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

I feel like the rules of the internet should be taught again, or at least particularly stuff like "don't feed the trolls". All of these engagement based algorithms are too focused on pushing bait content.

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.

Teenagers lying about their age on the internet is as old as teenagers on the internet.

Keeping the age barriers in place is good anyway. It communicates to younger people clearly that the content is not considered suitable for them. It gives them a moment to think and reconsider.

Participating in online culture might be generally not healthy for adults as well.
- Did you know? IG is pretty restrict about NSFW content? But does it stop anything? No.
I hope you're independently wealthy and can afford legal fees.
- What's most important is that you got to feel smug.

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.

I willingly blocked .world that place is a toxic cesspool. It also felt too much like reddit.
- Yeah, this sort of stuff strikes me as bad for the user affected and for .world, but good for lemmy overall. An active, competent user is being forced to post to non-LW communities exclusively.
I think i’m going with 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.

Then admins have no place banning people?
- Yeah, that probably wasn't a good point.
  
  I feel my point on
  
  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.
  
  Was probably a better one.
  
  .World is a good instance, but they are too big. Being banned from just any other instance? You can deal with. But being banned off of .world effectively takes away most lemmy content away from you.
  
  Damn RIP then if I got banned from .world after this post I am leaving Lemmy.
  
  Ultimately i understand why they did it, but sag was a great poster.

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.

I just think they should make a new account and not say that they are underage. I don't so much have a problem with people being underage online but saying that you are is putting an unnecessary target on your back.

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.

Right... What are we trying to protect the kid here from...

If he knows how to use fedi prolly already using Linux too... Anyone with Linux skills will figure a way around anything online tbh
- Oh Yea I use Linux it's even in Profile xD
- I think it's less about protecting the kid but about liability. You can just enter under 18, but they have to do something when you boast about it. It's not as if check your ID.
- If he knows how to use [fediverse sites][, he is] prolly already using Linux too... Anyone with Linux skills will figure a way around anything online [to be honest.]
  
  Yes, the same as if I lock a door someone breaking the rules will just climb in a window, and that should somehow be okay but isn't.

PTB, this seems really like they're overstepping their bounds, @Demigodrick@lemmy.zip 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.

Bruh

Why we banning kids now?

What if they have shitty parents and need to go online to vent?

😓

What if they have shitty parents and need to go online to vent?

Fortunately I have good and supportive parents.
What if they have shitty parents and need to go online to vent?

That's the whole point, they want to keep children away from support networks to enforce the idea of parents owning their children. People are going to argue otherwise but as a trans person myself I've seen this and you're not fooling anyone with your lame excuses about protecting kids. People especially those who are vulnerable need support networks, do you know how many trans kids kill themselves because they can't get the support they need and live with abusive and controlling parents. Don't tell me it's to protect kids, I'm not stupid enough to buy that lie and you're not stupid enough to think I'd buy it.
- Children are not fucking chattel and I'm tired of pretending like they are.
- This is the fediverse, they can sign up to any instance that will have them.
- That's the whole point[:] they want to keep children away from support networks to enforce the idea of parents owning their children.
  
  I wish I had your mind-reading ability. Without that omniscient edge this looks like the weirdest bit of teen O.D.D today.

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.

Hello,

Thank you for chiming in. Exceptions for federated users would be nice, especially for someone turning 18 in a few months.
- Yea, I agree, and I would personally be for that. But I am not well versed in the law, and don’t have any stake in the legal side of it all except for me liking lemmy.world, so it’s not my decision.
  
  I really hope people understand where we as admins are coming from, we really take no enjoyment out of banning anyone (except for spammers).
Disappointing, yet understandable :/ Thank you for replying, and addressing this.
Any update on this?

If LW is banning me for real then ban my all alt.

@sag@ani.social

@sag@lemy.lol
(Opinion bit)

There should definitely be an exception for federated users. @sag@lemm.ee did not sign up to lemmy.world and therefore did not agree to the ToS.

