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

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.

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.

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.

@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.

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 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.

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.

(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?
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).
Any update on this?

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

@sag@ani.social

@sag@lemy.lol
Disappointing, yet understandable :/ Thank you for replying, and addressing this.

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.

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?!?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

@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 🫤

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.

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'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.