To the admins of mastodon.social and mastodon.world:
I respectfully ask you to consider amending your Server Rules to prohibit the publication of pornography on your instances.
Flagship Mastodon instances such as mastodon.social and mastodon.world are easily perceived by many newcomers as central, general-purpose entry points into Mastodon and the wider Fediverse. That gives those flagship sites a particular responsibility.
Flagship general-purpose instances should not normalize unexpected exposure to pornography, regardless of orientation.
Pornography is commonly considered by many people to be harmful, offensive or inappropriate in general-purpose public spaces. People who want to view, publish or discuss pornography can already do so on other instances that allow it, or on dedicated adult-focused instances where users knowingly choose that environment.
Content warnings, sensitive-media blurring and hashtags are not sufficient containment for pornography on large general-purpose instances. In practice, many users who publish pornography do not reliably apply content warnings, sensitive-media settings or suitable hashtags, and other users who do not want to be exposed to that content can still encounter it unexpectedly.
There is also a legal and regulatory issue. In Germany and the UK, for instance, legal adult pornography is not simply prohibited online, but making pornography publicly accessible to minors without effective age-gating or age assurance is heavily restricted and may be unlawful or legally non-compliant. Large public social-media instances should not rely on ordinary Mastodon content warnings or media blurring as if they were equivalent to age verification.
For those reasons, I ask you to consider changing the server rules to prohibit pornography on mastodon.social and mastodon.world, rather than merely requiring it to be marked as sensitive.
This would not be anti-sex, anti-LGBT, anti-expression or anti-Fediverse. It would simply recognize that large general-purpose onboarding instances have a different role from adult-focused communities. A general-purpose flagship instance should be safe and predictable for ordinary users, including people who do not consent to unexpected exposure to pornography.
@staff@mastodon.social@ruud@mastodon.world@jeroen@mastodon.world
@bannanaente.mastodon.world
@paul@mastodon.world@solarbranka@mastodon.world
@mwadmin@mastodon.world
@sokian@mastodon.world@Rooki@mastodon.world@SigurdVie@mastodon.world@Gargron@mastodon.social#mastodon #fediverse #pornography #moderation