(I am not a lawyer, anyone else can correct the stuff I say below)

Since lw isn't storing sag's data (apart from public posts and comments) there shouldn't be any concerns with child data protection. lemm.ee would be serving them content that under 18s shouldn't view, not lw (unless they are hosting it, which I don't think you do?). I may be missing something (again, not a lawyer) but what is the point of this other than being (in my opinion, a bit too) careful with the law?

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.

Fully agree.

CLM/CLA.
@flamingos@feddit.uk While the email analogy works well, activityPub is technically an api.
- It's a protocol, which I suppose you could argue is an API though that'd be a very liberal definition of API.
Sag wasn’t accessing or making active use of lemmy.world itself.

He posted on "Fediverse@lemmy.world"
- And I disagree that that counts as making use of the service. Lemmy also sends Webmentions, if someone with a world account posts a blog post from someone and world then sends a Webmention to that blog, does lemmy.world's TOS apply to the blogger? TOS applying over distributed systems is frankly impracticable.
- Maybe !fediverse@lemmy.zip could become an alternative

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?

Afaik, there are laws and regulations that make it more difficult to collect personal information about minors including their email address. I imagine the admins understandably just don't want to deal with that.
- That's not really relevant in this case though, federated profiles don't contain any of that information. They just contain the public posts and comments and anything the person might have added to their profile bio directly. They don't contain personal information of any kind.
Yes and I fully agree. Online interactions are unrated by PEGI for a reason.

@sag@lemm.ee FYI since I don't think you've seen the new comments on your initial post

@Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 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?

It's always a bit surprising when people reply from Misskey or Mastodon, I feel like I have to answer while they just comment generally
- @Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com I started making "lists" of lemmy communities on sharkey, because lemmy still doesn't have the feature.

Wierd .ee modlog doesn't show me banned?

https://lemm.ee/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=2388762

I think it only appears on .worlds modlog

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.

Oh Reddit have 13+ requirement and have porn on it. You can lie about your age.
- And the trick to lying is not telling the truth.

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.

@EllaSpiggins@lemm.ee

Hey, I want your opinion on this matter. As you are currently admin of lemm.ee. Is my ban reasonable or just stupid? Whatever you will say I wil go with it.

Please stay with us 😶
- Most of the user on .world if they can't even see my post what is point of posting :(
Or @sunaurus@lemm.ee

If you don't mind. I know you are currently busy because of new wave of user. Sorry and Thanks
- I'm not sure why .world has the 18 age requirement - AFAIK GDPR only requires 16+ if you don't specifically ask for parental consent. Of course, there is the matter of pornography etc, but for example Reddit allows 13+ users, and all they do for pornography is show an NSFW warning, which Lemmy also has (although this is a good point - maybe the NSFW toggle should be improved to explicitly ask users to confirm their age on Lemmy as well, similarly to how it works on Reddit).
  
  But at the end of the day, each instance is free to create whatever rules and processes they want, and to ban people according to those rules. I would say that .world admins are probably just trying to do their best in enforcing their rules, and unfortunately that means that most likely you'll be cut off from .world for the next 5 months 🫤

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.

I agree with you that no one should really mention their age, though I don't agree with you that there's a point where it doesn't matter. You'll find plenty of groups willing to discriminate against older individuals, gaming groups, activist groups, STEM groups, it's weird but it's unfortunately a thing.

Lemmy.world has a problem with over modderation when it is out of scope in situations like this, they also have a problem with undermoderation letting shit slide that shouldn't like Reddit did. Lemmy.world has a lot of very big problems right now and they shouldn't be cut slack of any of them, even if it is obvious how it happened.
- This is a weird nit to pick. If you're doing it right, you're only mentioning your age when it doesn't matter (in safe places or places where your age is helpful, versus places like Lemmy where someone will ban you.)
  
  A good example would be me saying, in this thread, I'm almost 40. Anybody who can use that against me doesn't matter to me.
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.)

.world didn't though. The admins clarified that that was never the policy.

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...

"The law discriminates against and limits the freedom of children, therefore they're totally justified!"

Yeah ok sure
- For real, this type of apologia is downright disgusting.
- Wrong way around. The law enforces more protections for children than adults, for which platforms are held to a higher standard.
  
