I’m actually a child online safety expert and was one of the pioneers in this space with Club Penguin and so I feel uniquely positioned to critique this.
The groomer problem is real but it’s also vastly overstated. The far larger issue we saw at Penguin was suicidality or reports of sexual abuse in the home.
There is no solution for lazy/bad parenting. You can implement all the ID laws you want but if parents are going to just hand kids their phones unlocked, those kids will have access to all the same things the parents have unfettered.
What I found is that these draconian safety laws actually make it harder to be an honest operator of kids apps because on one hand it’s so much legal risk and so much user friction that it simply becomes uninvestible as a business.
Parents will just lie to let their kids use the unfettered internet. For example, I have a friend who works in mobile gaming who has two kids, one above and one below the age limit but separated by just 2 yrs, and the two wanted to play and chat together on Roblox - which is reasonable. To do this, he just verified that his younger kid is old enough for the chat feature when he’s not.
This happens all the time and will happen with these laws to. How far do we want to go with this? Scan the face of the user in real-time to make sure it’s not a kid using the device? We could do that but it feels like a massive unwanted intrusion of privacy.
That’s how you know this law isn’t about kids. COPPA and GDPR-K and so forth already make it illegal to allow chat and other grooming vectors to kids.
What’s really being done here is trying to eliminate online anonymity. And this is a far bigger issue that goes to core speech rights because if you cannot criticize the govt anonymously and if wrong speech is a crime then it becomes easy to identify all the detractors of the govt in power, and ban, fine or jail them for speech crimes.
Starmer has already been doing this and he wants to do it at a much bigger scale. Starmer won’t even acknowledge the problem of actual grooming gangs in Britain’s neighborhoods but he’s worried about online grooming?
No he’s not, and this hypocrisy gives away the game. What he wants is to kill online anonymity so he can enforce censorship of his unpopular policies. No politician should have this power.
Not to get too Reddit atheist but it always annoys me a little bit when someone experiences a moment of genuine human connection and solidarity for no personal gain, and then they thank god rather than the kind stranger who helped them
"Filo" is an interesting example of how dimunitive patterns differ by language.
"Pinoy" takes from the stressed or end part of Pilipino and adds a -y. Like many nicknames, Benigno became Ninoy. Tatoy's in Iloilo is names after Honorato.
"Filo" follows English nickname patterns.
Lived in the PH for 18 years before I left where the only way I'd get games is my parents buying me games if I had good grades since we were slightly above middle class but cant spend constantly.
Dad had a second computer that constantly ran isohunt, piratebay and utorrent.
Majority of my games (PC) up until the age of 16 were cracked and also had his friends teach me how to crack my psp and 3ds and install roms. My childhood games growing up came from popcap cracks, big fish game collection cracks, reflexive arcade collection cracks, etc.
I played cracked MC for 2 years until I bought a copy in 2014; same with TBoI.
I couldn't afford games back then but I tried to find different avenues play what I wanted - be it asking a person who had it or piracy.
I wouldn't call people who only watch gameplays of games that they are not fans but there is a degree of larp in there. You can talk about how you feel about the franchise but the discussion ends with you when it comes to talk about actually experiencing the franchise as a first person perspective rather than second hand accounts such as physically playing the game and experiencing limited timed events when youre actually there at the moment.
There are nuanced layers to this.
This is a level of larp but you're not discounted completely as a fan; you're just not applicable at higher or deeper degrees of discussions. Like learning a manga or game lore via memes or youtube reviews, I will view your takes as larp and won't treat you seriously however I won't discount you as a fan.
As an Arknights and now a Project Moon enjoyer I know this very well.
@LinkofSunshine I was reading a thread about this in the subreddit during my TCG pocket phase. Reply after reply of conspiracies about rigged coinflips. I felt like I was having an aneurysm.
I saw a comment on tiktok saying that racism and bigotry aren't things you can grow from, and it had a lot of likes. This is...extremely worrying to say the least. The fact that this is something a lot of younger people actually believe is genuinely alarming.
You see how much damage tumblr did to people's brain because they really don't understand that people can be mean/awful people and STILL be good at their work field lmao Just because you dislike a person, famous or not, that doesn't mean the person is bad at their job
None of you are self-aware. You are howling narcissists. This woman starts this video off by listing her personality type, attachment style, horoscope, as if borrowed categories add up to a self. You think about yourselves too much and have mistaken it for introspection.