(no subject)
Dec. 1st, 2020 07:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soc_puppetSo someone on Tumblr suggested that Fandom's next "home" should be a platform that doesn't allow minors. And I was only mildly bothered at first (see the first paragraph of my rant below), but then I had more time to think about it, and much worse likely consequences occurred to me.
Concerns with moving fandom to any 18+ exclusive platform: [Content Warning for CSA reference.]
For starters, it sucks to be excluding any group of people from the majority of fandom interaction based on age. Yes, there are legal and safety things that are important to observe and follow, but a certain subset of Tumblr is trying to push the "Fandom is not for anyone over 25/30/35/people five years older than me" thing, and it would suck from either end. And then there's the social transitioning thing; younger fans will still exist, and still want to gather, and they're not going to want to leave their friends behind for a brand new platform with a bunch of unfamiliar faces. Instead, I can easily imagine them trying to carve out their own 18+ corners of their other platform.
More importantly, though, if the majority of 18+ fans move to an exclusively 18+ platform, we're not going to get a platform full of only legal adults; we're going to get a platform with a lot of legal adults, and a non-zero number of minors who are lying about their age.
I'm not terribly bothered by minors lying about their age in itself; if they're old enough to be surfing the internet by themselves, I trust them to be able to curate their experiences. But we're going to get three groups of adults on an 18+ website when it comes to interacting with/planning for the existence of minors lying about their age.
First, we're going to get the people who haven't even thought about it. They're assuming that everyone on the website is eighteen years old or older. They probably aren't going to police their behavior any more than they would in any other presumed adults-only space.
Second, we're going to get the people who realize that kids can and will lie about their ages (some of whom know this from experience) and are going to try to be a bit more careful with the content they put out and the interactions they have.
Third, we're going to get the people who realize that kids can and will lie about their ages, and who are predators that will take advantage of it.
From a strictly legal standpoint, and also a consent standpoint, the first two groups of adults aren't in a great position if they find out the person they're interacting with is a minor, but presumably they know how to shut down interaction as appropriate if that happens.
The third group, though, is a major problem. I mean, they're terrible in general, but they're also going to use the fact that their victims are lying about their age to be on an adults-only site to keep abusing them.
Any of their victims are going to be terrified to come forward, because that will mean admitting that they lied about their age in the first place, and they'll be afraid of getting into even more trouble for that and losing any and all support from the rest of the community. And that is what really worries me about trying to move the majority of fandom to an 18+ exclusive platform.
Long story short, trying to remove Explicit/18+ content from fandom isn't going to work, and trying to remove people who are under eighteen from fandom also isn't going to work. What might work is planning for the existence of both.
Concerns with moving fandom to any 18+ exclusive platform: [Content Warning for CSA reference.]
For starters, it sucks to be excluding any group of people from the majority of fandom interaction based on age. Yes, there are legal and safety things that are important to observe and follow, but a certain subset of Tumblr is trying to push the "Fandom is not for anyone over 25/30/35/people five years older than me" thing, and it would suck from either end. And then there's the social transitioning thing; younger fans will still exist, and still want to gather, and they're not going to want to leave their friends behind for a brand new platform with a bunch of unfamiliar faces. Instead, I can easily imagine them trying to carve out their own 18+ corners of their other platform.
More importantly, though, if the majority of 18+ fans move to an exclusively 18+ platform, we're not going to get a platform full of only legal adults; we're going to get a platform with a lot of legal adults, and a non-zero number of minors who are lying about their age.
I'm not terribly bothered by minors lying about their age in itself; if they're old enough to be surfing the internet by themselves, I trust them to be able to curate their experiences. But we're going to get three groups of adults on an 18+ website when it comes to interacting with/planning for the existence of minors lying about their age.
First, we're going to get the people who haven't even thought about it. They're assuming that everyone on the website is eighteen years old or older. They probably aren't going to police their behavior any more than they would in any other presumed adults-only space.
Second, we're going to get the people who realize that kids can and will lie about their ages (some of whom know this from experience) and are going to try to be a bit more careful with the content they put out and the interactions they have.
Third, we're going to get the people who realize that kids can and will lie about their ages, and who are predators that will take advantage of it.
From a strictly legal standpoint, and also a consent standpoint, the first two groups of adults aren't in a great position if they find out the person they're interacting with is a minor, but presumably they know how to shut down interaction as appropriate if that happens.
The third group, though, is a major problem. I mean, they're terrible in general, but they're also going to use the fact that their victims are lying about their age to be on an adults-only site to keep abusing them.
Any of their victims are going to be terrified to come forward, because that will mean admitting that they lied about their age in the first place, and they'll be afraid of getting into even more trouble for that and losing any and all support from the rest of the community. And that is what really worries me about trying to move the majority of fandom to an 18+ exclusive platform.
Long story short, trying to remove Explicit/18+ content from fandom isn't going to work, and trying to remove people who are under eighteen from fandom also isn't going to work. What might work is planning for the existence of both.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-02 05:45 am (UTC)Pillowfort and a couple other platforms are included in their discussion over here, if you want to take a look (including OP's response to my essay). OP is mainly pushing for something called Bobaboard, which has some ...interesting... auto-anonymizing features that would make keeping a consistent identity challenging. Bobaboard was founded on very solidly pro-kink/otherwise inclusive ground, and apparently has some really solid anti-harassment and anti-bigotry rules baked in, but I'm still very wary of trying to move the majority of fandom, including as many adult fans as humanly possible to an adults-only platform. I definitely understand wanting to defang the Fandom Purity Police! I just don't think this is the way to do it.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-03 11:26 pm (UTC)Anyway in that specific context, boba's 18+ rule doesn't bother me because:
1) it's really not trying to be for everyone, and the main dev has put a lot of thought with how it would work in tandem with other fandom spaces
2) currently it's in alpha development so in order to get an account you have to know someone who has an account well enough to give them your email address so the likelihood of minors ending up on the platform is pretty low
If/when those two points change I expect boba will at least consider modifying the 18+ restriction in response & I'd definitely be on the side of replacing it with something more flexible
no subject
Date: 2020-12-04 08:06 am (UTC)