Content warnings and age ratings

[Noah_S]

Melooon told us to post this in "the" thread instead of the chat, so I'm making a thread.

LIQUIDCULT made this page about age ratings and linked to it in the chat https://liquidcult.neocities.org/unrated/

In the chat I responded with

I'm too tired to read the whole thing now. But in general, specific content warnings are better because they give actual information. And it allows for pages to be different. I have one page that starts with a big text content warning (https://art-noah-s.eu/index.php/existing-online-while-disabled ), and the rest of my site doesn't warrant anything. It makes no sense to rate the whole site based on one page. And if you look at the content warning there, I'm specific about why it's there and I'm leaving it up to the visitor to decide if they want to continue or go to a different page. There are adults who would go to a different page based on it, so putting an age instead is no use

[IndigoGolem]

Here's my response too (edited). I do agree that this belongs in a thread.

(before reading the page) My site doesn't have much at this time to warrent content warnings at all, but i do think they're better than age ratings.

Content warnings let people make an informed decision on whether they want to see something, which i think is the best way to censor something.

Age ratings usually assume that certain ages are milestones of maturity, and everyone above an age can handle this and everyone below the age can't, and i don't think that's true. Plus they only work on the lawful. If a kid wants to see something that's marked as being for adults, that label won't stop them. If they want to see something but then see a content warning that actually is for something they don't want to see, that might stop them.

I guess it's about giving people the freedom to decide if they want to see something.

Controlling someone else's life and experiences is not good, letting people control their own life and experiences is.

[LIQUIDCULT]

I agree with both of your takes! Especially that on making a blanket statement on an entire site. Like are you going to cuss on every single page? Another thing is that the MPAA has actually gone after people online for using their rating system since it is copyrighted. We tend to overlook copyright altogether on the indieweb but its not a system that I think we should be mimicking or endorsing.

[Rubbereon]

Another thing is that the MPAA has actually gone after people online for using their rating system since it is copyrighted. We tend to overlook copyright altogether on the indieweb but its not a system that I think we should be mimicking or endorsing.

That's the first time I heard of it and they don't seem to enforce it all that well since there's the Censorship Panda made by a fellow furry. Maybe the fact they added "web" right above the rating makes it legally-distinct?


I use age ratings because kids shouldn't be following me around for a number of reasons like for example they aren't mature, it's impossible to talk to them, they're impressionable, I generally don't wanna interact with them and I make adult content and they're in no business seeing it. you could argue some will regardless because they ignore the warning, one left 2 comments on my guestbook recently despite the fact that I'm explicitly "Web 14" (it's VERY generous because the content of my website generally stays relatively safe compared to what I post in my furry art gallery), and I know they're no older than 12 because they called my glaggle gallery "veritys" (if you don't know, it's a minecraft horror arg of some kind I dunno) and whined in the second comment that I linked my collection with "glaggle.html" in the url (it used to be "colorfun.html" based on a funny Swedish dude from the green shroom streaming community, but I changed it because it felt more 'rare' and thematic), but at least I can just say that I tried to protect them from indecent content if I get accused of something bad by a mob because I ultimately cannot control how anybody else behaves.

I can't even have a content warning like Noah suggested because there's nothing particularly bad other than the fact there is one page that is about something that is intended for an adult audience so there is a clear warning before you can read anything (this is the only time in my entire website that any content warnings are used) and also I regularly tackle adult themes on my blog, probably the only place really where I can add content warnings to multiple pages, I don't think I can add them on the index of my website, so I believe a fairly generous age restriction is hurting nobody.

[LIQUIDCULT]

That's the first time I heard of it and they don't seem to enforce it all that well since there's the Censorship Panda made by a fellow furry. Maybe the fact they added "web" right above the rating makes it legally-distinct?

https://petapixel.com/2025/11/05/motion-picture-association-issues-cease-and-desist-to-meta-stop-using-pg-13/

This was kind of a high profile incident. Among some others.