Honestly, I grew up playing roblox I never ran into and pdfiles however about 8ish years ago I joined a group of people who made a guild and since me and one other (the group leader) I ended up becoming second leader (that was about 12 years ago) we went from being a guild to just being a group of friends who played different games together on roblox and off roblox, but 8 years ago one of the oldest members in the group who was 19 found out he was dating a 12 year old he met on roblox, I reported him on roblox and on discord and nothing happened, I left the group because discord nor roblox banned the guy or the kid and never played roblox really after that except for studios because I make 3D models for a few friends.
I'm an adult with a Roblox account, cause I play with my daughter. I don't talk to other users at all and only to my daughter. I've seen a couple things over the last couple years that are certainly questionable, with people trying to get around the chat filters and one game that allowed user uploaded images that wasn't moderated at all. I blocked that game on my daughters account and helped her through any issue with chat. But yeah... it's a online game with tons of users. Just dumping your child on there and never checking on what is going on, is a problem.
@@RobJT Every child is going to eventually be spending time online as they get older and schools don't teach how to do that safely. So that sort of falls on me as a parent to teach. I'd rather do that in a game environment prior to them being unleashed onto the internet at large. Hopefully later in life she feels safe enough to talk to me if she encounters anything "odd", but i guess only time will tell. Check back with me in a decade or so...
As a former kid on the internet who's got groomed multiple times. I'm glad you're supervising things because it's a scary place out there. Most places do not give a single fuck about moderation because it's more profitable to let creeps use their platform (they are a market after all).
Lying to investors absolutely IS illegal. However, if the CEO gets punished at all, they will fine him $500K and pat themselves on the back for protecting the rest of us.
Not necessarily, look at one of Hindenburgs first reports on the company Nikola, the CEO of that company Trevor Milton got prison time and i think is still there now and he had alot of his estate taken off him
I wouldn't be too sure about that; Rich people are usually more worth protecting to the courts and as such, investor fraud can land you a pretty harsh sentence
I’ve been playing Roblox for over ten years. Started as a bab. The utter state of Roblox is so upsetting to me because I remember the vibrancy and fun of Roblox. When games weren’t incentivized to be made to milk as much money from you as possible, and when just outright pedophilia was far more underground. I’m not convinced that Roblox corporate isn’t run by pedophiles themselves.
I've been playing since 2008 and I 100% agree with you about the downfall of Roblox. The only reason I still play is because I'm working on a R6-based hood game. At least studio has been improving lol
You technically are allowed to discuss some of the subjects, it'll just result in your video being ineligible for monetization as well as the algorithm actively trying to hide it.
@@user-wj6jh1cd5nI don't want to call you a RUclips apologist, but if you can't share your thoughts and creativity with the internet then why make a video for this platform to begin with?
@@Brixster man these last two replies really missed the point. My point is that you can talk about such stuff, but larger content creators such as kira typically avoid it due to the monetization/algorithm aspects. It's a problem with larger creators and money imo.
@jamesp1389 Ruben sim is only good at promoting legitimate groups for dealing with the problem. Tho Ruben himself is just a grifter making money off the situation. Not to mention his track record of doxxing through proxy.
Sounds like the internet as a whole when I was a kid ... except as a concentrated kid zone it's worse. Yuck. Plus companies in the 90s had genuine care and enthusiasm for the net. Thats why the Dot Com bubble happened.
Fr creating social media and online games “for kids” is the stupidest thing ever done. I’ve been playing online games for over 20 years since I was a child. Age never came up because it isn’t relevant to the game or the space and they were all text based communication. These kids are being corralled into spaces that attract predators. It’s insane
ive had a roblox account since 2011, but its hard to find anyone my age that isnt a creepy weirdo or game developer ripping off children and their money, so ive lost most interest in playing and developing for that platform 😿 went from a fun place for people to have basic monetization from assets and making silly, fun games out of passion into a highly corporate and oversaturated platform where even children are encouraged to work for below minimum wage for *other children* or even real game studios on official “career” pages on the website 🙀
Same. I was playing since like 2006 and had so much fun back in the day but now everything just feels gross and exploitative right down to the popular game "templates" (because honestly, it's just the same game different paint all over the main page).
same 😔 i log on every now and then to play the kinds of games younger me wished for (the wings of fire game(s) mostly) or for nostalgia trips but i steer clear of anything popular because i hate the state of the game right now
Same. From back in 08 here, and I don't interact with the community anymore. I'd love to have friends join me to see why I still play, but sadly the stigma of the platform makes such things impossible. All I do these days is just play Phantom Forces and the sort. Wish I could find some of the games I used to play as a kid, see what became of them.
The thing with the 6 billion registered accounts claim is that Roblox does not ever delete a user's account. You cannot delete your account (although it can be deactivated, but as soon as you log in again, the account gets immediately restored) and even if you get permanently banned (which almost never happens), your account is just marked as "[CONTENT DELETED]" and hidden from other users, it's still there in the background. (I've tested this by querying the Roblox API for a banned user via their user ID, that query returned all the public facing account info as well as the "PERMANENTLY BANNED", "HIDDEN FROM SEARCH", "HIDDEN FROM FRIENDS" and "HIDDEN FROM WEB" flags on the account.) EDIT: Oh yeah. Also the PDF problem in Roblox is nothing new. It was already bad when I played 10 years ago, back when they actually had in-house moderation teams that did their job. Now it's absolutely rampant, their current moderation is borderline non-existent and is almost entirely algorith based. There is an extremely aggressive chat filter that will block lots of normal words for inexplicable reasons but just putting a full stop in the middle of a word that is rightly blocked is often all you need to do to side step the chat filter. And the thing is Roblox staff are fully aware of the fact that it is a problem and they just refuse to take action.
I'm sure the average staff member is doing all they can but moderators are playing a game of whack-a-mole until the higher-ups approve something stronger. I'm reminded of a video I saw a few years ago regarding people who review videos on various social media sites to determine if they need to be deleted. The topic was about the mental health of the moderators because they constantly are watching some of the absolute worst things imaginable. They really just wanted something more effective to ban that content from ever getting to be uploaded or seen by human eyes in the first place. I admittedly jerked back when Kira mentioned Robox using AI to police the site but thinking of those moderators, I understand going that route.
6 BILLION 😂😂😂😂😂😂 Those numbers are so hight and ridiculous, that yes, It means they don't destroy bots or old unused accounts... But also that they are shameless complete lier. 6 BILLION 😂😂😂
Just imagin that, on League of Legends, one of the most popular game, Riot estimate at 500 million the numbre of people who have created account since creation. And their is also double account, bots, etc on LoL So...6 BILLION for Roblox... 😂😂 This company is lunatic mythomaniac
@@BewareTheLilyOfTheValley You may well be right that the moderation team is doing everything it can given their situation and available resources... However I was merely pointing out from a user perspective, that moderation appears to be entirely automated already... And even then it is still hilariously ineffective at stopping bad actors. All it does do is hinder normal conversations because seemingly random things get blocked by the various filters. For example "OOF." is blocked, but obvious tricks to sidestep the chat filter and break the "Dating / CSEM" rule (letter substitution (Using a Z instead of an S for instance), adding spaces or punctuation in the middle of filtered words etc.) is rampant and the loopholes have never been closed despite being known for years. Also there is no longer any way to appeal moderation actions. So if you get reported by just a few accounts for something you never did, your account will get actioned despite there being no wrongdoing and you'll have no way to get the false ban overturned.
My 8 year-old loves Roblox and plays it on her tablet; but I make sure her time on it is heavily monitored. She simply cannot play it without me actually activating it and I won't let her play it without either myself or my wife supervising her playtime. I've also disabled her voice chat along with disabling her hearing other people's chats and she cannot send or receive anything without me being notified about it on my phone. That some parents allow their kids on that game platform without any kind of supervision boggles my mind. My wife's cousin has 14 and 11 year-old daughters and both were on Roblox unsupervised for years, even with me warning them about it repeatedly. That is; until they caught their 11 year-old (she was 10 at the time) taking pics of her nude chest and sending them to one her 'friends' to 'compare'. Yeah... they ended up punishing both daughters by blocking them from using their devices on the internet because they can't be bothered to supervise their internet usage instead.
