There is no way of telling if anyone your erotic roleplaying with on this website is a minor or not, and that needs to be changed for the safety of other minors.
I have a solution I propose, we create a place whether it be a discord server or some part of the website where (And before I continue I wanna say, that as a rule to this, no one is allowed to post it without their face, name, and location blurred) people post a picture of the part of their ID with their Date of birth on there (maybe next to the name of a given oc as well). And they are only allowed access into the chatrooms after providing said required image.
There is no ājust using common senseā or āReporting anyone who is susā that can solve this issue. Back when me and some of my friends were minors, we used to erotic roleplay in Chatzy rooms like Pokemon After Dark and Furry Sex all the time, and no moderators nor admins ever found out.
I want a place to erotically roleplay at, but I wanna do that without unknowingly potentially inflicting the same trauma onto other reckless minors like what happened to me and my friends when we were minors.
Please greatly take this into consideration for the safety of both minors and adults who want to avoid minors.
If someone wants to enter the site illegally, they will. This measure wonāt prevent minors from using Wolfery, but will stop most new players that are unwilling to share any information about themselves.
What I believe is necessary is a confirmation of age on the first entrance. Disclaimer on a blank screen and two buttons, āIt is legal for me to use this siteā and āLeaveā.
How will it not prevent minors? Minors donāt have IDās.
And sure it will scare off some new people, but the safety of minors and the concerns of adults who donāt wanna erotically roleplay with minors is far more important than new people.
Bars and clubs ask for ID, so if you donāt wanna show your ID even when instructed to conceal everything outside of DOB, then you are obviously not an adult.
That disclaimer wonāt work at all, I used to lie and select āIt is legal for me to use this siteā on other websites all the time as a minor, that will literally do nothing.
First, if I were a minor and had even a compulsion to enter Wolfery regardless, it would take me less than 5 minutes to fake my ID in one of many ways I can imagine.
Second, Iām sure even a blurry image of my ID could be enough to doxx me. Your proposal involves creating a database of personal information, and not only it can lead to some legal issues, it will be hacked and used by malicious third party.
Third, I can imagine adding this extra step leading to massive drop in playerbase among legal adults, especially new players that donāt yet see this site worth that much effort and sharing their information.
Your intentions with this idea are good, but it simply wonāt work as you suggest. It will only be an obstacle to real adults, while minors would find it extremely easy to bypass.
Unfortunately, the only real option is to trust the site usersā honesty and reasonability.
Trust is not an option, Iāve engaged in erp since the age of 14 (21 now). So for four years total, multiple numbers of adults out there have erpād with a minor. This is where trusting the users āhonesty and reasonabilityā gets you.
Unfortunately, this is as much as a website as small as Wolfery can do to prevent minors from using it.
Age verification system you suggest to use would be both useless and detrimental to this community.
Until either someone comes up with a solution that is technically implementable and can be applied to this site or Wolfery becomes big enough to sustain itself despite all the problems that ID verification will bring, we canāt help but trust users. And I really doubt the latter will ever happen.
Under no circumstance whatsoever would I ever post a picture of my ID here, not to a moderator, hell not even Acci himself. If I am correct, I believe this matter has been discussed before and nothing has come from it, the whole point of Wolfery is anonymity, it is the part that a lot of people enjoy on the site and unfortunately due to that fact there is a chance that yes, minors will be present. It is an unfortunate reality that cannot be changed unless one of the core precepts of wolfery itself is changed, and even then, all one has to do to bypass that is look up a picture of an ID.
I also agree with Yhapatch as ID verification would cause a significant drop in player base and lead to nearly no new players period. HOWEVER, I do think it is still a relatively decent problem that needs to be tackled, just without the help of sharing anyoneās ID or super personal information.
I have encountered several maybe like 3 or 9 people who are like 16 and still are not 18 or something like that and im like "bruh your like 9 years old you are wayyy too young to be on here because bad and naughty stuff happens on here and others
Yeah, this IS a tricky one, quite commonly discussed among the staff as well.
And I think quite commonly discussed in regards of Internet services in general.
