This is a reminder that you must be at least 18 years old to access Lemmy World per their Terms of Service (ToS). Additionally, as moderators of this community, we are obliged to report violations of this rule, so we will have to report it to the admin team if a user in this community explicitly identifies as younger than 18 years old.
We have reached out to the admins requesting for a modification to the rules if [email protected] were to adjust its rules to accommodate the needs of 16 and 17 year-olds. While they were understanding, it seems that the necessary changes are not possible at the moment. Therefore, unless the ToS change, if anyone identifies themselves as younger than 18 years old on [email protected], we will have to report your account. We would hate for someone to get invested in this community, develop a bond, and then have it suddenly taken away. At the same time, we don’t want to jeopardize it by helping users violate terms and ultimately the trust we have with the admin team.
We appreciate your understanding and compliance with this matter.
[email protected] Mods
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Now this is an interesting conundrum. Firstly, I get that their intention, but the wording of “use or access the website” is ambiguous. I’m a user on pawb.social, and could honestly have never used the website at all. Perhaps “create an account or directly interact with a lemmy.world user or community” might be better?
What about the following situation:
- I’m over 18 and have a mastodon account on furry.engineer which (apparently) doesn’t have any age restrictions.
- I make a post there, and think it’s interesting enough for here so I CC in /c/autism, which causes it to be posted here.
- Someone else on Mastodon sees my post and replies. In their profile they have their age listed as 17, and they have no idea what Lemmy even is.
Nobody involved has broken any rules. Lemmy.world could remove the post or ban the user, but that brings up the question of how they get their account unbanned when they reach age?
Of course, this is not /c/autism’s problem to solve, but I get the impression many people still think this is like Reddit when it really is something different with the whole “federation” angle.
@BackOnMyBS @savvywolf With federation the only sensible way to deal with this is to use the precedent set by email.
You don’t agree to any of Google’s ToS just by sending to a @gmail.com address, and if sending from a work address you certainly wouldn’t have the authority to bind the company. Of course Google can do what they want with their spam filter, including blocking everything from you.
Following that the terms of lemmy.world have no relevance to external users, unless the admins decide to defederate. Even then there would still be direct delivery between other servers for followers, along with parent post fetching.
I think these are valid points and will discuss it with the LW admin team. Ultimately, it’s their decision since we are guests on their instance.
We followed up with the admin and provided the arguments that were shared in the comments here. You can see the discussion here. Basically, the rules stand as they are.
Thanks, unfortunately as far as I know that doesn’t really clear up the situation I was talking about. As a concrete example, see the post here: https://furry.engineer/@savvywolf/111547720761183385 / https://lemmy.world/post/9329892 (assume I wasn’t using my alt there - didn’t want to create a new account pretending to be someone else).
… But honestly, I really, really need to stop getting involved in fediverse drama; it’s not good for me. Unless the lemmy.world admins start defederating other instances for not removing posts from under 18s, it doesn’t really affect me. I’m over 18 and everything I do on Lemmy.world communities (however much that covers) should be compliant with their ToS. So yeah, going to bow out of this whole thing.
I don’t think I understood your situation, but maybe this will help. What I gather from the admin’s response is that the purpose is to limit access of Lemmy World from users under 18 years of age because the content is not meant for those users. However that plays out, we are expected to help accomplish this goal, despite the technical nuances of the federated system. At the same time, they are also encouraging a compassionate approach to the moderation which includes informing users of the ToS and giving them the chance to make corrections before applying stricter measures.
But honestly, I really, really need to stop getting involved in fediverse drama; it’s not good for me.
Yeah, getting into things like that can be mentally taxing for me as well. That’s why sometimes it takes me time to respond to the more engaging comments. I really need to take care of where I decide to use my mental energy. I’m happy you recognized it and decided to limit exposure to it. I hope that [email protected] is not getting to dramatic for you. If you have any recommendations on what we can do as moderators to improve on this while also helping us reach our goals and maintaining to our values, we would be happy to hear about them. Otherwise, I hope that the community is a helpful place for you.
That’s why the fediverse is great. You can just move the community or users to a different instance with rules you agree with.
I think LW is doing this because regulations in the US are getting wild as republicans freak out about kids learning stuff they don’t want them to. Solution: don’t use a US instance if you’re a kid.(IMO the whole thing is stupid, all it does is lock out kids from relatively safe space and end up on toxic places overseas. Lawmakers don’t understand the Internet, as usual)
As far as I can tell, lemmy.world isn’t a US instance and isn’t subject to US laws or politics.
Their tos says “The website and the agreement will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the Republic of Finland Suomen.”
Thanks for pointing that out. I’m not familiar with those jurisdictions, but I’m a little surprised then. That’s what I would have expected from a US hosted site.
This doesn’t really effect me because I’m (unfortunately) almost twice that, but since those terms apply to the “website”, it doesn’t seem to effect people from other instances interacting with the community, since they’re using a different website.
We entertained that idea as well, but our interpretation of the following quote (emphasis is mine) led us to decide that anyone accessing the site in any fashion, wether from another instance or not, is violating the ToS. If you hear otherwise from the admin team, please let us know.
4.1: No one under 18 years of age is allowed to use or access the website. There may be designated sections of the website that may require you to be older to use them, so please read all notices and any additional terms carefully when you access Lemmy.World.
The TOS are unambiguous concerning the meaning of the term “website”.
This Terms of Service applies to your access to and active use of <www.lemmy.world> (“we,”“us,” “our,” “the website,” “Lemmy.World,” or “LW”).
So this is used in the common sense of “data coherently served under one domain/subdomain name which is intended to be displayed by web browsers”. It totally doesn’t concern someone who interacts with content originally posted on lemmy.world from a different federated server (or a lemmy client? idk if the API would run on the “www” subdomain but doubt it). They are even somewhat overspecific with the “www”. Not even the web interface runs on a “www” subdomain which means that no-one ever interacts with such a website anyway.
So in order to be correct your job would be to ask anyone with a lemmy.world account who states they are younger than 18, if they are posting through the www interface … 🤷
I just checked where the images are coming from, and nope they are coming not from www.lemmy.world but from lemmy.world/pictrs/.In other words, you could totally be autistic and explain to them that those TOS hardly apply to anyone within a federated/website-independent system and therefore are hardly enforcible and
are reasonably bullshitmay need a re-work.We followed up with the admin and provided the arguments that were shared in the comments here. You can see the discussion here. Basically, the rules stand as they are.
And this is the problem with copypasta legalese in the TOS.
While the rule makes sense for lemmy.world, who are keen to keep things clean and legal, this might be a good reason to move off of the instance.
Most are going to ignore the rule, but for obvious reasons that probably won’t fly here. Plus engaging with younger people may very well be within the spirit/purpose of the community.
