I totally agree that since the corporate powers that be have changed the rules for who may join eons, they have two responsibilities now. Since they have allowed minors to join, they MUST put age restrictions on profile settings. I have dialed back my privacy settings and will not change them until the management has added the ability for me to restrict who sees my profile by age (i.e 49+). I have no desire to interact with 14 year olds here. Secondly, I wonder if eons has thought about the ramification of allowing minors here without the proper safeguards in place. The recent publicity of pedophiles contacting minor children via MySpace is a major liability. I believe that MySpace is having to invest massive amounts of time and money to identify and remove MySpace members who are registered sex offenders. I do not know that there are such members here; but, the owners of this site have the moral and legal responsibility to take all the necessary precautions for allowing minors to become members.
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Yes, Eons is prepared for that. They gave all group managers and moderators a delete button to click.
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Wow, that was something. ...hard act to follow! I think I'll have to move that comment into the dedicated age restriction thread.
This message is about implementing privacy settings to restrict people viewing member profiles to those 49+ -- and the same thing for groups.
I happen to have thought a great deal about this particular feature over the last couple of months. For a wealth of reasons that might be a tad too lengthy and complicated to explain here, I would alter this suggestion slightly.
it is ultimately worthless (self-defeating, in fact) to restrict the viewing of your profile, but it is relatively simple and effective to prevent under-49 members from interacting with you or your profile. An age restriction could be applied to private messages, gifts, friend requests and comments (on your "stuff").
The same is true for groups. A public group would remain visible to all, but any age restriction would prevent people less than the target age from interacting with the group.
This would effectively imitate the effect of ye olde gate, while making it optional. An interesting twist that I propose is the ability to choose the target age range. Why not? Eons has changed its target audience from 50+ to "boomer." It makes sense to allow people to define their own age cut-off, if they want one.
I've spent some time trying to envision how this would play out. The devil is always in the details. We'd definitely have to fix that issue where Private Message permissions are not reciprocal. For the most part, however, the details seem manageable.
As you might be able to tell, I like this idea and will continue to promote it within Eons.
TallBob - I have a question regarding this.
The Welcome Wagon sends a Welcome letter to all Newcomers - two different letters one for the Younger generation and gives them a few groups to check out, and one for the older generation.
We are seeing many, and I mean many people putting 100 or 99 as their age. So how would the Age Restrictions work if you can change your age to anything you want.
In fact there are some we use to know as 50+ that are now 13 & 14, so if you can at random change your age / birth date, how will this work?
Debirae...On myspace a lot of people set their age as 99 and they are as young as 14. I have friends on myspace who are in their 30's that set their age to 99. To some people over 21, their age is nobody's business (that is what they think). Some women in their 40's don't want to put their age if they look younger. That way they can attract younger men. It works both ways.
Myspace has had a lot of problems with pedophiles and they have had to pay big time. If Eons thinks it cannot happen here, they are in fantasyland. Are they prepared? Who knows, but if Perverted Justice hasn't set up shop here by now, I would be surprised.
How closely are Eons Management watching the under 17 profiles that are registering here?
Some people are always going to lie about their age, whether for innocent reasons or reasons that are far more sinister. Perhaps it might be a good idea to allow people to restrict their interaction with certain age groups PLUS setting up a forum to educate young people about this issue. You can put in all the safeguards you want, but in the end it is knowledge as to how to protect oneself from being a victim that will be the most effective. As Deb said, we have a welcome letter for younger new members, and it might be a good idea to include a link that points kids to a "safe harbor" to discuss online safety and how it relates to that age group.
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