alt Hacker NewsHacker News is turning into every other platform over time it seems. More and more folks just see a headline and comment rather than understand that headlines are designed to mislead you for clicks.
These requirements make sense. They're additional verification steps in place for people trying to publish games for very young users.
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I agree with you that the HN title is editorialized and misleading, but I disagree that these requirements make sense.
They only make sense if you think it's OK for kids to send face scans to scary faceless corporations. And even if you do that, you can't share your game with friends unless they also take a face scan! (cause that's what "Trusted Friend" means - it doesn't mean trusted by you, it means trusted by them)
(Yes, I would recommend a change of title.)
The step is a significant one, and Roblox has taken one other measure recently, restricting chat a lot for minors (https://x.com/Roblox_RTC/status/2043723470899437623) . I think this is a move to satisfy people concerned with child safety, not a cash grab. I think RB hq probably know they're making tradeoffs of keeping parents happy, while devs will be annoyed/fewer. But everyone can still make games and play them with trusted friends. Likely damages the network effect (Roblox's multiplayer aspect being one of its best parts), but oh well.
> These requirements make sense.
I think requirement 3 can make sense if we start painting everybody as potential criminal.
but requirement 2 never make sense to me. -- why need age check to publish to adult user?
No this does not make sense for the platform. Roblox has some of that old Flash feel, where anyone can just create a game, no matter if you are 14 or 88. If you read the comments, most people are fine with the ID checks ( i would not, but fine) but are completely against the charging of a monthly subscription to publish games. All the people that would do it for fun, wont anymore now. Basically, the corporate greed machine has now turned the platform into a "professional" platform, where you pay-to-build.
As a side note, if someone is working on something similar, then now is the time to start talking about it! ;)
Literally demanding the subscription? The headline is correct - you have to have "an active Roblox Plus subscription".
In what way did you find the headline misleading from the actual content of the article?
What if you could only upvote after you've clicked the link?
More and more HN is turning into a PR outlet for companies
Upvoting gangs upvote the PR comment that downplays the article (the "actually, let me examine is why this is fine in very polished language" type comment)
So it's not like there a total imbalance of purely misleading headlines with no response to them
>More and more folks just see a headline and comment rather than understand that headlines are designed to mislead you for clicks.
My personal policy is I don't click links I consider clickbait. I mean things that are intentionally misleading and vogue. But I sometimes check HN comments - I never comment about the post itself (since I didn't read it), but I sometimes respond to other comments (like I do now).