Protecting minors
What changes when the account belongs to someone under 18 — plainly, and with nothing left out.
Diwigo grows by invitation: every member was brought in by someone who knows them. For a child, that is not enough. An account under 18 is protected by default, with no setting to find and no box to tick.
The six rules enforced
They cannot be switched off. None of them is a preference: they are refusals, enforced by the server.
13 at the minimum
Under thirteen, no account is created. Date of birth is asked at sign-up and it alone determines the account's regime.
A responsible adult
An account for someone under 18 can only be opened with the personal invitation code of an adult who is already a member. That adult becomes responsible for it. No adult, no account — and a minor cannot sponsor another minor.
Nobody can follow them
The "Follow" button does not exist on their profile. Only their responsible adult follows them. Neither a stranger nor a distant member can add themselves as a reader, not even by filing them into one of their own circles.
Nothing public
Their posts cannot be public: the option is not offered, and the server would refuse it anyway. They stay within the circles the child built. No profile detail — town, phone, address — can be made public.
Their inbox stays shut
Only members of their circles can message them privately. On other accounts, following someone is enough to be able to write to them; for a minor it is not — it takes a link they accepted themselves.
Invisible to strangers
They appear in no suggestions, and their profile page does not open to anyone outside their circles — not even by typing the address directly. A protected account behaves as if it did not exist for those who do not know it.
What the responsible adult sees
The responsibility is real, and deliberately bounded. It grants access to this, and nothing else:
- Their posts, each with its visibility.
- What they liked, and on which post.
- Not their private messages. Answering for someone is not reading their mail.
- The child is told. A banner on their own profile names the responsible adult and states exactly what that person sees. Hidden monitoring would be worse than no monitoring at all.
So how does the family see their posts?
Through their circles, which they build themselves. They create a "Family" circle, add their grandmother, and post into it: she sees it. The direction matters — the child chooses who comes in, not the adult who decides to walk in. An adult may invite them into one of their own circles, but that grants no access until the child accepts, and it never allows following them.
On their 18th birthday
The protections lift by themselves, on the right day. There is nothing to request and nobody to notify: age is recomputed on every read from the date of birth, never frozen into a flag someone would have to remember to update.
What we cannot do
Age is self-declared. We do not verify the date entered, and no consumer platform seriously does. A determined child can lie. What Diwigo guarantees is that a family acting in good faith gets a genuinely protected account — not that lying is impossible.
Nothing replaces a present adult. These rules reduce exposure; they replace neither the conversation nor the attention of someone who knows the child.
Reporting a problem
An account that looks like it belongs to a child under thirteen, worrying behaviour, unsuitable content: write to info@diwigo.com. A real person reads it, and an account that puts a minor at risk is closed without delay.
A child is not a user like any other. They should not have to find the right settings: the settings are already in place.
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