In light of recent events on UMD along with my own personal experience when I was a new user last December and private conversations I've had with a few general users on and off UMD, I think updating the block function should be considered.

I understand changing the function of something already built into the site is arduous at best and a long slog of bugginess at worst, but I think having better tools for users to block each other would help to protect the community here.

Yes, I understand the importance of free speech and that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but everyone should also be entitled to enforce their own boundaries when someone crosses them or says/does something hateful, threatening, harassing, or just makes them feel unsafe in general. To me, this is also an important part of free speech - the freedom to divest from toxic people.

Some things that I believe have been mentioned in the past, but would like to also see in the future:

1>Block feature being easier to find. So a block button rather than just a report button on PMs for example.

2>Not having a box where you need to fill in why you're blocking someone. I believe others have suggested this before, but it would be better if the block fucntion worked like: Select 'Block User' > User gets blocked > Then a completely optional free text box to allow a reason or report to be made if wanted. A lot of people get blocked long before they do a reportable offense because they have bad vibes. Also, some users get blocked for completely personal reasons regarding things that happened offsite. For flagging users to keep an eye on, if a particular user has a lot of reports, then they can be watched more closely, even if no one has submitted a reason yet. Again, I've seen this point suggested by multiple users before in various threads.

3>Block expanding to more than just inbox messages. Ideally: the blockee is unable to respond to the blocker's forum posts, or comment on their pictures, videos, scenes and wall.

4> An optional block function to prevent the blockee from viewing the blocker's profile and media.

5>Another optional block function to hide any forum posts started by the blockee and the blockee's comments on other forum posts.

The optional block functions could be presented like a checklist when blocking a user, and that can be edited in the blocker's settings after a block is in place.

Anyways, thank you for the consideration. Hope that some of this can be implemented at some point. If others in the community have other suggestions for how to make the site safer, please add your thoughts below.

yea i do think Updating the Blocking features would be a good thing and would be a good step in repairing some of the damage caused by recent events

Good idea. I thought being consistent with the link at the bottom of every page of that user profile would be better, but that doesn't mean we can't also have another report / block button up higher and above the fold.


I won't get rid of the box. The text area is optional and it does say it's optional. If you click the Block checkbox it submits with the text area empty. I do see how the overall layout of the form suggests that it's just a feedback form and I'll try to think of ways to make it more obvious that you can simply block somebody with it. The functionality is there but it needs design tweaks to visually communicate how it can be used. I put that on my To Do list.

The reason I won't get rid of the box is because having feedback from each user has always been SO important to helping me research what's going on. Like I said, I review and research every flag. Showing the box is my visual request that they please help me out and give me a little information about what's going on. Giving me more clues really does help me research more deeply, keep better notes for future moderation, and definitely keep everybody *else* on this site safer. It's an optional input field and I don't think it's too much to at least ask.


The social block already affects comments for all media, but does not block replying to forum posts. I'm afraid I can't think of a realistic way to make that happen. Hopefully I would have ejected that person from the site long before it got so bad that you needed to keep blocking them from your forum posts.


Remember that profiles are visible even for people not logged in. Blocking a UMD member would have no effect if they just logged out. This is what the "Users Only" profile option is for: If you enable that and then block a user, they truly would not be able to see your profile because they'd have to log in and then we know who to block.

But even then it is a profile-block only. Content you post like videos and pictures are not contained just within your profile. They end up on like Picture of the Day and on the Wall and stuff like that. The only way to prevent non-logged-in users from seeing that would be to make the entire site like Facebook where you had to log in first to see anything. We had a large debate about that and the TL;DR was that this was not in the spirit of UMD, so here we are. I explained more about the nature of our spread-out content back in 2019: https://umd.net/forums/how-can-we-make-the-umd-safer-for-women?start=60#postid_734478


We do have a forum block function, but you access that on the thread listing itself by hovering their username and clicking the red X. UMD will no longer show you any of their posts. Again, if you are blocking a user for reasons of harassment, you need to let me know about them because they just need to be gone from the site!

