i'm not happy with roblox.
roblox corporation decided to publish a statement reinforcing their decision to remove from their platform and threaten legal action against users identifying abusers to authorities. i initially learned about this from MoistCr1TiKaL's video below:
in that video, charlie mentions that the chief safety officer sold a large portion of shares prior to the corporation doubling down on their efforts to suppress "vigilantes". sure enough, there exists both a report and actual legal documentation on this occurrence. to me, this withdrawal appears indicative that, rather than directly confronting the predators, the corporation wishes to continue operating as-is and that they will go to great lengths to do so.
this behavior is absolutely disgusting to me. although moderating harmful content carries extreme difficulty, one would imagine that with the infrastructure and money of a megacorporation, widespread review could mitigate the problem. however, the lack of moderation on roblox's side has now allowed systematic abuse using groups to establish "condo" games and chat servers outside of roblox for unmoderated content. this type of abuse seems never easier before to perform, for online anonymity now shields the sketchiness of the abusers. on top of the other problems roblox has, i've decided to stop using the platform entirely. i've removed related stats and connections on this website, and i'll try to do the same for other platforms. roblox is sketch as fuck now, not only from abuse, but also from privacy.
i worry that roblox will require an ID for general use, and based on the privacy policies of both roblox and its partnering id verifier, persona, i don't trust either party to safely handle the extremely sensitive data in my ID. for christ's sake, it's how i verify who i am for governmental affairs; malicious use of this data could cause irrecoverable harm to me. i'm not taking the chance of a data breach occuring, let alone the employees handling the internal data without ulterior motives.
on a related note, i'm fed up with how much dangerous practices these corporations are getting away with. it's getting exhausting having to constantly transition to open-source, safe alternatives, and i think the innumerable amount of evil i'm discovering is affecting my mental game quite a bit. my next steps are to stick closer to my friends i've made and limit my purchases to mechanical, "dumb" objects (as opposed to "smart" objects - smartphones, smartwatches, smart fridges, etc). school's starting up again soon; i hope my friends, colleagues and work can cheer me up again.
-ozyximo