Right, that's how it is right now. And it's a problem!

Are there technical or administrative reasons for not giving us a "private albums" feature (or something roughly equivalent) where some photos are put into a separate file system, and don't get aggregated into a publicly accessible bin? (e.g., is there a problem of storage capacity, or coding?) Or is it a policy issue, related to an in-principle value of "openness"?

If the latter -- maybe it's worth thinking over the idea of an open site. On the one hand, I understand that part of your hesitation involves a concern with guiding user expectations. You shouldn't guarantee Fort Knox, because leaks do happen and you're not ultimately the one who is responsible for it when they do. Which is to say that people should be prudent, and users need to be reminded that the liability rests with them. But, on the other hand, quasi-private sharing (i.e., the option to disable photo aggregation, at minimum) would actually allow people to have the *powers* to be prudent... without also obligating them to be *prudes*. It would give privacy-conscious women the power to choose who they interact with (when it comes to intimate disclosures), and on the whole, would give dirtbag men an incentive to clean up their act.

That's how I see it, at the moment. All offered, of course, in constructive spirits.

You've identified the problem. A sticky post in the forum will only be seen by people who visit the forum, and not everybody does. Even if I put it in the Messy forum or made it a multi-forum announcement, the people who never visit the forum won't see it. I prefer to actually put in the work of directly working with my users users every day, doing any requested research on any suspicions or tips, upholding blocks and bans, putting conversations together as a 3rd party mediator, etc. Because almost all of this goes on behind the scenes and I'm not shoving it in your face doesn't mean serious work isn't going on, all the time. I don't need to make a sticky post to garner recognition for my work, and such a post would not deter any harasser anyway. But a deep conversation in the forum actually built for it will allow the vocal thinkers among us to bounce ideas back and forth and debate the future of this site.

No, they're mostly about you being UMD's antagonist. Reading through your complaints, some terms jump out like "drama-baiting, martyr-complex." There was even a block request against you before that feature existed. Like I said, I keep notes and I use them to get a sense of what a person is about and when/whether to take action. In your case a ban wasn't necessary as we've had several conversations about about your drama over the years, but I'm not going to make a sticky post warning the community about it every time we do.





The thing is that it's not a bin. Everything on UMD shows up everywhere. Your pics show up on the people page, can be chosen for Picture of the Day. They're all over people's personal Loves/Following sections, the wall, notifications. Search results are cached with the pictures. Emails go out notifying people of new pics, which would become broken after a privacy switch. I could go on and on and on... and this is just for gallery pics! This is what I mean that this is an open site to its core... everything is everywhere and totally integrated. The only way to ensure all of it is removed from the public eye is to switch to an invisible UMD profile.

I have to say again that openness is not the enemy. Private galleries won't fix anything once the perpetrator has already been let in. As was the case with Missie, most incidents of harassment happen between two people who have already friend-requested each other and have already been inboxing and chatting.


Yet this is the effect. People were already upset that their pics "got out" when I never promised them to be locked away. What do you think happens when I create what's supposed to be a private profile or gallery, but then your naked user icon is still showing up next to a cached comment you left on a vid back in 2012? Your user icon is a picture, and if you set your profile galleries to private, shouldn't that be obscured as well? (People will think so.) What about the comment itself? What about your videos and their teaser pics? How about forum posts and the pictures you post there, are they private too? Spoiler: They'll have to be, or else the people who don't 100% understand the limits of what a private "gallery" actually is will be lulled into a false sense of privacy about the rest of their content. They'll post pics to the forum or to a blog or event, and later be exacerbated to find that *they* were not private. It will be a confusing mess. And the person who loses out most is the person who posts stuff under the false sense of security, thinking it would all be private. I want to avoid that.

This is a social media site, and an adult one at that. This combination should trigger an extra level of consideration in everything we do and post. I promise to keep your personal info private and safe because that's always been under lock and key. But when you upload media content to a public site and demand that it be private, that's a promise I am uncomfortable making. After months of work, I'd just be opening the floor up to a bunch more confusion, disappointment, and probably liability too... And all anyone has to do to circumvent all of it is to log in and become your friend.

