I doubt this’ll be the last time it’ll be said - but it needs to be said again.
I don’t understand why ROBLOX does not allow offsite links.
I mean, if you really think about it, sure - they do it because they don’t want children seeing NSFW images or going to bad websites, but this entire failsafe can be mitigated and ALWAYS IS mitigated by simply wrapping the off-site url in a tweet and linking the tweet since twitter is allowed.
If someone really wanted to link something harmful, they’ll find ways around it and do it themselves. If someone wanted to they can just link an NSFW image in a tweet or even just post the link outright in a forum. This doesn’t affect the moderation system at all because the link still has to be checked out to see if it is bad.or not regardless (in the case of wrapping with a tweet), if anything we could save the moderation team a minor amount of time if the direct link was just there already.
Of course we can blacklist certain domains with elegant URL checking string pattern stuff, and get rid of those XXX sites that we definitely do not want on the game.
At the very least allow more domains. I don’t like that I can’t post direct links to (for example):
trello
pastebin
google drive
github
I’m sure there are tons more websites I’m missing out that serve legitimate purposes.
Maybe I’m not thinking of something, I’m not sure.
All other domains you mention suffer from similar issues. Google Drive would probably make it easier to link people to harmful software (keyloggers etc) or inappropriate content in images/videos, so I don’t think that will be allowed either.
These websites aren’t meant to be used maliciously, can we really disregard something just because a minority use it to cause problems?
I’ll agree again that it does have the capacity to do harm - but we can also use it like its intended to be use for beneficial reasons.
Harmful software will be around regardless, and again a tweet can conceal it just as much. Even worse, twitter also has no moderation I don’t understand the logic here. Twitter isn’t meant for people to be linking keyloggers or other malicious hardware but it can be used for such by evil people. Does that mean we shouldn’t allow twitter?
If I decided the list of allowed domains I would probably add most of these domains you mention, since it would probably (I think?) mostly be used legitimately, but I’m not sure to begin with.
I’m just arguing that because Trello was declined, and since these all have similar functionality and removal policies to Trello, they’ll probably be declined too.
Yeah, I know it isn’t you in particular but the reasoning why trello was denied doesn’t make much sense because the same applies with twitter. You don’t see people by the masses posting keyloggers or NSFW content concealed in tweets, so why would the same occur with trello? What you actually see is people still attempting to bypass the filter with their URL.
And even if it does violate rules, moderation should be able to deal with it as regular case because regardless that person was going to try to get around the URL anyway.
People rarely post outside URLs because its against the rules. If we had a rampant issue with people posting malicious or disturbing off-site content I’d agree we should probably avoid this, but we don’t.
Currently I already see comments about “go to wwwrobuxco for free robux” etc.
Making it easier to spread such stuff would be a bad thing. (not that it currently isn’t bad)
I’m more towards whitelisting more URLs like the ones I listed, I just ranted on about how I didn’t understand why there was a whitelist anyway, there should be a blacklist instead but…
Anyway, you’ll get people posting those malicious links regardless. Websites like trello, github, and pastebin are not meant for malicious content - they are information and project sharing websites. The vast majority of users will use them as intended, only a small minority may attempt to use them to get out of the filter but they could have done it regardless. I don’t think that just because a few people are abusing something that everyone should suffer as a result. If a malicious user wanted, they could tweet their keylogger or whatever and put that on ROBLOX just as much as they could do it with trello or github (I guess??). But what you can’t do with twitter is do what trello does, or github does.
There’s no difference between www.robux.co and www*robux*co. The site is equally unsafe with either. Removing the whitelist will not change how safe/unsafe ROBLOX is – anyone who suggests otherwise is sorely mistaken.
What happens when a moderator approves a link to Trello because there’s no bad content, but then later whoever posted it links something inappropriate? I don’t even know if there’s a moderation system on Trello. All the social websites Roblox allows are both widely known and have a decently strict moderation system that allows reporting of specific content.
Of course a majority of people would use it for what it’s intended, just because a majority would use it correctly doesn’t mean it’s completely secure. I’m sure a majority of people wouldn’t break into your house, but you’re still going to lock the door.
Also, I’m pretty sure they are currently working on a better filter to prevent spam with stuff that looks like a URL.
Report abuse and the link gets taken down. Same process that happens currently. Absolutely no change in moderation process nor safety of website whatsoever.
Why do the external sites have to have moderation systems? ROBLOX already has one in place to remove links to bad content from its own site.
Are you sure about that? Twitter has pages dedicated to pornography on the website. Directly on the website. The only difference is that it sometimes warns you that the material may contain sensitive material. Moderators can approve a twitter page that can be kid friendly and then the next day turn being to post lewd pictures.
We definitely do not want children seeing that I hope.
I’m glad they are working on a better filter to prevent spam URLs, but these people can just as easily tweet the link and post the twitter url to get their message across.
I’ve already iterated that if moderation is to have an issue with any of the URLs posted that a minority of users would post for malicious reasons, they are going to be the ones dealing with it regardless if it was posted with asterisks, a twitter wrap, or the raw url itself.
There’s a major difference between reporting text to have it taken, and a direct link to sensitive images that a kid could easily click on and see before it gets reported.
How are the two links I posted in response to einsteinK any different? ROBLOX can only make currently-whitelisted links clickable if the issue is it’s super dangerous to go from having to copy/paste links into the browser address bar to making them clickable.
I’m trying to understand what your argument is, sorry if I say something you already refuted.
Currently Roblox has a problem with comments that have slight changes in URL’s to bypass the filter. Like I said, they are already working on a solution for that. Just because those unsafe comments exists does not validate having direct links to websites at a simple click away.
Also, a link was posted to an admin mentioning that their decision to not use offsite links was because of the fact that besides the sites allowed, most of these don’t have a moderation system on them.
Twitter allows profanity and a number of other things which are not allowed on ROBLOX. Reporting a profane Tweet on Twitter will not get it deleted, so I don’t get why “lack of moderation” on sites like Trello are a factor in whether those links can be allowed. Plus, it would be trivial to just repost the inappropriate content if it actually got deleted from Twitter. I’m also doubtful that Twitter/Facebook/YouTube moderators would actually handle the reports in a timely manner.
People who want to share inappropriate/malicious content don’t care about the whitelist. They’re going to share it regardless of which links are on ROBLOX’s whitelist. Restrictions on innocent sites like Trello just make it a pain in the ass for the rest of us legitimate users, while doing nothing to stop actual rulebreakers.
If ROBLOX is magically able to prevent references to non-whitelisted links (which I’m doubtful they’ll be able to do - there’s always a way around the filter), the malicious users will just start using the whitelisted links as a bridge to their undesirable content.
…But Twitter doesn’t remove profane/inappropriate content. See: porn stars on Twitter. Same with swearing. At most they might mark it as inappropriate, but it still exists and can be shared. What moderation exists on Twitter?
Not directed at you, just trying to make sense of the (lack of) logic.
I definitely think that Roblox should add more links to their URL whitelist.GitHub is a great example, because which idiot would rather spread inappropriate content on GitHub rather than twitter?
Also, I have yet to see a single instance of an inappropriate Trello board, and quite frankly a lot of developers (myself included) would like to use Trello to let fans know what we are currently working on.