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

So I understand the prioritizing safety for legal reasons. But I don’t get why you’re so concerned with staying federated with non-NSFW instances. Making a different account for NSFW content is very common, and other NSFW instances are unlikely to be very concerned about fringe (but legal) kink stuff and want to defederate.

If for example lemmy.world (or beehaw if they haven’t already) defed’d this instance, why do we care?

I'd like to add that we are specifically looking into improved community identification methods. One on the table is a "nsfw+" concept for topics that may not be "mainstream" but aren't "illegal" - scat, pee, hentai beast, etc. These we would rather not show "on the main feed" or maybe even not federate, but we're not opposed to hosting. It's just that we want to make the instance appealing to the regular person. For those who want their "extreme" content - as long as it's legal, I think we all agree we don't necessarily mind it.

I'm open to hearing the community on this. With that said, "loli/shota" content where the object of eroticism is specifically that "they are a prepubescent child" will never be allowed. Don't start with that.

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.

Temporary Content Restrictions: The following content is temporarily restricted: Hot lunch (🤮), blood, scat, CNC.

How does your team distinguish between CNC and hard/brutal BDSM?

Is hard/brutal BDSM allowed or not? (temporarily)

Are there any rules about copyright? Many porn studios do not endorse the distribution of their videos/photography off their official website (paywalled content).

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.

I assume "we plan to implement a sitewide verification procedure" doesn't mean it will be needed to use the instance, but just for any posting or mod work.

Couple questions:

1. There was back and forth of "aged up" r34 characters being banned. What is the final decision on this? Should we expect admins to strike down any content of cartoon, comic book, manga, anime, and video game characters that don't have a current canonical age matching the age they are currently being depicted as?

(Annoyingly, 99% of the content that comes out of Japan is about teens and has to be aged up. Even if they don't even look or act like highschoolers! Exhibit A: Jojo's Bizzare Adventure Part 3-5)

2. Is a slime considered a fantasy animal?

(I'm partially asking this because I think this rule/question is fucking hilarious, but also because it would basically nuke a fairly active community on here.)

Depending on how far the noncon rule applies, I foresee an issue with media sharing.

Very little media will have explicit consent to be shared in our communities, or even social media in general. If we interpret the sharing as part of what you consent to (as is the case with OC but not revenge porn), no found media can be allowed.

If we allow the commonly used fair/similar use principle (found media may typically be shared in the same type of setting it was found) - how do we differentiate between found porn and found revenge porn?

If we mod as a response to reports, as in: we allow it until someone reports this being wrongful content, the rules will be fine, but obscure or poorly modded communities risk becoming seedy and drag the whole instance reputation down.

But these thoughts can't be novel, has anyone checked if there's a well tested out best practice to keep mods, community and admin safe?

@MikeyMongol@lemmynsfw.com can you edit the post with links to the comments with the proposed rules?
Lots of scrolling for mobile users.
Thanks!

Really good stuff. But the FAQ doesn't mention how one would go about removing content. Whether it's the original author/artist or a victim of revenge porn.