A politician would make the promise to you in bad faith, and then break it. I'm telling you all that this one is on you: Do not upload content that you don't want out there.

Thanks everybody for caring, and for your passion and your ideas. This conversation is not over and it never should be.
Messmaster

How many flags do I have?

DUDE

Agreed but that would really be steering things off of a serious topic.

As MM said:

Fair enough, Potato-person.

So here's another aspect of the serious topic at hand that hasn't been touched on in this thread:

If 45% of the visitors to the UMD are female (per Google Anayltics anyway), why is the number of forum posts by female members so incredibly lower than that? Do you have anyway to quantify the percentage of posts made by members who identify as female, MM? I would guess it is well below 10%, and that the large majority of even this small number of posts are made by women who are model/producers here... i.e. people with a financial motivation to make posts. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, just pointing out that the number of non-producer females who post here is incredibly low as a percentage of all members who post.

Some might jump to the conclusion that the same thing is true for male posters in an even broader sense -- that is, more than half of overall posts from on the forum come from male producers, but I think that's not even close to true. Way more than half of all THREADS here are started by male producers, for sure, but I'm taking all posts (i.e. counting each reply within a thread as a post), not just the posts that initiate a thread.

I've chatted online with dozens of female wammers over the years (way more at the now-defunct Wamchat site than here). Of course, some of them likely weren't really female, but i'm convinced that the majority of them were. (Skeptics are free to disagree.) Most of them said that they've never actively participated in the UMD forums, but they lurk on them or at least used to lurk on them. They have almost all said that they don't feel it's an inviting place for women to participate. Not all of them expressed safety concerns about participating, but some of them certainly did.

I'd just like to add a slightly more positive spin on things.

Alright, I'm quite famously attached, but I have to say, in my nearly 15 years on the UMD, I've always felt safe, I've only had one or two messages I felt were inappropriate and I feel it's a less male dominated environment than ever.
I do safe guard myself slightly, using the tools that are already in place, but I do that on any social platform.

I'm not belittling others experiences in any way, I'm just making it clear, this isn't every females experience.

Peace xx

I would surmise that "Visitors" =/= "Members" A lot of lurkers. Also women are generally less likely to say things like "Fantastic pictures of 'x' 'y'" and "Nice tits".



Go click on [People] [All Users] and select "Male" Tell me how many of those you see on the forums?

You know what, forget the male/female divide, just look through forums and you will find that probably less than 10% of all active members even comment on forums, or if they do, they don't do so regularly. The forums are not the end all be all of UMD metrics.

There are a lot of people that use chat and inbox without really ever touching the forums. There are users that have been here over 20 years and have less than 5 posts.

You make a fair point that the forums are not the "end all be all of UMD metrics." But that doesn't mean the very pronounced gender trends in them aren't worth discussing. It sure seems to me that males make 95% or more of the comments in the forums, despite the fact that an estimated 45% of the people visiting this site are female. You will clearly disagree with me here, Potatoman, but I think it's worth thinking about why this might be the case.

Some of that will be ingrained sexist cultural conditioning - basically while some of us guys are quite happy to discuss and be open about their fetishes, there are still an awful lot of people don't even think women can have fetishes much less discuss them - at very deep level even in progressive Western societies, there is still a huge prevailing undercurrent that a guy who has lots of sex or is involved in sexy stuff is "a stud" and someone to look up to or at least admire, while a woman who does exactly the same thing and owns her own sexuality is "a slut" to be shamed and hated / poked fun at. That at least isn't something the UMD is responsible for, it's a cultural issue. The result is a lot of women who do have fetishes are less likely to openly talk about them, even on dedicated forums like the ones here.

Now personally I'm a lifelong believer in total equality and sexual freedom, and I have female friends who are very open and outspoken about their own sex lives, sexual fantasies, fetishes, etc. But it'll be decades, possibly generations, yet, before women are genuinely able to discuss sexual pleasure with the same freedom that men already posses.

Not at all, just expanding on the data of "male users being the predominant voice" in the forums. I just think UMD metrics follows a lot of the others in the world at large. A very small percent of the voices make the most noise (you and I included).

