NeoCities 18+ Tagging / Search Visibility Concerns

In recent weeks, multiple NeoCities sites have been manually tagged as 18+, removing them from standard search results without direct notification to their owners. This seems to be in place as a form of content moderation for the site at large, but its implementation leaves much to be desired. As of writing this the only way that a user could know that their site has been struck with this label is that the 18+ tag section is missing in their site settings. Speaking from personal experience this is a section I was unaware existed, and so if it was missing from my user settings I would take a while to realize it’s missing.

There are a couple major problems with this version of content moderation. The largest of which is a lack of appeals process or anyone to make substantial contact with the admin team.

Firstly, it lacks communicating to the user that their site does not meet the NeoCities standard of SFW. In fact it does not communicate anything at all to the user.

Second off, the severity of being tagged with NSFW is ludicrous at present moment. In order to view NSFW sites it isn’t a simple checkbox that you can enable with other sites like X, Reddit, etc. In order to view NSFW content in the search system you need to add “&is_nsfw=true” at the end of the URL. Now this isn’t a big ask for a site where people edit HTML, if and only if this was said anywhere. The only source I was able to find of the existence of this feature was on this blog which is what tipped me off to the feature in the first place. If you were unaware of this feature you would never be able to search for sites that have been tagged NSFW.

With the knowledge of this NSFW search in mind, it brings me right into my third point, the range of NSFW sites. The majority of sites that are in the NSFW search system are hardcore porn, violent, or fairly unpleasant. A lot of the new users who were manually struck with the 18+ tag are nowhere near the type of content typically seen on this side of NeoCities.

And the last, and perhaps most major issue with the current moderation system, is that once you have been stuck with this you will receive no contact from anyone related to NeoCities. There is a common mythos of NeoCities that Kyle Drake is the sole person in charge of running the site, but I have found other sources that claim his partner is most likely involved and perhaps there is another person running the bsky account, regardless this does not entirely matter. My point is that most users that have been struck with the NSFW soft ban have tried to reach out to Kyle Drake or anyone at NeoCities and they haven’t received anything back. This problem goes back even further than the current issue at hand. There has been a bug that has been around for several years, at least, where users have just had their site banned outright for seemingly no reason. Both of these issues are exacerbated by them being permanent sentences and you will never hear back from anyone on the NeoCities team.

To summarize how the current situation needs to change, there needs to be communication from NeoCities administration,

there needs to be a set of explicit standards to which sites are going to be held if there is a soft banning system like this,

there needs to be a notification or some sort of indication that you have been struck with NSFW/18+ tag manually,

and lastly this needs to be something that isn’t permanent.

I see that many sites wish to change their site in order to be acceptable in the eyes of NeoCities, so if it is a one-strike permanent status it is too severe.

I am going to be using this image as my site thumbnail until things change. Below is the code if you would like to do the same, but just including it anywhere on your site will show your support for a better, more fair, NeoCities. I have already revoked my financial support from NeoCities and I suggest you do the same if you agree with anything I have written here.

Thumbnail Code

If you would like to set the protest image as your thumbnail please place the code below anywhere in your header. The image itself is on an external site for your safety, to show that I won’t be able to swap the image with something nefarious. If you use this code the image will not show up for users visiting your site, only the thumbnail bot that operates on neocities, if you would like to include it in such a way so that other can see it make sure to link to the image within your site itself.