A well-run community will either be explicit about its age/karma requirement, or it will manually approve filtered posts from low-reputation accounts. I moderate /r/flashlight and we use the latter approach.

That takes work though. Some moderators are lazy, and some communities are understaffed. That’s not good, but it most cases it’s not malicious. It has fairly little to do with Reddit the company making money from advertisers.

Under other circumstances, I might agree with you, but the guy built a bong into his dashboard.

That’s an impressive level of commitment to DUI.

A quick look suggests the UAE has stronger worker protections than are typical for the region. The government strongly encouraged employers to allow work from home last week, but I didn’t find whether that has been continued into this week. It doesn’t look like that recommendation is mandatory for employers.

Someone who reads Arabic will probably be able to find more recent statements from the government with relative ease.

You haven’t said what country or line of work you’re in, so nobody knows what’s normal. Countries in the middle east are not known for their strong commitments to worker rights, so it’s a good guess that having to do whatever management wants or get fired is normal there.

During an air raid, it’s probably safer to travel a short distance to a bomb shelter rather than a longer distance to your home, if that accurately describes the options.

I am not a doctor and I am definitely not your doctor, but this sounds like an eating disorder to me. Are you in a position to talk to a doctor about it?

That’s not criminal anywhere to my knowledge, but very creepy for an adult to say to a 13 year old.

He then said I groomed him.

He was trying to make himself feel better about being creepy with a kid. He’s wrong is this situation. There isn’t really any room for ambiguity.

Neither of us were exactly saints

You were a kid. Kids are entitled to do dumb stuff while figuring out how social interaction works, and should not feel bad about it years later. He was an adult, pretending to be a kid online and being very creepy. Depending on exactly what he said, sent, or requested, his behavior may even be criminal in some jurisdictions.

Reading through this story, I don’t see any mention of sexual contact, which would make it pretty hard for there to be any sexual assault. If I’m reading this right, it looks like you, as a child had a purely online relationship that was half roleplay and half real with an adult.

If you knowingly misled him, kids do dumb things sometimes; don’t do that again. If he knowingly mislead you, he’s an asshole. If he continued having romantic or sexual chats with you knowing your real age, he’s a creep.

The average person understands email pretty well. Mastodon doesn’t require much more understanding than that, but could probably use some UX and messaging work.