Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Disallow minors to PM you

I'm not throwing my hat in for either side, but I can get in legal trouble for interacting with minors because I'm a teacher. I also know there are plenty of people who have other reasons, but for me, I could actually lose my job if someone is under 18 and I decide to roleplay with them, no matter how innocent it seems.

As an English teacher, I know the skill is there, but I wouldn't want to risk myself or other people and that is why I don't interact with minors but I can't speak for others. I just wanted to give an example.

Adding a new blanket-block method that applies only to PMs isn't as hard as all that. The real complications I foresee would arrive in group PM chains where people have a mix of different settings and preferences, especially wherein those are already set up and have people PMing back and forth in them.

So --

Features I'm most interested in and will most likely to want to rapidly adopt are ones that will help people connect to each other and be more social. I also tend to cater more to general RP than to smut RP, and let's be real, the majority of people who would use this feature would be using it for smut.

Not saying never, just saying not convinced yet. A version of this feature I'd almost be more willing to consider is allowing people to not accept ANY PMs from people who aren't already on their friends list (+the mods,) as it has a somewhat wider use-case. The complications there, again, arise from PMs that have already been sent, group PMs with people who have mixed preferences, and the need for GROUP moderators to be able to have private discussions with members of their groups.

Protecting people and the site from legal issues is also of course something I care a lot about, as evidenced by the LFRP-AO forum existing. Features relating to age verifications are something we've discussed before and something I'm still mulling quite a bit.

I feel the need to officially say once more, even if you meet someone on the LFRP-AO forum - or via PM in some potential future where you think only people who are "of age" can PM you - we still strongly encourage you to ask people directly how old they really are before engaging in any X rated RP. Being able to say "I met them in a part of the site that is supposed to be for adults only" does give you some butt-covering, but people are dramatically more willing to lie to a website when they sign up than they are to someone they know who is asking them a direct question, especially if that question comes with some sort of explanation for why that person feels this is important. Suddenly it doesn't feel like such a victimless crime. It also massively increases your butt covering over just what the AO board can provide.

Just adding my +1 to this suggestion. I would personally feel more comfortable knowing something like this exists that I can turn on, whether it actually provides any legal/safety benefit or not.

Well, to me everything is said. It's a no-no to ban any possibility of contact or see a post of someone base off on the age, and I would like to said, about the teacher which protested, if you do no wrong, there nothing anyone can blame you too, real life is real life, rpg is rpg, everything done innocently never going to get you in trouble. You're a teacher, then what? You should stop to put your kid in the playground, and stop talking to the baby-sitter which is 16 around and is just doing a truly friendly chat about kids and their antics? I would have been sad, and I'm truly saying this because I had teachers as close friends and support, when things got rough for me in my life. Don't, and stop paranoïa.


I'm getting pretty used, sorry. I could have argument on other points, but quoting Kim is even more revelant here. See'y .

I think Cacophony has done extensive research on what is and isn't appropriate for him in his country under his laws and in his profession. He could lose his teacher's license even he has done nothing wrong in our eyes just for interacting with minors on the internet. I think it would be best to respect what he has to say on this and take his word for it. Different countries have different regulations after all.

That's what I was thinking of yeah, it gets tricksy when you have to take all the variables into account regarding group interactions and finding the best way to go around this. Being able to kill an entire group chat because one key person is suddenly unable to communicate due to one individual blocking them for their age doesn't sound that great to me.

I still think getting some kind of optional age verification process going where an account and/or character can be marked as Verified 18+ would be the easiest way for people to limit interactions to adults and avoid minors, and then use the rest of the tools as they see fit to customize their experience. It's easy enough to ignore and delete a PM, and block someone for unwanted interaction on a case-by-case basis if they decide to ignore a heads up on a profile, and being able to verify with a simple icon or tag that someone is a verified adult would help loads for someone's peace of mind.

Khaellar, I also noticed, the warning on your profile about the 18+ takes a little scrolling to get to. Perhaps a suitable workaround for the meantime would be to put that at the top of your profile? Some people might not read through a whole profile (some are short, some are reeeallly long) and just take a look at the person's characters. Having the warning at the top could prevent another accident like the one that prompted this thread, for the time being

You would think this would be true, but many laws don't make sense, especially when legal precedent for interpretations of those laws is piled on. Cacophony has real reasons to be cautious about online interactions with minors.

I'm going +1 for this

I don't necessarily see it being added (at least not any time soon) and I don't think I'd personally use it, but I could certainly see the use for it.

I'm honestly more for the age verification thing than the overall blocking minors from PMs thing. I can understand why exactly it would be placed, but like others have mentioned, kids are sneakier than we give them credit for and will lie about their age. Not saying all kids are like that, of course, just those who are really more interested in playing smut rather than respecting boundaries. I also understand that there may be issues with kids doing the same thing with the age verification, but I think the process would be different and give an easier peace of mind.

