CEO of RenMei (蓮メイ)

If you want minor-safe spaces, you need to be the one to create them. And that does not mean taking adult spaces and turning them into kid spaces. it means creating a new space for them that they actually want to use.

Even as an adult, I still love Webkinz World. We need stuff like this. However, Webkinz is for pretty young kids, so it's not very helpful for all minors. So, naturally, we need multiple spaces for different age groups, including the ones who are much too young to be online, and yet are anyway.

How do we do this?

For starters, we need to make the space. This requires a group of people who ACTUALLY care about the issue, and aren't using minors as an excuse to gain control over the flow of information and safety online.

2. You can make a website, game, app, etc fist and test it without needing capital, however, money helps, so if you have capital, you can get this made faster.

3. Gotta make sure if you are paying for development that whoever is building it is actually coding it themselves or everything will break with no way to fix it easily. No AI images either (not due to purity culture reasons, but because our kids need to grow up looking at things made by actual people.)

4. This is the biggest thing: forcing kids to stop using harmful places only creates "forbidden = more fun = I won't tell my parents things even if I need help because then they'll know I disobeyed them = child is using this while you don't know (probably on a device you don't know about) = your child ends up in groomer hell." You need to establish proper, open communication with them so that they don't think you're just a complete killjoy, and the ender of all fun. The easiest way to change a large group's behavior is:

Make it easier to use than the previous thing.

Make it more fun to use than the previous thing.

Make it more accessible than the previous thing.

If it costs anything, make your thing cheaper than the previous thing.

Make the design very human-friendly. If something breaks and they can't fix lot quickly, they'll go back to thew other thing... the thing that functions.

Make using your thing feel good, and make using the other thing feel bad.

5. After you've properly tested it out and found that it's ready for launch, advertise it as much as you can. Get it in front of everyone's eyes.

I remember when I was a kid and everyone around me online in the spaces I went was around my age. I think we were way healthier back then because kids were with kids rather than kids being so deeply mixed in with adults. So social media isn't inherently the problem, we just need to get them their own space.

And I'm just going to say this now: I think all kid's sites and apps should be required to show their whole code so we know they aren't illegally harvesting our kid's data. We also need apps and sites and games used by minors (everyone would be better, but it's easier to start here) to not have algorithms and infinite scroll. It would make what they look at way more intentional, less likely to end up with terrible and inflammatory garbage in front of their face, and having an end to a page ups the odds that they won't scroll infinitely.

"But if we can't keep them on that site, won't they go to the one that has infinite scroll instead?" not if we have lots of stuff to do there. Places to talk, places to play games, places to watch videos that aren't literal brain rot... God, I hate the word brain rot, but it's literally what it is. Oh!! Music would be cool, too.

And what if the videos were inspiring and taught them how to do cool stuff without having to pay to learn, and what if it was fun and engaging? I love that sort of thing. The site would have zero AI in it, and the ads could be affiliate links to things that have been thoroughly tested to make sure it's safe for all ages to view, like Sonic games, shows like Pokemon, and plush toys and such so that the kids could (with permission) buy things that are okay for them, and the site owners would get funding for the website that way.

The ads would be related to what is being searched by tag, not stalking you in particular. So if a post was about Yu-Gi-Oh, you'd get Yu-Gi-Oh related ads because of the tag, not because it's looking at what you search everywhere. Unlike Google, it wouldn't have it's claws sunk into you no matter where you go.

Anyway, I want to make this, but I'm also not in a place where I can right now. If you want to run off with my idea, just do it. We need to get kids off of Roblox. We need them off of TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. We don't need them on Tumblr.

We need them in a place that's actually safe and built with them in mind, and we need to stop trying to change other places to be kid friendly. it's like walking into a bar and demanding that everyone stop drinking and having strippers just because they want to bring their kid into the bar to have some food and water. It causes the place to be useless to the adults, and lame to the kids.

Minors don't like being served garbage. Just because they're young doesn't mean they should be given the worst quality of things. In fact, they're so important that we need to be allocating more energy into making things that are HIGHER quality for them. How we've been operating has been hurting everyone, and is just making everything in the world gross and boring. Now, instead of us being able to hang out in peace, we constantly are looking over our shoulder afraid that a minor will suddenly show up and shut down our whole operation. Social media--whether we like it or not--has become a home for a lot of people, and policies that change whole websites to suit a younger audience by default punish the people who lived here first, and also displace everyone else as well. It makes you not want to even try to plant your roots anywhere and try to make something because you keep expecting to lose your home in a few months.

Adults-only spaces are a nice idea, but we still have issues with the fact that in that moment, identification is required, and we are not in a situation where giving our ID is safe at all, so right now what we need to do is try to combine parental engagement with a whole new space that kids would prefer to be rather than these other places.

So, here's the 6th and final thing that comes to mind that we need to allocate funds towards:

6. Nobody will use this new place if it isn't active. We need to pay people to bring their art and videos and other products over to there and populate the place. it needs to become a fun place that people want to be, or nobody will go.