They...blamed the victim. Oh my frickin god, that's horrible. The amount of psychological damage you do to people when you make sex crimes become the victim's fault is horrendous. I'm so sorry to that child and I hope your wife can maybe one day have a conversation with the girl and let her know that it wasn't her fault. I'm sure it'll make the girl's parents mad but that was a terrible reaction to have.
Typical idiot parents who don't want to be frank about what pedos are to their kids because "they're just children, it's too scary for them", and then blame the kids instead of themselves. Also, the best way to get kids off social media isn't to limit screentime, it's to actually invest in proper single player games that doesn't have any dodgy chatrooms, combined with explaining to them early what pedos are and that anyone online could be one.
@@blondbraid7986 I heavily limit my daughter's online screentime; but that's mainly to get her to socialize with others as she's an only child. I got her a Switch with a couple of multiplayer games to compensate; but I found the best thing was to actually spend more time with her doing things she likes. And while I haven't really explained to her what a pedo is; I have spoken to her about talking to people she doesn't know online. I know that's not really tracking; which I why I've disabled voice chat, etc.
As a 40+ year old when i found out a friend of mine's child played Robolox i strongly tried to warn him about what happens in that game, sadly he didnt seem to care, i will pass this info on to him but i doubt it will change anythng. thanks for covering this topic
Kids don't really measure the consequences of things even if they're warned. That's kind of normal. Child sex crimes are also not really discussed in an honest way so they're gonna tend to think this thing will happen to other people or only on the tv but never to them until it does, then afterwards they might use that knowledge to speak on it. But if you're doing things to hope to prevent it, you're gonna have more luck trying to let the parents know so they try to supervise things a little bit more.
My spouse worked for them. He'd be so disappointed if he could see what a shitshow their moderation has become. I don't think he'd be surprised though.
It's really weird seeing the direction this game has taken as someone who played it back in 2008. I remember when it was just some knock-off lego game where you built stuff and most of the games on the catalog were obstacle courses, building games, and deathmatches. I guess it's not so surprising in retrospect when it always seemed like they were becoming greedier and greedier by the year.
dude facts, i was a blockland player back in the day and there was a childish rivalry between the two games for being essentially the same game. now they are almost indistinguishable. idek if there's even blocks in roblocks anymore at this point lol
The corpos got ashamed of being compared to Lego. Instead of embracing it and trying to do brand deals with Lego, emphasize and focus on the more creative building aspects of the platform, etc, they just became a generic metaverse MMO where all creativity goes to die. Truly a shame, I fondly remember Roblox when I was 10 years younger
A very big chunk of Roblox users know how much NSFW stuff there is. Not just the games, but the User Generated Content in the catalogue containing everything from suggestive to straight up "how has Roblox not banned this". Inflated metrics aren't surprising either, given you can easily make bots.
i've heard stories of user making things like simulations of cults commiting mass coolaid, car crashes, home breakings, school pea shootings, etc. it's so wild they are so degenerate
And I'd say it's more to do with how understaffed moderation is, as well as just bored teenagers being edgy. There's only around a thousand or so human moderators on a platform frequented by millions perpetually and a reliance on automatic moderation. The latter clearly doesn't seem to be working.
i went an joined once of those vibe pool games and within literally 3 mins someone was being dared to "go up to a random person and give them backshots" like wtf lol
As a data person, who has been responsible for both internal and investor metrics, Roblox is 100% bullshitting thrir numbers, either intentionally or unintentionally. Investor data being different is a massive red flag I can think of 500 million reasons why though.
I would 100% say it's on the parents and roblox as a company. My sisters kids were all avid players of the platform for years until I decided to make an account to play with them back in 2020 or so, to call the all a hell scape even back then is an understatement. A lot of the pdfs and other NSFW stuff that is happening now has been rampant for years after doing just a small bit of looking into the kind of content and games roblox itself pushes. I had to educate my sister big time on how to moderate everything her kids do on the platform and she has all the tablets and phones locked down hardcore to the point that they can't even access new games unless she approves it. It's a sad reality when a game like this is so rampant with issues but the people behind it are too busy raking in cash to care enough to do anything.
I was one of the first 25k people to sign up for Roblox when I was 7 years old back around 2010. Always wanted it to succeed, but not like this. Rip Builderman 💪 everyone’s first Roblox friend and the last man to care about Roblox’s integrity and quality over profit and publicity. I miss builders club bro, I still got the hats for all 3 variants of the subscription. Would gladly have paid that monthly over this.
>"first 25K people" >2010 As a 2010 joiner, you are massively capping. The first 25K users showed up in 2006-7 or so when the platform was first public in the first place.
@@InfinitySevens actually your 100% right. Even though the most popular games had about 200-300 people max. Turned out I joined early 2009, and even then it had 4 mil players. Absolutely wild, had no idea it was that big even then given when a game hit over 2k players back then it turned out to be botted. Just didn’t care enough to google their numbers til now as opposed to guessing based on their actual player counts. Then again Roblox claims they have 6.5 billion players… so I might be closer to that 25k than I think even if they say it’s 4 mil 🤣
Pedos in roblox is nothing new, like litterly seems like everyone knows except parents. Edit: man i can already see roblox lawyers and waht not Copyright claim every video like "PirateSoftware" when there is a video mentioning his fursona "Maldavius Figtree". o7
I mean to be fair, there's going to be groomers walking around in every online space marketed to children, regardless of how well they deal with it. We don't live in a perfect world unfortunately. The problem with Roblox is its apparent apathy towards it. It allows these types to feel undeterred and attracts even more because they know there's a low chance anything will happen compared to a different site with proper moderation.
@@user-wj6jh1cd5n I definitely want them to care more, but also I'm just distressed how a generation of parents who grew up WITH the internet now are still treating it like the app is going to babysit their kids.
@@Nassifeh because the internet of the 80s and 90s was a completely different thing. Back then the internet was smaller, more user oriented. Nowadays the internet is just another way for companies and governments to advertise or control people. Your phone can do more today, then a $2,000 desktop computer could in the 90s. It’s just not the same. And it’s going to be like this in another 20-30 year when the 2000s and 2010s generation has kids, because the internet of 2000s and 2010s will be very different from the internet in 2030s and 2040s. The internet simply evolves too fast for any one generation to keep up with it.
@@The_hot_blue_fire_guy I mean, yeah, it was different in those ways, but it was not actually that different with regard to this specifically? Like, do you think the CPU power of some kid's phone is the thing that exposes them to adult content? If you have a 12-year-old now, you were probably a teenager online in the 00s, not the 90s when maybe you didn't have internet yet. Today's parents of tweens and young teens have to know perfectly well that the internet is full of porn, that today's kids are going to be trying as hard to get around content filters as you were. We have a generation of parents now who definitely should remember that they *would* have done weird roleplay online in middle school if their PCs weren't in the middle of the dining room at the time, and why they're ignoring that their kids could be doing the same thing baffles me.
seeing that specific name outside of the 3d chat/grid SecondLife was like a punch to the face, and I'm not even halfway through the video. I used to hang out with that person ingame years ago- let me guess he's actually a shithead?
I don't think companies are even aware of what moderation is until -a certain credit card company- investors make a call threatening to pull out. Any other form of effort is paramount to educating a cat about Van Allen belts. You can pretend they listened but unless it's about making money it's all background noise to them.
My son loves Roblox. He doesn't play without me, I don't make him have to let on that I'm in the game unless he wants to. But I'll never trust mods, I remember what happened with my neopets chats back when I was his age, he's 11. Kira, I truly admire how you approach your audience with such respect and authenticity. You never feel the need to put on a persona or create a facade, and that level of honesty is rare and refreshing. I especially appreciate that you never underestimate our intelligence-you present your research in such a thorough and thoughtful way, which really sets your content apart. The stories you choose to share are always meaningful and well-researched, making each video not just informative but genuinely valuable. You remind me of the great investigative journalists, sometimes referred to as 'muckrakers,' who sought out the truth and shared it without bias or embellishment. Thank you for all the effort and integrity you bring to your work!
It really feels like there's no safe spaces for kids to communicate with one another. Unless it's a single-player game or a site that doesn't allow for comments, they've pretty much been shut out of the internet. I was nearly an adult by the time I had access to the internet and my one experience of chaperoning kids online were two girls I was babysitting. They used websites directly from Disney and Nickelodeon which had games and after I first confirmed that the websites were accurate and were safe, I sat next to them as they played on my laptop, just to make sure they didn't go to another site. We bounced between just those two sites.
