At 1/29/25 10:23 PM, AnthonyToons wrote:I can get behind the whole image removing thingy, and the whole age thing makes a lot of sense, especially for this site, if only Youtube would understand...

"YEAH LETS MAKE AN APP SPECIFICALLY FOR KIDS AND THEN MAKE OUR MAIN SITE WORSE BY MAKING EVERYONE ABIDE BY PUSSY BABY RULES EVEN THOUGH WE LITERALLY HAVE A SITE... FOR KIDS!"

At 1/29/25 10:36 PM, MinimanD wrote:

At 1/29/25 10:23 PM, AnthonyToons wrote:I can get behind the whole image removing thingy, and the whole age thing makes a lot of sense, especially for this site, if only Youtube would understand...

"YEAH LETS MAKE AN APP SPECIFICALLY FOR KIDS AND THEN MAKE OUR MAIN SITE WORSE BY MAKING EVERYONE ABIDE BY PUSSY BABY RULES EVEN THOUGH WE LITERALLY HAVE A SITE... FOR KIDS!"

The thing that really sucks is that Youtube kids isn't even a great place for kids. The platform's quality standards are critically low leading to lots of shovelware and low effort content. A lot of stuff I've witnessed is also just super creepy (without being edgy)

At 1/29/25 10:39 AM, Myceli0m wrote:

At 1/29/25 10:38 AM, OnyxGalaria wrote:Glad you're taking steps to keep people safe.
The images in PMs thing is 100% reasonable; the shit people send sometimes. :(

Yeah, I agree. I dont even want to imagine if I were to recieve gore or anything gross in PMs.
Eugh.

At 1/29/25 11:18 AM, MindChamber wrote:

At 1/29/25 10:00 AM, TomFulp wrote:Flash Forward kicks off on February 1st! If you’d like to help with the prize pool, please use the donation option on our Supporter page and PM me a heads up that you donate towards Flash Forward.

In the meantime, here are some things that have been going on this month, along with more plans for this year.

This month we raised the minimum sign-up age to 14 and we intend to gradually raise it this year until we settle on 16 as the minimum age. This keeps us more compliant with legislation in places like Australia and Florida but also feels like a good fit for Newgrounds. Australia may also be requiring ID checks, we’ll have to wait and see what they settle on and what they offer on that front later this year.

There's still time for newgrounds lite :3

At 1/29/25 04:05 PM, Anamonator wrote:

At 1/29/25 03:58 PM, DioShiba wrote:

At 1/29/25 03:52 PM, Anamonator wrote:

At 1/29/25 03:32 PM, DioShiba wrote:

At 1/29/25 03:13 PM, TomFulp wrote:

At 1/29/25 11:11 AM, detergent1 wrote:I guess that while minimum age to join will be 16, the E,T,M filters will remain available to non-users, right?

The filters will still be available to unregistered users, although at some point we might require registration and an age of 17 to toggle M. In the meantime, more stuff has been moving from M to A to try and avoid that, in particular because I don't like the idea of things like Salad Fingers and Madness being hidden by default.

This could be solved by a new method of filtering content, something which has been getting talked about some in the Supporter forum. It's a big overhaul though and would introduce its own headaches.

Couldn't the BBS be under the same restrictions that the NG Chat has if worst comes to worst and it remains an exclusive 18+ feature?

I get this might not be the ideal or anything like that but honestly, speaking from experience I'd rather not have to put up with teenagers who think they know a thing or two about the world when all they really know is whatever happens in their parents basement and whatever dumb drama they deal with in school.

I think the bbs shouldn’t be 18 + only because we already have a rating system on the BBs and a great moderation team so in my opinion that probably isn’t necessary. But it’s up to @TomFulp

In fairness, and I say this as a 30 year old man who has also been in the same shoes as a teenager in the past... Some things are really better left as adult spaces and lately my stance has shifted to feeling that have most online interactions should fall into that.

I know it sounds hypocritical but between the drama queens, bad actors, and all these other sorts of people who turn out to be problematic I'd rather not have to deal with the headaches that allowing teens in adult areas can cause in the same way a bartender wouldn't want to risk someone under 21 being in their place of business. It's a liability.