For real life, we need to create incentive to go to a place like that for kids, and making that safe would be rough, but it could be possible. It needs to be open to the public, or pople won't go because we can't afford to pay for some kind of day care for all minors. It needs to be free and fun to go to, and maybe their parents can have free wi-fi and cozy places to read and watch shows and movies or something and there could be a cafe? They could bring their laptops for work and know their kids are in a fun and enriching environment. Like a huge Mcdonalds play place, if you will. We'd need separate areas for different age groups or it will be a disaster, but I think this could be very good. The disappearance of third spaces has 100% contributed to this issue, and if third spaces existed, we might not even be having this discussion at all.

GET in line

who the fuck cares, stay by yourself if that is what you need. not everyone’s social battery recharges as quickly or while being with other people. some of us need to be alone for a longer time to fully recover from the multitude of constant inputs we receive from the world.

They insist that websites "don't have to" verify your age, but then they say, "if you don't when you have certain content on your site that kids may see, you will get a huge fine" which is going to cause most apps and sites to panic and do it anyway.

If you don't think it will affect you, that's where you're wrong.

They aren't just talking about sexual content. They are talking about gay themes in media (even if they are only holding hands and not even doing anything sexual). Discussions of drugs (not promotion of doing it, but discussions of people doing them and how to get help) discussions of self harm (how to get help) discussions about changes happening to your body (puberty, as well as health-related issues), cursing (as if kids haven't heard worse things at the back of the school bus.)

So, here are ways this hurts people in general, but let's focus on the fact that it hurts minors, the people these bills claim to protect:

If a kid has a friend who has started abusing drugs, they cannot reach out to anyone to ask questions to start the process of getting their friend help. Their friend could die because of this, or the one who wanted to help them could end up pressured into joining them.

2. A kid tries to look up how to get help for suicidal thoughts and how to get help stopping self harm and cannot get help and dies because these discussions are age gated.

3. A kid is being abused in anyway, including but not limited to sexually. They try to figure out what counts as that kind of abuse to try and get help, but because it has to do with minors being abused in that way, the search is considered illegal, as well as age gated so that they cannot receive any help.

4. A young girl has found a lump on her breast, and is having some scary symptoms, but she doesn't feel safe to talk to her parents because they're abusive. she turns to the internet to try and get help to learn what steps she needs to do next, but because the images that show what those symptoms look like are medical images that show images of breasts, she cannot learn more about her condition. Over time, the symptoms get worse. In America, we don't have free health care, and we are getting more and more impoverished. She doesn't get the help she needs, and eventually loses her breasts, or worse... it travels to the rest of her body, and she dies a slow and painful death.

This is not about helping minors. This isolates them and keeps them from being able to have online friends. Get basic information that could help them when they're in a scary situation.

What this is is a tool to gather information about people so that they are afraid to speak due to retaliation. This isolation is also good for both political parties--who both agreed that this bill is a good thing, by the way. Your political party is not "the good one" they are both your enemy--because they need us further isolated. If we cannot speak and cannot find ways to reach each other because the websites and apps eventually reach the point that to access them at all you have to prove your age, it will cause a greater divide in the people. Divided, we cannot rise up against fascism together. People have a difficult time meeting in public now to try and make friends, form alliances, or even share interests. There are no third spaces anymore. This has been in the works for a long time. This bill is the perfect tool to silence everyone.

We frogs are in a boiling pot of water right now. I know some of you are so sex averse that you want all of it banned, but because you wouldn't properly filter out that content and instead insisted everyone else curate the whole internet for your experience, you have vied for everything being illegal.

Your animes are going to be banned from viewing, and if you think fleeing this country will fix the issue, you're wrong. This will chase after you everywhere you go.

We have to fight this. this bill is called the KIDS Act. Please look into it.

Look up what is happening in the UK. I'm not overreacting. They have the most arrests over social media posts in the world now. If you don't think that could be you one day, you're a fool.

Please raise Caine about this. We need to stand together, or we will fall. The next thing that would be required to fix this is revolution, and you don't want to know what it's like to be in a post-revolution country. You have no idea what we will lose. You do not go from dystopia to utopia immediately. There is a very long transitionary period of the country being lawless with people rioting in the streets, people killing, stealing, and raping just because they can. You will be hungrier and thirstier and dirtier than you have ever been because the services you have come to know and love will disappear. The stores will be ransacked. Please, for the love of god, I know you hate what we currently have, but don't take this for granter. Don't be a fool. God, please.

If you feel uncomfortable with reblogging things from me due to disagreements you have with beliefs I hold, please just steal the post and copy-paste it as if it's you're own post. This information needs to be seen. It doesn't have to come from me. I don't care. Just please get this in front of as many eyes as possible.

This is not the time to be like "I won't share or even look at posts made by someone I disagree with" this is a life and death situation. We have it GOOD here. Do you understand? I know we have our struggles, but they are nothing in comparison to the other countries. Does the fact that you won't have electricity anymore if we end up having a revolution do anything for you? What about the fact that your dopamine-fulled activities will go away? what about the fact that you won't see new updates on the video games you love to play for years, or maybe even the rest of your life while the country rebuilds? We don't have to have a revolution. We just need to work on our foundation, and rebuild some rooms of the building instead of breaking the whole thing down just because one room is moldy.