Ethan Dallas was targeted by an adult sexual predator on Roblox when he was 12, and later on Discord, according to a lawsuit. He took his own life last year.
SL was too complicated when I was a kid. Might be different now, but a lot of us went onto IMVU instead. It originally had no separation for over and under 18 accounts, but even after they added it you had both kids and adults blatantly intermingling anyways. You couldn’t search up over 18 rooms as under 18 or search under 18 rooms as over 18, but people could still invite and chat.
Nothing quite like being 15 and hanging out with your friends until one of them invites their mid-twenties boyfriend to the chat.
Somehow we had second life before Roblox and as bad as some places there got it still was never as awful as Roblox.
I imagine it’s because Second Life was never popular with children.
As bad as mostly-adult spaces can be, the worst kinds of humans seem to skitter around children’s spaces.
SL was too complicated when I was a kid. Might be different now, but a lot of us went onto IMVU instead. It originally had no separation for over and under 18 accounts, but even after they added it you had both kids and adults blatantly intermingling anyways. You couldn’t search up over 18 rooms as under 18 or search under 18 rooms as over 18, but people could still invite and chat.
Nothing quite like being 15 and hanging out with your friends until one of them invites their mid-twenties boyfriend to the chat.
Something about the density of innocent and helpless prey really appeals to people who like to prey on the helpless and innocent.