I might covertly edit this post for clarification, but basically my concern goes like this.
We have all seen it, we’re watching a commercial for a fancy new site and at the very end they say “ask for parents’ permission before joining”.
We like to think the collective exists for all mankind, the final bastion of stoic cosmopolitanism and truth. But there are times when you may think “err, maybe not this person”.
I have a friend who is registered for a certain service and likes it a lot, and recently got scared out of her mind because a relative of hers who has autism and doesn’t understand so much as digital etiquette got banned from the same service due to getting scammed and just kept re-registering and getting re-banned over and over because this was an example of an inexperienced mind who had all the resources to break the norms, and several times the people in charge of the service thought about banning the whole family (I am in fact active in a certain community that is full of this kind of poor soul). This at one point got me thinking, how helpful it might be if we federate everything in existence, similar to Neopets services which gave you a different experience depending on your registered age group. You could have “the kids corner” or “the autism corner” or even an animal corner or robot corner or alien corner, a seeming limitless potential, fediversal accommodations to the different types of minds out there, with people not having to worry about what trouble is caused by their youngsters and whatnot because they have “the kidernet” which connects to the other “nets” and can keep them out the same way.
Does nobody think this? I personally think we should fediversify existence itself, with language and identity being one useful example.
And AOL. I’d say it sounds more AOL before they allowed access to the open internet, even.