  Specifically, I'm talking about the higher standards for data privacy, user tracking, and content moderation. These are things that are trivial for large companies to implement, but would be a huge hurdle for small teams of unpaid volunteers.

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.

??? Sounds toxic for no reason @IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com

Please help me understand, my above post was written earnestly. I was explaining to a user why they got a outcome they didn't like in the community to adjudicate moderator outcomes. I presented reasoning for my rational in the comment.

How can I explain my interpretation more helpfully?
Wow, this comment got 7 downvotes from 2 year old accounts with no posts or comments and 4 digits in the name........ That is quite the coincidence.

https://lemmy.world/u/Malisu19997@lemmy.world

https://lemmy.world/u/GodzillaFanboy129@lemmy.world

https://lemmy.world/u/EvilShakespear1192@lemmy.world - Cake Day 2023-08-05

https://lemmy.world/u/TheStanMachine7263@lemmy.world - Cake Day 2023-08-05

https://lemmy.world/u/AustereOctopus1997@lemmy.world - Cake Day 2023-08-05

https://lemmy.world/u/AllukaTheCutie7725@lemmy.world - Cake Day 2023-08-05

https://sh.itjust.works/u/BomberMan9865@sh.itjust.works (this looks like a real account, but fits the naming pattern)

https://sh.itjust.works/u/MonsterCity7732@sh.itjust.works (this looks like a real account, but fits the naming pattern)

https://lemm.ee/u/anomolous0 [this one might be real, but it fits the pattern]

@lwadmin@lemmy.world I suspect the LW accounts above share the same ip address, you might want to look into your logs for astroturfing.
- Interesting

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.

https://lemmy.world/comment/15592014
- Not if they’re a federated user. They’re not my user to worry about. Even if they say they’re not 18 it doesn’t apply imo, they’re not interacting directly with lemmy.zip.
  
  I think that is unwise of lemmy.zip’s admin. Their instance rules state “4.1: No one under 18 years of age is allowed to use or access the website.”, and I think the admin’s course of action would be contradictory to that. A NSFW post on one server can federate to lemmy.zip and then federate to a server hosting a minor (i.e., the minor passively used the lemmy.zip website); in that case, which is what the lemmy.world admins were trying to avoid, a server which is neither hosting a minor nor hosting NSFW content would be culpable in bringing the NSFW content to whom they would know or suspect is a minor. This may be uncharted territory legally due to the newness and niche-ness of the Fediverse, but it seems in poor judgment for an admin to be willing to take that risk. Yeah, it sucks for the user, I don’t dispute that; but if the law turns out poorly for the admins, then everybody loses access to that instance.
Is anything over https: a website? I'd argue its lemm.ee forwarding the post on his behalf.

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

Moving forward, know that your choices are:

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

did he though? He just posted to a community there from lemm.ee . He didn't agree to the ToS
- He didn’t agree to the ToS
  
  He didn’t even bother to read it. Which is why he ended up getting banned. You don’t get to waive out of a speeding ticket just because you didn’t bother to read the speed limit signs.
  
  If I didn’t bother to read the rules of an instance, and then got my shit removed because I violated those rules, I’d just accept that I made an error and walk away.
  
  So…
  
  I stand by my YDI.

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.

I am following my own instance TOS. If I started caring about other instance there are 100 of them.
- Pay that dumbass no attention, he's just you're average right wing troll trying to cater to right wing narrative and giving you shit because he thinks he's better than you.
- You can ignore anything PJ says or does, he posts on the internet for a living these days. He lives for being annoying and stirring up drama.

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.

Banning minors just incentivises them to lie about their age.
One ban can't stop me from using Internet.
I've seen Things as a minor online. There were formative in the worst ways
- lemonparty.com
  
  2 girls 1 cup
  
  is mandatory material for any teenager
- Seeing beheadings fucked with me. Then I was shoved down the alt-right pipeline during gamergate and it took until I was nearly 18 to actually internally reflect and improve as a person. I still have issues with the black and white thinking that was so heavily emphasized. I'm working on it but its hard.