Hello, My group follows TOS and community guidelines to the T. We have combed over both TOS and community guidelines many times, but primarily we go off of a post made by Strasz (VRChat senior community manager). In regard to private 18+ AV instances. As shown here.
“Private” Instances & Malicious Reporting
We see a lot of anxiety regarding malicious reporting in private spaces. The reality is that it is necessary for Group owners, Group members, event runners, and event attendees to exercise additional caution when it comes to ensuring that the content that they employ is used in the right place, and at the right time.
In our Community Guidelines, we state an important rule: provocative behavior restrictions may not apply in Private instances, as long as everyone present consents.
It is the responsibility of the “present authority” to ensure that everyone in the instance has provided consent. The “present authority” is the instance creator, event runners, group or venue moderators, a party host, a game master, or whatever is appropriate – it’s just whoever is “in charge” of your private instance.
For example, if you ran a group or event that had this in its rules:
“If you join this group/this event, you may or may not encounter provocative activities or content, and if you join this group/event, you indicate consent to view these activities or content.”
(The phrasing and semantics are important!)
This would serve the purpose of gathering consent. In those cases, you should also run that instance or event as an 18+ Verified Group instance. As always, use your own best judgment – it is your responsibility to ensure that attendees know what they are walking into, and you should employ every tool available to let them know, and fulfill that responsibility.
*We recognize that this method is brittle at best – however, it serves the purpose to help protect you from “malicious reporting,” while impressing upon you the importance of your responsibility as someone who might run a private instance or event. Thanks to various safeguards and procedures, the risk of malicious reporting is already quite low. We plan to iterate on our systems and policies over time to further reduce this risk.
Despite this, one of our mods has been suspended for what we can only assume is posting about one of our events to our private group. The group and the instance are always private and VRC AV 18+.
The group info does include the phrasing provided by Strasz to serve the purpose of gathering consent, and all group instances are operated as Group Only Instances with 18+ VRC age verification.
I feel it’s necessary that this very important info posted by Strasz be evaluated for clarity. I’d also like to note that in this particular situation, the account sanction sent to users needs more details, so that users have a full understanding of what the problem is, It seems purposely vague, resulting in users accidentally reoffending. I think that assuming the person always knows what they have done wrong is irresponsible.
If we have been misled by Straszes’ post, then please let it be known. If it is legitimate, then please add it to the rules.
Staff, Thank you for your time, and feel free to contact me for more info if needed.