As to discussing why this may be the case; Basically what I reply to DM1 below:


I dunno man, I feel like most of the men that are "happy to discuss" have next to no information up and hide behind fake avatars with no pictures, data, etc (A least in the case of hetero men in the community). Meanwhile many of our women here are quite brave and put themselves in a much more vulnerable position with what they share. It's easy to bark loud behind a veil of anonymity. Nothing is at risk.

(That reminds me to finish restoring my profile here)

Unfortunately the issue is not limited to the UMD. Women are regularly treated like shit in real life including stalking and all the stuff that has been described here. It is something I have been involved in conversations with on facebook recently with friends. Boys are not raised the same way women are. Boys are not taught all of the precautions that women are taught that make their survival possible. Boys are taught they are the dominant sex and that women are objects to do their bidding. Look at the current occupant of the white house and the acceptance of his treatment of women. It is a systemic issue in our society that gets sugar coated a LOT when it shouldn't be. There is no reason this should not be a place where women can be free to share in conversations without being harassed or objectified by assholes. I am curious how many female moderators are on the site. From my experiences with women, they can spot someone faster than men when it comes to abusive behavior.

I'm a diva, and like to read my reviews!

Those who due such things DUE NOT REPRESENT ALL OF US!! I Googled myself as you did and found nothing but links to my UMD account and my other social media, this site has many users most of which just lurk about, then you have those of us who ARE NOT dismissive and take this seriously, who help out with what we can. And of course there are those who are loud and obnoxious on the forums. As I said before gas lighting the situation solves nothing, I'm sorry for what happen to you. But blaming ever one for what SOMEONE did solves nothing.

This is not being dismissive THIS IS THE TRUTH, YOU are responsible for your OWN safety online us mods and Mess Master can only due so much. I'm sorry but this is the truth of any online forum , as the saying goes once you post something online its forever. It next to impossible to get it fully removed once its been posted online.

Another familiar thing I am finding when men talk about issues surrounding things women face. The not all guys stand point. You really think you need to point out that not all the guys on here are bad people as if the women did not know this and it is a new revelation to them? Thinking that everyone on the forum is being blamed for this issue tells me you must feel guilty about it or as if the person is talking about you. Do you have something you have done in the past that you regret that you are now feeling guilty about?

Also, bringing awareness to the situation is not gas lighting it. There have been many posts about this topic before and unfortunately this will not be the last thread on this topic until all men learn how to be respectful.

I think my emerging sense is that UMD is primarily good for updates from favorite producers and community discussions. But it's clearly not as useful for anyone who would like a intimate social media platform.

So it might be worthwhile if we were to branch out to venues that run on a different policy. e.g., you can alter privacy settings with Fetlife so your photos only go to friends, and you can curate your friends list. (Downside: at the moment FetLife is a bit of a WAM ghost town.)

That is not the answer. As has been stated many times, any time you put a picture out there it can be copied and placed anywhere the person wants. Having a little and I mean LITTLE HTML knowledge or web browser knowledge you can get the source of any picture online and download it straight from the file server. Disabling right click does not work with the way you can browse the objects in chrome and other browsers. Hell even texting a picture to someone can get out there as many celebrities can tell you. Any picture you see on any website is downloaded in a cached location on your computer which can be accessed by malware even if you are clearing your cache. The only way to make sure that pictures of your experiences do not get out is to either not send them or not take them and enjoy the moments.

Yes I Due and Any guilt I feel comes from not being able to due More for all the wonderful men and women on here. There are those who only choose to speak about this situation when something happens and then blow it up as a huge problem that is constantly happening with is far from the case THAT is gas lighting. AS A MOD I CHECK THE SITE EVERY DAY! I flag , I report , I comment , I heart pics , I upload my own content when I can. You no Nothing about WHO I am all you due is comment on posts and hide Try stepping into the light.

You might want to find a dictionary as the words you are using don't mean what you think they do. Yes I know it is a little petty but still.