The forum block feature doesn't extend into the individual thread view. It probably wouldn't make much sense. Like you'll still see replies to the person you meant to block, and the page numbering system would get thrown off, and things like that. If they're that bad let's just get them off the site


I want everyone to know how much VioletVixen has helped me behind the scenes, basically since the day she joined the site less than a year ago. Thank you for taking the time to give me so much help and suggestions over those months.

I do want to correct what I think is an unintended implication in a lot of these questions I get about the blocking system. It's never said, but It always seems to be presented like a necessary tool to shield yourself from some hoard of resident harassers that we keep around. But this isn't Instagram. If I see somebody acting up, I'll personally kick their ass off of here.

I get alerted to every block that a user does against another user, and investigate each one. About 50% of the time it gets used after two people have had a blowup and they block each other out of spite. Maybe 40% of the time somebody just disagrees with something somebody said in the forum so they block that person even though they had never tried to contact them anyway. (Not content-block, social block!) That other ~5% of the block feature's use really is important tho. I get people blocking others for reasons like preventing possible run-ins with someone they already know, perhaps an ex that just joined up.

I'm saying that the block feature rarely needs to be used to block someone who is actively "harassing" someone on this site. If anything, it would be a temporary measure until I see the flag, at which point I can delete the user profile if I need to, spider their IP to make sure they're not also on here as someone else, block their IP from UMD at the script level, etc etc etc. Don't get me wrong, the block feature needs to be there as a stopgap until real action can be taken, and it needs to be there when people just need a wall of separation between them and another user, for whatever their personal reasons may be. But I want to get out ahead of discussion of a block feature with a subtext that it's needed because we have a big harassment problem on this site. Sorry if this at all comes across as defensive, but aiding our users is literally what I do all day and night. Flags and blocks aren't handled by some algorithm, it's ME.

One more thing, I know we are all on heightened awareness because of recent events, and we should be. But that issue was about a producer and model over in the UK. UMD is in Philly, and its blocking feature would have no effect on things like that happening.

Love you Vix

Good point about the blocking a profile being useless like blocking someone from my twitter had them viewing it not logged in and sending me some shit on another account lol. But I think finding a way to prevent blockees from further adding to a blocker's forum posts is an important and needed update.

However, can I make another suggestion then?

>There are already privacy options to choose to make your profile public (non-users can see your profile), UMD only (only logged-in users can see you), and private (nukes all your everything, but the profile still exists in the shadows with very limited functions).

If the blocker has a UMD-only profile, then couldn't that also then include both site guests and blocked users as being unable to access the profile page?

>Re: forum blocking: the user could just have their posts appear as a blank with a note like [post content hidden because UserName is blocked]. It would still keep the page and post numbering consistent. If the blocking function expanded to include blockee from replying to the blocker, it wouldn't mess up the numbers either because they would have an error message or be unable to use the forum functions on a thread started by the blocker - even if they have already replied to it pre-block.

Can you consider combining the general site block and the forum block? Usually people will not want to interact with the blockee, and until you said there is a forum blocker, I had no idea this function existed. You never know how a blockee will react upon realizing they are blocked. They may not have a forum post to flag, but then go on a rampage later or act passive-aggressively to trigger the blocker on purpose or try to do other harmful things before the get banned, or just avoid getting banned juuust enough.

>You mention that if a user is erratic enough, then they get dealt with. You did this for me without me asking or requesting it when a user commented for me to 'wax my cunt' in a way meant to be hurtful. However, in these recent threads, sexual assault apologists, people pulling from harmful redpill and blackpill sexist idealogy, and that one absolute batshit insane user were allowed to continue posting in the spirit of opining for much longer than that one user who left one comment on exactly one scene of mine took to get both the comment deleted and a site gag (because it turns out he had done that to other users).

It may be more straight forward when someone says something like 'you're ugly' or 'lose weight' or a straight-up slur on a user's media, but what was said in the Leon threads and Penny's thread were extremely hurtful and were much worse and painful for me than some rando yelling about my hairy cunt (ironically his profile pic was two hairy pussy cats). I just don't want that sort of behavior tolerated. I understand misogyny, victim blaming, and assholes aren't unique to UMD, but UMD could do better at moderating these things.

I think it's time to accept that the ball was dropped on this and it took mostly fem users speaking up and putting themselves in a vulnerable position for some more men to speak up and eventually make it clear that the way it was/is being handled would cost the site money. It shouldn't have come to that.