With Newgrounds being a collaborative space, what about collaboration projects? It would be harder for younger artists under 18 to collaborate with other people because the pm feature is already sketchy enough

At 1/29/25 04:11 PM, QueenBoo wrote:honestly, hell yeah, based update imo, you gotta do what you gotta do to keep people safer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think this is a fine way of handling the updated online safety laws. Do the best that you can.

Unfortunately I do wish there was more safer and fun places for minors to visit, kids & teens need places to be kids & teens too.

At 1/29/25 11:10 PM, Thetageist wrote:

At 1/29/25 04:05 PM, Anamonator wrote:

At 1/29/25 03:58 PM, DioShiba wrote:

At 1/29/25 03:52 PM, Anamonator wrote:

At 1/29/25 03:32 PM, DioShiba wrote:

At 1/29/25 03:13 PM, TomFulp wrote:

At 1/29/25 11:11 AM, detergent1 wrote:I guess that while minimum age to join will be 16, the E,T,M filters will remain available to non-users, right?

The filters will still be available to unregistered users, although at some point we might require registration and an age of 17 to toggle M. In the meantime, more stuff has been moving from M to A to try and avoid that, in particular because I don't like the idea of things like Salad Fingers and Madness being hidden by default.

This could be solved by a new method of filtering content, something which has been getting talked about some in the Supporter forum. It's a big overhaul though and would introduce its own headaches.

Couldn't the BBS be under the same restrictions that the NG Chat has if worst comes to worst and it remains an exclusive 18+ feature?

I get this might not be the ideal or anything like that but honestly, speaking from experience I'd rather not have to put up with teenagers who think they know a thing or two about the world when all they really know is whatever happens in their parents basement and whatever dumb drama they deal with in school.

I think the bbs shouldn’t be 18 + only because we already have a rating system on the BBs and a great moderation team so in my opinion that probably isn’t necessary. But it’s up to @TomFulp

In fairness, and I say this as a 30 year old man who has also been in the same shoes as a teenager in the past... Some things are really better left as adult spaces and lately my stance has shifted to feeling that have most online interactions should fall into that.

I know it sounds hypocritical but between the drama queens, bad actors, and all these other sorts of people who turn out to be problematic I'd rather not have to deal with the headaches that allowing teens in adult areas can cause in the same way a bartender wouldn't want to risk someone under 21 being in their place of business. It's a liability.

With Newgrounds being a collaborative space, what about collaboration projects? It would be harder for younger artists under 18 to collaborate with other people because the pm feature is already sketchy enough

Announcing collabs can already be done in news posts, and replies to the posts can be used to link to entries. That’s been done before without having to use the Collab Forum.

I’m also in agreement with Dio about “honing your skill”, though, because we’ve already had enough instances of poorly run collabs on this site, to the point where I almost think that art collabs should require moderator permission to be launched.

I know I’m going against my original statement that you should try hosting a collab, but I’m realizing that that wasn’t very good advice given that you’re still young and very much learning to cope with the stresses of the internet.

At 1/29/25 09:54 PM, LeviRamirez wrote:These all seem like really annoying backend problems to fix with the everchanging online political landscape that's going on right now, but these all seem like they'll be really beneficially to the health of the website and I hope the development of these things goes as smoothly as possible :-)

It's a shame things have to happen this way, Kids on the internet don't really have a place to go like they used to in the late 90's early 2000's. Newgrounds is literally a website that hosts Games and cartoons and even it is off-limits to them (Mostly, and for good reason) but you can't blame 10 year olds for wanting to flock to a site like this.

Newgrounds is not a great place for kids, but is it really any better then joining private discord servers or talking alone in twitter and Instagram DMs? It's a shame there isn't more websites akin to coolmathgames that truly are made for a younger demographic to enjoy without fear of intermingling with creeps.

