I don’t think my previous post was realistic at all.
I have been talking to Yash and we agreed that we can’t realistically enforce the no minors rule at the extent that I first wanted to.
We feel like it is unreasonable to expect from us a complete vetting process of all the DMs someone feels like leaking in which they caught a random user disclosing their age. We can’t realistically verify that they are real, and we can’t be expected to verify them by hand.
Additionally, we both agreed that this server is becoming way too big to handle for the two of us. This is why I would like to announce a couple of changes regarding our role as server admins:
- We won’t be issuing server-side bans for any user, except if they are posting illegal content or if they are a bot spamming.
- We delegate the responsibility of moderating legal content to the moderators of the communities. If you as a user have a problem about the kind of content posted here, talk it out with the respective moderators of the community it is being posted on.
- We will rat limit the server if we find that things are getting out of hand. We urge moderators to take action in their respective communities first so that we don’t have to rate limit the server.
This is all regarding our role as administrators. To reiterate, we won’t be banning minors site-wide from now on, so please don’t message us regarding this. If you’re a moderator of a community, take it upon yourself to ban minors from it.
It is not because we don’t think the rule is important, it’s because we literally don’t have enough time or energy to enforce it. It is impossible for us to be attuned to every under 18 that creates an account here and every subsequent alt account after being banned. It’s simply not realistic.
For adult users this means that:
- Always assume that a minor will be able to see your posts. Post accordingly.
- Assume the person you’re interacting with could be a minor. Act accordingly.
For moderators:
- Assume that minors will be able to see your communities. Please clearly disclose by either tagging it as NSFW and/or displaying on the sidebar that your community is for adults only.
- If you don’t want accounts from minors to access your community, ban diligently. Keep in mind that banning known minors does not guarantee that your community won’t be visited by minors.
For minors:
- Please don’t browse or create accounts on this site. It is against the rules.
- If you decide to create an account regardless, take steps to be safe. Don’t visit communities clearly tagged as adult only. Don’t interact with posts tagged as NSFW.
We can’t do this without your help. We urge each and every member of this server to take it upon themselves to create a community they feel safe in and to curate their own browsing experience.
This is a passion project made by two people that just want this community to have a space in which they can speak and exist freely. We can’t make this the perfect online space. It’s simply impossible. If you expected perfection from this site, we were doomed to let you down sooner or later.
We understand that some users might feel uncomfortable with this decision. We could have taken steps in a different direction, but we decided to opt for something that both Yash and I feel is more sustainable for us.
We also both acknowledge that our response could have been better. We take accountability and apologize. We believe this post and the decisions that accompany it are proof that we’re taking steps to improve as administrators.
If you want a completely minor-free experience, this was never the place for it, and I now realize that it was foolish of me to suggest it could ever be. A discord server might be better suited for the level of access control a truly no-minors space requires, so we understand if you decide to leave this server. If you decide to stay, rest assured that we’re as committed as the first day to keeping it running.
Thanks again for your patience and cooperation.
And please don’t forget that we are both human and very tired from today’s drama. Please keep the conversation civil. Love you all.
Edit: We won’t be adding any more admins to the team. An admin role in lemmy is very serious and if we gave it to the wrong person they could leak all the personal information stored here. I only trust Yash with that power and Yash only trusts me. For now, expect no changes on the admin team.
Edit 2: If a minor has publicly posted on tranistan.com their exact age, then we will ban them site-wide. What we cannot do is respond to leaked screenshots of DMs from a third party.
TL;DR: If a minor has publicly posted on tranistan.com their exact age, then we will ban them site-wide. What we cannot do is respond to leaked screenshots of DMs from a third party. If you suspect that a user is a minor but has not publicly posted their age here in tranistan.com, you are welcome to raise the issue to the moderators of the community you’re concerned with.
I don’t think anyone really expected every minor to be banned, its just the ignoring of the rule and treating it like its nbd that people had issue with. If we all today found out pizza was 17 and not 19 and then she was banned literally 0 people would care because yes it happens all the time and yes minors lie. But some stuff from yash was a bit overly emotional and reactive with the things shes said.
