Thank you for all your responses. I agree with the pictures that you should not assume you are safe sharing them anywhere. How many times have we read about people leaving here because their pictures were used as a means of revenge porn or as a means to negatively impact their personal lives. I think that a person should be all in or all out.

I respect your intentions, which are well-stated. But I don't see how a friends-only (aka, de-Googlified) album feature would be dangerously misleading. You can warn people about the risks of bad actors, while also giving them an additional avenue for expressing themselves to a narrower audience. I don't think those are mutually exclusive options.

I mean, if the major problem is about legal liabilities, or had to do with technical problems, then I would understand on a practical level. But I don't understand how this "open site" idea works as a coherent policy. I've never tried to use this part of the chat feature, but ostensibly, we already have the ability to send files to each other, and presumably the pictures we could send don't show up in the picture archive or main gallery. Is that right? If so, are we also worried that peer-to-peer file transmission will lead to lots of confusion and disappointment?

A good case in point is how people thought the "Users-only" profile option meant that their user icon wouldn't show up on the Wam Party or the Wall, when the instructions next to that setting explicitly say otherwise. People read into these things (when they read at all) and I want them to absolutely understand the risks of uploading their stuff. Adding private galleries or profiles adds NO protection, yet it implies that people are safer because of it, which is incorrect. People will presume to be totally sealed off from search engines and creeps, and they'll be uploading content they otherwise would not have. When said content shows up elsewhere, I'm the one who has to deal with the complaint, which is fine, but that poor person's content is out there when they thought it was under wraps, and the whole thing could have been avoided. This is the type of stuff that makes me lose sleep at night.

I have to keep saying it: Almost all issues with harassment occur between people who were already users and friends anyway, so our energy is better focused on making users actually safe and educating them on the risks of uploading their content--not luring them in under a false sense of security. Besides, if your content is that sensitive, I don't want it on my servers.


It's an open site because we allow lurkers. You're not forced to log into UMD to view it. Also, content is not constrained to just specific sections--it's all spread out everywhere. This combination makes keeping specific content away from specific people on specific pages a programming nightmare, which can be done, but it will never be as effective as the feature would imply. I'm not worried about legal at all. I just don't want bad situations happening to people in the first place, especially when I know it will happen.

And technical? Of course. What if you switch a gallery to private or friend-only, but a picture from it happened to have been Picture of the Day? It'll still be in the Picture of that Day gallery unless I program an automatic re-vote for that particular day, whichever day it was. Filters will have to go back and refresh and re-cache any of the pictures on the Wall and inside people's notifications. Followers notified of the picture via email will now have broken links in the emails and notifications (unless they are friends). I'll have to refresh everybody's Loves pages so that pics they've loved won't show up--unless they are your friend, and if they aren't, they'll wonder what happened. UMD itself will become slower because picture pages cannot really be cached, since every single picture is attached to a gallery that is attached to a user who may or may not be the current viewer's current friend. A lot of pages will have to go to realtime DB lookups unless I scrap a lot of stuff and start over.

This is months of work and will introduce bugs, but none of that matters anyway because search engines probably already have cached the pictures. Users have already seen them and probably saved them. The picture is already "out" and the average user seems to be failing to realize that there is never going to be a hard wall when it comes to pictures on a social media site. I can see all this coming from miles away and that's why the private profile issue is black and white. I think it's the honest approach.

Peace, and thanks for your insight!
Messmaster

Just had a look at the updated T&C (and ta for moving the link into the more obvious blue area), and have to say this is a huge improvement on the previous wording:

Watch What You Post!
This is an adult social networking site, and you should take great consideration in what you publish. While we keep your personal data private, any content you upload will become public. This includes pictures, videos, user icons, shared files, and textual content like comments, reviews, blog posts, and wams. If you want to draw a little less attention from search engines, you have the option to restrict your own profile page to logged-in users only. But that option applies only to the main profile page itself, not to any content you've uploaded or activities you've done around the site.

