Welcome to Lemmy.

I explicitly denied that several times, as you can see.

word.

At this point Ada apparently had some communication with @gavi@lemmynsfw.com on Matrix, to which I was not privy. He told me, and I said that I had responded to Ada via Lemmy message. He had to step away, so I took over correspondence with Ada via Matrix.

YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME

If gonewild wants to restrict OF posts, that's fine. Then it becomes a violation of community rules. That's really a debate for the mods and posters in gonewild. The mere fact that someone has an OF is not grounds for reporting.

FAQ and clarifications

Q. Does rule 1 mean that we can’t talk about our personal experiences from when we were minors?

A. No, members of the instance can discuss their personal experiences with sex before the age of 18 as long as it is relevant, factual, and not graphic. “I lost my virginity in the back of a Volkswagen beetle when I was 15” is fine. A post that is a blow-by-blow detailed account of underage sex or a post specifically soliciting stories about underage sex would not be fine.

Q. What does “sourcing” mean? Why should we have to do that?

A. Sourcing is identifying the source of the content that you’re posting. Our primary concern is being able to tell if material is underage, or not made with the consent of the model. Sourcing helps alleviate that concern.

It can be as simple as naming the mainstream artist or studio that produced the image, or the well-known performer in the image (“Evil Angel” or “Sasha Grey” or “Boris Vallejo”). If the content is not a mainstream studio or well-known pornstar, a link to the creator’s OF or modeling agency page or pornhub profile or verified reddit profile can work as well. The source must indicate, at very least, that the creators/models of what you’re sharing are ok with being in porn on the internet.

You don’t have to source your posts, but sourcing will help your posts survive a report if someone erroneously reports your material. We don’t have the resources to do a full investigation on every report of inappropriate content, so without a source, mods will tend to err on the side of caution.

For OC posts in c/gonewild and similar communities, mods of that forum must comply with our verification requirements. For OC, verification counts as sourcing which means it is not strictly necessary but strongly encouraged. We plan to implement a sitewide verification procedure soon, but until we do it’s down to each community’s mods.

Q. How does verification work?

A. There are a couple of different ways to get verified, but the most important thing to remember is that no moderator or admin will ever ask you to show them your government ID. If someone does ask you to provide them your government ID, please contact an admin immediately.

We are actively investigating hiring a secure third-party age verification site like agechecker.net to provide verification for us. Until that comes into effect, we accept the existence of an Onlyfans, Fansly, Chaturbate, Streamate, or Pornhub account, or appearance in a 2257-compliant adult film as verification. If you and an admin can come up with another way of verification that does not involve sending your government ID to them, we will also accept that pending approval by a second admin.

Q. What’s your policy on drug-related content?

A. Because of the wide variability in the laws worldwide regarding mind-altering substances, linking to any site which distributes (for sale or otherwise) mind-altering substances or paraphernalia, regardless of legality where you are or where the site is located, is prohibited. This includes but is not limited to any cannabis or cannabis-analogues, any prescription meds, any alcohol, and any tobacco. Discussion of these substances is allowed; links to commerce or distribution are not.

Q. How do I know what counts as NSFW and what doesn’t?

A. When in doubt, flag it as NSFW. If it’s not something that could be pinned on a bulletin board in a professional office without drawing an HR complaint, it’s NSFW. Something doesn’t have to be nude to be NSFW. Feet pics are always NSFW.

Q. I am an NSFW content creator. Can I promote my OnlyFans, Fansly, Pornhub etc?

A. lemmynsfw.com supports sex workers and creators and we want you to feel like you belong here. We do not have an instance-wide rule against self-promotion, but be aware that individual communities may prohibit self-promotion and you must respect those rules. Please do not spam our instance and please do not spam messages to users, but feel free to create a comm for yourself if you like and participate in other comms that are friendly to your content. Solicitation of sexual services is strictly forbidden. (Fuck SESTA/FOSTA.)

Q. For drawings or animation, including manga and hentai, how can I tell if something counts as forbidden content or not? I can’t tell!

A. Trying to make hard and fast rules about this stuff is always tricky because people will keep trying to find ways around the rules and the human imagination is infinite, so we are going with a subjective standard: If a mod or admin looks at an image and thinks “that is forbidden content”, it’s forbidden content. We’ll know it when we see it. (And you know it when you see it too, quit lying. If you’re into forbidden content there are other instances where that material is welcome. Bring it there. We don’t want it here.)

Q. Does the prohibition on bestiality/zoophilia apply to fantasy animals, like Pokemon or magical winged ponies?

A. Yes. We may relax this rule in the future like the some of the content we are temporarily restricting, but that is not a sure thing yet.

Q. Why are you so strict? Reddit wasn’t this strict!

A. We’re not reddit and we’re not trying to be reddit. We have decided to prioritize safety and consent, which means prohibiting some content that Reddit may have allowed.

Q. Oh yeah? Well I’m gonna start my own instance! With blackjack! And hookers!

A. Godspeed, you beautiful maniac.

Admin/Moderator decisions are final and arguing with them can result in suspension or banning of your account and purging of your content.

Revised Rules for Sidebar

Rules

Before you start participating, please take a moment to familiarize yourself with our rules:

• 🔞 Age Requirement: All users and lurkers MUST be age 18 or over.

  • Posting content involving any person who is under 18 is strictly forbidden. This includes real, drawn, and fictional content.
  • All loli/shota/cub or similar content is strictly forbidden.

• Respect and Consent: Treat all members with respect and obtain consent when sharing explicit content involving others. No doxxing. No soliciting or sharing personal info. No homophobia, transphobia, body shaming, or kinkshaming. Don’t be an asshole.

