“Our Services are not directed to persons under 13. … If we become aware that a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, we take steps to remove such information and terminate the child’s account.”
They aren’t a platform for kids either, nor is FaceBook.
As far as it goes to DMing explicit material goes, yeah Discord is definitely worse than twitter, but that doesn’t actually make twitter more secure. It is also very very rare to see people DMing you explicit stuff unless you own or are high up in a large discord.
Those “dont accept a FR from user X because he’ll burn your house down and kill you” messages aren’t real, I assume everyone knew they weren’t but some ppl might be gullible lol.
I’m the 3rd highest person in a server with around 800 online people (right now, when most people are asleep), and I only get such a DM once every two months or so, if not less. I’s not even a server where we’re against bad language or stuff, as long as it’s not too harsh, annoying or actually nsfw, nor do we have #nsfw to “channel” some posts to, yet the chat is quite sfw, with mods quickly dealing with nsfw posts.
Yeah - That’s different. Advertising it onsite isn’t allowed and it doesn’t happen. Advertising around other discords, on twitter, and among friends is different.
Scenario 1. Person tweets a clan discord invite to clearly bypass filter and posts it in the group description
Scenario 2. Person tweets about a roblox related thing, and on their profile happens to be a discord invite
Which one would you allow, and which would you deny?
Yeah - Debating it here is fairly pointless because there are both legal and practical issues meaning it is impossible to incorporate without breaking Discord’s ToS or COPPA
Discord is a very volatile place, at one end of the spectrum, it can be a very good place for help in making a game / meeting people who will help you play a game. At the other end, you have your immature kiddos that trashtalk and harass players that join seeking help.
I would not be in favor of adding a discord button because of the possibility to enter a negative space for younger children.
Roblox is a place where children are encouraged to build and have fun online. Discord… Not so much, Only in limited spaces you can have a good time. I usually have a struggle just trying to tune out the rude / immature individuals on discord, but for children 13< its not a great idea.
It seems Roblox went hardline the other way and we’re not allowed to even say Discord now. If Roblox was to provide some sort of a bot to filter messages and white list Discords with it, that would be a better solution than clamping down on Roblox.
The way that Roblox is currently operating is purely damage control. Discord is largely uncontrollable, and Roblox is not going to be able to effectively demand that servers implement a given moderation system, nor would they want to. Furthermore this could not operate in voice chat sessions whatsoever, and could be disabled intermittently in order to allow the vulgar and inappropriate nature that is all too common on discord.
The thing is that, if Roblox allowed those links on their website, and children were exposed to this content, their parents could easily blame Roblox for allowing it to happen. It’s bad enough that kids are joining servers left and right and most likely being exposed to inappropriate content each time.
I have no problem with Discord personally, I enjoy using it to communicate with communities, including those on Roblox. But even those based on Roblox are rarely child appropriate, and I would certainly not allow my 6 and 8 year old cousins to participate in any of them. That is simply putting far too much faith in the discretion of Roblox players to be mature and efficient server administrators.
White listing is better than 1984 style muting. Trying to make something safer and rewarding those who help is better than pretending it doesn’t exist.
The issue here is that it is not ever going to be possible for Roblox to make Discord a safer environment. They can’t even pretend to monitor it, or moderate it. They can not moderate users for anything that happens on Discord servers, they can’t accurately measure what has happened on Discord servers. But parents can blame them for what happens on Discord if they openly support and allow Discord links and references on Roblox.
Lets say that someone’s child goes to a Discord server, and something absurdly inappropriate or vulgar is presented to the child. The parent catches wind of this, either by seeing it first-hand, or the child telling them for whatever reason. The parent is angry because they have already investigated Roblox and determined that Roblox is a safe environment for their child. So, how did their child find their way to this inappropriate chat room? They proceed to ask their child, who answers honestly, telling them that they were directly linked to that chat room from a web page on Roblox, which they are still able to show their parents. Lets say they were linked to that server from a Roblox game or group- the link is still going to be there, unfiltered, unmoderated, unobscured, and their parents are then going to be forced to question how safe their children are on Roblox.
You have a point, it is still possible for children to find their ways to Discord servers through Roblox even without supported links. But at least Roblox can assure the parents that they are doing everything in their power to prevent this behavior both in other users and their own children, and that the specific situation was in violation of their terms of service, and that they are doing everything in their power to prevent it from happening.
This is as opposed to: “Sorry, we’ve asked them to moderate their servers but sometimes they don’t listen or succeed, because lets face it, they are children- how mature can we expect them to be? Furthermore we’re going to continue to allow them to create these servers and share them with your child, because they like it even though it is unsafe.”
Anyway, that’s just my take on the matter. If I were in charge of making this decision for Roblox, I would make the same decision that they have made.
I understand what you are saying, but I most definitely think roblox should allow discord servers.
Now while it is true that roblox has no power over moderating discord servers, doesn’t that go just as well with twitter and youtube links?
But here’s something that neither twitter nor youtube provides: An amazing tool that can help you directly communicate with your fan base, make announcements and listen to feedback so easily.
I’m not sure about everyone else’s experiences, but discord has been a huge help for me. Discord provides a new sense of community to your player base.
I don’t want to dive into specifics since I think most devs would agree that discord is a very useful tool. If roblox does not want to allow discord links, it is understandable, but they should have an alternative. The current group system is very flawed, and I don’t think it would be too far off to say that lots of discord servers are better moderated than roblox groups anyways.
Isn’t it possible for youtube links to be put, where the video includes lots of cursing? I really don’t see how discord is so much worse than the links allowed, that even with all the benefits, it is still not even allowed to be spoken.
Roblox moderators frequently review the content behind Youtube and Twitter links, and take action on the people that posted them if the content is found to be inappropriate. Yes, it is possible to remove the content before a moderator sees it, but it is not very common. Discord, on the other hand, is like a black box: the moderators can’t be expected to join Discord servers all day, and its entirely possible that they won’t be allowed to see content immediately.
Funny thing is, the off-site link rule is one of their hidden rules they never actually show you.
read my reply here; Reminder Regarding Permissible Links
I went through the ToS, and Rules they provide, and couldn’t find anything.
