An Apology (non-cai, Lightshade)
Hey everyone. Limon here.
I’ll be honest. the last few weeks have been a mess, and I want to sincerely apologize to the community for the drama spilling over into the public.
I want to drop the corporate talk and just be a human for a second to clear the air, because some of the rumors being spread by former, disgruntled staff members are getting out of hand.
Lets start with the most talked about right now: The '13-Year-Olds' Myth & Staffing Mistakes.
There is a rumor being spammed everywhere that I, and all the founders/staff of Lightshade, are 13 years old. This is entirely false. However, I will take responsibility for where this started: in the past, I acted stupidly. I trusted people too easily and brought on volunteer Discord moderators without properly vetting their ages or maturity levels. That was my fault as a newer founder. Yes, this is my first time doing something like this. Lightshade is my first ever experience.
Dealing with some of these former staff members (like Spider) behind the scenes was genuinely traumatizing. The constant screaming and the power trips... it broke my trust. Because of this, we completely purged the team. Our current staff and management team are entirely 18+ and strictly vetted.
I also want to make one thing explicitly clear: Discord moderators do not, have access to website data or user chats. They were discord moderators, not website moderators. Your privacy has always been our absolute highest priority, and that will never change.
I also need to own up to our internal miscommunication. You’ve seen the posts and the disagreements. The truth is, we are a new team, and there were times when the founders weren't fully on the same page. That led to confusing directives for the staff and mixed signals for the community (like what happened with the NSFW poll). That is on me as a leader. We have restructured how we handle executive decisions so that everyone is unified moving forward.
Finally, I want to be completely transparent about my own age and a massive oversight on my part. When I launched Lightshade on April 12th, I was 17 years old. (I just had my birthday this May, and I am 18 now). Looking back I accept how incredibly stupid it was, and I blame myself heavily for allowing NSFW options on the website while I was still a minor. The only reason I added that feature was because I wanted to let everyone be moderately free on Lightshade to have the ability to write and create what you want, whenever you want (while still strictly blocking illegal content like CSAM). My desire to give this community complete creative freedom blinded me to the reality of my own age and the responsibility I held at the time. I own that mistake completely.
If you have genuine questions, go ahead and ask in the comments. I'll be answering them.