Safe Mode

[Corin]

The Safe Mode feature has been added because a couple of users were concerned that they could get into trouble if text material would end up on their computer or mobile phone which might be legally problematic in their country,

As you can see in the rules for this site, stories with children or young teenagers are generally banned from this site.

However, in some countries, the laws are overly strict and even the appearance that any character involved in sexual acts might be underage (usually 18) could be problematic.

Because of that, all stories which are tagged with at least one of the following tags will be invisible and inaccessible while the Safe Mode is active:

age regression, boi, boy, fatherson, high-school, incest, man-to-boi, school, son, student, teen, assault, force

The Safe Mode can be disabled by using an account for GaySpiralStories. An account on GSS does in no way make your access any less anonymous! See here for details about accounts, their advantages and how to create one anonymously.

If you’re not logged in to GaySpiralStories, the Safe Mode will always be active!

If you don’t agree with the list of tags blocked in Safe Mode, you can customize this by disabling the Safe Mode and then defining your own list of blocked tags using the “Blocked Tags” feature on the main page:

[Mafisto]

I reviewed all my stories tags. I had to remove a few student and college tags when I didn’t feel the story gave the appearance the character would be underage. But a few of my stories do belong in safe mode.

I would recommend removing college from the tags as people in college are not perceived as underage.

It would be great if safe mode users saw the titles of the missing stories but could just not see the content. It would motivate them even more to register. Or maybe see explicitly how many stories were hidden from a search. Or at the very least be informed clearly in a banner or such that there are missing stories. For example, Ch. 3 of my Lexington story is problematic, but not the other 2. Travis is mentioned several times as being eighteen but the incest is problematic. But safe mode users would not see that Ch. 3 exists.

In any case, these are just suggestions.

[Corin]

I agree that ‘college’ is debatable, but there are under-20 year old college students, as well as there are under-20 year old teens or 19 year old high-school students.

I do agree that the SafeMode is very broad. And I also understand that authors don’t like it all too much. If it were me, everybody would disable the SafeMode (and configure their own filter instead). And a very strict filter will - at least that’s what I hope - be an incentive to do this.

Your idea to list the banned stories is actually really good. I will probably show the author, title, tags and category, but hide everything else. Or should I display the summary? That could be problematic as well…

I might add an option to the user profile where you can control whether the filtered stories (blocked manually or by Safe Mode) are listed. That way it’s up to the user to decide. But for anon users I’d display the stories. That sounds like the best way to go.

[Mafisto]

I don’t think 18 year-old and above is going to cause any pedophilia issue, so college, being 18 and above, should be safe. But if you want to set the limit to 20 year-old, many of my stories won’t be accessible unless I don’t use the college tag. I don’t think those stories could, in anyone’s mind, be considered pedophilia.

I still have a few stories that have incest and late puberty teens, so those I made sure I had at least one tag triggering safe mode.

I’m all for safe mode, but maybe we don’t need to go to extremes right away?

In any case, I leave all that to your own judgment.

[Mafisto]

This could be useful: Ages of consent by country - Wikipedia

Not many go above 18.

In fact, it seems that only Bahrain, Cameroon and Niger have an age of consent above 18.

[Corin]

Alright, I’ll remove ‘college’ from the list… No point in alienating our authors

I’ve also removed ‘femboi’ and ‘fratboy’. This change will not going to be live immediately, though, I want to add other changes before I update.

[RobinHood70]

I would suggest not showing the summary, just from the point of view that that in itself might end up describing something illegal. The video that triggered this whole discussion, for example, gives an age and at least suggests where the story is going. Personally, I can’t imagine that just a description would actually get anyone in trouble, but if nothing else, it might be triggering for some people like the anons who were really going nuts in the beginning of the thread.

[dreamweavr]

Can we have clarification about the boi and man-to-boi tags? In my mind, ‘boi’ can easily describe someone in their 20s, even early 30’s, and has very little to do with age - it’s more of a mindset/behavior thing. Similarly, ‘daddy’ is not always age dependent. Likewise, man-to-boi transformation does not usually involve age regression (though, if it did, it should also have that tag), at least not the ones I tend to be into. In those cases, the age regression aspect is, in my opinion, what might trigger safe mode.

When I recently wrote The Secret Sauna, I initially included the boi and man-to-boi tags, because I thought they were accurate, even though the story only involves two guys in their late 20s and has no age regression theme. However, when I noticed I was only getting ratings by registered users, I did some investigating and realized these tags were blocked for safe mode. I removed the tags, only to see man-to-boi re-added the next day (I assume by some user who agrees with my usage of the tag).

I don’t really think boi or man-to-boi is perceived by many as having something to do with being underage or teenage. It’s more about ‘fagification,’ bottom transformation or sometimes feminization. At least to me, and I suspect others. Speaking personally, I get uncomfortable with stories involving people under 18, and yet these two tags are some of my go-tos for searching.

Would it be possible to unblock man-to-boi (possibly boi too), or at least add clarification about the tag so that I and others don’t misuse it (if we are misusing it)?

Edit: I notice twink is not blocked. In my mind, boi and twink are similar, except twink is even more about age - a twink probably would be early 20s or younger while boi could be older as long as they act a certain way. But, that’s just my interpretation… no one ever defined ‘boi’ for me, these are just my thoughts on it lol.

[Corin]

It’s a grey area, of course.

Twink is clearly not age related - there are 50 year old twinks.

Boi, however, is clearly age related. No necessarily underage, though, but neither is “teen”. Or “16 year old” if you ask me (and German law). It’s all a matter of definition what the reader sees as “too young” for himself.

Of course you could have the mind of an 30 year old being turned into a boi. But you could also age-regress a 30 year old to have the mind of a 12 year old. Would that be ok? Why the first and not the second?

Frankly, I’m rather tired of this, and all these double standards. Ok is always what the person who’s arguing, is into himself, while everything else is debatable and potentially awful and/or disgusting.

I don’t buy that. The definition for the Safe Mode is deliberately quite broad. Because I don’t like euphemisms, I don’t like double standards, and I don’t like hypocrites. The fantasy of creating a 19 year old mindless sex slave is ok, but not if he’s 17? Bullshit.

What I’m gonna do is that I’ll change the interface that blocked stories are listed, so people can see the author name, title and tags of a story. Whether I’ll make the summary of a blocked story readable isn’t decided yet. However, if you click the story, you can read the first 100 words or so, the rest will be inaccessible.

That way your story can spur interest in the potential reader and then he can decide whether he wants to play it safe or not.

On a not so unrelated note, we’ve had almost 3000 new user registrations in the last week alone, i.e. since the Safe Mode has been introduced. Before we had around 3000 user accounts in total, so the number of registered users doubled in just one week. I think that might relax your concerns a bit, that restricting your story to registered users would reduce the number of potential readers in any relevant way.