SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Roblox[*] blames 'gang rape' on hacker adding code to game
A popular children's video game has blamed a virtual "gang rape" on a hack of its systems. Amber Petersen's seven-year-old daughter was playing Roblox, when [her online avatar] was attacked by two male characters staging violent sexual acts.
The firm said the incident was caused by an attack on one of its computer servers that has been dealt with. But experts have cautioned parents not to let young children play online without supervision. They warn it is unlikely this will be the last time such a hack occurs.
After Ms Petersen witnessed the attack on her family iPad, she posted screenshots and an account of the event on her Facebook page, detailing the experience. Ms Petersen said that when her daughter had asked what was happening on the screen, she had viewed a "horrific" scene of her child's avatar being sexually assaulted by two male characters. Towards the end of the incident, she said, a third, female character interfered by jumping on the victim's body.
The BBC understands that the hacker responsible managed to subvert the California-based company's cyber-protection systems, allowing them to upload code that changed the game's rules and made customised animations appear. Roblox previously confirmed that it had identified the account responsible and blocked it from its platform.
[*] From the company web site, Roblox:
Roblox is the best place to Imagine with Friends. With the largest user-generated online gaming platform, and over 15 million games created by users, Roblox is the #1 gaming site for kids and teens (comScore). Every day, virtual explorers come to Roblox to create adventures, play games, role play, and learn with their friends in a family-friendly, immersive, 3D environment.
A victim of dank memes? Or the powerful scripting system?
Original Facebook post. Also at TechCrunch and The Washington Post.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday July 20 2018, @05:07PM (6 children)
Besides, they were talking about anonymity, not privacy. Very different things - anonymity is the ability to act publicly while keeping your identity secret - which has always before been a very difficult thing to do.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday July 20 2018, @09:32PM (5 children)
Not really. For the most part, complete anonymity was a a day's ride away by horse.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday July 21 2018, @03:17AM (4 children)
No, it really wasn't. They might not know your name or history, but they know you as "that guy who just rode in on a horse", and if you said something to piss off the wrong people, they could easily yank you off that horse and slit your throat.
Besides which, domesticated horses are themselves a quite recent technology, at only about 6000 years old. And even as recently as the medieval period it's believed that the vast majority of people never traveled more than five miles from the village where they were born. Hunter-gatherer's traveled further, but did so as a group, and it was a radically different society (For starters, it's commonly believed that economies were primarily gift-based, with trade being reserved for dealing with other tribes)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 21 2018, @10:56AM
Even today, the majority of people never go further than 100 miles from their home town. Even in western countries, the majority will never leave the country of their birth.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday July 21 2018, @01:29PM (2 children)
So you're actually talking about impunity rather than anonymity. For a great deal of the past before records might follow you around the country or even around the world, there was anonymity and even a chance to start over, but impunity was reserved for nobles (who did often behave badly).
Even without anonymity, we see cases of "affluenza" due to real or imagined impunity.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday July 21 2018, @02:38PM (1 child)
The two are somewhat related concepts, but with an important difference:
If you do something anonymously, you can walk around in public tomorrow and nobody will know that it was you that did it. That does indeed give you a measure of impunity, but only a pale version - if anyone learns it was you, you will still have to face the consequences.
If you do something with impunity, then you can walk around town with everyone knowing what you did, and still not face the consequences.
Starting over is neither, it's just a chance to escape further consequences for past actions through self-imposed exile, discarding everything attached to your old identity, good and bad. (well, aside from knowledge and whatever wealth you can carry). Your actions in a new life still are still attributed to you, and you will have to face the consequences for them, unless you choose to flee and start over yet again. Your actions in your old life are *also* still attributed to you, and if you're ever recognized, by returning to your old territory, or being spotted by a chance traveler, you may have to face the consequences for those as well.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday July 21 2018, @05:20PM
Agreed, anonymity can create something impunity like. The stronger the anonymity, the stronger the effect. But I contend that the anonymity is merely the mechanism providing the impunity that, in turn, leads the person to behave badly in some cases.
The effect is tempered by fear that the impunity might not hold. Perhaps someone in the group they consider to be peers will take offense, or their god, or they might face karma in their next life. Or perhaps they believe their ancestors are watching and think less of them.