I want to talk about NSFW now i’m not going to ask for the rules to be changed None of that haha funny business rather i want to talk about what i and many others could do to keep the platform safer Cause lets not beat around the bush There is a massive NSFW community within VRchat
I have some ideas For world and asset creators as well as the dev team
Account User Age System
(13+ for Minors and 18+ for adults)
for NSFW asset creators charge for your assets less likely for children to get the Assets if you charge for them on gumroad or booth
These are the only things i have thought of at the time of writing this but this would be a good start but i will go over the possible cons
For the account user age system this could help Malicious people so it may not be a good idea but one way around this is in the new SDK we could have an option to say if our worlds are for 13+ or for 18+ or both i feel like this would be a massive step for adult and child protections also make it so that this feature is required for existing and new accounts
Honestly im not afraid to talk about this this is the right place for this stuff and would appreciate it if the team could give there input on this as i feel this is a serious situation in vrchat after all its not 2016 anymore everyone is more connected and children in todays age have easier access to a VR headset thanks to the Quest 2
I know that there are options for selecting explicit features for your avatars when you publish them but I’m not sure if these are actually used anywhere. For example, if worlds can allow/disallow Avatars that have those tags enabled.
Of course, that means it will be up to the creators to voluntarily mark their assets with those tags but I think most creators are the kind of folks who would do it.
So, not sure if - more to your point - there were an age verification system in place, that perhaps avatars marked as having NSFW characteristics could be filtered for underaged accounts.
I know back in the day, age verification was often performed by requiring a valid credit card to be registered to your account. It isn’t ever charged, it’s just used as a means to filter out underaged users. Now of course that doesn’t mean that underage users couldn’t go grab mom and dads credit card, but it’s a step forward and would give a means of justification for locking/banning accounts that have been found to have circumvented the age verification.
I dunno. I like the idea of age verification, I’m just not sure how you’d do it. And I imagine there would be no small amount of work API-wise and on the VRC backend to check and enforce it.
You should take a look at the feedback site when you have a chance, that is where most discussions are occurring.
Personally I took a look at an NSFW world the other day and it’s private, and the instance was invite+. So only way for younger people to get in would be off of someone else.
Note: DPS is sold on gumroad
The main issue with any age gate is how do you make it actually function. I was totally born in 1920 if you’re asking if I’m old enough to look at porn…
Interesting ideas op however even if VRC implemented an age verification system, as another person replied, it could be easily bypassed.
A dishonest minor could lie about their age and use a card stolen or borrowed from parents or older siblings, and pretend they’re an adult, as well buy nsfw avatars from anywhere and upload them easily.
The onus is on them and liability on whomever opened the gate for them.
By default the free avatars and worlds will be SFW, since NSFW content is not allowed in public worlds.
The venues who run private NSFW events normally have strict adult verification requiring a photo id and 3rd party (e.g. discord age confirmation) on top of that.
On a darker note, if it were split 13+ and 18+ the pedos would get a fast track to interact directly with underage kids for abuse and grooming.
This is one reason why Linden Labs eliminated their teen/adult realms and initiated adults only worlds, though of course it doesn’t stop a savvy child with no supervision or moral compass to bypass. Nor can we prevent 7 year olds from donning a VR headset and login pretending to be 14. It is what it is.
I’m sorry if that’s a bleak view, but it is a long-standing reality of many online game lobbies, social networks, and other virtual platforms.
like fact they said they banned anyone from using nsfw and im 100% sure they also use nsfw avatar to! if they want keep people from using nsfw they would need remove upload but that would killed off almost whole community, and for me i just move over neosvr!