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Other 196's:
We constantly seem to forget we need safe spaces for new people and soft entries for them to into fandoms, careers, and our world in general.
Im so tired of people acting like kids and people in general need to already be invested and fully formed adults in mind so that they can already be talked to and sold to like everyone else.
we need safe spaces for new people
That's woke
Ha yeah...
Sad now.
Any space made for kids on the internet sooner or later will be bought up by some capital investment firm, and it will always end the same: enshittified
Now, if my email enshittifies, I'll get pissed, but I'll live.
If a kids space enshittifies, you get Roblox with the pedos which -arguably- is much worse than enshittified email.
Just like irl spaces for kids and teens have died out, too.
No money? No exist.
Basically. And what's worse, because there's no child friendly spaces, children go onto the general web, and because of the panic about them seeing inappropriate material, we now have people who want to censor the internet using them as an excuse. For a lot of people, there is a reverse incentive to create child friendly spaces because that way they can use children to censor the internet with things like the Online Safety Act and KOSA.
The death of third spaces hurts everyone.
Concerns with Roblox are not new. For years there have been allegations and lawsuits around the exploitation of children developing effectively for free so the company can make bank. There's even been investigative journalism programs and articles about it.
Roblox exploits children.
I was recently at a Hacker Festival in the Netherlands, and one of the things that I found neat was that there were plenty of kids there. There were activities on the timetable for kids, as well as spaces that were dedicatedly for kids. However, the event didn't feel like it was at all diluted for the sake of families — areas and activities intended more for adults still existed, as well as a general expectation for adults to be responsible and courteous when engaging in adult-only activities (such as drinking alcohol).
It felt like a cool model of coexistence that we don't get exposed to as much as we should in The Real World (TM). Whilst this openness towards the kids is partly for the parents, it's also cool for the kids who want to take part. For example, I remember that during a soldering workshop, I got talking to a boy sitting at my table — I think he was age 10-12ish. Whilst there was some level of me having to be mindful to be speaking with him in an appropriate way, this didn't prevent me from engaging with him as a peer; we had an earnest conversation about projects, and the usefulness of concrete goals; hobby burnout; and how much ambition is useful when you're learning a new skill. I wish I had more opportunities to hang out with kids in a capacity where I'm not actively in a mentoring role
In my Magic the Gathering community there's a few kids, youngest was 12 at some point. Most of us are adults 20-50.
I really like interacting with the kids, they bring a lot of innocent joy and glee to the game that many adults seems to forget, they're also quite competent and do win a lot.
We don't treat them much different from adults, apart from not talking about politics, interests rates and other boring adults stuff that suddenly became super interesting as soon as I got a job and mortgage.
Interesting, what is the name of the festival?
It was WHY2025. It stands for What Hackers Yearn, and this particular one happens every four years. However, there's also two other extremely similar ones (I am told — I haven't personally been to these others): the Electromagnetic Field Camp in the UK, held every two years; and the Chaos Communication Camp in Germany, also held every two years.
don't forget prime which is an energy drink whose ads target primary school kids
Club Penguin goated in child safety. I remember certain servers limiting online speech to pre-selected options off a menu.
Have you not seen the internet? So many spaces aren’t even safe for adults. The scams are out of control.
Go on, tell me the last time you didnt have to say “DONT CLICK THAT LINK MOM” just to be sure they don’t click a very obvious scam. Or have a long conversation about VPNs prior to handling identity online. Or describe AI hacks to someone.
And here you talk like it’s so very easy to make it safe for children.
I believe this is from a combination of factors, including the lack of revenue streams from young site visitors and the necessary protections and moderation being expensive to create and maintain. It sucks, but with the modern Internet it won't exist for long if there's no money to be made.
the lack of revenue streams from young site visitors
Isn't it just as easy to show ads to kids as adults? They have to be curated more to make sure porn ads aren't popping up, but otherwise it should be the same (if not easier because kids are less aware of ad blocking software).
they'd also have to be non-targeted ads due to child privacy regulation, and a lot of internet ads that don't pay for targetting are scams and porn
PBS Kids is a thing and has been for a long time
Weren't those all flash games and videos? Do they still exist or did they make new games?
(I suppose the videos could just be converted)
They have plenty of games and videos that work on modern browsers. I imagine some of the flash stuff was converted years ago
I think kids should be exiled to kids only places. But the issue is, a few adults sneak in, and no adults guarding? R.I.P kids.
that's one reason (but the main reason is control) why we have all this draconian shit. Because parents aren't parenting.
I still play Neopets every day. It's been excellent for my mental health and it's the most wholesome community I've ever been a part of.
Currently? I feel like it was years ago that Roblox's controversies came to the fore.
They used to have controversies. They still do, but they used to too.
Neopets still exists and is great though
I said this too. I still play every day.
This is the main reason I don't use tiktok, ever since its inception: It was meant as a space for young people and I don't want to be one of the jerks who intrudes on that.
Yeah, there's privacy concerns and brainrot pearl-clutching and all of that, but while those are legitimate, my number one reason for not using it has always been that I believe there should be spaces for young people online that adults don't mess around or intrude in.
I ain't buying this internet ID propaganda
There used to be an all-Flash site called "poisson rouge" when my kid was a toddler, and it was absolutely awesome. Hundreds of educational games, bright, fun, animated...
Edit: was nostalgic, looked it up - seems they relaunched at some point! https://www.poissonrouge.com/play/
Isn’t this just called online video games? Basically what Neopets was.
Most videogames don't do anything to segregate kids from adults (or make sure things stay kid appropriate) and don't really make the space with kids in mind. They make the space with revenue in mind.
Most videogames, especially with voice chat, you might get an 8 year old saying this is his first time alongside a crochety neckbeard screaming about banging that kids mother
Oh no. Go outside.
Scratch was the social media site I grew up on. It's still around.
That's because kids should be outside running around and having life experiences that teach them the things they need to be well-rounded adults. Make spaces for that. Dicking around on the internet achieves nothing.
There's a place for both. Some kids literally can't go run outside, should have a space for them too.
The problem is it doesn't matter where, virtual or physical, the spaces have been paved over or you get the cops called on your for letting your kids pay outside. The argument that kids should have spaces made with them in mind still stands