First of all, I don’t mean this post as a complaint, maybe more of a warning?

There is teenagers on the fediverse. Most of them don’t share their age, for hopefully obvious reasons. I’d say that a lot of the accounts which do a lot of posting/commenting are run by teenagers — because most adults probably wouldn’t have the time for that much posting.

While the young people of this generation are generally useless when it comes to something more complicated than microsoft word, the people who are good at technology, usually are very good at it.

most of my friends (most of which don’t know the difference between a laptop and a desktop) could understand the fediverse as a concept perfectly when I explained it to them irl.

So, if you’re in a really stupid argument with someone, try to remember that there is a small chance they are 14.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      And what’s the problem with that?

      Laws don’t currently make a concession for federated social media. If the law in an instance’s jurisdiction says that users on a platform must be of a certain age, then for practical/enforcement purposes it makes no difference if they’re local or federated.

      FWIW, I also ban people under age 18 on my instance (local and federated). Obviously I can’t know everyone’s age, but if someone offers it and I become aware, and it’s below the minimum age set in our policy, then they’re banned until they’re of age - simple as that.

      I’m in the US, so 13 is the minimum age by law for most services (COPPA), and there’s various grumblings to increase the age specifically for social media, so I’m playing it safe with 18 which is the age you’re legally considered an adult.

      Considering some of the stuff that gets posted here (legitimately and via bad actors), then my legal liabilities are less as I’m going out of my way to only serve adults on the platform. Mind you, I’m running this as a hobby / volunteer and do not have a team of lawyers on hand.

            • throwaway@lemmy.cafeOPEnglish
              0·
              8 months ago

              From a bit of clicking around, its linked no-where but the footer, so if you’re making an account they don’t tell you to read it. Easy to miss.

            • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
              0·
              8 months ago

              Quoth Article 8:

              1. Where point (a) of Article 6(1) applies, in relation to the offer of information society services directly to a child, the processing of the personal data of a child shall be lawful where the child is at least 16 years old.
                Where the child is below the age of 16 years, such processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that consent is given or authorised by the holder of parental responsibility over the child.
                Member States may provide by law for a lower age for those purposes provided that such lower age is not below 13 years.
              2. The controller shall make reasonable efforts to verify in such cases that consent is given or authorised by the holder of parental responsibility over the child, taking into consideration available technology.
              3. Paragraph 1 shall not affect the general contract law of Member States such as the rules on the validity, formation or effect of a contract in relation to a child.

              The referenced point (a) is in the conditions for data processing to be lawful:

              the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes;

              In essence: The age of consent is 16 when it comes to your personal data. A completely different question is whether lemm.ee even processes personal data, even more so in a matter that requires consent. Because unless you doxx yourself lemm.ee knows nothing more about you than your IP and, presuming best practices, only keeps limited logs around for strictly technical purposes which don’t need consent. That point (a) is only one condition under which personal data can be processed, there’s also b, c, d, e, and f.

              …not that I’m saying that the legal notice is bad it’s good. It’s overzealous and overcautious going beyond the letter of the law and event intent, reaching into the fabled realms of actually giving a fuck. Like, if the law says “assault is bad” then this notice is saying “please all cuddle, ok?”

    • throwaway@lemmy.cafeOPEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      Thats why I made this post. If a teenager is on the fediverse, they will know how to evade a ban.

    • cm0002@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      To any teens who come across this post, do NOT admit you’re underage or were underage at time of account creation anywhere, anytime for any reason

      It’s like Rule 1 of the internet.

      Sincerely, The kids who grew alongside the internet since the 90s

      • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
        0·
        8 months ago

        Nobody should pretend and nobody should have to li

        Also, nobody should volunteer age info for no reason… Esp under age crowd. Fucking pedos everywhere

  • WatDabney@fedia.io
    1·
    8 months ago

    I’ve long assumed that many (most?) of the tankies, and of hexbear’s userbase in general, are teens.

  • Kane@femboys.bizEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    Maybe, but I was on the internet as a teen and that went fine, being careful is a general thing in life.

    But more importantly: adults have a phone and use it during work ALL the time. So I’m not so sure about the average age of the people commenting on here.

  • Fleur_@hilariouschaos.comEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    WHAT!!!??

    TEENAGERS??

    ONLINE???

    Brooo I had no idea… how could this happen? I never would’ve guessed there could be teenagers despite at one point being one and using the internet. I get you’re probably pretty new to being online but like come on, the rest of the world doesn’t discover things at the rate you do…

  • Darkmoon_UK@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    It should not be that surprising. Many teenagers are really smart, curious and will find their way here. That said I realise your warning is well intentioned; I hope Lemmy remains a more civil place than Reddit became over the last ten years, for everyone; teenagers included.

  • FundMECFS@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    But don’t assume everyone who is very active is a teenagers.

    Some of us aren’t ;).

    And you don’t have to understand federation to use lemmy. I’ve brought a couple of gen-z ers here. Get them to download voyager. Voyger automatically suggests lemm.ee for account creation. And then you just use it like reddit. Super simple.