• No NSFL/Gore/Snuff Content: We strictly forbid the sharing or promotion of NSFL (Not Safe For Life) or gore content. This includes fictional snuff scenarios.

• No Bestiality/Zoophilia: We strictly forbid any NSFW content involving animals.

• No Non-Consensual Content: We strictly forbid content made or released without consent of everyone in the content, including revenge porn / deepfakes / leaked content / NC / true voyeur / rape content.

• No Illegal Content: - We strictly forbid promotion and detailed discussion of things that are broadly illegal in most of the world, like murder, animal cruelty, money laundering, and so on. Our policy on mind-altering substances is more complicated – see the FAQ (link to FAQ pending).

  • Solicitation of sexual services (either way, asking or offering) is strictly forbidden.

• NSFW Flag: All NSFW communities and posts must be flagged as NSFW.

• No Rules Lawyering: Admin/Moderator decisions are final and arguing with them can result in suspension or banning of your account and purging of your content.

If any material is ambiguous or borderline forbidden content, we’re usually going to err on the side of caution. Please use your common sense.

All users and communities must follow and respect these general instance-wide rules. Any violations could result in suspension or banning of your account or community and purging of your content.

Community Guidelines

• Stay Relevant: Share relevant content in the relevant communities and ensure your content complies with the rules of those communities.
• Self-Promotion: Self-Promotion is only okay as long as the community you are posting in allows it, and you don’t spam it.
• Content Sourcing - We would strongly prefer all content be credited and sourced if possible, to make it easier to keep CSAM and noncon off of the instance. See the FAQ for more info. (link to FAQ pending).
• Furry Content - Furry content is allowed (unless it conflicts with any other rules) but furries may be better served at https://pawb.social/ or https://yiffit.net/.

Temporary Rules

Because of technical limitations of the Lemmy platform, we are forced to implement some restrictions on content. These are restrictions that don’t necessarily fit with our larger philosophy. We hope to revise this section once Lemmy evolves as a platform and moderation tools improve.

• NSFW User Avatar: NSFW user avatars are prohibited as it is currently not possible to mark users as NSFW.
• Temporary Content Restrictions: The following content is temporarily restricted: Hot lunch (🤮), blood, scat, CNC.

If you are the admin of another instance and you have any issues with Lemmy NSFW please raise it with one of our admins so we can communicate on how we can improve this instance. We would prefer to work with you before either of us consider defederation.

... and then the rest of the stuff currently on the sidebar: Contact info and the Donations info

When I say section 230 it's actually shorthand for a much bigger tangle of rules: the CDA, the DMCA, SESTA/FOSTA, 18 USC 2258A and sometimes even 2257 regulatory compliance, and I'm probably missing a bunch.

Basically, if somebody posts illegal material on your site, be it copyrighted material, underage stuff, defamation, true threats, pro-terrorism stuff, advertisement of sexual services, revenge porn, snuff, etc you are not on the hook for that stuff in either civil or criminal courts as long as you jump through some very specific hoops both ahead of time and after if and when you become aware or should have become aware of such material (except the sexual services thing, which is a specific carve out due to sesta and fosta. Plus what qualifies for advertisement of sexual services can be a tricky issue.)

These hoops are very specific, and your jump through them can be triggered in a number of different ways, and both the hoops and the triggers can be moving targets depending on recent interpretations of the rules, court precedent, etc. Some people think that this is not real because a lot of places are able to skate under the radar for a long time which breeds a false sense of complacency, but as soon as the feds come a-knocking you better have all your papers in order or they drop the hammer on you. This can include both massive civil and criminal liabilities depending on the specific nature of the content and where it comes from.

And this isn't even including any of the credit card compliance stuff, which means if you want to take donations or payments to your platform using any service that takes credit cards there are extremely onerous burdens of record-keeping and content management you need to follow well over and above anything the government requires.

Your "producing, looking for, or storing" conditions are not correct. Producing, obviously, yes, on a number of different levels. Looking for, actually no, you're allowed to look for all you want. It's if you find it that you're in trouble, but the looking itself is fine. I mean it'll be exhibit 2 in the criminal case against you because it proves intent, but if you look but don't find you're actually ok in most cases. "Storing" is very complicated. Did you know that you're storing it? If you did, did you report it? If you did, how are you storing it, who has access to it, when did you report it, who did you report it to, and what format was your report? If you didn't know, should you have known? Did someone report it to you? Etc etc etc.

TL;DR: GET A GOOD LAWYER AND DO WHAT THEY SAY.

Re: your afghan example, the short answer is yes, because the US government has jurisdiction over you as a US person. Even if you're hosting the material in Afghanistan, if you have direct control over it then it is your material. Now from a practical point of view, getting an Afghan ISP to cooperate with an FBI subpoena may be a pretty tall order, but always remember that the feds have effectively unlimited resources and unlimited time to crush you like a bug if they want to.

Sure, but that disincentivises people from posting and participating in the community, because forcing people to have two profiles is a significant barrier. Easier and better to just implement not caching images flagged nsfw in the codebase

Well, there's a discussion on the lemmy github that sort of touches on this issue, because right now instances cache federated content. So let's say somebody posts a bunch of illegal content here, and before it gets nuked by mods it gets federated to beehaw, which caches the material. Now beehaw is technically hosting illegal material, and they may not even realize it.

There are three or four other instances that allow nsfw content, but it's forbidden for most instances because NSFW content is a massive pain in the ass to moderate. Depending what country you're in you probably have a lot of regulations you need to follow, including in the US where you need to comply with safe harbor regulations so you don't get in trouble when some asshole uploads a bunch of underage stuff to your server.

Even outside the legal stuff, you're going to have to deal with a lot of weirdos and negotiate and regulate other people's sexual fetishes to a significant degree. Most people just don't want to deal with that, and I can't blame them.