Like there’s a difference between “eh i didnt really check the leaked dm images or care enough so i didnt do anything someone else should have banned her” and “yeah i knew she was 17 but who cares”
I imagine today must have sucked for you two though and that’s really unfortunate as well, don’t beat yourself up over it too much
truth tsar bomba
You didn’t manage to ban ONE minor, who Yash knew about, and now it is impossible? Really?
deleted by creator
It was always impossible, that’s why we both hesitated in the first place. If you’re moderating a community and want to play whack-a-mole with 5000 alts from pizzaboy, you’re welcome to do so. I have a job, a family and a house to take care of.
Get more admins…
We won’t be adding any more admins to the team. An admin role in lemmy is very serious and if we gave it to the wrong person they could leak all the personal information stored here. I only trust Yash with that power and Yash only trusts me. For now, expect no changes on the admin team.
I wasnt aware that admins had access to that data… well… I do not agree that minors should be allowed… I think the issue was lack of enforcement… changing the rules doesnt fix that… I really really like it here… I love it here… I really dont want it to have to close or end… but I cannot see this going well…
Minors are still not allowed, we simply can’t be expected to deal with verifying leaked DM’s from third party IM services. If a minor is publicly posting their age here either by post, comment or DM to another user, then it’s easy for us to verify and ban them. If not, then we won’t ban the user site wide. We can’t be expected to ban users only based on screenshots.
I didn’t care about that situation with PZBY all that much, honestly. And I have gone overboard with my second comment, sorry. No one expects for you to ban every single one of them. But this was known by Yash, why pretending like it was something hard to find?
I don’t know about Yash, but for me personally the information got to me through a leaked screenshot from a third party IM service. I don’t think we can be expected to verify every screenshot that gets sent to us. If the minor in question has disclosed their age in tranistan.com via DM or by public comment or post, then we can ban them because we have a very easy way of verifying it.
It’s fair, but I still find this announcement unnecessary, no one expects you to track down minors. Yash should’ve just owned her mistake and people would’ve forgotten about that two hours ago.
yeah i dont think thats legal. banning known minors is like, the bare minimum action.
Removed by mod
We don’t fucking care about making sure it’s impossible for any minor to get in here. What we want is when mods are given info that someone is a minor, they’ll be banned. We don’t expect fbi investigation bullshit holy shit
Exactly, the space has to be at least officially 18+ and that has to be enforced when people are outed as under 18s. At that point if a minor continuously lies to be on here its more or less their fault when the see inappropriate stuff, otherwise this is now a officialy mixed space and everything will have to become censored which i dont want.
We can’t be expected to react on leaked DMs from third parties, no?
Why not? I get the impulse to not want to go off of leaked dm’s tbh and you should investigate them but i cant imagine that it will happen that often to the point where its not doable.
I’m not doing that. If the DM happened here in tranistan, it is easy for us to verify it. If the DM was sent through a third party source and forwarded to us through a screenshot, then we can’t act on that information. If you expect us or any other online service to ban users because of activity that happened outside of the service, you’re in for a disappointment.
I guess, but still sitewide policy should still be that no under 18s are allowed.
The sitewide policy is still no under 18s allowed. We just won’t react to leaked DMs from third party services.
I think you should make a new announcment clarifying this here and on reddit tbh
Already posted. I’m not touching reddit today.
i think not banning minors site-wide is the wrong decision. yes, you cant keep track of all of them. no, you shouldnt be expected to ban the instant you know. but if you are made aware of someone who is definitely minor i think a site ban should still be issued
We will only ban minors site wide if they have posted their age here or using the DM’s from this lemmy instance. Otherwise, we can’t be reasonably expected to verify leaked screenshots from third party IM services.
I do not know how to reply to this… I dont know of this is a good response… its alot of information…
aight I’m gone, was fun while it lasted GG
That’s not the point of a “no minors” rule. Minors are going to lurk. I lurked 4tran4 as a minor. In fact, minors are going to try to impersonate adults by making an account. But at least said minors would be nigh unreachable for predators, because or:
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They blend in with the adult population. In case they get hit up by whoever and disclose their age, there is a higher chance that the person does the responsible thing and reports the user. If they don’t, then that’s a failure on their part on keeping this community safe.
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If they don’t blend in, as in, it’s easy for a potential predator to know if a user is underage or not, then you should be able to tell the signs as well.
