My awful experience with Kyodo
I've been using Kyodo for a few months now, and I must say I really liked the app until a few weeks ago. It's not about bugs, servers, or problems with Brazil or Spain; I'm talking about moderation. At first, I was in the most popular circles, and that wasn't a problem. Maybe occasionally there would be a raid and users would post inappropriate content, but the admins were very helpful and would fix it before you even knew about it. But then I started exploring new circles, and the situation is awful.
While checking the "safe circles" (some had profiles with adult content, but they disappeared after a few reports), I came across some users promoting a circle in their bio. I reported them too, but out of curiosity, I decided to check out the promoted circle. It was full of cropped, censored, uncensored, or outright pornographic content everywhere: posts, user profiles, chat rooms, everywhere. So, of course, I reported the circle and each user and post individually, as much as possible.
A month has passed and nothing has changed: the circle is still active, the person who created it has been promoting more similar circles, and after contacting support, all I got was a message saying "Make sure you report everything within the app."
But lately, things have gotten worse. I started researching how to create my own circle. There's a feature called "Circle Topics" that I assume helps your circle get featured and all that. I was testing it out until I discovered that some of the topics Kyodo shows are "sexrol," "sex," "loli," "shotacon," and "shota," with some variations and sometimes emojis. The worst part is that these topics exist because circles are using them. I saw some circles using them, and the content is disgusting, same as the aforementioned encounters.
Finally, what prompted me to write this post is what happened this week: I started getting followers on my global profile. The username was something like "Join this awesome circle" and there was a link to a circle in their bio. While investigating the circle, I found the same thing as in the first encounter: a lot of pornographic posts and profiles. But when I started reporting profiles, I saw that they also contained links to another circles. After reviewing them, I found myself in a rabbit hole. Each new circle I found was darker and darker: there were profiles with references to pedophilia, abuse, rape, zoophilia, and all sorts of other things. Not only that, but I went so far that images became too explicit and disgusting.
You could say it's my fault and that I brought it on myself. Sure, I like to report things to help the moderators and Team Kyodo moderate the app, but at this point, it's impossible. Team Kyodo won't do much because it's a small team against thousands of users, and I don't know why they don't delete circles with topics that contain words that CLEARLY violate the rules. The worst part is that Kyodo is for ages 13 and up, which means that underage teens could (out of curiosity) follow the same path I did and expose themselves to a lot of borderline illegal and disgusting content, and probably abuse or harassment.
If you're coming from Amino, this will sound familiar. Let me remind you that a lot of children were abused on it, I know myself many victims of abuse and harassment on Amino, and many of them were underage. To make matters worse, I have no doubt that if precautions aren't taken, the same thing could happen on Kyodo, or might be happening today. Please share in the comments if you've had a similar experience or what you think about it.