Easy, don't let kids online. If they want to be social, let them be social with real kids in person. I didn't have any social media before 18, and didn't ask for it because my parents were honest to me about stranger danger early on.
@@blondbraid7986While I do agree with the notion that kids shouldn't be online as much as they currently are, the internet is a part of life whether we like it or not. I think that it really is up to us to teach internet safety to children because schools don't do that for us despite the internet, again, being an integral part of modern life.
Been speaking about this myself for over a decade. I saw the top games change from stuff like paintball and tycoon games and arcade stuff, to dollhouse, role playing, family simulator, just full of pedos.
Literally everything you describe was also around on Roblox years ago. It's just way more noticeable now because the sheer scale of it all has gotten massive.
@@InfinitySevensyes, they were on roblox years ago but MUCH smaller probably, and smaller means a less chance to get victims so it's recently amplified in problem, making this more urgent. "A death is a tragedy, a thousand is a statistic"
I mean Metaverses have always been around. They were much bigger in the 90s. I played Second Life growing up myself, which is exactly what all the Metaverses keep describing. And why people who play Second Life know better than thinking a platform like that could replace anything much less the Internet. We were told this too, tried it, and realized waiting for everything to load and physically walking around a 3d representation of a website was one of the biggest pains in the ass ever. Basically, how to know if techbros will fail. Does what they want to do already exist? And can it be done in a more efficient manner? People will always choose efficiency over anything else overall
@@CC-qx7hk It's not just the idea of the metaverse that isn't new. The creators of Second Life did actually try to sell the idea that it was going to replace the real world. Even the grift isn't original.
As a former accounting major, keeping two sets of accounting books isn't necessarily illegal or fraudulent because taxes sometimes need to be calculated differently for certain things. The issue is when they are deliberately keeping one set of the real numbers but showing investors a different set with much better numbers to keep them investing which seems to be what they are implying is going on here and it certainly seems suspicious that all the big company people are dumping their stock like it's Enron and the ship is sinking fast.
Roblox is a publicly-traded company. They don't have a CHOICE about what version of the numbers they show investors. It's legally mandated. They can use a different thing internally if they want that's more pessimistic; the version that they report publicly isn't optional. You have to remember, whatever else is going on here, that this research company is extremely financially motivated to say the most negative thing possible, and take stuff with at least a small grain of salt. Accusing them of misstating their *audited* financial statements would be a much bigger deal and is something they do not seem to be doing here.
I've been playing Roblox for nearly 14 years, and I've seen the evolution of Roblox get worse and worse. It's always been bad in terms of moderation but in about 2019 Roblox moderation became terrible. I'm only on Roblox still because I have a brother and a cousin that are considerably younger than me and I play it with them. Sometimes we'll see the most depraved stuff on Roblox nowadays and Roblox will do nothing about it. We joking played a bluey game once and found it was hacked and that the hacker was making people's avatar's have naked bodies and the hacker was flying around saying sexual things. Reported the hacker, nothing happened. So I took a video, sent it in to Roblox support, and got a 24 hour ban on my account. The hacker remained in the game. And that's when I realized their moderators don't care or turn a blind eye to it.
i’m 23 and the only reason i have an account is because i made it originally back in 2013 when i was 12 years old. i’ve never had any bad experiences on there but that’s probably because i don’t chat with other users and just play the games i’m interested in which are usually those geared towards slightly older audiences or general audiences. whenever i venture out of my normal games i see a ton of concerning behavior though. don’t even get me started on the crazy amount of straight-up nazi iconography and “free diddy” clothes that are available on the avatar shop. the platform is deeply and severely flawed, and if i had a kid i wouldn’t let them anywhere near roblox.
I'm I'm adult with a roblox account but it's an account from way back in like 2012 when I was a child playing the game. I had 4 accounts (mainly to try getting rare items at the time for special events and such). I keep my account just to go on every once in a while to see all my old friends and stuff I have. I hate what the platform turned into. It was awesome when I was a kid.
I've been saying it for almost 20 years. The internet is not a place for children. At what age it's usage is OK is debatable, but the internet is an inherently unsafe place and I'd consider anything under 16 to young to actually deal with what they get access to. *Especially* the places designed for and marketed around children are full of predators and they always were and it is outright impossible to keep them out.
There's a lot of stuff that can help with teen issues on the internet, so I'd say 13 or so and having had a decent education on internet safety beforehand; bring out the old stranger danger videos! And limited times of access - so on a laptop or something after school, not on a smartphone 24/7. Make them consider what they actually value using it for, and what they can do another way instead.
Ive been on the internet since the wild west days, as a 10 year old and nothing happened to me cause I wasnt an idiot., youve got to teach your children not to be dumbasses instead.
@@Sololaverdad429 The "I've been doing XYZ and nothing bad happened to me" argument has always been a very terrible one. This is an issue that requires a lot more nuance but yes, internet literacy is a good first step.
Thank you, I’m a gamer myself and I’ve known about the Roblox situation for a number of years and therefore I don’t allow my children to play it but Imagine all these parents that are clueless and think it’s a harmless game.
i enjoy roblox as an adult; it's an easy platform to make something for fun on with an easy language to become passably good at to use, and some of the games there are just genuinely fun to play especially with friends. but any adult who plays this game can tell you it's actually terrifying seeing the sort of things that happen on there, often completely unmoderated
I was one of the first player on Roblox back when it launched (first few thousand at least). The amount of grooming going on was insane, particularly any of the "Life" or "Sim" style games. I remember one gave vaguely named "School Life" or "School Sim" that had player roles in the game such as Student, Dad, and Mom. People playing the Dad and Mom roles would roleplay... adult situations when the Student player was away at the in-game school. This was almost always prompted by the Mom player who would either claim or act like a female and pressure the Dad player (regardless of gender) into the roleplay. I was much younger at the time so I didn't give it much thought and I have some vague memories of participating as a Dad player, but in hindsight this was absolutely horrific and is for sure still happening to this day.
When Charles Barkley (former NBA player) made that infamous commercial back in the 90s, "I'm not a role model; PARENTS should be the role models"... ...he was talking about parents like these, the type of parents who let their kids run amok, unsupervised.
No actual normal adults left playing roblox is not even just because of the stigma and all the pedos, but also just becuase the game catalogue is sooooo much worse than what it used to be, the quality of games to play and discoverability of good games is the worst it has been in over a decade if not in all of the platforms history.
There's a couple I still play, like Phantom Forces and the sort, but I've never touched, nor would I want to touch the games that tend to be prone to this kind of kiddy-diddling crap. I tried a military tycoon game out of curiousity, and realized that holy shit - these games are just as monetized as mobile games. Worst that PF has, is you can buy credits for R$, which even then, isn't required since you can just sell skins (which doesn't have a proper economy, it just deletes the skin from inventory and pays you a certain amount for it) and level up for credits.
I think one key takeaway that should be taken from this is thankyou to those in the moderation for dummies crew and rubensim, they've been publishing all the lists of the ERPers and bringing this to the forefront. I don't have kids myself but they definitely wouldn't be playing roblox if I did.
Ruben Sim is an unsung hero of this mess. The fact that he was forced out of the platform by management over mistakes they themselves were responsible for is still disgusting. Good to see him still fighting the good fight in exile.
@@vinesauceobscurities well, he has some people to help work with him now, the ERP slaying initiative has been quite successful so far. Also there's Schlep who's been doing similar work lately and even got one of them arrested.
I have a hunch that many mmos are inflating user metrics a ton. Look at Runescape’s botting problem and look at the recorded player counts. The company is including bots in player analytics. The real game is a ghost town in all but a handful of areas.
I played Roblox in the 2000s before it became what it is today. When it was just kids in an online Lego game essentially. Even then, I can think back to a situation that in hindsight was highly inappropriate. I hardly even recognize the game anymore, and I’m not sure about letting my kids play it.
