Russia Bans Roblox

Reactions to the Roblox Ban

• Some commenters welcome the ban, arguing Roblox is exploitative or harmful for children; they see a “right outcome for wrong reasons.”
• Others focus less on Roblox itself and more on the pattern of Russian internet control and information isolation.
• Comparisons are made to China, where Roblox is also banned; hypothesis: nationalist or authoritarian governments dislike global platforms that shape youth culture outside state control.

Russian Censorship and VPN Use

• BBC and many Western sites are blocked; people in Russia report widespread VPN use to bypass restrictions, even among non‑technical workers.
• Others push back, saying VPN use is illegal, unstable, expensive (due to fines), and more heavily blocked in poorer regions, so adoption is far from universal.
• There is discussion of future “whitelists” (only approved IPs reachable) and inventive circumvention ideas (e.g., tunneling over state‑linked messengers), with strong warnings that such tactics could be dangerous.
• Legal situation is described as ambiguous: using VPNs per se is said to be not explicitly banned yet, but searching for “extremist materials” is; this creates risk for VPN users.

Comparisons with EU/US Censorship and Sanctions

• Some argue there is “standard censorship” on both sides: Russia bans Western media; the EU formally bans Russian state outlets; TikTok bans and internal US restrictions (e.g., on Wikileaks for federal employees) are cited as Western examples.
• Others counter that Western media remains pluralistic and can openly criticize leaders, whereas Russian media is described as fully under state editorial control.
• Debate over sanctions: sanctions and payments systems have hit ordinary Russians and emigrants, sometimes those politically opposed to the Kremlin; critics say this punishes the wrong people.

State Power vs Corporate Power

• One camp sees state censorship as uniquely dangerous because the state holds the monopoly on violence; another argues “big capital” effectively rules in Western democracies, so corporate deplatforming and right‑to‑repair issues feel like a different kind of dictatorship.
• There is a broader argument over whether any country is a “real democracy” or just different flavors of elite control.

Broader Political Digressions

• Heated debate over how popular the Russian leadership actually is, the impact of war pay on poorer regions, historical atrocities, and “cancel culture” in the West; participants strongly disagree on equivalence between these phenomena and open dictatorship.