That is not where your guilt comes from. The fact you felt the need to point out that there are bad apples in the bunch and not all men are like that speaks volumes about your opinion of the women that have been posting. Being a man you know nothing about what is going on every day with women as I don't. I can only listen to their experiences and support women the best way I can.

Why do you think any abusive treatment towards women is not a big deal? Why do you think that is something that should be swept under the rug? You do realize that women have gotten to the point that they are sick of dealing with the bullshit. You should really walk a day in the shoes of some of the women who have been harassed on here. Take a minute to talk with one of the women on here being harassed and listen to what they describe. The fact that it is still being brought up says there is a problem and there are people on the site that are not helping things. If you are a mod than surely you must have noticed that the harassment is generally geared towards women. That there is a toxic society of men that feel treating people this way is completely acceptable. If you are not trying to help things then you are complacent in what is happening which is worse. If this was the first time this has happened I would understand your gas lighting bullshit. But it is not. That is the problem is that it KEEPS FUCKING HAPPENING! IF you read the forums like you claim you would remember that the topic of women being harassed has been brought up multiple times. In fact, this very topic is what led to the ability to flag posts by MM as a tool to help with the problem. If you are a mod, I think there may have been some bad choices there considering your stance on a systemic problem that extends to not just the forums here but society in general. How can you help moderate forums when you are in denial about the seriousness of an issue that happens?

I comment on posts like everyone else. I try to follow many of them and I am here almost everyday looking at things. There is no hiding going on. Anytime you want to talk to me I respond to all PM's.

I don't think he is a real mod. In his mind maybe. He informed me that talking with me was useless and he was going to report and block me. Most sites I have been to mods are not allowed to block people. Mods would also have the permissions to do more than just report posts.

Okay, but a little bit of control over privacy settings is better than forcing a choice between Fort Knox (invisible mode) or the Red Light District (everything else). The abuse of trust is an important thing to think about, and relevant to the question of the thread, but not relevant in the context of asking "why are my pics getting automatically snapped up by Google?"

Ok, so forget about practicality and what can and can't be done for a moment. List the things that you SPECIFICALLY think are the problem and what YOUR solutions would be or want done to remedy the situation and/or "fix" the site.

Then let's go from there.

I think we need to discuss what issues are site problems and what problems are things the site can't control. For example, I don't think that picture stealing is a site issue. Even if you have them made private, people in your friends list can still be assholes if they choose. I think some of the harassment is a cultural issue that definitely needs to change, but I also admit that there needs to be more reports made before it is too late. I think that we should all be looking at things and report them if we see it. Maybe have a category of flag for offensive VS abusive. Since offense is a choice the reader makes and abusive is a choice the poster makes. Something that says look at this now.

I know this is small and what not, but if there is a way to make it so the the color of the font of moderators and people in positions of administration of the site so that the people who are in that position are known and those who are not are known.

There needs to be trust built back with some of the members on the site. I remember when there was not the thought that there were bad people on the site. It could be my ignorance at the time to things, it could be the culture of fear that still exists in dealing with reporting men or it could be the social changes that have brought the behavior to the light or a combination of all of these things that are making me more aware of things. I think this can still be a place where women can feel safe sharing what they are comfortable with with the community and that we would be decent about it. There are things that are out of the control of the people running the site and I know this. I am not sure if it would help, but maybe get together some of the women on the site and have a meeting of sorts with a female moderator and MM and discuss things on the site. What is working and what is not working and what can be altered or changed. I also know that people need to speak up more and that does not just mean the people who are the victims of this bullshit behavior. When it is seen in the forums everyone should be reporting the behavior. Users should not be allowed to threaten some of the women on here and still have an account.

Ok, maybe this can be done. Honestly, I really don't know. As someone who has next to zero experience with HTML or and ZERO with any other internet programming, I don't know what would be involved in changing that.

However, from a practicality stand point there is an easier solution to this. If only a friend could see your pictures in a scenario like this, and no one else; how would this be any different than if you didn't have any pics on UMD, and just maybe texted/e-mailed back and forth? Like you don't need UMD to do this. You don't even need an app to do this.


