@TomFulp - If a user's account is verified, will there be a publicly visible indication that it is verified? Or will that be something only visible on the admin end?

young man, you will be old one day.

While I do understand making the ability to send images a Supporter feature, it makes it slightly harder for people who don't have a way to send images if they are in a collab or other things. Overall, I think the update is for the better.

No more Oh-Pencil-Miss!

YAY!! FLASH!!!

So if I set my profile age to 13, no one can bug me with messages?

Sold.

Or you can turn your DMs off

Tom keeps turning them back on.

I understand keeping kids from inappropriate content, but I have no doubt in my mind that this sudden "age verification" going on with legislation worldwide simultaneously is just to get a foot in the door of "true ID". That way, they can prevent criticism of the government because canceling your "internet ID" could be grounds canceling you from the internet entirely.

Truth. Getting older sucks, but the only alternative is dying young and I would rather live to 100 than to die young.

what……..the……….hell, why are people sending gory and sexually explicit images to random strangers online. That’s just ducked up.

Okay @Tom, don't get me wrong here. I have complete faith that this PM Protection Plan (PPP if you will) will keep the children completely safe from visual trauma.

But I may see a slight problem or oversight here. So imagine this:

I am now, no longer good old wholesome Guido, who everbody knows and loves so well, I have instead become the man named Creeper McPedopants. And I am in the mood to give little Timmy some good old traumas by showing him some disturbing images.

So what if I use my evil mastermind brain, instead of sending an image directly in the PM, I simply upload the image to litteraly any other website, then send a link to that image in the PM, and then tell innocent little Timmy: hey, click this link, there's cute little puppies! (And shock & trauma ensues)

Then what?

Words cannot express how much I love this change, but...

Thank you!

Mainly asking this for verification for users from the UK, but this will likely affect the rest of us as well at some point:

- As I understand it "age verification without reliance on some poorly conceived government-ID system" will become a supporter feature for users from the UK? Or will supporters still have to use that government-ID verification in order to view "A"-rated submissions and posts?

- Will this also apply to NG accounts which are already over 18 years old or will they be spared?

- And in case "old" accounts are spared: A quick online research suggests that most children learn to read by age 6 or 7. At least accounts that are over 12 years old would seem eligible to receive the same treatment.

·

I felt that this bit of news was a bit overshadowed by the rest and wanted to say: Thank you(!) to all the enthusiastic Pixel Day participants.

Whole internet is going to shit it seems. Fucking government slowly inching towards mandatory ID verification for the simplest of things. All under the guise of safety, even though we all know the government doesn't actually give a damn about it's people. I fucking hate this, I hate all this. I miss the early 2000's internet. The simple days where you played adventure quest or adventure quest worlds. This year of the snake is going to be shitty.

I Don't blame Tom for this. He's just trying to keep the site up. Still fucking sucks though.

I wonder how much longer it'll be until they start mandating neuralink to "verify who you are" for everything?

It's probably just a phase politicians are going through.

Hey @TomFulp a user named @pennyiscool got an error message saying they are too young and they are 13 and they joined newgrounds on 1/4/25 i believe so was that account not grandfathered?

We don't plan to display the verification publicly. On one hand it might be a handy way to know you're interacting with a confirmed adult, on the other hand people might not want everyone to know the lengths they went through to view adult content. Do you think a verification badge would be helpful? Maybe we could make it an optional toggle for age-verified users.

This all sounds good to me tbh. I know some of the red tape can feel frustrating but the harsh truth is that no one is monitoring kids online and this is a good thing ethically but also helps protect newgrounds and our users legally.

I aint pulling out my soap box this morning but I've lost count of how many 1st and 2nd graders at school come up to me talking about skibbi toilet and Ohio and squid games and all kinda crap 6 and 7 year olds should not know. Using rizz and goon on their spelling test sentences.

Once, we went on a field trip, and 4 of them were swinging on a swing and singing the ultimate showdown at the top of their lungs, and while that was pretty funny, elementary school kids don't belong here.

That's actually kind of scary.

I for one am in two minds about this:

- On one hand, knowing that the person you are about to talk to is "100% not a minor" would feel reassuring.

- On the other hand, I see an issue with peer pressuring people into using several government-controlled systems which, as voiced throughout the last 11 pages of this thread, are not exactly "well received" for reasons such as governments silencing voices of opposition, governments keeping track of what sites citizens frequent, data breaches, etc. And of course the false sense of security in cases where a literal kid used a parent's phone to verify that it is 18+ on NG - which is more likely to go unnoticed than a child stealing money for online transactions.