At 1/29/25 11:18 PM, Thetageist wrote:

At 1/29/25 09:54 PM, LeviRamirez wrote:These all seem like really annoying backend problems to fix with the everchanging online political landscape that's going on right now, but these all seem like they'll be really beneficially to the health of the website and I hope the development of these things goes as smoothly as possible :-)

It's a shame things have to happen this way, Kids on the internet don't really have a place to go like they used to in the late 90's early 2000's. Newgrounds is literally a website that hosts Games and cartoons and even it is off-limits to them (Mostly, and for good reason) but you can't blame 10 year olds for wanting to flock to a site like this.

Newgrounds is not a great place for kids, but is it really any better then joining private discord servers or talking alone in twitter and Instagram DMs? It's a shame there isn't more websites akin to coolmathgames that truly are made for a younger demographic to enjoy without fear of intermingling with creeps.

Also want to mention this to you: I’m hoping to try to put together a list of safe websites for kids. If you know any (besides Coolmath, I got that included already) let me know.

At 1/29/25 10:00 AM, TomFulp wrote:Flash Forward kicks off on February 1st! If you’d like to help with the prize pool, please use the donation option on our Supporter page and PM me a heads up that you donate towards Flash Forward.

In the meantime, here are some things that have been going on this month, along with more plans for this year.

This month we raised the minimum sign-up age to 14 and we intend to gradually raise it this year until we settle on 16 as the minimum age. This keeps us more compliant with legislation in places like Australia and Florida but also feels like a good fit for Newgrounds. Australia may also be requiring ID checks, we’ll have to wait and see what they settle on and what they offer on that front later this year.

Existing accounts will be grandfathered, meaning we won’t be deleting accounts that joined before the change. If you are an artist who was hoping to participate on NG but are too young, please keep honing your craft, we look forward to seeing you here some day!

We’ve also changed the PM system, so that sending images via PM is now a Supporter feature. Reasons for this are people abusing the system with shock photos, the potential for creepy stuff happening and to better comply with the UK Online Safety Act.

The next round of updates will make it so you can't PM a minor account unless they follow you, message you first, or are friends with you. This is also in line with UK regulatory guidance but also for the best overall. If you never noticed, there is already a flag button in each PM you receive, if you ever get something creepy.

If you live in the UK there is more excitement on the way. Starting in July, we will be required to verify your age in order to toggle the Adult filter. There is currently no way we can do this without charging you money and we’re not keen to do that via Paypal or Stripe. Ideally a better option will arrive in the months ahead, such as a UK digital ID that we can check for free.

Various states and countries are rushing into age verification laws that are a total mess and a burden for everyone involved; no one wants to show their ID to random websites. We personally hope progress is made with the Digital Age Assurance Act (DAAA), which would require device-level age verification. This means you would verify your age once on your phone and on your personal desktop PC / Mac profile, at which point it could pass a true or false value to apps and websites. This makes so much more sense than what is happening now and would allow sites like NG to verify age in a consistent, simple and costless way.

In other news…

Pixel Day winners will be announced next month, probably after the Best of January. Please take some time to enjoy, vote on and review the Pixel Day entries!

https://www.newgrounds.com/collection/pixel-day-2025

The NG Documentary Kickstarter is almost to $50k out of the $80k goal, please consider contributing to its success!

Expect some downtime today around 1pm EST as the site undergoes a number of structural changes.

At 1/29/25 09:54 PM, LeviRamirez wrote:These all seem like really annoying backend problems to fix with the everchanging online political landscape that's going on right now, but these all seem like they'll be really beneficially to the health of the website and I hope the development of these things goes as smoothly as possible :-)

It's a shame things have to happen this way, Kids on the internet don't really have a place to go like they used to in the late 90's early 2000's. Newgrounds is literally a website that hosts Games and cartoons and even it is off-limits to them (Mostly, and for good reason) but you can't blame 10 year olds for wanting to flock to a site like this.

Newgrounds is not a great place for kids, but is it really any better then joining private discord servers or talking alone in twitter and Instagram DMs? It's a shame there isn't more websites akin to coolmathgames that truly are made for a younger demographic to enjoy without fear of intermingling with creeps.