For the feature of blocking minors from PMs overall? ...+1/2. I'm not interested in talking to minors much myself, but I do know of one or two that I do have PM conversations with, and that's not fair to them if they need my support or something. Maybe if there's a selective filtering option that allows exceptions to the rule? Because some people may be in my boat as well and don't want to block every minor... Just the majority they don't talk to. That and we forget, sometimes parents may join the site along with their kids. What if they want to use the option, but it also blocks off their child? That's something to keep in mind as well.

I'm going to also add that I would like this on here myself. I don't like interacting with anyone under 18 privately due to the complications of legal trouble it can cause.

When I did my own research over this topic back a year or so ago, I found that online interaction actually negated the age of consent in a single country. Anyone under 18 is a minor and cannot contribute consent or personal responsibility of content written between two individuals. Adult themed roleplays many kinds including just innocent "kiss" fall under a bunch of umbrella terms that basically wind up to a number of charges against the adult party and the younger party.

The laws basically always fall in favour of punishing the accused whether there was innocence in play at all. It's a mess and it's all a terrifying process to begin with.

I've had a parent threatening me online because their child lied about their age. I was just over 18 so it scared the mess out of me too.

There's plenty of reason to be paranoid or fearful of interacting with someone older than you or younger than you and I would much rather an optional filter be in place that prevents the younger ones from being contacted or reaching out to older folks that they just don't need to be interacting with online.

I like celestinagrey's point about putting that information as well at the top of a page. I'm going to move mine specifically there myself after realizing mine was so much further down.

I am for an age verification.

Some rp site I use to go on had a system like that where they could access certain parts of the forum once they hit a certain age.

Smut does not intrest me one bit.

I am rather cautious interacting with some people older than me. Not all are bad. I had some grim experiences from some people who wanted certain rps or attempted to force their rps on me.

Even more complicated, in the US, each state has it's own laws on the matter too. They tend to be similar to one another but there can be key differences depending on where you are. Aside from that, then you have Federal law as well. I don't think there is any one 'easy' fix to get around these issues. I will say one caveat in a lot of these laws is the intent and knowledge of the accused. The suggestion about flat out asking someone's age is a good one. If you didn't knowingly interact with a minor, when you reasonably couldn't have known they were one, then you're often covered.

Don't take this as legal advice but research the laws where you live on such matters. Then take appropriate measures to safeguard yourself.

Idk about the block all minors thing, but I'd def support an age verification thing. Though idk how that'd work, nor do I have any suggestions for how it could work personally.

I personally don't know where I stand about the PM thing. But I do thank those who pointed out about putting the warning up on the writer's page. I just did that myself. Not to say that minors aren't good writer's, and while I personally have not had issues concerning minors, I want to keep it that way.

Agreed. Due to as it's been pointed out, people can lie about their age. It's a tricky thing.

Adding onto the Age Verification thought briefly- I'm with a mobile company that restricts access to sites with adult content (albeit that is rather awkwardly placed in regards to the specific algorithms used) unless the user provides birthdate-containing identification that the user provides for the privilege of seeing those adult content sites. Perhaps as a default, the Adult-Only Forums could be locked unless the user provides proof of age (though which forms of identification could be up for discussion). Though that doesn't prevent adult roleplaying in messages, or even minors lying about their age (after all my little brother lied about his age to get his first FB account), though it could be a neat thing to consider.

That is not a bad idea, but it is a level of hassle that can turn people away from Rping on the site in general. I also have a really crappy net, so I could never log into facebook from home, and I would have to wait for a month before I have enough spare cash to go somewhere and pay to get online at a cafe. This is also going into a level of personal detail that people will likely not be comfortable with sharing. Even if it is only the site admin or mods that see it, it is still uncomfortable.

I do agree it can be seen as a definite hassel, but I have to say I would feel more comfortable if some form of age verification was put in place as I do use the adults only board often. Not strictly due to sexual content, but even because I tend to like horror based roleplays that often contain extreme violence and gore at times. To be able to confidentially know I'm speaking with another adult (18+) would bring me an I'm sure many others a lot of comfort.

I hope adding my own addition to the topic isn't troublesome. I often have anxiety speaking in forums I didn't start but this one was fairly important
: )

I agreed Arkavious about the age verification that requires you to present personal information. In all honesty, sites that requires you to pay 1 cent for age certification is a lot of hassle and also presents you at a security risk of your account and credit card getting stolen. If this goes into effect, expect a large drop of people roleplaying in the Adult section or anything adulty.

I don't think Kim would make such a thing as paying for age verification active. IMVU and a few other sites already do that enough as it is, and despite it being a lot more secure, it's still an annoying thought to most people. If there is a way to have a non-paying option that still requires a sort of verification, then I'm all for it. I'm either-or since I happily spend my money here when I can anyway.