NSFW is already off by default when you sign up to most instances
I donāt think this works in practice. Most big instances have gone the extra step to also defederate from the two major porn instances here. Showcasing that there are additional issues, otherwise theyād just have used this instead. I took a quick random sample of the biggest Lemmy instances and ~50-60% additionally block them entirely.
NSFW and 18+ arenāt the same thing. The NSFW tag is made for a slightly different purpose. And itās a crutch that doesnāt work well for this purpose. There are some slightly vulgar topics that shouldnāt inadvertently pop up at your workplace but they might be safe to consume for minors. Also I think minors should have access to sex education. The Wikipedia has a similar stance. There are videos of āthe actā on Wikimedia. You shouldnāt watch them while sitting in your open-plan office. But I think especially with the situation of sex ed in the USA, adolescents should get a chance to ask their questions and learn something about important aspects of life. The NSFW tag as is is doing them a disservice because now they canāt. Or everything else immediately gets mixed in. For example Iām not comfortable sharing my experiences >!sticking bluetooth-enabled things into somebodyās bum!< with kids. Or having sex ed and hardcore fetish stuff being the same category.
And I mean itās not even just that. Gore and pictures of dead bodies in the Ukraine war also fall into the same category. So everyone just gets a yes/no decision on everything ranging from sex education to gore. In practice both these extremes arenāt very common on Lemmy. But in theory itās just like that. (Itās not entirely theoretical. We just have a different community here. But there are examples in the wild. For example 4chan mixes pretty tame porn with fetish with crime, gore and death.)
So in summary the current state of (mis)using the NSFW tag actively leads to defederation and itās doing a disservice to both people who participate in adult conversations and also adolescents. And its overly simplistic design prevents some conversations which should be allowed.
Why do you think porn is bad/unsuitable for 14-17 year olds?
My opinion doesnāt really count here. There are legal requirements people need to implement, whether they like it or not. So thatās kind of already the end of this conversation.
I think it makes a difference if you watch (somewhat tasteful) plain sex, or >!somebody dangling from a hook in the ceiling getting whipped by a disguised old man!<. I think itās just not the same category. And we shouldnāt treat it as such. Similarly itās also not the same if you deliberately explore that when youāre 17. Or youāre inadvertently exposed to it when 12 while researching what sex education has failed to provide you with.
And thereās the aspect of me inviting friends and family to my self-hosted services. Or discussing Linux server administration with people. I donāt want to mix either of that with porn. I think having it hidden per default is a good first step. And just requiring an extra, deliberate step to enable it is a good design. It just lacks any of the nuances to it, mingles valid use-cases with filtering that is made to do something else, and as I pointed out with the defederation happening, it comes with issues in practice.
And I think the Fediverse offers some important advantages over other platforms. ActivityPub is very vague. We can just attach fields to label content and the technical aspect is kind of simple to implement. And with federation, we have diversity built-in to the platform. This is our unique advantage. People have different use-cases, different moderation needs and perspectives and opinions on something like my proposal with the filtering. And I think the Fediverse turns out to be made exactly for something like this. I could have my instance my way and someone else can have a different opinion and have their instance another way.
But it requires some coordination effort. We need to agree on a foundation and some technical aspects. I donāt think a crazy rag rug works as a whole. And we already see some consequences of other disputes. Moderation being a constant issue in the background and instances seperating from each other because thereās no nuance to moderation and defederation. And ultimately we want to talk to each other and connect. And provide everyone with a place they like.
Sure. For me itās the other way around. Iāve never really fell in love with microblogging. My hobbies are kind of mixed and sometimes niche, I sometimes donāt have anything of substance to post from my everyday-life and I really disliked the mob mentality and regularly surfacing toxicity in places like Twitter. And at some time I tried Reddit and got hooked. Itās a very different approach whether you follow people or topics/communities. Itās less about who you are, but more a marketplace of ideas. A level playing field. Sorted by ideas and hobbies and you can just dip in. It also makes you target different audiences for different niche hobbies. And everything gets ordered like that. I mean you also have hashtags on Mastodon, but itās not really designed around this concept.
It really has some appeal to me. I also sometimes participate in web forums and found a similar structure in this. And I always liked how the free software community is supposed to work. It doesnāt matter who you are, if youāre 15 or a 40 yo womanā¦ You just all come to the same place and discuss your ideas and perspective on things.
It does have downsides. And it doesnāt necessarily foster good behaviour and being nice to people. I donāt have an ultimate opinion on this. I think encouraging good behaviour in discussions, requires some degree of āit matters who you areā. Because having an image stick to you incentivizes you to behave properly. Itās not than big of an issue in practice, the overwhelming majority of people is nice and they use the platforms to everyoneās benefit and not to troll and cause trouble.
