Lordy, I hate sensationalized editorial headlines. This is the actual quote.
Asked by co-host Casey Newton how he thinks about the issue of child predators on his platform, the Roblox CEO said the issue wasn’t just a “problem, but an opportunity as well.”
This is standard corpo/PR speak when addressing an issue, you refer to it as an “opportunity”, there’s an implied “to solve/address”.
Full interview question and answer, just for fullness of context:
Newton: You have joined us today to talk about this new age-gating policy that Roblox is rolling out to protect kids. And I think we should start by just talking about the scope of the problem here. What has led you to this point? And how do you think of the problem of predators on Roblox?
Baszucki: We think of it not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well. How do we allow young people to build, communicate and hang out together? How do we build the future of communication at the same time? So we, you know, we’ve been, I think in a good way, working on this ever since we started. And when we were — this was almost 18 or 19 years ago — when we first launched the company and we had just four of us sitting in a room, we were literally the moderators, like we would rotate all the time. And so fast-forward to where we are today, it’s just like every week, what is the latest tech? At the scale we’re at, 150 million daily actives, 11 billion hours a month, like what is the best way to keep pushing this forward? And as you correctly note, we’ve just started adding that we’re going to be using facial age estimation with A.I. to complement that.
Am I the only one that’s reading that over and over trying to find where he actually clarifies about it being an “opportunity”? It seems as though he just says that and starts talking nonsense.
11 billion engagement hours a month! Does anyone seriously believe that lol. And still not profitable! What do they need, ever human beings every waking hour to spin a profit!?
It comes out to be 73 hours over a month, per daily active. That’s about 2.5hrs daily, which doesn’t seem too far fetched considering it’s cross-platform and also a large mobile audience.
A normal full time job including holiday is only ~140 hours a month. Assuming you believe their user stats too that would be pretty grim. You probably shouldn’t though.
Man goes to his boss and says “can we talk. I have a problem!”
His boss gets mad and replies “I don’t want to hear about your problems. We are an opportunity based company. We don’t have problems we have opportunities to improve. Do you understand?”
The man thinks and then replies “yeah, I get it.”
“great now tell me what you wanted to talk about, and you better not use the word problem!”
“well… Based on what you said, I have a huge drinking opportunity”
Lordy, I hate sensationalized editorial headlines. This is the actual quote.
This is standard corpo/PR speak when addressing an issue, you refer to it as an “opportunity”, there’s an implied “to solve/address”.
Full interview question and answer, just for fullness of context:
Am I the only one that’s reading that over and over trying to find where he actually clarifies about it being an “opportunity”? It seems as though he just says that and starts talking nonsense.
11 billion engagement hours a month! Does anyone seriously believe that lol. And still not profitable! What do they need, ever human beings every waking hour to spin a profit!?
It comes out to be 73 hours over a month, per daily active. That’s about 2.5hrs daily, which doesn’t seem too far fetched considering it’s cross-platform and also a large mobile audience.
A normal full time job including holiday is only ~140 hours a month. Assuming you believe their user stats too that would be pretty grim. You probably shouldn’t though.
This did not make it better.
Contrarians don’t understand the difference between disagreeing and having a point.
Reminds me of an old joke…
Man goes to his boss and says “can we talk. I have a problem!”
His boss gets mad and replies “I don’t want to hear about your problems. We are an opportunity based company. We don’t have problems we have opportunities to improve. Do you understand?”
The man thinks and then replies “yeah, I get it.”
“great now tell me what you wanted to talk about, and you better not use the word problem!”
“well… Based on what you said, I have a huge drinking opportunity”
Ludicrously bad wording, a CEO really should have realized that there’s situations corpo speak isn’t the right choice
Unfortunately, CEOs are really only good for one thing. Saying nothing by spouting a bunch of corporate jargon.