Matthew Ball (via Hacker News):
During the average day, more than 80MM people log onto Roblox. As a historical point of contrast, this means that more people log onto Roblox every 10 or so minutes than used Second Life in a month at its peak. On a monthly basis, Roblox now counts more than 380MM users according to RTrack – 2x as many as PC gaming leader Steam, 3x that of Sony’s PlayStation, 3x the number of unique annual users of the Nintendo Switch in a year, and 5x as many as have bought an Xbox console in the last decade. After accounting for duplication across these platforms, as well as the gap between monthly and annual Switch users, it’s likely Roblox has more monthly users than the entire AAA gaming ecosystem combined. What’s more, NPD/Circana reports that Roblox is typically one of the 3–7 most played games on PlayStation and Xbox (Roblox is not available on Switch or Steam), and SensorTower says that in 2023, Roblox averaged more iOS/Android monthly active users than any other game (including Candy Crush!).
Compared to its most similar competitors—the social virtual world platforms, Minecraft and Fortnite — Roblox has about 5x and 2.25x as many monthly players. For non-gamers, Roblox has about two thirds as many monthly users as Spotify and half as many as Snap (though it probably has a lower share of daily-to-monthly active users) and is roughly as popular as Instagram circa Q4 2015, and Facebook in Q3 2009.
When you’re that popular, you don’t have to follow Apple’s rules about not having App Store–like interfaces, apps within apps, or downloading code.
So yes, Roblox is unquestionably “working.” Yet Roblox is also unprofitable. Very unprofitable. What’s more, Roblox’s losses continue to swell because its impressive rate of revenue growth has been outpaced by that of its costs. Over the last four quarters, Roblox’s income from operations was ($1.2B) on revenues of $3.2B, representing a -38% profit margin.
[…]
Unfortunately, many of these costs are outside of Roblox’s control. To start, an average of 23% of revenues are consumed by various App Store/platform fees (this sum is less than 30% because roughly 20% of sales are direct via browser or PC, where Roblox pays credit card processing fees but not 30% store commissions). Another 26% of revenues are paid out to Roblox’s UGC developers.
Previously:
Update (2024-09-09): Alex Heath:
CEO David Baszucki announced that creators of these games, which Roblox calls experiences, will be able to keep between 50 and 70 percent of revenue from their paid titles when they’re purchased in real currency on desktop computers. That’s significantly more than the roughly 30 percent revenue split Roblox gives developers for purchases made with its native Robux currency inside freemium experiences.
The move could help incentivize the creation of more premium games as Roblox looks to attract older users. Baszucki says the intention is to also bring these new economics to paid experiences bought on other devices, including mobile phones and consoles, though app store fees will likely get in the way on iOS and Android.
App Store Business Game iOS iOS 17 iOS App Roblox
Proton (via Hacker News):
We have received multiple reports today from users in Brazil having difficulties installing the Proton VPN app on iOS devices via the Apple App Store. We can confirm that the issue is not on our side, but likely with the App Store itself, which is controlled by Apple. What makes this an extremely strange coincidence is that it is also impacting multiple other VPNs in the Brazilian app store.
Most likely, something has happened on the Apple side, and we do not know if it is accidental, or if Apple is secretly implementing a censorship order.
Previously:
Update (2024-09-06): Jack Nicas and Kate Conger (9to5Mac):
Justice Moraes issued multiple orders on Friday. In the first, he also ordered Apple and Google to prevent downloads of X as well as popular VPN apps.
People across Brazil quickly criticized the move against VPN apps, and about three hours later, Justice Moraes issued an amendment to the order, this time leaving out the directives to Apple and Google.
Even with that amendment, Carlos Affonso Souza, a Brazilian internet-law professor, called the order “the most extreme judicial decision out of a Brazilian court in 30 years of internet law in Brazil.”
Gui Rambo:
The original decision also banned all VPN apps and asked Google and Apple to remove all VPN apps from the stores, but he backtracked on that “for now”. Crazy stuff.
Mike Masnick:
I initially thought that first section couldn’t possibly mean that app stores also had to ban VPNs. But that’s what it pretty clearly says and what multiple Brazilian reports claim.