ISTR it used to make reference to "posting socially" without making clear that it meant posting on the UMD - until this thread appeared up I'd always assumed that a) a profile set to private meant everything that user posted would be private, and b) that "socially" meant on Facebook or Twitter, not here. The new text is much, much clearer - I'd encourage everyone who's been here for a while to go and re-read the T&C (find the link as "Terms" in the blue bar at the bottom), it's well written, readable, mercifully free of lawerbabble, and makes a lot of sense.

Thanks for noticing! That section ends: "PLEASE do not upload anything that you are not comfortable ultimately being out in the public. Even with privacy controls, all it takes is for a user to log in or befriend you to see the content you've put up, and we cannot control or be held responsible for what they do with it."


Those were my thoughts on the confusing term "social," hence the change. But to clarify, there was never a "private" setting for the profiles. That was a deliberate verbiage decision based on everything I outlined above, but apparently it still isn't that clear to people. Probably misleading since the setting is in the Privacy section and the alternative option is a "public" profile. But the setting itself has always been called "Profile Page Visibility"

Messmaster

But if everyone established a picture to use for picture of the day if they win we could have private albums *Sarcasm off*.

I do think that getting rid of lurkers and requiring an account to access the site would be an awesome thing!!! It would help prevent the Google picture scrubbers from being able to autorobot it. Yes it would suck for lurkers, but establishing yourself as a human not a bot takes like 5 minutes.

You have to keep in mind that lurkers are 90% of the traffic here and most visitors are NOT OK with anyone knowing who they are or what their sexual proclivities are. Locking it down would destroy the site and possibly rob all those people of their primary safe outlet.

Ultimately, the only "private" picture is one that wasn't taken in the first place.

I think you might have missed the point of my post with regards to locking it down. Is soundguy your real name? Is it something you use on other sites or strictly a UMD thing? I am assuming that lurkers are people who do not have an account on the site. That is the part I am talking about locking down. To where you have to have an account on the site to look on the site. That it is not an open door. It takes literally 5 minutes to create a fake email account and then use said account to make an account for access here. The email account does not need to be associated with anything else and no one in the real world will know about your kink here. I would also go as far as to say that those who don't want people to know about their kinks and still want the freedom to share what parts of that with the community have found clever ways of covering their faces or blurring them out. Unfortunately we do not live in a society of acceptance and I don't see anything wrong with blurring out faces or always keeping faces covered with something like some women do their breasts. Until there is a societal change in the way sex is viewed and the way a body is viewed the judgements will still happen and people will still try to shame others who are comfortable in their skin.

I don't think there will be that big of a dip in traffic. Yes I know that there will be people who will make accounts to harass people and use the site as a form of revenge porn against people on it. But I hope that there will also be those that don't want to go through the hassle of signing up for a membership to a porn site to dig up dirt on someone.

Another thought I have had as I typed this with regards to the privacy stuff and private albums and what not. What about giving people the option to make some albums VIP only. So that people have to pay for that. I am not suggesting making VIP a way for payment to stores or anything like that. But as an option to where if you don't want people with free accounts to browse certain pictures, they can be hidden in a way.

You're just guessing and I have decades of experience that suggest you are very wrong.


So your proposed lock down will not only alienate and discourage 90% of the visitor base, it will do exactly nothing whatsoever to slow down the miscreants. How is this a positive step? How does it help protect anyone?


You give humanity way too much credit. It won't stop one single troll or trouble maker. It WILL stop most of the regular visitors that are already too timid and paranoid to sign up for an account. I say this as someone who has been in the sex & fetish business in various capacities for 4 decades and running online services dedicated to it for 2 decades. Locking down is unworkable. Privacy does not exist. If it's digitized, it can possibly be made public to 7 billion people at some point, intentionally, accidentally, inadvertently, due to malice or ignorance, etc.

The solution lies elsewhere.