I also find many people are not comfortable reporting users, even when experiencing harassment. I don't think it's reasonable to expect that every user (or even most users) have the mental energy to place a report. A lot of the bad stuff happens in PMs, and it's going to take a lot for some users to trust flagging both the offending party and themself knowing it may get some very sensitive info read in their private messages.

I think though that reform is possible, and I hope to see positive changes.

Hmmm, I could block them if you were the one who started the thread. And I could block them from replying to your reply. But I wouldn't be able to stop them from posting to someone else's thread that you're also in. I'll tuck this one in the back of my To Do list. I've never been asked for this type of feature before.


Yeah that's pretty much how it works. Set your profile to users-only which makes people log in before they can see your profile. Since they have to log in, we'll know who to block and they can't see your profile. Other logged-in users can.


I'm afraid it's the same problem If the user simply logs out, UMD won't know who they are anymore, and will show them all the forum posts. We do have a "private" forum posting option that makes your forum posts not show up for not-logged-in viewers. Combining your blank-out idea with that might work, but honestly that's a ton of programming work to fix a problem that should be handled in a more meaningful way. Such as flagging the user so I can gag them from posting at all, or kick them off the site. Doing all this work to accommodate a harasser just so they can remain here and not see your messages doesn't seem to make sense

Edit: Did you mean that you wanted to filter seeing THAT user's posts in your own view? That might be doable! I'll mull over that if that's what you meant


The "Posts and Media" block makes UMD filter out that user's images and videos from most areas of the site, plus their forum posts. Is that what you mean? One of that ways you activate that is by hovering their username on the forum to see that red X, and on the Wall there is a text link under each entry. You can see who you're blocking and unblock them on your Preferences page.


I took longer than usual to clean the arguing out of that thread because I was simply overwhelmed by everything else that was going on (still is). I've got it pretty clean now. Now I realize why you were requesting to block individual users' posts in a thread, but honestly this was literally a once-in-25-year event, and it lasted 3 days. If it happens again we'll use what we learned to deal with it quicker. Meanwhile if someone is that triggering for you to read in the thread, I kindly ask you to not read the thread until I can get to their messages (just ask me if you want me to notify you). I'll try to think of how to implement a blank-out feature at some point


The delay was me working behind the scenes, pulling consecutive all-nighters trying to sort an extremely complicated and fraught issue out behind the scenes among people who were yelling competing demands at me from all sides. I've gotten 7 hours of sleep in 3 days. I was not waiting to be convinced by fem users. And I didn't suddenly act when men thought keeping Leon here would lose money. Where did that come from? He was literally the largest producer that ever existed on UMD. Even with a substantial exodus of UMD's user base and producers, we still would not have lost more money than we just did letting him go. UMD has taken a major financial hit that I'll have to deal with to make ends meet with all the servers we're running now. I haven't mentioned any part of any of this to avoid making it about me or about money.


It's not required to leave a report. You can just click the block checkbox and send. It will send and they will be blocked.


I'm not sure I understand? You don't have to write any sensitive info, or supply any info at all. It really does work like a pure block, despite having that big old optional text area there Still got plans to make it look more like it functions. I don't know when I'll be able to get to that, but it works right now.

I've just implemented the blank-out idea. That was actually pretty easy. Thread replies from people you've already blocked will now be blanked out with a message and a link to un-block them. Thanks for that idea

I was also able to implement the thread reply block. Only works if you were the OP

If you ever want women and other non-male genders to feel comfortable using this site, you need to get shot of that box, or at least hide it using Javascript and have a "Optional: click here if you would like to provide more information" button to open it. I remember the last time this came up, when Candy asked for quizz-free blocking. I get your reasons for wanting the box, but you seem to be thinking in terms of "well if anyone is obnoxious enough to be blocked we should know why so we can yeet them off the site". But in many cases that's going way further than people want or need for comfort. Someone might want to block another model they've fallen out with, or a producer who gave them bad vibes but never actually did anything wrong, or someone who's politics they consider toxic, or even just an ex who shares the fetish but that they no longer want to interact with. So no actual reason to yeet the person being blocked, just that the blocker, for their own comfort and feeling they have the ability to control their own site experience, wants to remove certain others from their visibility. And to do it withouty feeling they're being interrogated for doing so, which **is** how that text box comes across to many people.

