This post comes as a result of a little talk we had on GenZedong's Matrix servers a couple of days ago and I thought it was a good idea to bring it as a proposal to discuss here.
There are some strange people in Lemmygrad. I bet you can think of one or two names when I say this. Honestly, I have nothing against it, I don't think anyone should as long as they cause no harm, and quaint characters being attracted to on-line left wing spaces is as much of a natural law as that day follows the night so there's nothing one can do even if they wanted anyway. However, one can tell by some behaviours that the strangeness of some of them come from being young. Too young. And I think it would be nice to limit our list of extravagant individuals to people with a somewhat developed prefrontal cortex, since I think that currently we have none of that.
As some of you may do too, I belong to the earliest sector of Gen Z. As such, it means that I was part of that experiment of giving unlimited access to the internet to someone from an early age, and after remembering well having seen that one video of a man and a glass jar after barely hitting a double digit age, I can say with some confidence that it was a bad move. While there is nothing as nearly as inappropiate as that going on here, I still consider that now that we are older and it is us the ones who are in charge of something, it would be for the best if we did what we could to prevent the youngest ones from wasting their years of brain plasticity on Hoxha-themed soyjaks, anti-psychiatry drama and debates about whether or not the Shining Path was "giga-based" or "turbo-cringe" amongst other brainrot instead of playing Poptropica on coolmathgames dot com or, even better, away from the internet.
My proposal is to set the minimum age for a Lemmygrad account at 16. Of course we can't go around asking for IDs, but I think it would be sensible to put a message stating one must be 16 or older to join in the registration page, make it part of our rules and if someone's behaviour seems sussy then let the mods and admins decide according to their collective judgement.
That's it. Discuss.
Edit: Because some people seem to be missing the point - I know there is no way to enforce thia for all cases. But in the state things are right now, if some kid openly states that they are 12 they would not be able to be banned because there are no rules that justify it, which is no bueno.
The edit makes sense, but I would go back to my first comment and just say that I would rather a 12 year old be here then other parts of the internet. 4chan and the Vaush subreddit are cesspits with no age requirement, and for what goes on here with minor memeing, news, and theory discussions, I don't see all that much that could be harmful to a minor.
For example, in all three of the examples you listed for harmful content, the admins have taken a good position and eliminated the source of the problem. The Shining Path is lambasted as a horrific and atrocious terrorist group, and that one poster that came here from his pro-Shining path website was banned within a few days; the anti-psychiatry sub has been banned multiple times and the people associated with it have similarly been removed, and the soyjacks aren't nearly as bad as what can be found elsewhere.
Also a lot of people don't have anything else to really be doing. Spending time away from the internet is vital, but it is a core component of a modern person's life, and some people are restricted by their societal status, finances, or geography from participating in activities outside of the internet. Even if someone is privileged enough to live in a nice house in the American suburbs, what are they supposed to do without a car? Everything is 10-15 minutes away by car with zero bike or pedestrian access, so they're stuck at home. Same goes for less fortunate individuals.
I would argue that the elimination of third spaces, and the inability to go anywhere unless you have a car is the entire reason behind why GenZ focused on the internet so much, there's quite literally little else to do.
I don't know about the voosh subreddit but 4chan has a +18 age requirement and outing yourself as a minor will get you banned. This post's inspiration was partly on realizing that this site doesn't have a measure that a place as godforsaken as 4chan does get right.
This is almost if not exclusively an American problem. It could serve as an excuse for the US, but my org is constantly promoting healthy forms of leisure for the youth because we have plenty of activities to do around yet we still have kids on their PCs who don't leave their rooms unless necessary. There has to be more than that to it.
Sadly this has impacted a significant number of countries, and while I used an American example since it is more understandable, an identical problem exists in Belarus as I have seen firsthand. If you are outside of Minsk, and a few select cities, you are shit out of luck when it comes to transportation, unless you can borrow your dedushkas old Vlada. I would even take the chance and say that this problem affects anyone not fortunate enough to find themselves within a city or urban area, at the very least a suburban area with good public transport. That still leaves out billions of people. Good public transport outside of majority cities and towns is virtually unheard of in vast portions of the world.
4Chan only has that requirement because they distribute pornography and are forced to include that as part of their TOS by law. That's the same reason that all porn websites and Reddit make you state that you are over 18 when trying to access sexually explicit materials. I doubt any of them would bother if that was not a mandatory regulation by US law.
By extension, Lemmy, and Lemmygrad do not distribute pornography, with that being against the TOS, and thusly are not forced to include age verification.