I recently banned a girl avatar from Undercity for abuse reporting another kid.
The girl abuse reported a boy named Zakari right after he said he’s 16 years old in RL.
Now you might say: “The Terms Of Service are on her side, she did right.”
Here are my reasons why I feel bad about people abuse reporting a seemingly underage resident that quickly:
1. We have no means to verify the real age of a resident. To do so, we would have to meet them in person or check their real life ID, which we are not obliged to do. A resident stating to be underage could have lied, could have been drunk, could have made fun. Heck, it could be a typo. A chat window is not RL identification.
2. I abhor discrimination based on age. Psychologists and psychotherapists all over the world plead for a society where adults and teenagers, kids and old people mix up. Seperation based on age creates social stupidity, ignorance and mental illness. Where generations learn from each other, social intelligence rises. This is the state of science today.
I am happy to live in a place where it is perfectly normal for teenagers to hang out in dance clubs after midnight with adults, to participate in eduactional projects with adults and to voluntarely work in the care of old people.
3. The girl who abuse reported Zakari told me her reason: “I am not putting up with RL kids.”
So, someone who likes to play a kid in a virtual world feels unable to put up with someone who might be a RL teenager (16 years old) in this virtual world? To me that’s hypocrisy.
An abuse report is a measure not to be taken lightly. Residents banned from SL lose their land, their Linden Dollars, their creative work and probably their friends.
I will abuse report kids for griefing, and for running around naked or violating the rules of my land or community. I will not abuse report residents solely based on them saying they’re less than 18 years old, as long as I can not prove this to be true. I will take appropriate steps when finding out they are underage indeed, for example if I know them in RL or after I saw their ID. Since this is highly unlikely I think that age verifaction is something Linden Lab should do, not me or any other resident.
On my land I will ban residents who are known to be AR trigger happy.
Kids Are United
Love you all,
Rai
Rai Fargis 