The end result is taking away VPNs from millions of Brazilians, which is an awful lot of collateral damage just because Elon Musk is a jackass. VPNs have many legitimate uses other than accessing ExTwitter after a ban in Brazil.
A few hours after the decision, Moraes seemed to walk back that section of the ruling, though perhaps only temporarily. In a second short ruling, he “suspended the execution” of that item “until there is a statement from the parties in the proceedings” in order to “avoid any unnecessary and reversible inconvenience to third-party companies.”
In other words, after Moraes hears from “the parties in the proceedings,” the VPN ban could come back.
Mike Masnick:
On Monday, the Supreme Court upheld the overall ban. Moraes said that the ban on personal use for VPNs would only be enforced for users who sought to “engage in conduct that defrauds the court decision,” which seems somewhat broad and open to interpretation. One other judge wanted to limit the individual fines only to users who got around the ban and used it to post racist or fascist supporting content, but that request did not receive the necessary support from the other judges.
App Store App Store Takedown Brazil iOS iOS 17 iOS App Proton VPN Virtual Private Network (VPN)
Luana Maria Benedito (via Hacker News):
Media platform X said on Saturday it would close its operations in Brazil “effective immediately” due to what it called “censorship orders” by Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes.
X Global Government Affairs:
Last night, Alexandre de Moraes threatened our legal representative in Brazil with arrest if we do not comply with his censorship orders. He did so in a secret order, which we share here to expose his actions.
Despite our numerous appeals to the Supreme Court not being heard, the Brazilian public not being informed about these orders and our Brazilian staff having no responsibility or control over whether content is blocked on our platform, Moraes has chosen to threaten our staff in Brazil rather than respect the law or due process.
As a result, to protect the safety of our staff, we have made the decision to close our operation in Brazil, effective immediately.
The X service remains available to the people of Brazil.
Michael Shellenberger (in April):
They:
- illegally demanded that Twitter reveal personal details about Twitter users who used hashtags he did not like;
- demanded access to Twitter’s internal data, in violation of Twitter policy;
- sought to censor, unilaterally, Twitter posts by sitting members of Brazil’s Congress;
- sought to weaponize Twitter’s content moderation policies against supporters of then-president
@jairbolsonaro
Previously:
Days later, Brazil’s former secretary of digital rights, Estela Aranha, unmasked the fraud. Confronting Shellenberger publicly on Twitter, she demonstrated that he had cut and pasted together paragraphs selected from the company’s internal communications on a variety of different issues to create a false narrative (FAIR.org, 4/18/24). The paragraph about criminal charges referred not to de Moraes, but to GAECO, the Sao Paulo district attorney’s office’s organized crime unit, which pressed charges after Twitter refused to turn over user data on a leader of Brazil’s largest cocaine-trafficking organization. Shellenberger apologized in Portuguese, admitting he had no proof that de Moraes had pressed charges against Twitter, then left Brazil.
The eight-page congressional report parroted Musk and Shellenberger’s criticism of the deplatforming of Twitter users, and claimed that ordering the removal of specific posts constitutes “censorship.” Surprisingly, for a report authored by a committee chaired by inner-circle Trump ally Jim Jordan, the most cited journalistic source for the document is the New York Times.
The Times is generally not sympathetic to Musk or Jordan, so this could be interpreted as if even the Times agrees with them, there must be something to this. However, Mier casts doubt on the Times’s reporting.
It is disputed precisely what Twitter was being asked to do, and I don’t have the time or expertise to dig into the claims and counterclaims. However, it does seem to be the case that Twitter received a secret order, that its local staff was threatened, and that it’s leaving Brazil.
[Moraes] was the one who ordered the arrest for all of the insurgents and the one that, and this is important, ordered Elon to surrender the names and IP addresses of every Brazilian X account who used X to organize this coup attempt.
[…]
As such The Brazilian Constitution written after the end of the dictatorship in 1988 is very strict in regard to treason and coup attempts and such. So yes! By Brazilian laws Elon would have to comply and give this information to Xandão or else he would be obstructing justice.
X Global Government Affairs:
Soon, we expect Judge Alexandre de Moraes will order X to be shut down in Brazil – simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents. These enemies include a duly elected Senator and a 16-year-old girl, among others.
When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts. Our challenges against his manifestly illegal actions were either dismissed or ignored.
