The Reason
In response to the UK's Online Safety Act 2023, I have made some small changes to the Terms and Conditions for the site. You know, that page that none of you have even read anyway 😁
The update clarifies what has always been a long standing understanding within the Terms anyway and that is that public content must be suitable for kids. It's been that way on the site since 1999 and we've had some pretty strong disagreements with users over the years about 'Freedom of Speech'. Freedom of speech doesn't give you the right to force your way into someone's living room and spout hatred.
Nevertheless, specifically the following part of the terms have been updated under Contributor Responsibilities.
By making Content available, you agree that:
- any public Content is not obscene, libelous or defamatory, hateful or racially or ethnically objectionable, and does not violate the privacy or publicity rights of any third party. Additionally, public Content must not encourage, promote or provide instructions for;
- self-harm
- suicide
- eating disorders
- bullying
- serious violence or injury
- dangerous stunts and/or challenges
- the ingestion, inhalation or exposure to harmful substances
Discussion of recovery from any of these issues is permissable provided it does not encourage, promote or provide instructions for these issues.
- the above clause applies to diaries or comments or any other interaction with the public on the site. DearDiary.Net reserves the right to remove any public content that it deems does not adhere to the above clause.
- For the avoidance of doubt, content available to Followers Only is still considered public content and is subject to the conditions above.
Statement of DearDiary.net's Children's Risk Assessment
The content that is provided on DearDiary.Net is of course almost exclusively user generated. And since 1999 we have had terms and conditions in place to prevent harmful content being shown to children by ensuring the terms allow removal of public content that is harmful to children. Our users, in the main, point such content out to us extremely quickly and we remove it.
The content on DearDiary.Net is written in nature, though does allow the embedding of images and videos in diary entries (but not comments). It is therefore extremely unlikely that children will be shown any content that contains serious violence or injury, dangerous stunts, challenges or the inhalation or exposure to harmful substances.
We are still a small site from a userbase perspective. We have no algorithms in place to promote content to other people, aside from what they themselves choose to visit. We do not allow content that is harmful to children, and we have an active userbase of members (many of whom have been with us for decades and we know have views on the protection of children that align with our terms) who point out any content that may infringe the terms. Where these are pointed out, we investigate immediately and if the content is found in breach we will remove it.
We believe that the risk to children is extremely small. We will continue to monitor that risk and put additional safeguards in place if that risk appears to be increasing.
Statement of DearDiary.Net's Intent to Implement Age-Verification
We have no intention to implement age verification. Although the Act does state that large user-user services (known as Category 1 services) must provide adult users with ways to verify their identity in order to allow them to have better control over unverified users contacting them, or to enable them to see age appropriate material, we believe that all publicly available material is age appropriate as per our terms and conditions of use and the moderation principles outlined above.
To reduce online trolling, all DearDiary users who wish to leave a comment on any public diary entry must be logged in with a registered e-mail address account. We do not allow 'disposable' email addresses to be used where possible. If trolling becomes an issue we will revisit this statement to determine steps forward to allow diarists to restrict who can comment on their diaries. Admins already have the ability to block known trollers (of which there are remarkably few) from leaving comments.
DearDiary.Net is not a Category 1 service in any case and there is therefore no need to provide specific identity verification.
Freedom of Speech
Nothing set forth in these terms and conditions affect your rights to free speech. You may say whatever you like. We value reasoned and reasonable discussion. But if it's illegal or abusive, you can't do it here. It's been that way since 1999 and it will continue to be that way.
If you're interested, here's some history on this from 2001 to give you an idea of our views on this. Note that some of the history is from Matt who is no longer involved in the site - but we still share his fundamental ideas and truths even from back then.
https://www.deardiary.net/diary/598/viewentry/62891
https://www.deardiary.net/diary/598/viewentry/67397
https://www.deardiary.net/diary/598/viewentry/75709 - with apologies to Bosnia-Herzogovina