Fedi fucking sucks (as a minor)

This post is difficult for me to write, because it's addressed to the void since I don't think anything here can be ""fixed"". Keep in mind this is my personal experience, don't let me ruin your fun.

Here's my central point: Fedi is an overwhelmingly adult space rather than having an equal split. There is this poll with 35k voters including me by jsstaedtler which shows that Fedi is overwhelmingly inhabited by adults, that's the best data I can get for you without scraping.

18+ accounts interact with me (even if I don't want them to) #

I'm going to crack this egg because I think it's more major.
I'm a doggirl and I like being one because that makes me happy, I'm going to save you the essay about this.
Whenever I post about doggirl stuff and it takes off a little on the network,

Happens with non-doggirl posts.

I've noticed that my doggirl posts that do well usually get adopted into (pet play) NSFW circles, which I don't inherently mind (glad you're enjoying the post).

I don't really want afterdark accs interacting with my stuff, because it's an unequal relationship. They see and interact with my posts but I'm supposed to pretend they don't exist? How fucked up is that?
That's ignoring that I'm underage.

I used to have a post where I wrote my feelings about this down with nuance, but nobody reads that.
So I put down that I'm a minor in my bio, nobody reads that either.

Now I have this very sternly written message at the top and some people still don't read this.

My friend probably puts it best,

tfw at this rate you'll have to prefix [nsfw dni] to your name and that sucks

I can't interact with non-NSFW posts on 18+ accounts #

Say I see a funny post on my feed.

If you're an adult, you simply go "haha" and like it.
If you're a minor, you are expected to check every single profile if they want you around or not.
You skim over the profile for terms like 18+ or 🔞 , you don't see it so you share it.

And your skimming is punished with someone not using the terms you expect

Second example, here's eclairwolfs profile (no harm to you, you're lovely)

Did you spot it? You did because you probably have your undivided focus on this, I can tell you I don't when I'm browsing federated feed.

And funny story, I actually didn't spot no minors, I spotted it all the way down here in the fields first.

So I suck up to my mistake, remove my interactions on their posts and DM them that it was my bad.

(thanks for being so kind, by the way)

Anyway, you go on with your day.
But this entire ordeal, everything here repeats ad nauseam. Over and over and over.

There's no standard way to tell if someone is 18+ #

Some profiles contain NSFW content and that is fine, but there's no singular way for me to opt out of seeing that. Profiles can't mark themselves as sensitive, admins at most can force accounts to require a warning to open but that's a instance moderation tool.

Why don't you use filters? #

I already do, Mastodon doesn't filter the keywords in the bio and fields of profiles for whatever reason.

Even if it worked, it wouldn't be useful here because eighteens is not on my filter. Do I block eighteens, eighteen? I might block legitimate profiles with this because eighteen is a normal word.

Even then, filters are terrible for this because you enter the Scunthorpe problem.
Say I block the word "minors" for profiles (in order to block no minors), now I blocked someone because they wrote in their profile they're a minor. Or because they think people who use MDNI (minors do not interact) are weird.

Every phrase I block is a tightrope between blocking things I might otherwise want to see, because this is the only user mechanism for me to deal with NSFW content.

Different types of 18+ #

Going back to Claire for a moment, if you're a attentive reader, you might have spotted something here.
They don't seem to mind that people interact with the SFW stuff, and that's actually something I've noticed on Fedi a lot, there are users who simply don't want minors to interact with their NSFW content but end up restricting their entire account.

This for example why a profile filter also wouldn't work, users use 🔞 to indicate that some content is NSFW, even if their entire profile isn't.

Nuance: There's no arbiter of NSFW #

Here's why I think this can't ever be fixed, what is NSFW or not depends from person to person.

Closely related example, I spoke about being a doggirl with a Discord chat of mine.
TLDR; It makes me happy, it makes my friends happy, everyone is having fun.
A person in there jumped to petplay, similar to what I mention above.

I don't have a grudge against this, it's a misunderstanding, but here something that was (to me) not NSFW got subtext immediately with a NSFW topic.

There is no algorithm to decide if something is NSFW, there's no ruleset you can adopt, there's no standard you can develop.
Expression is too diverse to dictate something like that. Trying to stamp out NSFW content is a fruitless endeavor, if you need examples, look at Tumblr.

THIS IS NOT NORMAL #

I'll say it straight, this is not normal. There has never been social media where I felt this afraid of interacting with people, where I have to guess at times if my vis-à-vis wants to talk to me or not because their profile contains something other than what they actually feel.

I think for some people this is a brainworm imported from NSFW Twitter, where it's not possible to do mixed content accounts.

Guess what? On Fedi, we have this magical tool called content warnings that prevent showing posts to people who might not want to see it. If you tag your stuff with content warnings, I can actually filter it properly and someone must consent into seeing it.

At that point, you bear no responsibility for minors on your NSFW content and you have my full permission to scold them.

But despite this mechanism existing, a lot of accounts simply don't use it and restrict me and others from ever being able to interact with them. And that's sad.

Some arguments against this #

Minors shouldn't be on the internet anyway #

Taking this argument in good faith and full seriousness, it's impossible to live in the modern day without having exposure to the internet. The internet (in)directly has become a vehicle for people to live out human rights such as the access to information or freedom of assembly, you'll need to make the argument that people who are not 18 should not be entitled to those if it's over the web.

But ignoring that, this argument is silly. Do you actually think people who turn 18 automagically will know how to use the internet? They won't, you will create a generation of outcasts who will struggle with the technology and need to catch up with the rest.

Why don't you just stop using Fedi? #

I might.

Why are you so sensitive against people doing NSFW? #

I'm not, I don't care what you do as long as it's consensual and you're enjoying yourself. But the interactions above are partially not consensual and I'm not enjoying myself.

Why don't you go to those safe, corporate social media platforms then? #

https://glub.slipfox.xyz/notes/9mwytozpr8wgd2dk
Also, go fuck yourself.

Minors are immature, that's why I don't want them around #

If you read this far, you clearly don't think I'm so immature that you can't stand me. But age doesn't matter up to a point for maturity, I've seen some really behaved and mature minors and some literal manchildren.

Can I help? #

Sure, do you have adults only account? If you do, do you actually post primarily NSFW content, to the point where you need to lock off your entire account?

If not, please write into your bio something like Minors DNI with my NSFW posts, always behind CW. This way, I know that you both orbit around NSFW people, you use CWs and you don't mind me interacting with your account for non-NSFW things.

Oh and please don't take it for granted that your account can interact with something. Thanks.

Conclusion #

In conclusion, my experience on Fedi is where I'm distrustful of every account I see because I don't know if I'm allowed to interact with them because I haven't hit the magic number.

And when I try to carve myself my own space around that, those same accounts come into my space where I explicitly say they shouldn't be in, which means I can't even be myself on my own to the greater network.

There's no fix because the problem is a structural / culture one that only really exists for a small subset of users.

This is bad and I don't feel very welcome here.