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veritas_vincit ago

As someone who spent years playing Club Penguin/Webkinz as a kid, I think this is absurd without any known cases of child abduction related to the games.

Webkinz is laughable. It's impossible to say anything about one's personal information in chatrooms. They are heavily moderated. Numbers will not go through. Names, places, and vulgarity are all filtered, and the rules are heavily enforced. There is manual as well as algorithmic protection in place. No chat logs go unreviewed. Violators are banned from chat spaces for some period of time.

Club Penguin's filter system is a little more lax, but it's still extremely hard to communicate anything personal. Numbers will not go through chat, spelled out, or in numeral form. Names will not go through, except for usernames. Using vulgarity automatically earns you a ban. In seven years of playing the game, I've seen users acting in suggestive ways on a few very rare occasions. But to make the jump from that to "therefore pedophiles use it to groom kids" is absurd.

Not everything marketed to kids is pedo related.

bdiminishedminor7 ago

You're talking from the point of view of a regular user. Yes, they are severely moderated, and I'm quite certain these platforms do everything they can to keep the "regular" pedophiles away. But I'm talking about the architects of the platform. They have access to all the data, can bypass any moderation, and remain completely invisible.

veritas_vincit ago

There's literally no evidence whatsoever that this is happening.