Lightning round: predictions and takeaways

Cecilia D’Anstasio on Roblox efforts to protect children from pedophiles. 

Roblox is one of those games that is more popular than you can imagine, but unless you are of a certain age group and live in that world, you’ll rarely hear about it unless it makes the news for some terrible reason. More recently, for example, we wrote about the Tumbler Ridge shooter who created a mass shooting simulator in Roblox.

But what is Roblox, how big is it exactly, and why does it seem like it's so frequently embroiled in controversy? This week we’re joined by Cecilia D’anstasio in an attempt to answer all of these questions. 

This week we’re joined by Cecilia D’Anstasio. Cecilia reports about video games at Bloomberg, and has written many important articles about the business and controversies of one of the biggest games in the world, Roblox. A few weeks ago we had Patrick Klepek on to discuss Roblox from a parent’s perspective, but today we’re going to hear about it from the perspective of a great investigative reporter and for my money the most knowledgeable journalists about Roblox.

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• Roblox’s Pedophile Problem

• How Roblox Became a Playground for Virtual Fascists

• Roblox Game-Buying Frenzy Is Turning Teens Into Millionaires

• Roblox User Group Re-Creates Real-Life Mass Shooting Events

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