Roleplay/Partyfinder Discrepancies & Policy Enforcement by GM's

[NessaWyvern]

You are making a special and magical exception for FFXIV that you don't make for other sites; you don't go around to other places and tell people not to send private messages to anybody if they contain inappropriate content because maybe that person isn't of age. There comes a certain point where a human being has done all they can to reasonably verify who they are talking to (and most people who actually ERP talk with any potential roleplay partners beforehand to assess everything from the age of their partner to what they are or aren't comfortable with to anything in between, because despite the impressions most people have, actual roleplayers overall take this issue very seriously) and there is nothing more that they can reasonably do.

If you believe that isn't good enough, then I would expect you to hold the same candle to everywhere online that you're trying to hold to XIV right now. Which doesn't even address the fact that this entire topic, spurred on by bad-faith actors trying to imply that roleplayers are degenerates who secretly predate on specific individuals and don't remotely try to police their own communities, is not even remotely related to the actual problem of a GM blanket-smashing roleplay adverts regardless of their content.

/edit : I also don't want to hear "By advertising an 18+ venue in PF you're FORCING a poor child to look at it" because most of those venues (with only maybe one exception I've ever seen) simply state "18+". By this logic I'm sure you also all deeply panic when some 15 year old in a store notices a movie or a game with the 18 label on it, right? Oh me oh my, the forced exposure to the number "18+" and the inference that mature things might happen. Won't anybody think of the children.

You don't think I make these comments elsewhere?
I'm not making a special or magical exception for FFXIV. When companies don't want to face lawsuits for sexually explicit material sent to minors by other users, they are free to punish their players and put restrictions as they see fit. Facebook gets backlash because they don't to it enough, but they still do it. Same with Youtube. Squeenix is no exception. Even some discord chats get shut down when explicit material is found on them, like what happens with the wallstreetbets discord, since there were too many people for the moderators to moderate that stuff off of there.

I honestly think that Youtube, Discord, WoW, Facebook, etc should not have sexual material on them, as they are accessed by children. In the FF14 Rules and Policies page, those under the age of 13 are not allowed to play, but that means that 13+ people *can* play, which means sexually explicit material should not be in this game. Especially if it's from other players.

And you can't just "talk to someone to access their age". Some people may write beyond their years, use voice changers, some may be minors that already know about things that are talked about in ERP, due to grooming from adults, or previous ERP sessions and webstites they should not have been in. To ask for info that gives a more accurate assessment of age, such as pictures and identification can be problematic as well (not to mention, they can be edited), as it can result in a person being doxed.