I always want to have hope that society is better than it is. With there not being ads on the site for monetary value, what value do lifetime lurkers provide?

It's like gun control laws. No matter how well intended or worded, they only stop or make it harder for law abiding citizens from getting them. They don't do anything to make it harder for criminals because get this... They don't abide the law.

Back to UMD though. If someone has malicious intent, do you really think they'll go "man, I have to sign up for this shit!?" and walk away? Sadly Dal you said it yourself, you can use a junk e-mail. This solution doesn't actually provide any protection for anyone.

Privacy, in the world at large anyways died with the advent of the internet. The only thing likely to bring it back is a global EMP. But you can limit some of what ends up there.

This is a question I love to answer. I love my lurkers actually

The first purpose of UMD was to inform the world of all the WAM out there. That's still the primary job of this site, and most of the traffic we send out to fellow wam sites is from people who have no account. I'm perfectly OK with that.

Even if not signed in to UMD, lurkers still view stuff and read posts and click ads and affect our hit counters. They still discover new content and updates in the world, and they click through to patronize other sites. Producers see all that energy and traffic, and that causes them to participate even more at UMD, even uploading more free stuff, in a vicious cycle. Even search engines are able to detect all this "juice" which boosts UMD's own ranking along with all the stores on it, and sites we link out to.

Lurkers even flag content and submit piracy tips!

Lurkers really are a huge arm of this community and I value them greatly. They are a different type of audience than you are used to seeing opining on the forum, and some of my decisions will make more sense if you take them into consideration as much as I do.

I know you asked about lifetime lurkers, but really they are potential members. Every member at one point was a lurker until they signed up. We should not be looking at them like outsiders to keep away, but potential new friends to invite in.

A site note: We also have members who are lurkers, which is possible using the invisible profile option. So there are a lot more actual UMD accounts than is shown to you on the People page.

Messmaster

THIS

and...


THIS

Thank you MM. I always figured lurkers just lurked and never interacted.

I did not know about the invisible profile thing or that it worked that way. That is actually a great option to help the UMD be safer for women. Can the invisible option still allow you to post without showing you online? I am thinking if there are people constantly harassed as soon as they show up online it would be a great option.

I still wish there was a way that we could just teach people to grow the fuck up. I think we are in the midst of the second women's movement. I have hopes that this time it sticks. Women are not taking this shit from their abusers and are taking back the power.

If you use the invisible profile option, all social media abilities are removed (for the same reasons I've been talking about in this thread). I strongly recommend you take a look at all the privacy options available to you here. Just edit your preferences and go to the Privacy section.


If you're being harassed via chat as soon as you get on, I recommend using the option for "friends only" chat. Or please flag the person harassing you so that I can research it and take action myself. All females who sign up are already defaulted to friends only on the chat and inbox, and are opted out of wam party, etc etc. It's all in your privacy options if you want to change any of that.

Messmaster

DAMN!!!! There are a ton of options in there.

One thing I noticed when changing everything is that it wanted my password. It says that it is only needed when changing email. Not sure if that is by design or not. Noticed it and figured I would mention it.

The options under profile being public etc would resolve a lot of the comments I have made and some I have seen in this thread. It literally took my 5 minutes to go through the privacy options. Check them out!!!

Yeah I've been building those options into UMD for years based on debates just like this one. Just wish more folks would take advantage of them or at least take a look to see what's available. Here is more about privacy at this site: https://umd.net/termsofservice#privacy

Anyway, your password is encrypted so that even I cannot see it. We use your current email address as part of the encryption process, so if you change the it, you've got to put in a password again.

Thanks!
Messmaster

The only problem with the "user's guide" is that the people that need it the most won't seek it out on their own (but perhaps MM can link to it, when dealing with a "problem child"??)

I've avoided UMD for most of the last 22 years because my focus is wetlook, but i am here now because i like the way UMD is set up, compared to my other exisiting choices...