Right now, "I supported NG for longer than two months" has turned out to be a pretty good indicator of who is an adult and who isn't. There are edge-cases, but there will always be statistical outliers, no matter what you do.

·

As a footnote: I know you already answered my earlier question in part, but I still hope you'll consider treating 12 year old accounts as verified adults without any government-ID-1984-bullcrap - along with those from users who are old enough to transfer money to you. ;)

I'm not sure. I would definitely say it should be voluntary.

I participated in a NG-related Discord community in the past that asked for ID verification since it hosted 18+ events, so for something like that having a badge to display might be useful. Though it might be irrelevant if online ID laws come to pass, since Discord will be implementing an ID check too.

I used to be on IMVU in the past (keyphrase: used to - I liked playing dress-up with 3D avatars, don't come for me). There it was pretty common knowledge that people applied for age verification (which came with a profile badge) in order to confirm they were truly interacting with adults. It wasn't always a NSFW thing.

I personally don't consume much 18+ content, but I would voluntarily display a badge to show I'm an adult.

I've been on NG since 2000 (I was 10 lol), but never posted till 2019, so I have little experience with the attitude of the general userbase. I have no idea how the site as a whole would adjust/react to ID checks or an age-verified badge. My biggest concern is causing a rift that creates a site culture of exclusivity. Young people annoy me, but I would not want to, say, make anyone feel they are barred from participating in E- or T-rated events. It might be inevitable.

Just some of my thoughts. I have no solutions. We live in interesting times.

the worst part is, this isn't as unrealistic as it may sound to some...

@TomFulp since you’re considering badges for verified adults, could us minors have badges for that too so we could be labeled as minors or if we haven’t verified, unverified adults?

I'm going to be frank. That shit is the result of parents letting phones and tablets raise their kids instead of the parents doing their job and being actual parents. Government is taking full advantage of that and offering the "solution" to those irresponsible parents. Worst part is that it doesn't even solve shit. It just gives the government even more of an iron grip on you as a citizen.

100%

I have mixed feelings.

I want to do more to protect minors online.

I also want less of the government in my business.

The best way to protect them is for parents to simply not them have a phone or tablet until they're ready. Same kind of deal with how parents back then would not let us watch movies with a higher age rating until we're old enough. Same kind of deal with a lot of things actually. But that was the best example off the top of my head. And when it comes to tools such as like idk maybe a knife for cutting vegetables or something. The parent has to teach them how to use it and more importantly how to use it safely when helping which chop vegetables for dinner.

Shit that should be common sense for any responsible parent trying to properly raise their kid.

But that seems to be lost with most parents these days seeing the situation we're in right now.

If you get pmd an image it's right in your face and you cannot avoid it. I don't think many people with some common internet sense would click a random link from a stranger.. and if they were to they've then, as much as I hate to say it, been taught a valuable lesson. Links are much more harmless and also require some kind of creative effort from the sender being deceiving to work. It would also be more effort to first upload to a different site, and that friction is also not diminishable.

i'm kinda scared about this and fulp i am scared about the state of me being on ng if im 13

A much better approach imo would be educating children about the possible dangers on the net and possible courses of actions should they encounter them. Schools, parents, school nurses, social workers, mentors and every common website should provide and have information at hand about possible dangers, and easy to understand and easy to follow instructions on how to act if you encounter predatory interactions. I'm not educated on the subject but it's seems like it's a pretty common thing for some to try to prey on innocent minds.

idk, these are just some random assorted thoughts I've had; there could be some value to mentioning it. It feels like grooming wasn't invented when I was a kid on the internet. Looking back at it now it feels like it was utopian.

I wish I could say I turned out alright despite having interacted with adult content as a kid but that would be a big fucking lie. Yet, there's no way to scientifically prove that me being messed up is a direct consequence of me interacting with adult content specifically.

Overall I'm sceptical about mature content really being that harmful to children. Watching madness combat was a bonding activity for me and my friends as kids. (We were about 10 years old. Happy tree friends was fun too.) altf4 animated The Ultimate Showdown when he was 14.

All of these seems reasonable. Although what happen if you're above 18 but don't have an ID

Oh no, I don't exist 🤕

Jokes aside, Newgrounds slowly becoming a real military training website :p