In this case, removing the contact that the potential minor may have with a predator or interacting directly with an 18+ community is the top priority. This is why predators often ask minors for their socials/insta/discord. Because there is little to nothing you can do after this is done.
Letting minors in, that people know are minors, requires more control and rules that this community could manage. A minor could still make an alt pretending to be an adult and try again. You’d be back at the same initial problem.
If the minor in question is publicly posting about their age here, we will ban them. What we won’t do is acting on leaked DMs sent from third party services. We can’t verify that those screenshots are real, and we can’t be expected to try and verify them.
What happens if they meet and ehchange contacts on tranistan? Is that sufficient proof?
At least I’m glad the ban on minors is still appliable.
If the minor discloses their age in the transitan DM, then we can verify it. If the suspected minor discloses their age somewhere else, then there’s no way for us to verify it.
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lawl, cya guys then, dm me if u want my disc
This site is effectively a sandbox for groomers then.
A blanket ban on NSFW content would’ve been the only sensible decision.
If a minor has publicly posted on tranistan.com their exact age, then we will ban them site-wide. What we cannot do is respond to leaked screenshots of DMs from a third party.
I fail to see how this is a sandbox for groomers.
you should at least ban someone when you have multiple people telling you they’re a kid or know that for a fact. you obviously can’t reasonably hunt them down but if someone informs you of it you should have to act, even with the risk of them coming back
If they are posting on tranistan.com then yes, we can reasonably ban them. But if the allegations are being sent from a third party messaging service, then we won’t.
it’s very complicated ig if you have multiple people who are telling you that someone‘s a kid then it might be worth more consideration, but i get that it’s difficult to actually verify that
It’s way too complicated. That’s 100% something that I urge the moderators to do by themselves if they feel like it. Again, if the minor in question has disclosed their age using this service then we have no problem in banning them.
maybe a system where it’s up to the community moderators to ban people they suspect of being minors could work. if they feel certain enough they could then tell you about it. it needs to be enforced somehow otherwise the nsfw communities gotta go, at least that’s what the people who know more about legal stuff than me say
if minors arent banned site wide anymore, then can you ban nsfw topics? if not then how is this any different from the major issue we’ve all had with r/mtf?
I guess its kinda like how minors arnt banned on reddit as a whole but the individual moderaters have to ban them, but still this entire site should be 18+ in my opinion otherwise i dont want to be here
If a minor has publicly posted on tranistan.com their exact age, then we will ban them site-wide. What we cannot do is respond to leaked screenshots of DMs from a third party.
i guess. Be careful tho, cus a post like this opens up a huge can of worms legally
We’re open to suggestions.
Legally --> You’ve effectively signed a contract with each user that regardless of interaction with other members of tranistan, you yourself personally are liable and on the hook if that person was found to be a minor. Always assuming each member is a minor puts that danger on the members. If the rules state they are no minors allowed, then its not the people themselves liable but the minors who are breaking the rules and therefore they are responsible. Making it safer for everyone. Even if its not 100% enforceable, just that rule makes it so that the users arent responsible if they are interacting with a minor and its inappropriate for the age (which will happen regardless)
Keep the rule that minors arent allowed in most servers, but that they can be designated in certain areas (like DIY and DIY resources or minor specific channels)
That could be something we end up doing. Maybe tomorrow we could talk about this more in depth.
let me know if u want to discuss anything with me personally. Foxy5Sqd is my discord and its always better to reach out there for me
Get more site wide admins who have the capacity and willpower and maturity to deal with a place like this?
We won’t be adding any more admins to the team. An admin role in lemmy is very serious and if we gave it to the wrong person they could leak all the personal information stored here. I only trust Yash with that power and Yash only trusts me. For now, expect no changes on the admin team.
then tbh i think just shut this place down then, if the admins and mods are not equipped to keep the place 18+ it just shouldn’t exist and we should go back to reddit or the board.
Fair enough, I didn’t know lemmy was that badly designed tbh, I guess some sort of sidewide moderator thing would be better but idk if its a thing.
Though, and i say this with all the love in my heart, maybe you should be the only admin and then this hands off approach could actually be reasonable, yash seems to want it both ways and it does create a lot of issues and distrust
More admins…
