At 2/1/25 04:09 PM, HeroPapaya wrote:

At 2/1/25 03:21 AM, Guidodinho wrote: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?

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.

At 2/2/25 02:01 AM, Guidodinho wrote:

At 2/1/25 04:09 PM, HeroPapaya wrote:

At 2/1/25 03:21 AM, Guidodinho wrote: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?

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.

Well geeeeeez! Guess who feels stupid about himself now by getting an actual good point shoved into his face!?

(Spoiler alert)
It's me. ':(

At 2/1/25 07:11 PM, HeroPapaya wrote: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.

At 2/2/25 06:05 AM, Rerstuf wrote:

At 2/1/25 07:11 PM, HeroPapaya wrote: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.

Believe it or not, it used to be a thing, even some schools would teach you the dos and don'ts of online interactions, including things like "don't upload your real name or any information that could link back to you", "don't click dubious links and be suspicious of things sent to you", "if you see something bad, tell your parents/teacher/an adult", etc...

Social medias (and Google + Facebook in particular) threw that notion away and encouraged displaying your real identity for data gathering, and it reached a point where not only people are unable to not share their private infos with strangers online, it became the norm.

And so we reach that point where we're trying to fix the symptoms of the problem rather than the cause, by adding restrictions demanding you to make accounts, post an ID, display your real data, etc... I'm sure you can see where this is going and how it's gonna end.

At 2/4/25 07:59 PM, wlimy wrote:I always have to remind myself that it's never to "save the kids" no matter what they say.
Even if some truly believe that, the reason these things are introduced is never to "save the kids" and there's something else that's a much higher motivation

At 2/2/25 02:29 AM, Yatsufusa wrote:

At 2/2/25 02:01 AM, Guidodinho wrote:

At 2/1/25 04:09 PM, HeroPapaya wrote:

At 2/1/25 03:21 AM, Guidodinho wrote: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?

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.

Well geeeeeez! Guess who feels stupid about himself now by getting an actual good point shoved into his face!?

(Spoiler alert)
It's me. ':(

I think both of you make good points: Merely removing "image inclusion privileges" for non-supporters is just going to move the problem around a little - but it doesn't solve it. Seeing a link is still safer over an image, but at the end of the day, a user would still have to click that link if they wanted to justifiably report an account that harasses them...

And even if all of that is regulated, there's still rude ASCII-art. Site owners can make an effort to soften the blow, but there's no such thing as 100% safety.

"Successful" politicians on the other hand do not care in the slightest if something is actually effective. They just want good press because they did "something". And somehow those scumbags still get votes...

At 2/1/25 08:14 AM, Dolorious wrote: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?

At 2/10/25 12:42 PM, Yatsufusa wrote:

At 2/10/25 09:41 AM, CrazyGears wrote:I barely recognize the internet now. Used to be a fun place to connect with people now its just bleh.

I think that's partially connected to the development process of certain kinds of sites - as well as the outsourcing.

"Back in the day" many sites tried to offer a lot of things. In some cases they tried to add everything and more. Some MMORPGs went through the effort of advertising free "fan-site kits" - just so a handful of users who actually had ambitions in that regard could slap something together and then immediately abandon their project - loudly signaling to visitors that this might not be the game they are looking for if the websites people make for it look like ruins.

Today, most sites just copy "formulas" that work, rather than innovating. That includes not doing what people don't use or ask for. Most people don't go to Wikipedia because they want to engage with the community; they want something specific and they want to spend as little time as possible on the task. They might get sidetracked and browse, but their focus will be whatever they originally came for.

A more recent example for the outsourcing parts of traditional websites would be: "Why go through the stress of moderating a forum when you can just create a Discord server? Who gives a damn about the privacy of their user base - just let somebody else handle that headache..."