it up. But we cannot allow the world to burn just because it allows rich people to become just a hair more rich.
yes, which is all that matters to companies. If courts don't regulate it, there's no need to focus on that. Either that or the people themselves revolt, but I'm not holding my breath.
And we've seen much more necessary protections revoked this year alone. multiple times in the last 3 years in fact.
It's not really "our" choice (you and me). But it is "our" (the people's choice), and so far society shrugs.
Yes, and this is precisely why we need to stop being so complacent about it! We need to call it out for the bullshit that it is and advocate for change.
Despite my cynicism that we can get from here to there, on an ideological level I do agree with you. We could lose nothing of value if irresponsible companies like this were nuked from orbit and negligent company owners thrown in jail. We don't allow physical playground makers to install creep cams for pedos or bear traps for....Swift Baby Eaters, and in a better world we should not allow kid traps like Roblox to proft either.
How do you reason out that Companies exist to serve people rather than to make money? Also who gets to define "abuse them"?
It's well established that companies are beholden to their stakeholders. That's a wider group of people than shareholders, which includes people who own the company, yes, but also includes it's employees, contractors, suppliers, and customers. A company is, at it's core, a social construct. That's why we use the same term for the people who are around us. And if a company does not serve the needs of the people involved, there is no reason for it to exist. Companies should never become a monolith in any sense of the word; they should not be the only one standing (a monopoly), nor should they be an unquestionable authority. They cannot be allowed to take too much power because that corrodes society and turns it towards authoritarianism, which brings along associated issues.
Because companies are social constructs, the people who get to determine if they have abusive relationships is everyone. People have a choice to buy their thing, and suppliers have a choice to sell their things to them. Employees have a much more fraught relationship, though, as their livelihoods are affected by their ability to work, and that's where unions come into play. In much broader strokes, we are given authority over companies in the form of effecting legislature that restricts their actions.
Right now the balance of power is very strongly imbalanced in the favor of shareholders. They have lobbied to stop legislation that would restrain them. They have formed monopolies and shrunk the competition. They have quashed worker's rights and the efforts to unionize. And as a result, we have seen people's wages stagnate and income inequality has grown to extreme highs.
Unfortunately that type of response from police isn't a shock. But, especially for parents whose kids may be on Roblox, the shoddy way it handles these issues may well be. I hope this news spreads to them so that they can at minimum have serious talks with their young kids about being safe online and change the default settings to something more safe and age-appropriate.
Oh I blame the parents as well. How is it that your teen gets gifts from an internet stranger on an ongoing basis and you haven't talked to them about grooming nor watching their internet use. I get that teens will do what they want in the end....but at the very least if she's convinced the romance is real, have the boy come meet up in person, not hop in an Uber to some warehouse with a mattress. Talk to them about how if the man turned out not to be a 6' blond hair and blue eyed adonis, or the meet up location turned out not to be the promised penthouse honeymoon suite, Uber yourself to a nice hotel that we'll pay for, give us a collect call, we'll pick you up no questions asked.
Chat filtering is woefully inadequate as protection mechanism: knowledge about how grooming works is far more important.
You're not strictly wrong, but it feels like you're bending over backwards to absolve Roblox of their share of responsibility here -- my read of this article is that they are woefully inadequate at preventing a whole swath of behaviors like this, and that's something they should be doing regardless of how good the parents are at educating their kids about grooming. Chat filtering IS woefully inadequate as a protection mechanism -- which is why a site with an audience that primarily consists of children under age 13 should have safer defaults and a huge number of other features for protecting child safety and a child safety team with a lot more power in the organization.
I think it's more a recognition that in a world where bad people do bad things it is the responsibility of the people who brought the child into the world to teach them how to be safe. It shouldn't have to be this way, I think we are all in agreement. But when we have to live in a world that allows child exploiters to draw breath, we also need to teach our children to not be exploited.
I'm certainly not disagreeing -- parents should teach their children about grooming and more generally about online safety. But we can't expect parents to be perfectly informed about the risks of every specific website targeted at children, and they can have wildly different levels of safeguards for kids by default. We should still hold websites that profit off children accountable and require them to put in sufficient effort to build systems to protect them. Blaming it all on the parents ignores the fact that there is a company making money off creating a social platform for young children in the picture here, and it's absolutely not unreasonable to believe they have a responsibility to prevent children from being harmed on their platform to the best of their ability.
Exactly this. It is the same reason that we have laws about checking IDs to sell alcohol/cigarettes/whatever to people at the registers. We don't say "well, the parents should have told them to not buy alcohol" and leave it at that, we put some responsibility on the venue providing the service.
We're talking about an international billion dollar company. Setting aside the deplorable inaction of the Tucson cops, Roblox are much better positioned for generally preventing misuse of their own product than a web of disjointed local, national and international police forces.
We've known for years how exploitative Roblox's business model is of children - even this article mentions the young victim "working" for her kidnapper. The company generate a ridiculous amount of profit off the backs of its young users. Yet, also going by the article, they're seemingly too cheap to hire an amount of moderators sufficient for keeping up with the amount of data exchanged on the platform. No one is going to convince me they can't afford it, and if you read through the article at the many statements the company has made, they always skirt around this one issue. They're creating better "tools" and nominating new "positions" and, just like many other of the more massive online platforms, are going to keep disclaiming responsability because it's not feasible to hire more people and profit a little less? I find that super gross myself.
It’s easy to assume that they don’t have other urgent problems when we know hardly anything about them. What else are they supposed to be doing? We have no idea. That’s usually the case for organizations we happened to read about in the news today.
Mirror: https://archive.is/LBWsj
How sites that aim to be a place for anyone under the age of 13 is baffling to me. COPPA has existed for a long time.
Roblox has been criticized for these types of activities many times. I understand the concept of a website not immediately being responsible for user-generated content. But when your website is inclusive of young children, I think that concept should be re-evaluated.
Especially when it's not just inclusive towards young children -- young children are its main target demographic.