uh. 100000% no offense but. zugzwang is really. not so much the case study i'm wanting to look at. largely because they're going on what, two years now? and i'm more trying to get at a phenomenon that's going on right now in the current panfandom climate with brand new sites.

which is that the past.... idk 6+ months, when i've clicked ads for any brand new panfandoms (as in they just started advertising within the past few days or weeks), it's always been to like. 2+ pages of member directory and 70+ accounts right off the bat. and i'm always. so baffled. because i have the eyes to see they're not really advertising site-to-site or on directories or on tumblr (or doing a site buzz on tumblr). and it feels like it's too big to be purely word of mouth. so i'm just. burningly curious for if there's some other method they're using to advertise themselves that's causing that massive pre-opening bump (like if that crazy bird app is actually working for them) or if i'm just vastly underestimating the power of panfandom cliques.

just to unmuddy the water real fast - i'm not so much here to try to make the case for why someone shouldn't write explicit content on forums. not really. i'm mostly just here to provide more information about jcink's tos for premium to try to keep misinterpretations about it from bouncing around.

honestly, i don't see jcink really altering their tos to be, well, anything in line with what you proposed - not because they're wanting to "make it your responsibility" to enforce age-restrictions but rather because, again, jcink premium is not actually an 18+ host, the ability to age-restrict things is just an extra feature that's included as part of the premium package, along with custom domains and more storage space and an ad-free site.

honestly, i could make a whole bunch of practical arguments for why they don't really need to change their tos but.

instead, i'll just point out that, from a legal standpoint, it's not going to matter if there's an explicit statement like that in the jcink's tos or not. because it really isn't. a prosecutor isn't going to go after anyone if some random minor is stalking the site to read mature threads, the same way they wouldn't go after a bookstore if a minor got caught reading erotica that the bookstore sells; if anything, the fact there is the age-restriction actually makes your case stronger since imo they had to seek out + consent to see that content in order to get to your thread. if someone's engaging in writing explicit content with a minor (or directly giving them explicit content), the tos rule isn't going to be a determining factor for them, it's going to be whether or not you as the adult intended to engage in inappropriate behavior with a minor + whether a reasonable person would think that you "ought to have known" you were interacting with a minor (aka they need to prove you had the "mens rea" to carry out the crime).

honestly, i do not think there's anything in jcink premium's tos to be worried about in that regard. it's doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing, if a little bit clunkily, and it's honestly pretty in line with what the comparable standards are.

jcink premium's tos is actually about as solid as any other site that allows opt-in explicit adult content.

the reason that the tos is separated out like that is because being a jcink premium site does not mean that a site is necessarily 18+ or allows explicit content (since jcink premium is also how you do custom domains + ad-free jcink) - thus the tos has to be structured to state the two rules that 1) anyone registering for an account on any jcink site period must be 13+ (as is standard for most forum hosts, as far as i've seen) and 2) any explicit content must be posted in boards that have the age-restricted settings (which is worded in the mirrored format of "age-restricted settings must be turned on for any boards where explicit content is being posted").

as far as i'm aware, as long as you're following the second part of that rule, you're not going to get in trouble for if a minor sees explicit content since by checking that age verification box before they go into age-restricted areas, they're stating that they're 18+ and have consented to potentially seeing such content - it's the same system ao3 and discord use for handling adult content and tbeh i don't see a better way for a host / an rp site to structure that because imo if there's a more robust security process such as showing real world ids to verify, that has way bigger privacy issues (and probably infringes upon that big eu privacy law that came out a few years ago).

again, a site being jcink premium does not mean that it's an 18+ site and/or allows adult content (nor does an 18+ site necessarily mean that it's a premium site and/or allows adult content since imo it could just be a rule curating the community on the administrative end)...... but if an 18+ site is actively + knowingly letting minors stay on the site after they're discovered, that's a huge red flag, especially if the site is one that permits explicit content to be posted. and honestly, i think it's kind of silly to be hand-wringing over "premium sites don't clearly label minors in the discord" when no non-premium site is expected to do the same and unless someone is setting up their permissions incorrectly, the only time a minor is going to get "surprise explicit content" is if someone is up in their dms being inappropriate, and uh, yeah, that's kind of on the person who did it since they did not do their due diligence beforehand to verify that someone's an adult before they dropped that stuff on someone (and even then, imo, just because someone is 18+ doesn't mean they want gore or smut randomly dumped on them by a stranger, you probably shouldn't be doing that).

i imagine proboards would structure their premium option much in the same way, if they don't right now, for largely the same reasons, so. yeah.