I agree with @Yhapatch, that a required age verification using photos of ID on registration is to go over the top, and can still be falsified by the more cunning teens. But I think such verification requirements can be used in those cases when we have good reasons to believe someone is underaged.
I know that places like TikTok users similar methods: Underage appeals on TikTok
So, the rough plan is currently:
Explicit disclaimer on Registration, where you have to explicitly lie by clicking āYes, I am 18+ā, just like Yhapatch is suggesting.
A way to set an account as āRequires age verificationā, which may prevent the user from waking up any character while showing them instructions on how to verify their age.
Continue to encourage the community to report underaged players.
EDIT
And to respond to @Serinaās comment; yes, the process for verifying age should be a more strict process, where it is VERY clear to the user on things like:
who will see this personal information
how will this personal information be stored
for how long will this personal information be stored
That means, I would want to build such a system myself, so that we donāt end up with personal information on places like Discord.
Iād like to note that I specifically worded it āIt is legal for me to use this websiteā (or anything similar really), and there are 2 reasons Iād like to point.
First, Iām sure there are countries where using Wolfery would be illegal for hosting drawn pornography. Thankfully it is small enough to be under the radar, but itās better to avoid responsibility. Just in case.
Second, one of imageboards I use was once targeted by āInternet paladinsā who deemed its contents immoral. Nobody asked for this, but they have caused enough problems to force the site to change its hosting service. I really donāt want anything similar happening here.
But I think both ā18+ā and ālegalā should be stated.
After all, hosting this in Sweden where age of consent is 15, it is perfectly legal for a 15 year old swede to ERP here. Grooming also only applies to contact with those younger than 15, by Swedish law.
But yet I still want 18+ as ādefaultā, because a lot of other countries have higher age of consent, and would be excluded,
Are there other systems in place already been built to do age verification? Iām happy with just explicit disclaimers. I agree with Serina I donāt want to post identifiable information to mods.
Just talk about movies games and books. Never fails to make me feel old. @Noah_BabyFurFluffy, please report people!
Not anything built yet.
But also, the Underage appeal system (for lack of a better name) is for those cases when we have good reasons to be believe someone is underage. And Waku, we have good reasons to believe you are not underage, so it will not affect you
The current system for players to appeal an underage ban is by sending the relevant proof, in accordance to given instructions, to me on support@mucklet.com, where it will only be seen and reviewed by me. The only info shared with the mods is whether the player has proven to be 18+ or not.
Please be mindful about Wolferyās core tenets in regards to privacy too. Donāt collect information to share with other users without explicit consent or there will likely be trouble if somebody in charge hears about it.
Users absolutely do not need to be running data/info collection on one another for the sake of public record of any sort.
I second that, some of us ((ahem, me.)) are the type that reaaalllyy donāt like what we look like, and we donāt have enough trust for people to see, and such.
This is actually a solved problem ā there are companies that offer services for the id verification. They are commercial, of course, so acci wonāt be able to provide wolfery access completely for free to cover the cost of using them, and Iād imagine itās a crazy overkill. It might be need for finance, as they have very strict know-your-customer laws, but of you donāt need your passport to watch porn, why do you need one on wolfery?
Cause this isnāt like watching porn. This is a place where people can sexually interact with other people. And on top of that, you do need ID when it comes to Bars, Clubs, and even shops that sell adult toys. So I donāt mean to sound mean at all when I say this, but that argument you provided hardly holds up.
I wouldnāt have provided this idea had it not been in place in lots of establishments already.
You know, āpeople can sexually interact with other peopleā on a whole lot of places.
I spot-checked a couple and itās trivial to get into the sex talk. I donāt see why youād expect Wolfery to make more expectations. No one asks your ID on FA or f-list. No one ever asked my ID in a bar or a sex shop for that matter (gee I must be old. Now Iām sad).
Some countries have laws to handle this specific situation, but those laws vary widely by country and Wolfery pretty much has to respect its operation jurisdiction (and block access from some places if they arenāt happy with what Wolfery does). Pornhub blocked the whole US state recently because of a similar thingy.