14:51 bro, thats accounting basics. Every company has internal vs external accounting for different purposes.The internal is to help them see how their company is doing and provides much more detail than is required for external investors
As for the "two sets of books". This may be a perfectly legitimate activity being misreported. And not Roblox doing anything illegal. There are financial accounts, that are used for statutory reporting. Then there are management accounts, that are structured to report the performance of the business units within the company. Whilst they are related, they can have vastly different structures.
My nostalgia for penguinz0's old videos are starting to not be enough to outweigh my loathing for the worst title format that RUclips has seen in a long time. In case Kira decides to change to a real title, the current one is "The Roblox Situation Is Crazy".
I'll be frank: Absolutely no one goes to the "Therapy" game expecting a serious discussion. It's pretty much a meme game at this point and it wasn't designed for anything serious, so naturally it just leads to a bunch of edgy teenagers trying to outdo each other in raunchiness.
As someone who has been groomed into explicit roleplay when I was underage by someone who has gone on to become a Roblox Game Dev in the years after, I am always following these kinds of stories and dreading them because I know what some of these kids may be going through.
I saw something recently that the FTC has made botting illegal. Which this now allows them to nail down the jello they havent been able to over the years. So wonder how the netzen pastures will be after that being a thing for awhile
You can't tell if the alts are actually different people or not, just cause they use the same IP doesn't mean they are the same person. Alts shouldn't matter too much for DAU, cause that would mean people would have to use their alt accounts every day. There is no way that 20% of all users use their alts every day, they probably just forgot the password and made a new account and just use the new account instead of the old account.
Amazon did the same thing for a long while. The CEO kept saying, don't look at cash flow, we're growing! If you looked at the books you'd see that they never made a profit for the longest time. Then they pivoted towards AWS services and finally started making money. Roblox has no plan to pivot to a profitable company as far as anyone could tell.
They're not exactly a shining example of decency, and it's very humorous that mainstream outlets all of a sudden care about child welfare, but if Roblox is "the worst company on the planet" then I'd love to hear these journos opinions on Boeing, Raytheon, Vanguard, BlackRock, Lockheed, etc
I'm an active Roblox player and have been for almost 10 years now. The site has been going downhill for a while now, back in the day it was more focused on actual games while now it leans more towards roleplay. Specifically more generalised roleplay, because there is a difference. I don't come across much in my corner of Roblox with fandom roleplay and animal simulators. But still I would not recommend kids coming into these spaces, at least not without being taught about the dangers and with the right parental support. At least these spaces are somewhat moderated, but it's by game specific volunteers. I remember hearing directly from a WCUE moderator that they had 13 year old moderator... It honestly shouldn't be left up to teens to moderate giant multiple thousand daily players Roblox games.
Why does every third youtube video nowadays have to be called "x situation is crazy". What happened to video titles serving as a quick summary of events? Is this an algorithm thing or a generational thing?
Some awful story for sure regarding Roblox! This is one more reason why I stick to using Unity and Unreal Engine to create my games even this means I can not easily show my creations to other people then my closest friends as the games are only on my own computer and not shared online in the way a system like Roblox works. My games are also not ready for release on platforms like Steam. Its mostly smaller and often incomplete projects that I create just for fun and to learn gamedev in general.
I’ve been playing since _I_ was a preteen. I’m in my 20s now. My account is 13 yrs old. I play most games solo, or keep interactions to a minimum and mostly in-game. Some family friends’ kids will hop on to play when they’ve got screen time, lets me help their parents monitor their behavior by being the person they interact with. I do try my best to reiterate healthy social media boundaries to the kids in my life (family or friends’). Everybody my age and older who’ve spent a crazy amount of their life online agrees with me that kids should NEVER be online without a trusted adult to monitor them and make sure they avoid predators
I made an account to play with my nephew. Ended up playing 3-4 games by myself a fair bit. I liked that the games were basically shitpost versions of genres I liked. That being said, I did move away from it pretty quickly. At first it was fun to just play a multiplayer game with people who wouldn't harrass you just for logging in - but after a while, even though I never interacted with anyone.,.. it started to feel weird. The chat would still pop up and you'd just have a constant reminder that the people nearby are children. To be clear, I never played or noticed anything suss. I played games that didn't require interaction and didn't see anyone showing the ability to perform inappropriate acts in the specific 3-4 games I played. I'm glad I didn't keep playing or tell many people I did though, hearing this.
some people build levels with "click to see boobs" and other sexual shit on level markers, that dont do anything when you press them besides lets predators know theres potentially a horny kid in the server that can be easily manipulated. if they see them trying to interact with it pedos hit em up in chat and try and groom them with a "hello there fellow kid, i see your sexually frustrated. perhaps we can make some sort of arrangement of some sorts" type beat. its a big problem on roblox
Love the content and the off the hand approach usual to this channel. However, I feel this needed to done on your main channel. There is so much to go into on this topic and the lack of crazy jovilaty, well, that's just my thoughts. Still a brilliant deep dive but, maybe not right for this channel. Just my thoughts.
For people asking "wen Off the Grid video". Tomorrow.
Wasn't asking, but was expecting.
Honestly, I grew up playing roblox I never ran into and pdfiles however about 8ish years ago I joined a group of people who made a guild and since me and one other (the group leader) I ended up becoming second leader (that was about 12 years ago) we went from being a guild to just being a group of friends who played different games together on roblox and off roblox, but 8 years ago one of the oldest members in the group who was 19 found out he was dating a 12 year old he met on roblox, I reported him on roblox and on discord and nothing happened, I left the group because discord nor roblox banned the guy or the kid and never played roblox really after that except for studios because I make 3D models for a few friends.
Rubin Sims has reported 1000s of inappropriate content on Roblox and they tried to make the guy's life harder
I'm an adult with a Roblox account, cause I play with my daughter. I don't talk to other users at all and only to my daughter. I've seen a couple things over the last couple years that are certainly questionable, with people trying to get around the chat filters and one game that allowed user uploaded images that wasn't moderated at all. I blocked that game on my daughters account and helped her through any issue with chat. But yeah... it's a online game with tons of users. Just dumping your child on there and never checking on what is going on, is a problem.
That's fair. I mean there are other games not explicitly infamous for perverted user bases, but at least you're taking precautions...
Or just don’t let your kids play Roblox? Seems like a much better option to me, it’s what I went with.
@@RobJT “just”
like you weren’t able to do virtually any single thing your parents forbid if you’d decided to, _especially_ on the internet.
@@RobJT Every child is going to eventually be spending time online as they get older and schools don't teach how to do that safely. So that sort of falls on me as a parent to teach. I'd rather do that in a game environment prior to them being unleashed onto the internet at large. Hopefully later in life she feels safe enough to talk to me if she encounters anything "odd", but i guess only time will tell. Check back with me in a decade or so...
As a former kid on the internet who's got groomed multiple times. I'm glad you're supervising things because it's a scary place out there. Most places do not give a single fuck about moderation because it's more profitable to let creeps use their platform (they are a market after all).
Lying to investors absolutely IS illegal. However, if the CEO gets punished at all, they will fine him $500K and pat themselves on the back for protecting the rest of us.
Not necessarily, look at one of Hindenburgs first reports on the company Nikola, the CEO of that company Trevor Milton got prison time and i think is still there now and he had alot of his estate taken off him
I wouldn't be too sure about that; Rich people are usually more worth protecting to the courts and as such, investor fraud can land you a pretty harsh sentence
This is why more countries should operate like the EU regarding stuff like this
Fraud of that level is prison time. A good layer can reduce the sentence but not the stain in the reputation.
Roblox went to shit when it became a public company they relaxed moderation and pushing gambling elements to increase $$
I’ve been playing Roblox for over ten years. Started as a bab. The utter state of Roblox is so upsetting to me because I remember the vibrancy and fun of Roblox. When games weren’t incentivized to be made to milk as much money from you as possible, and when just outright pedophilia was far more underground. I’m not convinced that Roblox corporate isn’t run by pedophiles themselves.
Well, the tastes of the rich are historically quite like modern AAA games, underdeveloped.
Getting terminated felt like a refresher
I've been playing since 2008 and I 100% agree with you about the downfall of Roblox. The only reason I still play is because I'm working on a R6-based hood game. At least studio has been improving lol
i hate that YT won't just allow us to discuss mature content like adults. the need to censor important topics only allows it to hide more easily
You technically are allowed to discuss some of the subjects, it'll just result in your video being ineligible for monetization as well as the algorithm actively trying to hide it.
