The current system for moderation makes no sense at all for a chat intended for children, especially since there's no longer a minimum age allowed on the site (for God knows what reason).
Criticism #1: Clearing the ban list
I've heard that this happens in my short time back. For what reason should a ban list, consisting of mostly pedophiles, be cleared? All that's needed is there to be a way to submit a ban appeal. It legitimately makes no sense to clear a ban list when most people on that ban list were banned to protect children from abuse and exploitation. To put it in perspective, if this rule was around ~2-3 years ago, that would mean someone like V1RU5, a known pedophile at the time, would be unbanned once a month. I can't stress enough how this doesn't make any sense.
Criticism #2: Not allowing the kick/ban of obvious pedophiles without screenshotted evidence
This was actually what inspired me to make this post. The amount of evidence required to actually kick/ban someone is inefficient and insane.
If someone like this (friend list faces blurred to protect potential children involved) has a friend list consisting of what appears to be very little children, most of which aren't even teenagers, how can someone even claim that this isn't worth looking into? Like seriously, the profile pic alone is shady and his friend list just puts it over the top. But according to rules, he can't be banned or even kicked without textual evidence showing him being a pedophile, despite it being clear to anyone with common sense that this is a pedophile's account. That account specifically has been around since April 16, 2019.
And if we go deeper down this rabbit hole, we can find this. What we see here is an image of a child with the name "sissy." This account was made 4 days ago and already has 19 clearly underage girls in its friend list. I censored their faces to protect any real children who may be in the screenshot, but it's clear as day that this is just a pedophile pretending to be an underage girl to get in contact with other underage girls. And if I were to take an easy guess, the name "sissy" is intended to portray the pedophile behind the account's fetish. And while writing this post, I dug even further and found this. An account which coincidentally panned down the profile image to specifically only show cleavage. And not to my surprise in the slightest, nearly every single account on the friend list has a profile picture featuring an underage girl. You may say, "well yeah, it's a Kids Chat so everyone should be underage," but it doesn't take much to put together this puzzle: half naked girl of an unknown age with a cropped out face that has a friend list consisting of only underage girls specifically (one of which is literally named "gym fun").. I'll get to the point, it's a damn pedophile.
Conclusion:
This post isn't meant to target the mods of the chat. According to the rules, they literally can not kick or ban anyone without screenshotted evidence of grooming. Even if it's blatantly obvious where a person has an image of a half naked underage child, they can't do anything except maybe tell them to change their profile picture. A more common sense approach needs to be taken. The implementation of the friend list creates the issue where anyone can stay in touch with children at all times. They can see when a child was last online and can pose as a child to talk to them. This makes it insanely easy for a child to be groomed using the new chat sites compared to the old Flash chat where none of this info was available. Let the mods and admins kick and ban who they deem necessary, especially on a Kids chat. If a mod abuses this power, evidence will easily be available. Screenshots should be needed still to report someone who isn't obviously a pedo, but in the cases I've shown and described, it's obvious that these are pedo accounts but these rules make it so nothing can be done. If you're going to allow kids under the age of 13 to chat just by simply saying "i have my parents' consent," than mods should be granted more leniency to actually protect these children. The ban list should absolutely never be cleared. It should be by ban appeal only for obvious reasons.
Criticism #1: Clearing the ban list
I've heard that this happens in my short time back. For what reason should a ban list, consisting of mostly pedophiles, be cleared? All that's needed is there to be a way to submit a ban appeal. It legitimately makes no sense to clear a ban list when most people on that ban list were banned to protect children from abuse and exploitation. To put it in perspective, if this rule was around ~2-3 years ago, that would mean someone like V1RU5, a known pedophile at the time, would be unbanned once a month. I can't stress enough how this doesn't make any sense.
Criticism #2: Not allowing the kick/ban of obvious pedophiles without screenshotted evidence
This was actually what inspired me to make this post. The amount of evidence required to actually kick/ban someone is inefficient and insane.
If someone like this (friend list faces blurred to protect potential children involved) has a friend list consisting of what appears to be very little children, most of which aren't even teenagers, how can someone even claim that this isn't worth looking into? Like seriously, the profile pic alone is shady and his friend list just puts it over the top. But according to rules, he can't be banned or even kicked without textual evidence showing him being a pedophile, despite it being clear to anyone with common sense that this is a pedophile's account. That account specifically has been around since April 16, 2019.
And if we go deeper down this rabbit hole, we can find this. What we see here is an image of a child with the name "sissy." This account was made 4 days ago and already has 19 clearly underage girls in its friend list. I censored their faces to protect any real children who may be in the screenshot, but it's clear as day that this is just a pedophile pretending to be an underage girl to get in contact with other underage girls. And if I were to take an easy guess, the name "sissy" is intended to portray the pedophile behind the account's fetish. And while writing this post, I dug even further and found this. An account which coincidentally panned down the profile image to specifically only show cleavage. And not to my surprise in the slightest, nearly every single account on the friend list has a profile picture featuring an underage girl. You may say, "well yeah, it's a Kids Chat so everyone should be underage," but it doesn't take much to put together this puzzle: half naked girl of an unknown age with a cropped out face that has a friend list consisting of only underage girls specifically (one of which is literally named "gym fun").. I'll get to the point, it's a damn pedophile.
Conclusion:
This post isn't meant to target the mods of the chat. According to the rules, they literally can not kick or ban anyone without screenshotted evidence of grooming. Even if it's blatantly obvious where a person has an image of a half naked underage child, they can't do anything except maybe tell them to change their profile picture. A more common sense approach needs to be taken. The implementation of the friend list creates the issue where anyone can stay in touch with children at all times. They can see when a child was last online and can pose as a child to talk to them. This makes it insanely easy for a child to be groomed using the new chat sites compared to the old Flash chat where none of this info was available. Let the mods and admins kick and ban who they deem necessary, especially on a Kids chat. If a mod abuses this power, evidence will easily be available. Screenshots should be needed still to report someone who isn't obviously a pedo, but in the cases I've shown and described, it's obvious that these are pedo accounts but these rules make it so nothing can be done. If you're going to allow kids under the age of 13 to chat just by simply saying "i have my parents' consent," than mods should be granted more leniency to actually protect these children. The ban list should absolutely never be cleared. It should be by ban appeal only for obvious reasons.
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