I read * MOST * of the posts, but skipped a few. Jerks/Trolls scaring away the more -delicate- ladies? A cultural phenomena indeed...(bumpity-bump...TTT)

That's a totally patronizing way to put it. But putting rudeness aside, it's not an appropriate way of capturing the thrust of the complaints.

The issue throughout the thread is that some of us are not fond of the "open site" concept. So, many of us, men and women, do not post things we otherwise would like to post. We could do better if we had just a little more control over who our audience is. Kittenish suggested a user block feature, for example, which I thought was a great suggestion.

If none of that makes sense, then here's a totally egotistical way of making the same point. The fact of the matter is that I have seen some totally amazing photo sets taken down because people on this site tracked the posters down and harassed them. That sucks. Maybe those sorts of creeps will always be floating around the margins, but that's no reason not to give people the means of making it harder.

There have been MANY great suggestions, and many great explanations about how *some* of those suggestions won't work (kinda like the mice's suggestion to tie a bell to the cat's collar, so everyone can hear the cat coming. Yes, ok, who is going to *ACTUALLY* tie the bell to the cat's collar?)


a lost photo set? (you didn't "right click/save as" by any chance?) To some extent, it doesn't matter how material is lost...a very popular wetlook blogger (living on the west coast) was viciously attacked in the garage of her home by a wetlook stalker from a big midwest city. What saved her? She had a gun and knew how to use it. She shot that guy dead. But also, she said F* the community...no more new material.

Here's another story...wetlook model get's blackmailed by a dirtbag baby daddy... she had been enjoying some extra cash and a little fame, for a while... and guess what, no longer producing new material now.

By all means, i agree, let's keep the creeps away. It's just very often easier said than done. Usually when you find out who the creep is, the damage has already been done. Just that i've seen it happen several times. A new lady arrives, she contributes wonderful new material. She enjoys this fetish. Some creep screws it up.

Did anyone suggest a "Ladies guide" for new contributors? I think many of the models for producers already arrive with a decent idea of what to expect and/or are protected (somewhat?) behind the structure of the producer's website/etc. It's those individual ladies, that are so warmly welcomed in by so many of us, and all it takes is that one creep that manages to get a surname, an address, a recognizable landmark...(however that information happens to be obtained) and she gawwnnn...

Whelp...

Here's a constructive suggestion for Messmaster...

at the very top of the main home page, please add the note:


probably add a "hyper link" on top (or underneath) the - About & FAQ - lettering?

At the very top of the "About & FAQ" page, please add: Please use caution before posting anything to this website. We do our very best to make this a safe place for everyone. Please let our staff know if you have a problem with ANYONE

HTH! (hope this helps...)

It -- and by 'it', I mean, preventing harassment, not just losing wank material -- matters insofar as you can do something to prevent it.


The idea of 'community rules' was one point of disagreement back in 2017: https://umd.net/forums/etiquette-female-harassment-on-the-umd

The new TOS and some of the newer features (e.g., various profile settings) were a few compromises that came out of that discussion. But it's also worth noting that the block feature had supporters even back then.

Yikes! Nine (Nein? Neun?) pages of running discussions! Honestly, i probably will never read past page 1 (unless i get REALLY bored at some point?) All the same, it * IS * a topic near and dear to me. I even found "your safety" within the "Terms & Privacy" link at the bottom of every page... so i am happy to see that, but i still emphasize my up-front (but short) warnings to ANYONE that might post here... this would be hopefully to prevent anyone from publishing anything that they might later regret, but more than that, the larger issue is preventing harrasment!

Perhaps add: You can read more about "your safety" *here* on our "Terms & Privacy" page that you can link to from the LINKS that appear near the bottom of every page!

Errr...feel free to edit/revise my wording to something better?

...and THIS might just be the place to ask a specific question...

Does anyone know what happened to Hannah20? i was liking her blog a lot but it's been "dark" since March...