Meanwhile they serve fetish game ads
@@user-wj6jh1cd5n So you actually can't, thanks for the clarification
@@user-wj6jh1cd5nI don't want to call you a RUclips apologist, but if you can't share your thoughts and creativity with the internet then why make a video for this platform to begin with?
@@Brixster man these last two replies really missed the point. My point is that you can talk about such stuff, but larger content creators such as kira typically avoid it due to the monetization/algorithm aspects. It's a problem with larger creators and money imo.
About the pedos, there's this yt channel called "people make games" that did two pieces on Roblox, for sure a horrible company.
Ruben Sims also runs a moderator twitter account and he's just a content creator.
@jamesp1389 Ruben sim is only good at promoting legitimate groups for dealing with the problem. Tho Ruben himself is just a grifter making money off the situation. Not to mention his track record of doxxing through proxy.
@@jamesp1389He gets more pedos banned than roblox admin team
I watched it.
those documentaries were really well made and very damning for roblox
Sounds like the internet as a whole when I was a kid ... except as a concentrated kid zone it's worse. Yuck. Plus companies in the 90s had genuine care and enthusiasm for the net. Thats why the Dot Com bubble happened.
Fr creating social media and online games “for kids” is the stupidest thing ever done. I’ve been playing online games for over 20 years since I was a child. Age never came up because it isn’t relevant to the game or the space and they were all text based communication. These kids are being corralled into spaces that attract predators. It’s insane
ive had a roblox account since 2011, but its hard to find anyone my age that isnt a creepy weirdo or game developer ripping off children and their money, so ive lost most interest in playing and developing for that platform 😿
went from a fun place for people to have basic monetization from assets and making silly, fun games out of passion into a highly corporate and oversaturated platform where even children are encouraged to work for below minimum wage for *other children* or even real game studios on official “career” pages on the website 🙀
Man... Roblox really has gone down the drain from what it was when I was a kid back in the late 2000's. I've had an account since 2007.
Same. I was playing since like 2006 and had so much fun back in the day but now everything just feels gross and exploitative right down to the popular game "templates" (because honestly, it's just the same game different paint all over the main page).
same 😔 i log on every now and then to play the kinds of games younger me wished for (the wings of fire game(s) mostly) or for nostalgia trips but i steer clear of anything popular because i hate the state of the game right now
Same. From back in 08 here, and I don't interact with the community anymore. I'd love to have friends join me to see why I still play, but sadly the stigma of the platform makes such things impossible. All I do these days is just play Phantom Forces and the sort. Wish I could find some of the games I used to play as a kid, see what became of them.
The thing with the 6 billion registered accounts claim is that Roblox does not ever delete a user's account. You cannot delete your account (although it can be deactivated, but as soon as you log in again, the account gets immediately restored) and even if you get permanently banned (which almost never happens), your account is just marked as "[CONTENT DELETED]" and hidden from other users, it's still there in the background. (I've tested this by querying the Roblox API for a banned user via their user ID, that query returned all the public facing account info as well as the "PERMANENTLY BANNED", "HIDDEN FROM SEARCH", "HIDDEN FROM FRIENDS" and "HIDDEN FROM WEB" flags on the account.)
EDIT: Oh yeah. Also the PDF problem in Roblox is nothing new. It was already bad when I played 10 years ago, back when they actually had in-house moderation teams that did their job. Now it's absolutely rampant, their current moderation is borderline non-existent and is almost entirely algorith based. There is an extremely aggressive chat filter that will block lots of normal words for inexplicable reasons but just putting a full stop in the middle of a word that is rightly blocked is often all you need to do to side step the chat filter. And the thing is Roblox staff are fully aware of the fact that it is a problem and they just refuse to take action.
I'm sure the average staff member is doing all they can but moderators are playing a game of whack-a-mole until the higher-ups approve something stronger. I'm reminded of a video I saw a few years ago regarding people who review videos on various social media sites to determine if they need to be deleted. The topic was about the mental health of the moderators because they constantly are watching some of the absolute worst things imaginable. They really just wanted something more effective to ban that content from ever getting to be uploaded or seen by human eyes in the first place.
I admittedly jerked back when Kira mentioned Robox using AI to police the site but thinking of those moderators, I understand going that route.
@@BewareTheLilyOfTheValley they don't care about the mental wellbeing of the moderation team, they just want to save money.
6 BILLION 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Those numbers are so hight and ridiculous, that yes, It means they don't destroy bots or old unused accounts...
But also that they are shameless complete lier.
6 BILLION 😂😂😂
Just imagin that, on League of Legends, one of the most popular game, Riot estimate at 500 million the numbre of people who have created account since creation.
And their is also double account, bots, etc on LoL
So...6 BILLION for Roblox... 😂😂
This company is lunatic mythomaniac
@@BewareTheLilyOfTheValley You may well be right that the moderation team is doing everything it can given their situation and available resources... However I was merely pointing out from a user perspective, that moderation appears to be entirely automated already... And even then it is still hilariously ineffective at stopping bad actors. All it does do is hinder normal conversations because seemingly random things get blocked by the various filters. For example "OOF." is blocked, but obvious tricks to sidestep the chat filter and break the "Dating / CSEM" rule (letter substitution (Using a Z instead of an S for instance), adding spaces or punctuation in the middle of filtered words etc.) is rampant and the loopholes have never been closed despite being known for years. Also there is no longer any way to appeal moderation actions. So if you get reported by just a few accounts for something you never did, your account will get actioned despite there being no wrongdoing and you'll have no way to get the false ban overturned.
Is it me or is Kira recording this from the fog world themed for the silent hill 2 remake release?
“Information is only as good as it’s sauce” -Kira 2024
I hope it's marinara
My 8 year-old loves Roblox and plays it on her tablet; but I make sure her time on it is heavily monitored. She simply cannot play it without me actually activating it and I won't let her play it without either myself or my wife supervising her playtime. I've also disabled her voice chat along with disabling her hearing other people's chats and she cannot send or receive anything without me being notified about it on my phone. That some parents allow their kids on that game platform without any kind of supervision boggles my mind. My wife's cousin has 14 and 11 year-old daughters and both were on Roblox unsupervised for years, even with me warning them about it repeatedly. That is; until they caught their 11 year-old (she was 10 at the time) taking pics of her nude chest and sending them to one her 'friends' to 'compare'. Yeah... they ended up punishing both daughters by blocking them from using their devices on the internet because they can't be bothered to supervise their internet usage instead.
Those garbage parents need punished
They...blamed the victim. Oh my frickin god, that's horrible. The amount of psychological damage you do to people when you make sex crimes become the victim's fault is horrendous. I'm so sorry to that child and I hope your wife can maybe one day have a conversation with the girl and let her know that it wasn't her fault. I'm sure it'll make the girl's parents mad but that was a terrible reaction to have.
Typical idiot parents who don't want to be frank about what pedos are to their kids because "they're just children, it's too scary for them", and then blame the kids instead of themselves.
Also, the best way to get kids off social media isn't to limit screentime, it's to actually invest in proper single player games that doesn't have any dodgy chatrooms, combined with explaining to them early what pedos are and that anyone online could be one.
@@blondbraid7986 I heavily limit my daughter's online screentime; but that's mainly to get her to socialize with others as she's an only child. I got her a Switch with a couple of multiplayer games to compensate; but I found the best thing was to actually spend more time with her doing things she likes. And while I haven't really explained to her what a pedo is; I have spoken to her about talking to people she doesn't know online. I know that's not really tracking; which I why I've disabled voice chat, etc.
the only way to have voice chat enabled is to verify your ID. so something here makes no sense
As a 40+ year old when i found out a friend of mine's child played Robolox i strongly tried to warn him about what happens in that game, sadly he didnt seem to care, i will pass this info on to him but i doubt it will change anythng. thanks for covering this topic
Kids don't really measure the consequences of things even if they're warned. That's kind of normal. Child sex crimes are also not really discussed in an honest way so they're gonna tend to think this thing will happen to other people or only on the tv but never to them until it does, then afterwards they might use that knowledge to speak on it. But if you're doing things to hope to prevent it, you're gonna have more luck trying to let the parents know so they try to supervise things a little bit more.