So that would completely remove all lurkers...I don't know that that's necessarily a good message to send. "Hey if you're too insecure with your kink to have a membership, you just can't come here at all."

Keep in mind that lurkers can report things they see wrong too.

Also, how would this improve privacy. You can create an account with a throwaway e-mail using a VPN. Then that user would suddenly have access to all the things you mentioned above. If anything the above mentioned things that can be used anywhere on the internet have tenfold increased "privacy" or at least anonymity, and therefore piracy.

I don't think your suggestions are bad, nor am I trying to be a jerk in dismissing them. I just don't think the solutions you've presented actually do anything to add any layer of meaningful protection to our community. But this is exactly the kind of brainstorming needed to find the ones that do.


Agreed, case in point you can go right into the chrome store and find extensions for downloading things that aren't designed to be downloaded. Such as this.

[Link to image downloader app removed]

If Instagram wanted people to be able to easily download photos, then right click "Save Image As" would be there. But it's suspiciously missing.

Programs like this (video downloaders in particular) are what have made such a large increase in piracy in the past couple years. So much so that a number of producers have just flat out called it quits.


I mean, I feel like that's what that explanation box in the report is for. There you can choose to say whatever you want about the piece that's being reported. I honestly don't know how exactly they show up though. Even as an admin I didn't get reports as MM handles those directly and solely.

I get your point though about offensive vs. abusive. A current events example is "Peloton Girl". People are currently rioting over this commercial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pShKu2icEYw

The level of which that the male ACTOR is getting a ton of blowback on his personal social media accounts as being sexist for a part he played in a fucking commercial.

https://time.com/5745757/viral-peloton-ad-husband-interview/

I mean...is it cringy, definitely. Is it sexist? Only if what you read between the lines of what's not seen in the commercial as "the husband must have gotten the wife this because she's fat etc."

But the follow up commercial the "wife" did for Ryan Reynolds Gin is priceless
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2t7lknrK28

Agreed, but a reasonable person might think that the tacit assumption in the question, "How can we make UMD safer for women?", was that we were not looking for strategies that give women reasons to step back from UMD.


By eliminating massive Google Image scrapes, since that was one of the key concerns in the OP. I think Misspies was perfectly right to point out it is a problem. (FWIW I struggle with similar insecurities about privacy so it's a problem for me, too.)

I think this would be a bad idea because it would just let a user on how badly their behavior is or at least is perceived by the rest of the community. If there's a troll or abusive person that sees they have a "red light" that's a good indicator for them to just ya know...make another account.

I think this would make matters worse rather than better.

I love that everyone on this conversation cares deeply about it, and I get the sense that we know we're all on the same team. Lemme just respond to some stuff.


That stat is based on all visitors to the site, not just registered users (who are only a small percentage of UMD's overall visitorship). It seems that guys are more likely to actually register for a profile, and once here, they're more likely to post and comment. Men are just more forward about stuff like that than women but I don't think that's any surprise. I have no clue how accurate Google's demographic stats are, so take them with a grain of salt. The point is that we know this community is not like 90% sausages.


I made no joke and I apologize if anything in this thread comes across as anything but dead serious. I've spent literally half my life building up tools and methods to insulate us from harrassment and harm, and I use them every day to personally research every flag I get. Then I explain all of this to you so that you can hopefully understand how you're being protected, and so the community can offer meaningful and actionable ideas for improvement. I have a few females on UMD who have *actual* stalkers that I have to continually battle to keep away from the site. I can't ever say I understand what a women goes through, but jeezus... Based on what I see from the backend, yall get my utmost respect and sympathy.


I don't think he meant it like that when he called it gaslighting. Of course your experiences are real and should not be belittled or disregarded. But gaslighting is something we do to ourselves. It's psychologically reversing the blame back onto the victim, causing them to fear that they are the actual cause of the problems instead of an outside actor. This community and the way it is run are not perfect, but we absolutely can't be blamed for every jerk who ends up on here or for every conversation that goes sour. That guy justme2k17 had nothing to do with UMD, nor was his behavior provoked by some anti-woman sentiment cultivated by UMD. The community itself is also a victim when attacks like that happen, and it's easy for a cancer to develop where the community starts accusing itself, trying to find everyone and everything to blame for the attacker's existence except him. Any failings to prevent such users on this site should be discussed, but it helps to stay focused on what can actually be done to weed those people out early and keep them gone.


