People's Court

There would be absolutely zero way to enforce this.

Everyone has met extremely immature adults with the mind of a 14 year old, and 14 year olds far more mature then their age. Unless the admins begin asking for IDs, or some form of verification picture, that rule would never be feasibly enforced. You say that the admins could use their collective judgment, but all that amounts to is “vibes-based policing” unless someone outright states their age.

Honestly I’d rather a minor be on here then on 4chan or vast portions of Reddit.

FWIW we de jure already have a minimum age here for a large portion of our user base:

Honestly, i think we should welcome them as long as they follow the rules. It is kind of a miracle that these hypothetical kids landed on lemmygrad, lt may be annoying sometimes and bring the quality of the discourse down but we can guide them in the good direction.

Like i wish i had a community like this available when i was that young.

on Hoxha-themed soyjaks,

anti-psychiatry drama

debates about whether or not the Shining Path was “giga-based” or “turbo-cringe”

Is this the kind of nonsense people do on discord?

Because I definitely haven't seen any of the last one, any ultras who tried would get clowned on fast. Can't recall having seen much of the first and I think we had one episode around the psychiatry thing a while but I think that was resolved reasonably eventually.

My proposal is to set the minimum age for a Lemmygrad account at 16

It should already be at least 13 to comply with certain laws regarding protection of children, I know we may have various issues that place us on authorities' radars already and in potential legal hot water for promotion of communism but we shouldn't risk getting got over a technical violation on something like that.

That said there is zero way to enforce this. Kids lie about their age online all the time. Legally speaking all website admins are required to do is immediately ban and delete data of minors if they openly state that they are 12 or something.

As to admins determining, unless someone is really acting like a pre-teen I don't see any way for admins to know whether someone's just being immature (and you have 20 year olds who act that way and conversely 16 year olds who roll their eyes at these clownish 20 year olds) or if they're young and then you're back to either demanding IDs (bad opsec, awful) or admins just banning people based on vibes of being too immature or young and that would risk encouraging a certain bad faith "kid-jacketing" let's call it whereby people, wreckers, etc construct a narrative of someone being underage and press the admins on it creating drama when the admins do or do not act. Admins already have power to act to remove those from lemmygrad who are disruptive, an account here is much more a privilege than on world or .ml or even hexbear given the scrutiny and narrow purpose of a site for Marxists.

A certain decorum and level of maturity is a good idea and I think we are a bit more serious than another similar instance but it should be driven by community sanction mainly, downvotes, and if needed eventually being called out by a mod or admin privately if it really crosses a line.

There are some strange people in Lemmygrad. I bet you can think of one or two names when I say this.

I guess I’m too dense to know who your talking about, but just to be on the safe side I’ll assume you’re talking about me.

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.

Of a similar age (debatably either oldest Gen Z or youngest millenial) and personally my take on it is "thank god (or science, or the universe, or whatever) for the internet, otherwise I'd have been even more fucked up" myself tbh. Growing up with a cultish, abusive family and as an extreme minority (Asian in the prairies) I feel there'd have been no hope for me otherwise to have any proper pride and dignity or grow into a better person, among other things.

That said- while I'd usually agree that maybe we should vet for kids (and libs... but then again I'd be perfectly fine with this space becoming near-wholly defederated even, probably) this space is about as kid-friendly as it gets. No porn, reactionary bullshit gets dunked on or banned real quick, hell, I saw that post where the 'grad decided not even to have gorier war footage in Ukraine- it's as safe as it gets. FWIW also- if they're sticking around here, I'd expect the opposite of brainrot to be happening. That's a good thing.

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”

Hell, even your examples of brainrot are... well, brainrot, yes, but the kind that could perhaps at least lead them down the right path (eventually). Better that than most youtube/FB reccs, their social sciences/history classes (if they live in the west- my experiences certainly were full of anti-communist propaganda), sermons at the church at bible camp or whatever, or pretty much any western mainstream news, isn't it? Hell, I'd even say that frankly it's better they're thinking than being effectively lobotomized by such things... the internet may be responsible for a lot of brainrot, but I hold firmly to the position that it has been infinitely more beneficial than not all the same.

The only reason I can think of for vetting for minors in this case would be if we had issues with people being creeps. But as far as I've seen that doesn't seem to be the case, and hasn't popped up in the 'grad yet(?) We have good mods, a good community generally.

I don't think that's a good move:

1. Nobody will heed the warning and there's no way to enforce it.

2. Banning someone for something as arbitrary as their age (which they can do nothing about) is how internet communities end up dying. Plus, these kinds of rules not only turn people away from the community, they actually end up making the community worse, due to the mods policing with more vigilance.

3. There are many alternatives to lemmygrad, especially on reddit. If a teenager wants to join a communist space, then let them do so in one that is good and well-managed.

4. (related to the above) If we ban someone for being too young, there's a very good possibility they'll end up in some reactionary space, where the idea that communism is bad will be reinforced in their minds. Once again, let them spend time here than elsewhere.

Yeah, I agree, access to the internet from a young age is a problem. But it's a problem that primarily parents should deal with, and not lone communist internet communities with 500 users.

I don't disagree, but like others here, I just don't think something like this is enforceable. This is an inappropriate space for children, but so is 99% of the internet, and I would probably rather a kid learn from people here rather than go on 4chan or Reddit. I do agree that a kid openly stating their age should probably be a banable offence, as it isn't a good idea to state stuff like that on a public forum. But again, it's impossible to enforce something like that. I just don't think this place really has any ability to solve this problem.

If somebody who is younger than 16 wants to learn about communism in a semi-ironic way, they could easily do so on Discord or Reddit rather than here. If they don't find memes about Hoxha or the Shining Path here, they will find it elsewhere.

Some people who are, say, 14 years old are more mature then the average person their age, or even more mature than the average adult. We should judge users by their actions and not their age. If somebody who is 14 follows the rules and acts alright, they should be allowed to stay, they should not be banned from the site just because of their age. If they don't follow the rules, they should be punished just like somebody who is older.

Negative stereotypes about young people are rampant and I do not believe we should contribute to them in any way, even if it's as small as banning them from an obscure internet forum.

As others have said, there is no way of enforcing any sort of age minimum here, or anywhere else really without requiring invasive personal information to be shown as proof. So this point already means it's pretty much pointless to have any real age minimum rule.

But I do agree that some of our frequent posters, who I have a very high suspicion of being quite young, 10-16 or thereabouts, can be somewhat annoying at times when you're looking to engage in something more serious or substantial. But the truth is that children make up an absurdly large amount of the internet's userbase in general, so it's statistically nearly guaranteed that we'll end up with some around here.

I think the best solution would be to either just ignore them if you're not in the mood to deal with that type of thing, or in extreme cases, if you find it's getting too annoying, there is a block feature which you can use should you find the need.

I was born in 1842