@@ArturGlass.C i think you misunderstood
@@ArturGlass.Cwell, the one not really bother is his friend. So the child's father.
Yeah..
@@ArturGlass.Cwait you thought this guy was just lecturing his friends child???
Poor grammar for a 40 year old living in Canada, spoke another language growing up?
My spouse worked for them. He'd be so disappointed if he could see what a shitshow their moderation has become. I don't think he'd be surprised though.
It's really weird seeing the direction this game has taken as someone who played it back in 2008. I remember when it was just some knock-off lego game where you built stuff and most of the games on the catalog were obstacle courses, building games, and deathmatches. I guess it's not so surprising in retrospect when it always seemed like they were becoming greedier and greedier by the year.
dude facts, i was a blockland player back in the day and there was a childish rivalry between the two games for being essentially the same game. now they are almost indistinguishable. idek if there's even blocks in roblocks anymore at this point lol
The corpos got ashamed of being compared to Lego. Instead of embracing it and trying to do brand deals with Lego, emphasize and focus on the more creative building aspects of the platform, etc, they just became a generic metaverse MMO where all creativity goes to die. Truly a shame, I fondly remember Roblox when I was 10 years younger
A very big chunk of Roblox users know how much NSFW stuff there is. Not just the games, but the User Generated Content in the catalogue containing everything from suggestive to straight up "how has Roblox not banned this".
Inflated metrics aren't surprising either, given you can easily make bots.
i've heard stories of user making things like simulations of cults commiting mass coolaid, car crashes, home breakings, school pea shootings, etc. it's so wild they are so degenerate
And I'd say it's more to do with how understaffed moderation is, as well as just bored teenagers being edgy. There's only around a thousand or so human moderators on a platform frequented by millions perpetually and a reliance on automatic moderation. The latter clearly doesn't seem to be working.
i went an joined once of those vibe pool games and within literally 3 mins someone was being dared to "go up to a random person and give them backshots"
like wtf lol
I could understand someone gooning to Skyrim mods, or even Sims but Roblox of all things? How fried does your brain have to be to get aroused by that?
I've seen porn of Roblox shit on R34. Every time I see it, I question my fellow humans' sanity, taste and mental competency.
As a data person, who has been responsible for both internal and investor metrics, Roblox is 100% bullshitting thrir numbers, either intentionally or unintentionally.
Investor data being different is a massive red flag
I can think of 500 million reasons why though.
These seemingly spontanous Kira takes are becoming almost as high quality as the actual "serous essays". Well done!
I would 100% say it's on the parents and roblox as a company. My sisters kids were all avid players of the platform for years until I decided to make an account to play with them back in 2020 or so, to call the all a hell scape even back then is an understatement. A lot of the pdfs and other NSFW stuff that is happening now has been rampant for years after doing just a small bit of looking into the kind of content and games roblox itself pushes. I had to educate my sister big time on how to moderate everything her kids do on the platform and she has all the tablets and phones locked down hardcore to the point that they can't even access new games unless she approves it. It's a sad reality when a game like this is so rampant with issues but the people behind it are too busy raking in cash to care enough to do anything.
I was one of the first 25k people to sign up for Roblox when I was 7 years old back around 2010. Always wanted it to succeed, but not like this.
Rip Builderman 💪 everyone’s first Roblox friend and the last man to care about Roblox’s integrity and quality over profit and publicity. I miss builders club bro, I still got the hats for all 3 variants of the subscription. Would gladly have paid that monthly over this.
>"first 25K people"
>2010
As a 2010 joiner, you are massively capping. The first 25K users showed up in 2006-7 or so when the platform was first public in the first place.
@@InfinitySevens actually your 100% right. Even though the most popular games had about 200-300 people max. Turned out I joined early 2009, and even then it had 4 mil players. Absolutely wild, had no idea it was that big even then given when a game hit over 2k players back then it turned out to be botted. Just didn’t care enough to google their numbers til now as opposed to guessing based on their actual player counts. Then again Roblox claims they have 6.5 billion players… so I might be closer to that 25k than I think even if they say it’s 4 mil 🤣
@@TheFakeGooberGoblin Ight, glad this resolved well I guess lol. Games getting 1K or even 2K concurrent players was a big achievement back then.
Pedos in roblox is nothing new, like litterly seems like everyone knows except parents.
Edit: man i can already see roblox lawyers and waht not Copyright claim every video like "PirateSoftware" when there is a video mentioning his fursona "Maldavius Figtree". o7
I mean to be fair, there's going to be groomers walking around in every online space marketed to children, regardless of how well they deal with it. We don't live in a perfect world unfortunately. The problem with Roblox is its apparent apathy towards it. It allows these types to feel undeterred and attracts even more because they know there's a low chance anything will happen compared to a different site with proper moderation.
@@user-wj6jh1cd5n I definitely want them to care more, but also I'm just distressed how a generation of parents who grew up WITH the internet now are still treating it like the app is going to babysit their kids.
@@Nassifeh because the internet of the 80s and 90s was a completely different thing. Back then the internet was smaller, more user oriented. Nowadays the internet is just another way for companies and governments to advertise or control people.
Your phone can do more today, then a $2,000 desktop computer could in the 90s. It’s just not the same.
And it’s going to be like this in another 20-30 year when the 2000s and 2010s generation has kids, because the internet of 2000s and 2010s will be very different from the internet in 2030s and 2040s. The internet simply evolves too fast for any one generation to keep up with it.
@@The_hot_blue_fire_guy I mean, yeah, it was different in those ways, but it was not actually that different with regard to this specifically? Like, do you think the CPU power of some kid's phone is the thing that exposes them to adult content? If you have a 12-year-old now, you were probably a teenager online in the 00s, not the 90s when maybe you didn't have internet yet. Today's parents of tweens and young teens have to know perfectly well that the internet is full of porn, that today's kids are going to be trying as hard to get around content filters as you were. We have a generation of parents now who definitely should remember that they *would* have done weird roleplay online in middle school if their PCs weren't in the middle of the dining room at the time, and why they're ignoring that their kids could be doing the same thing baffles me.
seeing that specific name outside of the 3d chat/grid SecondLife was like a punch to the face, and I'm not even halfway through the video. I used to hang out with that person ingame years ago- let me guess he's actually a shithead?
DAU is an acronym we use in germany. It means something different tho.
"Dümmst anzunehmender User" or "most stupid common user"
I don't think companies are even aware of what moderation is until -a certain credit card company- investors make a call threatening to pull out.
Any other form of effort is paramount to educating a cat about Van Allen belts. You can pretend they listened but unless it's about making money it's all background noise to them.
6:01 "joker in batman begins"
Think we wouldn't notice that?
False information. Mass unsubscribe incoming 😂
My son loves Roblox. He doesn't play without me, I don't make him have to let on that I'm in the game unless he wants to. But I'll never trust mods, I remember what happened with my neopets chats back when I was his age, he's 11.
Kira, I truly admire how you approach your audience with such respect and authenticity. You never feel the need to put on a persona or create a facade, and that level of honesty is rare and refreshing. I especially appreciate that you never underestimate our intelligence-you present your research in such a thorough and thoughtful way, which really sets your content apart. The stories you choose to share are always meaningful and well-researched, making each video not just informative but genuinely valuable.
You remind me of the great investigative journalists, sometimes referred to as 'muckrakers,' who sought out the truth and shared it without bias or embellishment.
Thank you for all the effort and integrity you bring to your work!
It really feels like there's no safe spaces for kids to communicate with one another. Unless it's a single-player game or a site that doesn't allow for comments, they've pretty much been shut out of the internet. I was nearly an adult by the time I had access to the internet and my one experience of chaperoning kids online were two girls I was babysitting. They used websites directly from Disney and Nickelodeon which had games and after I first confirmed that the websites were accurate and were safe, I sat next to them as they played on my laptop, just to make sure they didn't go to another site. We bounced between just those two sites.
Easy, don't let kids online. If they want to be social, let them be social with real kids in person. I didn't have any social media before 18, and didn't ask for it because my parents were honest to me about stranger danger early on.
@@blondbraid7986While I do agree with the notion that kids shouldn't be online as much as they currently are, the internet is a part of life whether we like it or not. I think that it really is up to us to teach internet safety to children because schools don't do that for us despite the internet, again, being an integral part of modern life.