[…]
We are absolutely not insisting that other countries have the same free speech laws as the United States. The fundamental issue at stake here is that Judge de Moraes demands we break Brazil’s own laws. We simply won’t do that.
In the days to come, we will publish all of Judge de Moraes’ illegal demands and all related court filings in the interest of transparency.
Tiago Rogero (Hacker News, Slashdot, Nick Heer):
He gave Brazil’s National Telecommunications Agency 24 hours to enforce the decision. Once notified, the agency must pass the order on to the more than 20,000 broadband internet providers in the country, each of which must block X.
Trey Alston (Hacker News):
“It is urgent to regulate social networks,” [attorney general Jorge Messias] wrote. “We cannot live in a society in which billionaires domiciled abroad have control of social networks and put themselves in a position to violate the rule of law, failing to comply with court orders and threatening our authorities.”
Mike Masonic:
The main argument is that it’s pretty clear that he is violating Brazilian law. First off, it involves disobeying orders coming from the Brazilian Supreme Court, which people insist must be obeyed. Also, the law in Brazil requires that to operate an internet service, you have to have an employee in the country.
But, here’s the thing: as we’ve argued for years, standing up and fighting back against unjust laws is what standing up for free speech and civil liberties is all about.
For example, lots of countries are now pushing for these laws that require internet companies to have local employees in order to arrest them if the company doesn’t do the government’s bidding. We have long pointed out how dangerous this is, as they are effectively “hostage laws” that enable authoritarian countries to put undue pressure on private companies.
[…]
When Twitter refused to pull down those tweets, the Modi government first threatened to jail Indian Twitter employees. Later, it raided Twitter’s offices in India. India threatened to ban Twitter in the country, and some politicians pushed Indians to move to a local competitor, Koo. Twitter fought back against those demands, and many people cheered them on for standing up for free speech and against undue pressure.
Mike Masnick:
In the battle between Elon Musk and Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the biggest losers are Brazilians. They are now at risk of being stripped of VPNs while facing massive fines if they somehow get around a countrywide ban on ExTwitter.
[…]
As we noted, there was nothing particularly new about the second point. Brazil has done this in the past with WhatsApp and Telegram.
Jack Nicas and Kate Conger:
X began to go dark across Brazil on Saturday after the nation’s Supreme Court blocked the social network because its owner, Elon Musk, refused to comply with court orders to suspend certain accounts.
[…]
In a highly unusual move, Justice Moraes also said that any person in Brazil who tried to still use X via common privacy software called a virtual private network, or VPN, could be fined nearly $9,000 a day.
[…]
Justice Moraes also froze the finances of a second Musk business in Brazil, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite-internet service, to try to collect $3 million in fines he has levied against X. Starlink — which has recently exploded in popularity in Brazil, with more than 250,000 customers — said that it planned to fight the order and would make its service free in Brazil if necessary.
Starlink:
Earlier this week we received an order from Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice
@alexandre
de Moraes that freezes Starlink’s finances and prevents Starlink from conducting financial transactions in that country.
This order is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines levied—unconstitutionally—against X. It was issued in secret and without affording Starlink any of the due process of law guaranteed by the Constitution of Brazil.
Jack Nicas (Hacker News):
On Sunday, Starlink informed Brazil’s telecom agency, Anatel, that it would not block X until Brazilian officials released Starlink’s frozen assets, Anatel’s president, Carlos Baigorri, said in an interview broadcast by the Brazilian outlet Globo News.
Mr. Baigorri said he had informed Justice Moraes “so that he can take the measures he deems appropriate.” Mr. Baigorri said his agency could revoke Starlink’s license to operate in Brazil, which would “hypothetically” prevent the company from offering connections to its Brazilian customers.
Yet Starlink could try to continue to provide service in Brazil without a license, though that would violate Brazilian law.
[…]
Mr. Musk has called the financial sanctions on Starlink “absolutely illegal,” saying that Justice Moraes was punishing shareholders of SpaceX for the actions of X, a separate company. Mr. Musk said he owned 40 percent of SpaceX.
Pascale Davies with AP (Hacker News):
Brazil’s Supreme Court voted unanimously on Monday to uphold the decision by one of its justices to ban Elon Musk’s social media platform, X.
Starlink:
Regardless of the illegal treatment of Starlink in freezing of our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil.
