Age Verification & Games

catzilla

@Ominous On the forum PBP and Discord game side of the RP world, I see a lot of 21-25+ minimum age.

Prototart

I started MU*ing in elementary school but I was 100% raised wrong.

sao

@Evilgrayson Fair. As an American I sometimes forget the rest of the world exists except in so far as their time zones are inconvenient to my rp.

Pavel

@catzilla said in Age Verification & Games:

@Ominous On the forum PBP and Discord game side of the RP world, I see a lot of 21-25+ minimum age.

I suppose an easy way to see if someone is 25+ is to show them various kinds of painkiller and ask which they take regularly.

Ominous

@Pavel Ask them to name their favorite two Nirvana songs that aren’t Smells Like Team Spirit.

hellfrog

@Ominous we’re still waiting for you to name one Nirvana song

Rucket

@hellfrog said in Age Verification & Games:

@Ominous we’re still waiting for you to name one Nirvana song

omg, needed that laugh.

Prototart

@hellfrog said in Age Verification & Games:

@Ominous we’re still waiting for you to name one Nirvana song

summerland and electra made me blind

Jennkryst

@hellfrog said in Age Verification & Games:

@Ominous we’re still waiting for you to name one Nirvana song

Batman Theme.

Prototart

@Jennkryst said in Age Verification & Games:

@hellfrog said in Age Verification & Games:

@Ominous we’re still waiting for you to name one Nirvana song

Batman Theme.

that was Prince, duh

Jennkryst

@Prototart No, I mean Glitter-Edward Batman.

hellfrog

@Prototart the Prince Batman soundtrack was the first cassette tape I ever bought for myself with my own allowance

Prototart

@hellfrog said in Age Verification & Games:

@Prototart the Prince Batman soundtrack was the first cassette tape I ever bought for myself with my own allowance

I don’t remember mine but there’s a really good chance it was one of those Cleopatra Records cover CDs.

Jennkryst

@Prototart said in Age Verification & Games:

@hellfrog said in Age Verification & Games:

@Prototart the Prince Batman soundtrack was the first cassette tape I ever bought for myself with my own allowance

I don’t remember mine but there’s a really good chance it was one of those Cleopatra Records cover CDs.

Mine was the Ninja Turtles Pseudo-Musical thing.

Selira

congratulations, you all passed age verification.

A10 Rockwell

This strikes me as such an obvious doxxing vector. Pass.

MisterBoring

Does anybody think the KIDS Act being reviewed by the EU Parliament might affect our hobby?

Pavel

@MisterBoring It does have specific provisions relating to online games, so it’s a very big maybe.

MisterBoring

@Pavel There’s also a legal argument that the act would cover MUSHes as a form of social media, which means we could lose a lot of the EU folks in the hobby unless they band together to build their own servers that go through all those meters of red tape.

Shygaming

I think people are missing the much bigger picture here. This is being pushed by governments and institutions that have already demonstrated just how badly they can fail children when powerful people are involved.

Look at Jeffrey Epstein. American prosecutors gave him an extraordinarily lenient deal and failed to properly inform his victims. Yet we’re now expected to believe that these same institutions are so deeply concerned about protecting children that ordinary people need to surrender their privacy just to access the internet?

I don’t believe protecting children is the only motivation here. I think we’re watching the normalisation of an infrastructure that could enable mass surveillance. And the particularly insidious part is how it’s being sold to the public.

“Protecting children” is practically impossible to argue against without looking suspicious. If you object to handing over your passport or having your face scanned just to use a website then suddenly you’re treated as though you must have something to hide.

It’s an incredibly effective way to shut down legitimate concerns about privacy. Nobody wants children to be exploited. But that doesn’t mean governments should have unrestricted access to everyone’s personal information or that private companies should be trusted to collect it.

You can protect children without treating every adult on the internet like a potential criminal. The responsibility for protecting children should fall primarily on their parents. If you let your child wander unsupervised into dangerous places every morning then you’d rightly be held responsible for neglecting their safety. Why should the internet be any different? If parents knowingly expose their children to serious dangers through negligence then hold them accountable. Prosecute them for criminal neglect where the circumstances justify it. Don’t use irresponsible parenting as an excuse to strip every adult on the internet of their privacy and anonymity.

And frankly I find it disturbing how readily people are accepting the erosion of online anonymity simply because they’ve been told it’s for a good cause.