Been speaking about this myself for over a decade. I saw the top games change from stuff like paintball and tycoon games and arcade stuff, to dollhouse, role playing, family simulator, just full of pedos.
Literally everything you describe was also around on Roblox years ago. It's just way more noticeable now because the sheer scale of it all has gotten massive.
@@InfinitySevensyes, they were on roblox years ago but MUCH smaller probably, and smaller means a less chance to get victims so it's recently amplified in problem, making this more urgent.
"A death is a tragedy, a thousand is a statistic"
Describing the crypto metaverse as Roblox with a slightly LESS mature playerbase was such a perfect dig at cryptobros.
Rent free
@@xenn4985rent free? Where I need a place.
@@xenn4985 Thank you for the immature response, it was a good example.
I mean Metaverses have always been around. They were much bigger in the 90s. I played Second Life growing up myself, which is exactly what all the Metaverses keep describing. And why people who play Second Life know better than thinking a platform like that could replace anything much less the Internet. We were told this too, tried it, and realized waiting for everything to load and physically walking around a 3d representation of a website was one of the biggest pains in the ass ever.
Basically, how to know if techbros will fail. Does what they want to do already exist? And can it be done in a more efficient manner? People will always choose efficiency over anything else overall
@@CC-qx7hk It's not just the idea of the metaverse that isn't new. The creators of Second Life did actually try to sell the idea that it was going to replace the real world. Even the grift isn't original.
As a former accounting major, keeping two sets of accounting books isn't necessarily illegal or fraudulent because taxes sometimes need to be calculated differently for certain things. The issue is when they are deliberately keeping one set of the real numbers but showing investors a different set with much better numbers to keep them investing which seems to be what they are implying is going on here and it certainly seems suspicious that all the big company people are dumping their stock like it's Enron and the ship is sinking fast.
Roblox is a publicly-traded company. They don't have a CHOICE about what version of the numbers they show investors. It's legally mandated. They can use a different thing internally if they want that's more pessimistic; the version that they report publicly isn't optional. You have to remember, whatever else is going on here, that this research company is extremely financially motivated to say the most negative thing possible, and take stuff with at least a small grain of salt. Accusing them of misstating their *audited* financial statements would be a much bigger deal and is something they do not seem to be doing here.
Two accounting books, one labelled "Show this to the IRS" and the other "Don't show this to the IRS". The Producers all the way.
I've been playing Roblox for nearly 14 years, and I've seen the evolution of Roblox get worse and worse. It's always been bad in terms of moderation but in about 2019 Roblox moderation became terrible. I'm only on Roblox still because I have a brother and a cousin that are considerably younger than me and I play it with them. Sometimes we'll see the most depraved stuff on Roblox nowadays and Roblox will do nothing about it. We joking played a bluey game once and found it was hacked and that the hacker was making people's avatar's have naked bodies and the hacker was flying around saying sexual things. Reported the hacker, nothing happened. So I took a video, sent it in to Roblox support, and got a 24 hour ban on my account. The hacker remained in the game. And that's when I realized their moderators don't care or turn a blind eye to it.
i’m 23 and the only reason i have an account is because i made it originally back in 2013 when i was 12 years old. i’ve never had any bad experiences on there but that’s probably because i don’t chat with other users and just play the games i’m interested in which are usually those geared towards slightly older audiences or general audiences. whenever i venture out of my normal games i see a ton of concerning behavior though. don’t even get me started on the crazy amount of straight-up nazi iconography and “free diddy” clothes that are available on the avatar shop. the platform is deeply and severely flawed, and if i had a kid i wouldn’t let them anywhere near roblox.
I appreciate you putting this out on your 2nd channel when it certainly was a good enough subject for your main channel.
I'm I'm adult with a roblox account but it's an account from way back in like 2012 when I was a child playing the game. I had 4 accounts (mainly to try getting rare items at the time for special events and such). I keep my account just to go on every once in a while to see all my old friends and stuff I have. I hate what the platform turned into. It was awesome when I was a kid.
5:18 Our whole economy based on infinite growth when it hears this 👀
I've been saying it for almost 20 years. The internet is not a place for children. At what age it's usage is OK is debatable, but the internet is an inherently unsafe place and I'd consider anything under 16 to young to actually deal with what they get access to.
*Especially* the places designed for and marketed around children are full of predators and they always were and it is outright impossible to keep them out.
There's a lot of stuff that can help with teen issues on the internet, so I'd say 13 or so and having had a decent education on internet safety beforehand; bring out the old stranger danger videos! And limited times of access - so on a laptop or something after school, not on a smartphone 24/7. Make them consider what they actually value using it for, and what they can do another way instead.
@@tifinity there would be value in teaching internet literacy and safety at schools.
Ive been on the internet since the wild west days, as a 10 year old and nothing happened to me cause I wasnt an idiot., youve got to teach your children not to be dumbasses instead.
@@Sololaverdad429 The "I've been doing XYZ and nothing bad happened to me" argument has always been a very terrible one. This is an issue that requires a lot more nuance but yes, internet literacy is a good first step.
@@Sololaverdad429yeah and people have smoked for 50 years and never gotten a bad effect. Does that mean it’s no issue to smoke?
He expects investors follow ANYTHING in the gaming community? How does he think we got to the modern AAA business scape in the first place? 🤣🤣🤣
Thank you, I’m a gamer myself and I’ve known about the Roblox situation for a number of years and therefore I don’t allow my children to play it but Imagine all these parents that are clueless and think it’s a harmless game.
They're also being investigated in Brazil for violating child labor laws.
Saw the pyro slop title so I clicked on it, then saw it's Kira, which is even better, well played sir.
Genuinely out of their minds if they think Roblox will hit 1B daily active users. Head-in-the-clouds completely disconnected from reality stuff.
Roblox being a cringe mecca for pedophiles has got to be the least surprising revelation of all time.
i enjoy roblox as an adult; it's an easy platform to make something for fun on with an easy language to become passably good at to use, and some of the games there are just genuinely fun to play especially with friends. but any adult who plays this game can tell you it's actually terrifying seeing the sort of things that happen on there, often completely unmoderated
I was one of the first player on Roblox back when it launched (first few thousand at least). The amount of grooming going on was insane, particularly any of the "Life" or "Sim" style games. I remember one gave vaguely named "School Life" or "School Sim" that had player roles in the game such as Student, Dad, and Mom. People playing the Dad and Mom roles would roleplay... adult situations when the Student player was away at the in-game school. This was almost always prompted by the Mom player who would either claim or act like a female and pressure the Dad player (regardless of gender) into the roleplay. I was much younger at the time so I didn't give it much thought and I have some vague memories of participating as a Dad player, but in hindsight this was absolutely horrific and is for sure still happening to this day.
When Charles Barkley (former NBA player) made that infamous commercial back in the 90s, "I'm not a role model; PARENTS should be the role models"...
...he was talking about parents like these, the type of parents who let their kids run amok, unsupervised.
No actual normal adults left playing roblox is not even just because of the stigma and all the pedos, but also just becuase the game catalogue is sooooo much worse than what it used to be, the quality of games to play and discoverability of good games is the worst it has been in over a decade if not in all of the platforms history.
Back in the good old days you didn't need a "sponsored" section filled with brainrot
There's a couple I still play, like Phantom Forces and the sort, but I've never touched, nor would I want to touch the games that tend to be prone to this kind of kiddy-diddling crap. I tried a military tycoon game out of curiousity, and realized that holy shit - these games are just as monetized as mobile games. Worst that PF has, is you can buy credits for R$, which even then, isn't required since you can just sell skins (which doesn't have a proper economy, it just deletes the skin from inventory and pays you a certain amount for it) and level up for credits.
I think one key takeaway that should be taken from this is thankyou to those in the moderation for dummies crew and rubensim, they've been publishing all the lists of the ERPers and bringing this to the forefront. I don't have kids myself but they definitely wouldn't be playing roblox if I did.
Ruben Sim is an unsung hero of this mess. The fact that he was forced out of the platform by management over mistakes they themselves were responsible for is still disgusting. Good to see him still fighting the good fight in exile.
@@vinesauceobscurities well, he has some people to help work with him now, the ERP slaying initiative has been quite successful so far. Also there's Schlep who's been doing similar work lately and even got one of them arrested.
