Post

Stroznia wrote:

We need to remember and respect that nationstates.net has a very strict PG-13 content policy, for legal reasons, and nations that link to NSFW content are liable to be banned from the *site* - we don’t want that happening to member nations. I don’t know if their content policy technically extends to what’s said in Discord, but a strong argument can be made that it’s worth playing it safe anyway.

Even discord requires that you put any nsfw content into special age-gated channels. I’m not sure if those are reliable or more of a v-chip situation.

https://discord.com/safety/360043653552-Adult-content-on-Discord

The underlying rationale in both cases is that the platform could get sued for distributing the material, if they don’t take it down or age-gate it first. It’s not really an ideological standpoint so much as a necessity based on the irl laws.

What applies on NationStates according to their terms of agreement obviously does not extend to Discord channels. But since, as you correctly pointed out, Discord also requires users to flag NSFW channels, there cannot be any pornographic material in our community as a whole (unless a mod tags the region's channel as an NSFW one).

All that said, law isn't the rationale behind those rules, since porn isn't illegal (save for a few authoritarian regimes, plus the notable exception of South Korea which is nevertheless a "young" democracy): unless NationStates' servers are located in China or Saudi Arabia, they can host whatever depraved video they want, as long as it's legal (e.g. no paedophilia or bestiality). Age verification legislation has been an utter failure since lawmakers quickly realised it couldn't be enforced (e.g. UK), and even asking users for their age isn't mandatory in most civil countries (I believe that to be the case in the US, surely not in most European countries).

NSFW content is actually prohibited and frowned upon on most websites in order to respect children's rights, look professional (be it in the entertainment, information or tertiary sector) and create a "safe space": if NationStates were to allow porn, they'd soon get a reputation for being either a sketchy website or anyway something that children should stay away from. In the same vein, supermarkets generally don't sell porn magazines (in designated and indicated spaces) because many families bring their children with them, whilst a kiosk doesn't have anything to worry about: it's really just a matter of expediency.