Your profile picture (user icon) is not only on the WAM party, it's shown next to literally every thing you do. It's next to every comment, it's in people's notifications, it's everywhere. If you think that makes you unsafe, please delete the icon, or just don't do stuff around the site.

Making a private profile option will mislead even more people into thinking like you did, that all their actions are hidden. Less-advanced users may even think their pictures can't be saved or shared, and that's dangerous. I'd rather be straight-up with you, and reject your content that if it's that sensitive. Maybe I care about this more than Fetlife or whatever, but I feel better knowing I'm not encouraging uploading damaging content.


I'm rarely all-or-nothing, but an incremental feature like that will dangerously mislead people into thinking it does more than it actually does. What happens when I promise tens of thousands of people that their galleries can be "private," and then people still find their pictures saved and uploaded somewhere else? Or that their user icon is still showing up next to a comment they left ages ago? They won't understand, and it'll all come back on me. So it's also a game of managing expectations and informing users of the limits of a site's abilities to hide their content.

When you upload content, regardless of any profile setting, you are publishing it. Publishing your pictures and videos to any adult social media site is something you should use extreme discression about because at the end of the day it's all public. Our #1 defense has always been to NOT host content that would be a liability, and that rule is also for your protection. If your media content would cause problems if leaked, it should not be uploaded here. That's on the TOS. https://umd.net/termsofservice#watch_it


Not all moderators are listed, but Mhop is one and he's listed on the People page under Your Hosts. The idea of "moderator" here is blurry anyway: I have a bunch of powers that I can turn on or off for any member depending on how they choose to help around the site. And I have a small compensation plan too. https://umd.net/groups/i/help-umd-and-get-a-small-compensation


All flags come to me and Messmistress for review, regardless of the category selection. The cat selection does a bunch of separate internal things, but changing their verbiage won't make them get noticed any faster or slower.


Moderators can choose to have a title next to their name in red if they want. And they can appear on the People page too, if they want. Not all want the recognition though; Some just want to help. If the idea is to increase the presence of authority, that is no deterrent to problematic people anyway, and more often has the opposite effect.


People who threaten other members would never be allowed to stay here. If I see or have any proof of it happening, they're gone. If there is no proof in my hand, I may just take notes and put a watch on the account pending more corroborating evidence. It's a whole process.


Something is being done about it constantly every day, but you still have to put thought into what you post. I know it's disappointing, but if you feel that your safety would be compromised if your pictures got out there, then please don't put them out there in the first place. You can't rightly insist on uploading your stuff to someone's server and then demand they barricade it, lest they be accused of doing nothing at all. If you want an outline of how UMD protectes your privacy, see this section: https://umd.net/termsofservice#privacy and if you want insight on our M.O. for dealing with trolls, it's here: https://umd.net/termsofservice#host_guidelines . And here are tips on how you should safeguard yourself while you're here: https://umd.net/termsofservice#safety .



We already have a points system that's linked into everything on the site. Every user has a score that can be positive or negative based on their flags and everything else, but that's not published, and ultimately it's the internal notes that will guide any decisions. It's done internally like this for a reason. The tips are anonymous, and much of the notes contain sensitive information or hasn't been corroborated, so they won't be made public. The incessant trolling on UMD in the 2000's didn't stop until I took much of this type of work into the backend, in lieu of public demerits against a user. But to be clear, trolling and racking up negative points is a different type of issue than the personal harrassment that this thread is about. Harassers don't get a score. They get removed.


Trolls of course are not highlighted, because they are kicked off if they are discovered. Most problems today are not trolling, but rather things gone wrong between people who were already chatting and flirting and role playing and stuff. Adding more locks on the doors won't help if you're letting the perps into the house.

Peace, and thanks again for a meaningful debate.
Messmaster

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?