LW admins instance-ban a Lemm.ee user for being underage

Eh, kinda half and half. Kids these days seem to forget rule #1 of the internet: if you're under 18 never admit it anywhere, anytime, for any reason.

Hell, don't even admit you made your account when you were underage, but aren't now. I've seen regular forums and MMORPGs ban people who admitted they were underage at the time they made the account, but not anymore

PTB. This is unreasonable. Also trying to prevent teenagers from accessing the internet is just going to lead to all teenagers just lying about their age. It's not going to stop it. It's just going to mean they can't discuss their actual opinions and issues honestly. It would also reinforce the need to lie to be part of culture, which is just not healthy.

Damn, i liked sag :(

I think i'm going with a soft PTB from my pov. Tbf dbzer0 is pretty lax on rules, especially towards people outside the instance. I don't think it's within my place or anyone else's to ban someone from such a huge part of the fediverse.

But this highlights the need to decentralize from .world, the fact that a single instance ban can take away such a huge part of the fediverse from a user feels ridiculous.

I get why they did it, but it feels unfair.

Aw, they actually did the ban. That's unfortunate.

On one hand, yes, legal liability and all that, but on the other hand half the site is copyright violations. The law only matters sometimes. I say this as someone who has hosted web communities myself, there's no reason to be banning for something like age on these instances, especially when we're talking 16 and not 12. It's unenforceable and trivial enough that there's no legal pressure to do so.

That is a kind of shitty response from World and seems a little condescending to me, but tone is difficult. You are welcome here and I would rather you stay and interact with the rest of us than leave the fediverse. Your voice matters and I didn't have the same outlets when I was your age.

PTB, this seems really like they're overstepping their bounds, @[email protected] has clarified the matter.

Unfortunately this isn't the first time Lemmy.world has done something like this using "legal" as an excuse, and probably won't be the last time. They're too big so they'll never get defederated or penalized by any server wishing to stay even remotely relevant so nothing is likely to change.

I'm really not sure how the TOS apply given it opens with:

This Terms of Service applies to your access to and active use of https://lemmy.world/, it's API's and sub-domain services (ex alt GUIs)(we, us, our the website, Lemmy.World, or LW) as well as all other properties and services associated with Lemmy.World.

Sag wasn't accessing or making active use of lemmy.world itself. This would be like an email provider blocking a particular address from another service because the user of that address doesn't comply with a part of their TOS.

Hey, I’m the one that decided to ban this user. I understand the frustration, but it is very much in the TOS of lemmy.world and has been for a long time.

We are having an internal discussion to see if there’s room to lower the age to 16 and if we can make exceptions for federated users.

I hope you see that this really isn’t meant as a powertrip, and we are just trying to protect the Lemmy.world site.

Sorry if I do not respond to comments quickly, it’s late in my timezone.

Yeah, it seems a little odd to do a full ban for anyone under 18. Do they feel that all communities on there are not appropriate for minors?

@[email protected] FYI since I don't think you've seen the new comments on your initial post

@[email protected] Is it the responsibility of gmail to make sure that people on other mail services don't break their TOS?

Isn't that the whole point of email being federated?

I'm half and half. I get it, liability and all.

I do think it's healthy for young people to get more info outside of the bubble of their family and school and we got away with crazy shit on the internet back in the day.

But that was also when the internet was relatively new and a lot of sketchy shit was being done to kids online during that time. Governments today are cracking down on sites that allow kids to use them, and no one wants to be the site admin who convinced yet another European country to draft draconian "think of the children" anti-privacy laws.

The other part of it too is, c'mon, basically rule #1 of using the internet is never admit when you're underage. Like every other Millennial out there, I was born on Jan 1, 1960.

I think an 18+ rule for an instance that allows porn or federates with porn instances is reasonable. And when you interact with another instance's communities, you are beholden to their rules. And the admin who did it said they're talking about changing the rule. So it's not like they're just trying to be dicks.

So... I'm going to go with admins did what they had to, sag learned a tiny lesson about not giving people more information than they needed. I don't want to say YDI, though.

ptb

but....

I think it's great that we can expect actual rules and enforcement from instance admins, and have a chance to suss out the edges of these rules in open fora.

Gonna go against the grain here and say YDI.

As others have mentioned, liability. The hosts of Lemmy instances are doing an incredible service enabling us to use this platform for free. And in providing that service, they are also assuming a significant amount of risk in a rather volatile legal environment. The law views a platform that allows ("targets") minors very differently from one that is intended only for adults.

Additionally, TOS. Its as simple as that. This is not power tripping, this is just enforcement. Even if there was nothing explicity wrong about the behavior, once age is directly mentioned, liability is opened, and their hands are tied.

As a side note, there is nothing wrong with adult-only community spaces. Sometimes I want to have a discussion without worrying about whether the person on the other end is a literal child - there are enough adults that act like children as it is...

If LW has a tos they have to be consistent and follow it as a normal business practice for it to protect them when something goes wrong.

You waved a red flag and said I'm violating the TOS, what are you going to do about it? You volunteered this information, nobody asked you to do it.

You backed LW into a corner, and they had to apply their TOS or in a future court case they couldn't rely on it to protect them. I.e. the prosecutor would say that LW didn't enforce it's TOS, here are reports of TOS violations being ignored, etc....

In many communities children's data is treated differently, and their is a higher moderation and safety requirement for the service provider. You often see this in online services saying you have to be at least 13/16/18 to use this service, it's because they don't want to have to follow the special rules for children.

I'm biased here. I'm still against .world and their tendency to use "legality" as a smokescreen. (Blaming it for banning Luigi content right after he axed that United guy has earned my ire forever.)

However... I'm almost 40, and it was always the rule to never mention your age until it didn't matter. So on the one hand, world loves to use legality to push it's agenda. On the other hand, this is an expected outcome.

You admitted to violating ToS, soooo…. Yeah. YDI.

Moving forward, know that your choices are:

1. Be dishonest with your age
2. Don’t tell anyone abut your age
3. Read the rules of the instance prior to using it.

YDI. The instance rules state that minors are not “allowed to use or access the website”. To my knowledge, Lemmy as a whole does not have the infrastructure to age gate content except by users voluntarily filtering out NSFW content themselves. If somebody posts mature 18+ content anywhere on Lemmy and the admins of a server know or at least suspect that an account is ran by a minor who may see that content via federation with that server, the admins may be held legally liable. Implementing an age gated system in the Fediverse that is effective in filtering out mature content is the only way to avert servers being held liable if they know of an account that announces themself (even jokingly) as a minor. It’s not powertripping; it’s covering the instance’s back against an instant and total shutdown. There is a case to be made about hypocrisy and double standards, say with servers that allow and/or endorse piracy, but that is not as dire in the eyes of the law and most people’s morals.

So they banned an under age user from only their instance for the exact amount of time until they become old enough to be a legitimate user on their instance?

Man I want Reddit mod drama back. Where's I was banned for sleeping with my step mod?!?

YDI, it's not in the TOS for funsies.

Good. Minors shouldn't be on the internet. They should be reading books and going outside.

I was a minor on the internet once, and it ruined me. I'm horribly addicted to screens.