  • 𝓔𝓶𝓶𝓲𝓮@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    Surprise, surprise. Some chunk of Reddit annoyances stem from kids running around amok.

    Then moderators make many stupid rules to try to increase quality and overmoderation takes hold

    In short time it becomes increasingly annoying to browse let alone post to get past the anti teen rules filter. Not to mention all the young hormones commenting some stuff at you like it is school break slander or smh

    One can always change instance though so it isn’t doom and gloom. The kids will have Lemmy.world and nice, enjoy it and have fun. It is the club penguin of Lemmy instances. We knew this would happen

    • Corgana@startrek.websiteEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      Then moderators make many stupid rules to try to increase quality and overmoderation takes hold

      This is so true. One of the best decisions I made during my tenure as mod of /r/StarTrek was changing the rules to be spirt-based instead of language-based. People will literally try to lawyer their way around the language of any rule, and it gets exhausting for mods to get drawn into debates when it’s obvious the person is trying to get around the spirit of the community’s purpose.

      For example we had a rule that was literally just “be nice” (vs what a lot of communities have which is “don’t be uncivil” followed by a 1000 item list of uncivil things that nobody will read and only exists for mods to point to after the fact). We got a lot of pushback like “who decides what being nice means?” (to which I would reply "if you truly don’t know what ‘nice’ means then you need to ask your mother) but if someone is ““concerned”” about a rule to “be nice” or “honest”, they are probably not someone that needs to be around anyway. It’s a discussion community, not civil society, not everyone has a right to participate.

      As you said the beauty of the fediverse is that each instance can have it’s own styles.

      • 𝓔𝓶𝓶𝓲𝓮@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        8 months ago

        Great comment, great moderation. Also by the way it has come to my attention that your instance bans/warns users that merely upvote discovery hate posts? Or was it some other Star Trek instance?

        • Corgana@startrek.websiteEnglish
          0·
          8 months ago

          I know this comment is satire (well done… I think) but I want you to it hurt me deep in my bones.

          Cheers

          I’m clearly not paying enough for a therapist.

    • throwaway@lemmy.cafeOPEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      Pretty much yeah, most people assume that no one under 30 is on fedi because its “hard” to use.

      • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
        0·
        8 months ago

        Fedi does screw heavy middle aged and male and US but any one who can handle Linux can figure our how to operate here haha

        Yeah kids might be retarded tech wise now but there is always the nerds who excel at tech so they would naturally end up here

      • ByteMe@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        8 months ago

        I’m 24 and I’m using it just fine. I’d say that after signing up somewhere and getting an app to login into, the rest is pretty simple and much similar to reddit

      • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        0·
        8 months ago

        What part of the fediverse is “hard” to use?

        Lemmy is easier to use than the UBB forum I started to become active on at the age of 10 that was the entry point for me being on the Internet at all. Back then we didn’t have Markdown, but BBCode, and I had that figured out after a few weeks.

        I think you’re way underestimating young people.

        • throwaway@lemmy.cafeOPEnglish
          0·
          8 months ago

          I am a young person. It made sense once i explained it to them, but they had no idea how to do anything without my help, at first.

        • JayGray91@fedia.io
          0·
          8 months ago

          I started to think it’s because of the result from years of a lot of people being trained and marinated by big tech in siloed opaque social media and website sign ups, where everything is it’s own thing with almost no interconnectedness and communication between each other. So it seems hard when they (me too admittedly) see all this instance thing and federated that.

          Also IMO fediverse has a too nerdy and being infodumped on image to me. That image, at least on the threadiverse side, seems to be toned down and normie-d with recent “campaigns” on reddit though.

          You guys really do need to not be too nerdy lol.

        • Today@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          8 months ago

          I’m old. I’m not sure what part of lemmy is hard. It’s just sign up, click a few things, download an app if you want. I don’t even have to remember a password. You don’t have to know how to build a car in order to drive.

          Yes, noticed the influx of youngsters recently in the daily posts of ‘how come my boyfriend won’t talk to me’, ‘why are the girls at school so jealous of me’, etc. Also, putting 19/f in the post. What’s that about?

          • cabinet_sanchez@midwest.socialEnglish
            0·
            8 months ago

            I’m also old and I really don’t know what’s going on. You’re mostly right, I’m here reading stuff and it’s working fine for me, but when it comes to federated instances and mastodons, I’m not sure I’ll ever really understand what this IS

        • Palladiumasteroid@piefed.socialEnglish
          0·
          8 months ago

          Truly hard to use I’d say are hubzilla and its forks. The rest of the Fediverse doesn’t require much knowledge and aren’t as hard as their userbases pretend they are (they aren’t even hard at all)

      • Lucy :3@feddit.orgEnglish
        0·
        8 months ago

        I’m 19 and assumed that there are at least a few. And with that I’m correct.

      • Nougat@fedia.io
        0·
        8 months ago

        The assumptions that people make about age boggle my mind. You know that the people who made the internet are all “old” now, right?

        • throwaway@lemmy.cafeOPEnglish
          0·
          8 months ago

          Yeah, though most people severely underestimate, or overestimate the internets age.