I have a hunch that many mmos are inflating user metrics a ton. Look at Runescape’s botting problem and look at the recorded player counts. The company is including bots in player analytics. The real game is a ghost town in all but a handful of areas.
I feel like this should have been main channel video. Good stuff and good job!
I played Roblox in the 2000s before it became what it is today. When it was just kids in an online Lego game essentially. Even then, I can think back to a situation that in hindsight was highly inappropriate. I hardly even recognize the game anymore, and I’m not sure about letting my kids play it.
Roblox aint worth shit. And never will be worth anything kids dont have money.
14:51 bro, thats accounting basics. Every company has internal vs external accounting for different purposes.The internal is to help them see how their company is doing and provides much more detail than is required for external investors
I think that was batman the dark Knight
Nice video format. Like the fact you mix face-showing with your main channel-style content!
"Do your own research." Generally good advice. In this case, hell no, ew.
They need to bring this report to the FBI. Forget hitting their stock price, we need the law.
The only peraon i have met who played roblox was a drug addict who used it to buy drugs.
People Make Games called this years ago, you'd hope they'd improve but nope
When they write about your company you know you've done something bad. They don't joke around.
Joker wasn't in Batman Begins. You're thinking of The Dark Knight.
Wait, the whole description of Roblox operating at a loos and still growing with lots of investors sounds exactly like a crypto scheme.
mate, this should be on your main. Brilliant review as usual
As for the "two sets of books". This may be a perfectly legitimate activity being misreported. And not Roblox doing anything illegal.
There are financial accounts, that are used for statutory reporting.
Then there are management accounts, that are structured to report the performance of the business units within the company.
Whilst they are related, they can have vastly different structures.
Yeah crazy how people with no business education are just now learning that the 10K reports are not the same thing that they're using internally.
My nostalgia for penguinz0's old videos are starting to not be enough to outweigh my loathing for the worst title format that RUclips has seen in a long time. In case Kira decides to change to a real title, the current one is "The Roblox Situation Is Crazy".
this is the greatest Roblox exposé of All Time
Love the new editing format.
bro, idk what is YT doing but I'm only getting notifications for your videos like every 3rd video or some shit...
Funny how they can short stock and when normal people do it it's prosecuted.....
shorting stock is not illegal, plenty of people lose all their money on it every day
@@Zechques tell that to the people short stocking gamestop stocks....
I'll be frank: Absolutely no one goes to the "Therapy" game expecting a serious discussion. It's pretty much a meme game at this point and it wasn't designed for anything serious, so naturally it just leads to a bunch of edgy teenagers trying to outdo each other in raunchiness.
As someone who has been groomed into explicit roleplay when I was underage by someone who has gone on to become a Roblox Game Dev in the years after, I am always following these kinds of stories and dreading them because I know what some of these kids may be going through.
Damn, bro cleaned up well lol
Kira is spreading misinformation here.
Joker was not in Batman Begins. That was The Dark Knight.
I saw something recently that the FTC has made botting illegal. Which this now allows them to nail down the jello they havent been able to over the years. So wonder how the netzen pastures will be after that being a thing for awhile
You can't tell if the alts are actually different people or not, just cause they use the same IP doesn't mean they are the same person. Alts shouldn't matter too much for DAU, cause that would mean people would have to use their alt accounts every day. There is no way that 20% of all users use their alts every day, they probably just forgot the password and made a new account and just use the new account instead of the old account.
Your facial hair makes you look so different like this lol
You look good either way, no shade. The stubble just makes you look completely different.
Glad to see the algorithm recommending some actual news.
Why is this the first notification I’ve gotten for a Kira video in months wtf RUclips
Wow, I knew that Roblox had problems, but I never realised it was this bad......
@@xLionsxxSmithyx 😶😶
Amazon did the same thing for a long while. The CEO kept saying, don't look at cash flow, we're growing! If you looked at the books you'd see that they never made a profit for the longest time. Then they pivoted towards AWS services and finally started making money. Roblox has no plan to pivot to a profitable company as far as anyone could tell.
I don’t want to be that guy, but at 6:25 there is an error. Joker was not in “Batman Begins”, he debuted and burned the money in “Dark Knight.”
why is Kira a ghost
He died for our sins!
The deal with the devil is running out
They're not exactly a shining example of decency, and it's very humorous that mainstream outlets all of a sudden care about child welfare, but if Roblox is "the worst company on the planet" then I'd love to hear these journos opinions on Boeing, Raytheon, Vanguard, BlackRock, Lockheed, etc
Lmao Boeing has become a meme at this point. Engineers dropping like Russians falling out of windows
I'm an active Roblox player and have been for almost 10 years now. The site has been going downhill for a while now, back in the day it was more focused on actual games while now it leans more towards roleplay. Specifically more generalised roleplay, because there is a difference.
I don't come across much in my corner of Roblox with fandom roleplay and animal simulators. But still I would not recommend kids coming into these spaces, at least not without being taught about the dangers and with the right parental support. At least these spaces are somewhat moderated, but it's by game specific volunteers. I remember hearing directly from a WCUE moderator that they had 13 year old moderator... It honestly shouldn't be left up to teens to moderate giant multiple thousand daily players Roblox games.
Why does every third youtube video nowadays have to be called "x situation is crazy". What happened to video titles serving as a quick summary of events? Is this an algorithm thing or a generational thing?
Some awful story for sure regarding Roblox! This is one more reason why I stick to using Unity and Unreal Engine to create my games even this means I can not easily show my creations to other people then my closest friends as the games are only on my own computer and not shared online in the way a system like Roblox works. My games are also not ready for release on platforms like Steam. Its mostly smaller and often incomplete projects that I create just for fun and to learn gamedev in general.
Never trust a CEO that gives a presentation in Steve Jobs style
I’ve been playing since _I_ was a preteen. I’m in my 20s now. My account is 13 yrs old. I play most games solo, or keep interactions to a minimum and mostly in-game. Some family friends’ kids will hop on to play when they’ve got screen time, lets me help their parents monitor their behavior by being the person they interact with. I do try my best to reiterate healthy social media boundaries to the kids in my life (family or friends’). Everybody my age and older who’ve spent a crazy amount of their life online agrees with me that kids should NEVER be online without a trusted adult to monitor them and make sure they avoid predators
This was a kira tv level video ! Suprised to see quality. I do love my slop too 😂
Oof, and yeah, we need to be extremely careful as well. You can never know who is on the other side of the player.
I made an account to play with my nephew. Ended up playing 3-4 games by myself a fair bit. I liked that the games were basically shitpost versions of genres I liked. That being said, I did move away from it pretty quickly. At first it was fun to just play a multiplayer game with people who wouldn't harrass you just for logging in - but after a while, even though I never interacted with anyone.,.. it started to feel weird. The chat would still pop up and you'd just have a constant reminder that the people nearby are children.
To be clear, I never played or noticed anything suss. I played games that didn't require interaction and didn't see anyone showing the ability to perform inappropriate acts in the specific 3-4 games I played.
I'm glad I didn't keep playing or tell many people I did though, hearing this.
Never been on Roblox, didn't even learn about the platform till a few years ago. I was on Second Life for a while, but that's also long ago.
It's heartbreaking that this game I grew up playing has become such a vile, filthy place.
Thank you Kira.
I don't care, I just welcome wholeheartedly the return of the beard
What baffles me is as the net income goes DOWN for Roblox, it's stock goes up.
some people build levels with "click to see boobs" and other sexual shit on level markers, that dont do anything when you press them besides lets predators know theres potentially a horny kid in the server that can be easily manipulated. if they see them trying to interact with it pedos hit em up in chat and try and groom them with a "hello there fellow kid, i see your sexually frustrated. perhaps we can make some sort of arrangement of some sorts" type beat. its a big problem on roblox
Sometimes short sellers are good for removing bad actors from the market, like Wirecard for example.
As always another great Kira video
Rob Stark of House RUclips - Very good video
Love the content and the off the hand approach usual to this channel. However, I feel this needed to done on your main channel. There is so much to go into on this topic and the lack of crazy jovilaty, well, that's just my thoughts. Still a brilliant deep dive but, maybe not right for this channel. Just my thoughts.