Brendan Carr:
Brazil’s decisions to ban X and freeze Starlink assets are part of a growing crackdown on free speech. But they also violates Brazil’s own laws.
Today, I wrote my regulatory counterparts in Brazil to address these unlawful actions.
[…]
The serious and apparently unlawful actions against X and Starlink cannot be squared with the principles of reciprocity, rule of law, and independence that have served as the foundation of the FCC and ANATEL relationship and the basis for reciprocal foreign investment.
Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court unfroze the assets of Elon Musk’s satellite communications company Starlink and social platform X after 18.35 million reais, about $3.3 million, was transferred to the government’s coffers.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the unblocking of Starlink and X’s bank accounts and assets after the funds had been transferred, covering X’s fines for noncompliance, according to a press release Friday.
Some 7.28 million reais, about $1.3 million, was transferred from X, while 11.07 million reais, about $1.99 million, was transferred from Starlink on the judge’s orders.
Is Starlink paying part of X’s fine or was it separately fined for something else?
See also: Alexandre Files.
Brazil Business Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Internet Service Provider (ISP) Legal SpaceX Starlink Twitter Virtual Private Network (VPN) Web
European Commission:
X designs and operates its interface for the “verified accounts” with the “Blue checkmark” in a way that does not correspond to industry practice and deceives users.
[…]
Second, X does not comply with the required transparency on advertising, as it does not provide a searchable and reliable advertisement repository, but instead put in place design features and access barriers that make the repository unfit for its transparency purpose towards users.
[…]
Third, X fails to provide access to its public data to researchers in line with the conditions set out in the DSA. In particular, X prohibits eligible researchers from independently accessing its public data, such as by scraping, as stated in its terms of service.
Via John Gruber:
Blue checkmarks were indeed used, “back in the day”, to indicate “verified” accounts. But upon purchasing Twitter, Elon Musk eliminated that program. They don’t advertise it as “Verified” any more; they just call it “Twitter Premium” and make it very clear that blue checkmarks indicate premium account status. That’s illegal under the DSA?
Mike Masnick:
I know that many Elon Musk supporters assume that my mockery of the many stupid things that Elon does means that I won’t give him a fair shake. But when he does something good, I’m happy to highlight it and give him kudos.
[…]
We’ve been warning for many years that the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) would be abused for censorship by the government. EU officials and supporters of the DSA kept insisting that we were overreacting. But, Thierry Breton has made it clear that while the DSA is under his purview as a Commissioner, it is his own personal censorship tool for anything he dislikes online.
[…]
Donald Trump joined Elon Musk for a conversation on “Spaces,” the extremely buggy real-time audio chat feature on ExTwitter. Before that happened, however, Thierry Breton posted one of his typically smug open letters that more or less warns Elon that if Trump said anything bad, the EU might seek to take action against ExTwitter.
Mike Masnick:
Elon’s response — posting a meme telling Breton to “fuck yourself in the face” — while not exactly a masterclass in diplomatic communication, at least made his feelings on the matter abundantly clear. It also made the point that Breton appeared to be using the DSA in a manner that Europeans insisted the DSA would never enable: to order companies to censor content.
[…]
Indeed, it appears that other EU officials agree that Breton went too far. The Financial Times covered the story by noting that other EU officials were wholly unaware that Breton was going to send that letter, and they sound displeased about it[…]
Mark Scott (via John Gruber):
Four separate EU officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Breton’s warning to Musk had surprised many within the Commission. The bloc’s enforcers were still investigating the platform for potential wrongdoing and the EU did not want to be seen as potentially interfering in the U.S. presidential election.
“The EU is not in the business of electoral interference,” said one of those officials. “DSA implementation is too important to be misused by an attention-seeking politician in search of his next big job.”
Previously:
Update (2024-09-17): Michel Rose and Foo Yun Chee:
France picked Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne as its new candidate for the next European Commission as the incumbent, Thierry Breton, abruptly quit on Monday with tough words for the EU's re-elected executive chief Ursula von der Leyen.
John Gruber:
Translation from bureaucratese to English: “Faced with being fired for being a jackass or resigning, I resign.”
Previously:
Advertising Digital Services Act (DSA) Elon Musk European Union Legal Twitter Web