Thanks for your input. Iāve come to the conclusion that maybe I need to broaden my perspective. Have a closer look at other places in the Fediverse. Iām pretty sure Mastodon aināt it for me. But Friendica might be a good place to start. Iāve also had Akkoma reccomended to me in this discussion. Maybe some other software than Lemmy is more closely aligned to my vision of what Iād like to run on my server. Iād like to stay compatible with Lemmy, since there are lots of nice people here and itās usually fun to talk here, more so than in some other places.
Meh. Since youāre hereā¦ How is Friendica? Should I try that? I read itās focusing on privacy and being a nice place, has communities and distributed forums, ārelationship controlā and add-ons.
On the paper it looks like it has many more features to offer than for example Lemmy. Iād be interested in the distributed forum aspect. Do the added features tie into every aspect of the platform? Or is it mainly microblogging with a basic forum added on top? And when participating for example in this Lemmy discussionā¦ Is it a smooth experience, or can you tell youāve left Friendica and only have basic functionality here? (I mean I can tell from over here, that youāre from a different platform, since it includes the @ user mentions like Mastodon does. And Iāve tried Mastodon and I think itās not really a great experience interacting with Lemmy and KBin communities. Some of the structure of the threads gets lost in the process and comments from other branches of the discussion donāt show up.)
Sure. But what about federation? Arbitrary content is pulled from other instances. And my users are confronted with that content, too. Not only with each other. Iād need to also disable federation. (Or am I missing something?)
I think at that point Iād be better off installing Discourse or Flarum. And Iāve changed the whole vision of my instance. Iāve started with envisioning a federated platform that simultaneously can cater to adults and adolescents. And now Iāve locked it down to just cater to the few adolescents I directly invite, done away with the federation aspect and also cancelled all the appeal to adults. I think thereās not much left of what Iād like.
Wouldnāt you find exactly the same stuff on porn websites ?
Yes. And i think itās bad practice. We should strive to be better than the average porn site.
How would you do otherwise with preserving user privacy
I think there are two issues at play:
Itās a complex task. Usually that leads to people saying āwe can never achieve 100%ā and āit doesnāt fit every purposeā and then nothing gets done. Iād argue this gets us like 40% the way and thatās better than nothing. And itād get me all the way and probably a few other people, too.
I think verification should be delegated to the instances. There isnāt a single solution. In some jurisdictions it might be enough that people claim to be 18. Those admins can choose a really simple solution. Other admins might not care or cater to minors, they can not activate the filters. A compromise might be requiring signup. Thatād hide content from kids who arenāt logged in and just browsing the web. And already far better than just displaying it to them. What Iād like to do is have users request access and handle that manually. Alike some Discord servers or other software does. I know a few people Iād like to invite and their age. So itād be no problem to unlock their accounts. I think itās the same for other communities. And usually āeyeballing itā also works to some degree. It might be a valid approach for some admins. I know from experience you can often tell if your opponent in a computer game or the person youāre arguing with is a 13 year old kid, or 35. Itās not perfect but surely does a decent job with the extremes.
Iād like to abstain from privacy-breaching methods that are in use by big tech companies like Google etc. Requiring phone numbers on signup or showing your ID into the camera is too much. And itās bad. I donāt want to tell the admins how to handle verification. If theyāre required to, or would like to see the IDs and their users are comfortable with itā¦ Iāve included extensibility to the requirements. So they can. Maybe weāre provided with a solution in the near future. My German ID card can already vouch for my age without revealing my identity. Itās a zero knowledge proof and the proper technical solution to age-verification. I can also envision some āWeb of Trustā providing this. Something like PGP or CAcert does.
I think there are some valid ideas and some technical solutions are already out there and available. The issue is just nobody uses them. And neither do we.
Also, how do you avoid falling in the reddit trap where every discussion vaguely about sexuality end-up being 18+
That is a good question. These categories need to be concise. And the people ticking the boxed need to comprehend the meaning and consequence. I think moderators will do. With the users, Iām not sure. I donāt think I had that issue on Reddit. A year ago when I still was there, Iāve occasinally replied to people on relationship_advice and some more explicit subreddits. I didnāt see any problems. But Iāve not been a heavy user. Maybe I didnāt pay attention. Iāll listen if this is deemed a likely scenario or proves to happen in practice.
That is part of my idea. I donāt think it should be water-tight and not circumventable. My personal opinion is if a 16 yo really wants to watch porn or something, and they put in the effort to circumvent something that is a bit more elaborate than just clicking on āYesā on a popupā¦ They should be allowed to see it.
But thatās just my opinion. And Iām not really concerned with what other instances do. Itās enough if it enables me and a few other people to have my instance how I like and invite people to my instance without worrying too much. I mean my own server is also the only one Iām held responsible for. As far as Iām concerned other people can do what they like.
