several dozen people braved the snow to hold up hand-drawn placards reading "Hands off Roblox"..
You mean several dozen hardcore addicts.
Let's stop bullshitting here already. It's already sickening enough realizing we're rapidly approaching that point in society where everyone is a digital addict, dismissed under the guise of "social" media that makes humans anything but social.
If you're a parent of a child, ask yourself; if entire countries start banning children from social media, will you remove your own child from it? If not, understand why you won't. Look in that mirror. Hard.
You've never used it. The Roblox FUD has to stop. It's a simple gaming platform that makes it very easy for amateurs to clone and customize existing games. Most of the games suck, a few are fun, but it's mostly mindless fun teens and pre-teens. This was a simple power move to cut off American soft power. American teenagers make fun low-effort games that you get to play for free because you're Russian and broke. It's no more social media than Halo, Fortnite, or Steam. You can see your friends online and chat with them, but it's focused on simple games.
I think a difference between Roblox and everything else is 2-fold:
1. It's popular among girls and boys, whereas Fortnite, Call of Duty and Halo are sausagefests.
2. It's not designed to be a social media site, like Twitter or Facebook. It's not designed for politics, just playing obbys and various clones of about 5 game types. Most of the games the kids go nuts for have absolutely not point...I don't get it, but I'm old.
It's common sense when your dictator leader bans news and sharing platforms. When he goes after mindless children's games, it's kinda shitty and rubs you the wrong way. Yeah, you know you can't go on a site that bashes him...but one that lets you adopt pets and survive 99 nights in a deer infested forest? WTF? What are the rules now? You can get why Twitter is banned, but not why "Steal a Brainrot" is.
Twitter isn't fun. It's not entertainment. Roblox is. Part of a successful dictatorship is your subjects knowing the rules and being able to follow them. Most can tolerate an authoritarian if they know how to avoid his wrath....especially Russians who are very used to authoritarianism. But when your dictator is unpredictable, it's very scary.