Hi all! As promised, here is the proposed text of the newest version of the rules. The staff has gone through like eight drafts and literally thousands and thousands of matrix posts to get here, so please be kind. You can see @limeey's comment on the transparency post if you want more insight into how this sausage was made.
We are opening these rules to commentary from the community before they go into effect. To be clear, this isn't a vote, but we will take all community feedback into account and answer whatever questions we can before finalizing anything.
Please keep in mind that we are not Reddit, we do not have Reddit's resources, and safety and consent are our priorities.
I'll post the draft in two parts in two comments: The new sidebar, and the FAQ/clarifications page.
FAQ and clarifications
Q. Does rule 1 mean that we can’t talk about our personal experiences from when we were minors?
A. No, members of the instance can discuss their personal experiences with sex before the age of 18 as long as it is relevant, factual, and not graphic. “I lost my virginity in the back of a Volkswagen beetle when I was 15” is fine. A post that is a blow-by-blow detailed account of underage sex or a post specifically soliciting stories about underage sex would not be fine.
Q. What does “sourcing” mean? Why should we have to do that?
A. Sourcing is identifying the source of the content that you’re posting. Our primary concern is being able to tell if material is underage, or not made with the consent of the model. Sourcing helps alleviate that concern.
It can be as simple as naming the mainstream artist or studio that produced the image, or the well-known performer in the image (“Evil Angel” or “Sasha Grey” or “Boris Vallejo”). If the content is not a mainstream studio or well-known pornstar, a link to the creator’s OF or modeling agency page or pornhub profile or verified reddit profile can work as well. The source must indicate, at very least, that the creators/models of what you’re sharing are ok with being in porn on the internet.
You don’t have to source your posts, but sourcing will help your posts survive a report if someone erroneously reports your material. We don’t have the resources to do a full investigation on every report of inappropriate content, so without a source, mods will tend to err on the side of caution.
For OC posts in c/gonewild and similar communities, mods of that forum must comply with our verification requirements. For OC, verification counts as sourcing which means it is not strictly necessary but strongly encouraged. We plan to implement a sitewide verification procedure soon, but until we do it’s down to each community’s mods.
Q. How does verification work?
A. There are a couple of different ways to get verified, but the most important thing to remember is that no moderator or admin will ever ask you to show them your government ID. If someone does ask you to provide them your government ID, please contact an admin immediately.
We are actively investigating hiring a secure third-party age verification site like agechecker.net to provide verification for us. Until that comes into effect, we accept the existence of an Onlyfans, Fansly, Chaturbate, Streamate, or Pornhub account, or appearance in a 2257-compliant adult film as verification. If you and an admin can come up with another way of verification that does not involve sending your government ID to them, we will also accept that pending approval by a second admin.
Q. What’s your policy on drug-related content?
A. Because of the wide variability in the laws worldwide regarding mind-altering substances, linking to any site which distributes (for sale or otherwise) mind-altering substances or paraphernalia, regardless of legality where you are or where the site is located, is prohibited. This includes but is not limited to any cannabis or cannabis-analogues, any prescription meds, any alcohol, and any tobacco. Discussion of these substances is allowed; links to commerce or distribution are not.
Q. How do I know what counts as NSFW and what doesn’t?
A. When in doubt, flag it as NSFW. If it’s not something that could be pinned on a bulletin board in a professional office without drawing an HR complaint, it’s NSFW. Something doesn’t have to be nude to be NSFW. Feet pics are always NSFW.
Q. I am an NSFW content creator. Can I promote my OnlyFans, Fansly, Pornhub etc?
A. lemmynsfw.com supports sex workers and creators and we want you to feel like you belong here. We do not have an instance-wide rule against self-promotion, but be aware that individual communities may prohibit self-promotion and you must respect those rules. Please do not spam our instance and please do not spam messages to users, but feel free to create a comm for yourself if you like and participate in other comms that are friendly to your content. Solicitation of sexual services is strictly forbidden. (Fuck SESTA/FOSTA.)
Q. For drawings or animation, including manga and hentai, how can I tell if something counts as forbidden content or not? I can’t tell!
A. Trying to make hard and fast rules about this stuff is always tricky because people will keep trying to find ways around the rules and the human imagination is infinite, so we are going with a subjective standard: If a mod or admin looks at an image and thinks “that is forbidden content”, it’s forbidden content. We’ll know it when we see it. (And you know it when you see it too, quit lying. If you’re into forbidden content there are other instances where that material is welcome. Bring it there. We don’t want it here.)
Q. Does the prohibition on bestiality/zoophilia apply to fantasy animals, like Pokemon or magical winged ponies?
A. Yes. We may relax this rule in the future like the some of the content we are temporarily restricting, but that is not a sure thing yet.
Q. Why are you so strict? Reddit wasn’t this strict!
A. We’re not reddit and we’re not trying to be reddit. We have decided to prioritize safety and consent, which means prohibiting some content that Reddit may have allowed.
Q. Oh yeah? Well I’m gonna start my own instance! With blackjack! And hookers!
A. Godspeed, you beautiful maniac.
Admin/Moderator decisions are final and arguing with them can result in suspension or banning of your account and purging of your content.
There are many moderators that I've seen given a position after simply offering themselves in a post. And we can't ask for a review of an action of a random person that has the title of moderator? Excuse me but if that is the case, this is feeling like quite a red flag to me.
If there is an issue with a moderators decision, please contact an admin for further review. There is work being done to try figure out how make it so that posts can have a reporting distinction of some kind, kind of like how Reddit did. Sort of (report to site staff) and (report to community)
Thanks for the reply and clarification. I still see as troublesome the wording in the part I mentioned. I can understand that you want to cut fast the issues with annoying users but from outside there can also be concerns about moderator abuse.
Thank you bringing it up! We will clarify in the final version, but yeah. Our desire is hopefully to have reporting procedures in the same way reddit does, kind of like "report to community" and "report to site staff"
I would also like to add that many posters are often also moderators, and they're not an unbiased party when their post is reported for loli/shota (which is a subjective determination to begin with).
"Admin/Moderator decisions are final and arguing with them can result in suspension or banning of your account and purging of your content."
At reddit, we ran into an issue where a moderator took issue with a post of of ours (a verification, actually, so it was extra obvious we were new there). We sent a very respectful and apologetic response to their message asking only for clarification about the rule so we could avoid violating it in the future. The response was an immediate and permanent ban across 12 separate subreddits that this person moderated.
We believe most mods wish to help and are genuinely doing their best, but in cases of abuse, what recourse would we have?
I think the "admin team" is pretty active, and since the instance is more specialized, you can simply bring it up to us in the matrix, message one of us directly, etc.
We have been discussing "rogue mods" as an issue too - and also community creation/moderation expectations.
It's definitely something we want to get right
THANK YOU for bringing this up @BabuKitten. The number of mod's with god complexes on Reddit made me grow to dislike using the site.
I want community where everyone is on even ground. I'm not much into begging to participate, or having my ability to ripped away because of honest mistakes (& no chance for discussion.)
We're glad to hear that, though we are new enough to not understand what the matrix is (other than a movie haha).
What mastodon is to twitter, and lemmy is to reddit, matrix is to discord/slack.
Ok that's actually pretty easy to understand, thank you 💜💚