And itās kind of pointless to try. Kids donāt need Lemmy or the Fediverse to watch adult content. They can just go to Pornhub and click yes. So Iām already in a position where I donāt care about other domains. But Iād like to keep my own Website and Minetest server clean. And also potentially offer some more services and at least do my best to do it right there.
Iāll research that. If you have some specific examples for federated platforms that provide more than a simple blocking or allowing on a domain level, feel free to drop me a hint to get me in the right direction. Iām not really a social media person so I have limited experience. I didnāt specify a platform. My initial motivation was linked to Lemmy as I really like this platform type. But I also like and use Peertube, maybe others.
I think I have a proposal with a bit of overlap. At least the privilege implementation could do both things at the same time: A call for better age-restriction and moderation/filtering on the Fediverse on !fediverse@lemmy.ml
So whatās your opinion or alternative solution? I can see filtering being a controversial topic since it has been applied to restrict users.
My own motivation is: I want to run my own small federated instances. Iād like to invite friends and family and also maybe random people. And I want to like and use my instance myself, not lock it down for everyone and defederate too much. Currently Lemmy prevents me from doing that. Iād either need to close registrations and exclude minors, make sure my family also likes the communities I like to visitā¦ Or be comfortable with potentially breaking the law or ending up with a severely limited instance I donāt like myself.
If it were possible to invite everyone while not blocking content, and Iād have some means of unlocking accountsā¦ Itād allow me to provide service to everyone. And with this proposal it wouldnāt necessarily change anything for people on other instances.
Also it would allow me to swear and discuss adult topics in dedicated communities without taking into account whether thatās appropriate. Thatās probably more of a concern for people who do more than just discuss politics hereā¦ But thatās some additional benefit.
Iām not aware of one who has locality embedded at itās core.
Iād love to see an alternative to kleinanzeigen.de . I recently learned (here on Lemmy) that there is Flohmarkt. I still have to try it myself. But it doesnāt seem to sort the listings by proximity, which would really add to it.
And there is Mobilizon for events.
Both projects are federated afaik. But the ālocalā aspect isnāt really baked in to the way they federate.
I get that. Iād love a customizable out-of-the-box solution for small companies that is free software and ties in a user-respecting ecosystem. AFAIK they mostly use a CMS. Something like Wordpress can even speak ActivityPub with the correct plugin. But I donāt know any good solution to recommend to you. There are quite a few free software (big) eCommerce solutions and management stuff. Other things are more tailored to one task and youād need several pieces of software and customize it to your use-case.
Keep in mind hosting stuff takes time. And if itās your platform you got to moderate stuff and constantly make content and contribute yourself. I doubt itāll take off otherwise.
And you need something unique that attracts users to your platform in specific. Could be your companies products, your good content, or you being better and nicer to people than other platforms are. Because there are lots of other services out there competing for attention. I could sign up for 15 different federated services today. You somehow need to convince me to choose yours and your instance.
But maybe someone else has a good recommendation for you. Using free software and connecting people is always a good idea.
I think the whole Fediverse isnāt made for corporate websites. I donāt want to sound too negative here. But the Fediverse is made to engage with people, have discussions and to provide a level plaing field between parties. The point of corporate websites is to push info in a top-down approach and retain strict control over your image. You have the aspect of communication in common. You want to be able to communicate with your customers. But thatās probably it. Even if they ask for support, itās often private info and directed directly at you and other people shouldnāt be able to read their contact info etc.
Furthermore lots of customers donāt want to engage and talk about software for example. They want to buy it and use it as a tool to do their job. Not have a community. But that depends on the exact use-case. I canāt imagine a community for pressure-washer customers. But there are also lots of examples with a healty and mutually beneficial communities around software products.
It really depends on your use-case. If I were in your position Iād ask myself what my customers probably want or need and do that. Often thatās a static website plus a forum or something like that (and something like a blog for news). And some means to get in touch directly for support.
A bonus of the fediverse is that it interconnects. You could choose two or more pieces if software and combine them if you donāt find one solution that fits you.
The user @SkyLeaf@lemmy.world is also doing research about Lemmy and the Reddit -> Lemmy migration:
Thanks! At the time of writing, I wasnāt aware of the existence of piefed and sublinks. I read some of the Piefed blog posts today. Seems the author has some really good ideas how to address the shortcomings of the current approach. (Or what I view as shortcomings.) Splitting NSFW and NSFL is a really good start. Implementing better moderation tools is also a regularly requested feature. And judging by the other articles they mention, the project is closer aligned to my vision of a welcoming and inclusive platform. Iāll definitely keep an eye on it. Hope it approaches a usable state soon.
I guess I have my answer, here. Iāll wait until Piefed comes along and then use that. Iām somewhat optimistic about their claims. And if not, they included extensibility.