(Yeet: Yorkshire term, usually taken as "throw, with great force")


I do get your reasoning, but I think you are overlooking the need to provide people with the comfort of being able to control their own experience and restrict their audience. Multiple women have now asked for this, please listen to them.

This is amazing, thank you Violet, you are bloody amazing, and thanks MM for listening.

This is the kind of thing I was going to try and write to you today to suggest, but my brain was not co-operating to gather my thoughts and reasoning enough to suggest them. I still will write at some point but at least now I'm not in a panic trying to get it done quickly.

I wasn't aware the block reason section thing was optional. I can see it right there now in front of my eyes now, but yeah, my inattentiveness, missed that one initially.

That's really helpful, as it removes friction, which is really important generally but especially for those of us with ADHD and similar neurodiversity.

Sometimes I can't really put into words why I want to block someone, certainly not with any brevity and there's no time to do an a4 page report either going over the inner workings of my brain and whatever dread, anxiety or trauma it is they may have triggered -

Sometimes they appear to have not even really done or said anything bad, but with experience over the years, you just know when bad is coming next or soon, and that in itself is a trigger.

So if I have to try and explain it, I'll just go dark and vanish for a bit rather than blocking, or just hope they go away. So anyway I really appreciate that, and sorry I didn't notice it sooner.

Having people I've muted, muted on the threads as well (to my eyes at least) is so freeing and incredible. There were so many posts I knew would be damaging if I read them on the various threads the last few days that I had to quickly skim past them and just hope I didn't see the content and get the resulting deep feeling of dread that these people even exist and think that way.

I can now read those threads properly without fear of seeing the damaging, pointless content from certain users. I know these people and views exist, I really don't ever need reminding. I have the full allowance of 200 words muted on twitter, as it's the only way to make it a useable and non depressing place for me.

So yeah, that's incredible and thanks for doing it. It's a huge relief and takes away an unexplainable mental toll

I do agree here with DM1

Like I said in my above post, sometimes I can't even explain, and if I did, it may still not make any sense to you, because it's one of those things where down to experience I know the exact next few sentences they are going to say and I'm nipping it in the bud before I have to witness it - or when I have other reasons that tend to be, kinda more specific to me and my own traumas and that person isn't terrible or likely to harm other users.

However, I promise that when I do have a solid and easily explainable reason, especially something that may affect other users, I would click a link to explain more.

Taking the box away would make sure no one feels obliged to try and explain, or misses the fact that it is optional. This takes away the risk of them just giving up and leaving or going quiet for a while.

Edit to add also what i mean is, sometimes people might tell you reasons that don't make sense and therefore would be useless to you for trying to understand patterns etc anyway

That's along the lines of what I was thinking. This is what was on my mind when I said the functionality is there but it needs design tweaks to visually communicate how it can be used. Oh why did I put it that way Sorry not so eloquent right now but my thinking was something like a big prominent button with maybe a minimized little text field underneath for optional information. I think it should made to be dead simple and non-intimidating as possible, nothing like it looks now. But I do want to keep at least a little text field to let them know visually that we are listening to them if they do have anything to say. That form also handles everything from the piracy reports to customer issues, so that's why they all share that big text area


I think I know what you're saying, and yeah that's pretty much been the reality. There really have been a lot of cases where without that information, I wouldn't have been able to find and kick certain harassers off of this site. It really does help me. I promise to make it tasteful my guy

I am going to sleep now. I am massively indebted to everybody who's sent me messages of support through all this. Let's keep the focus on keeping this community together, safe, fun and... did we forget wet and messy?! I'll see everybody in about 48 hours

I'm been silent about this for some time and after reading over everything from every trend and this here I didn't even know there was a blocking opportunity. I'm so glad there is one. As to say that it's the best thing for women I feel is little one sided. Yes women are probably the most effective by harassing males but there has been males or non defined gender being harassed too by other males or non defined genders or other women. I have had some users be little more forceful with me that I have just ignored cause due to my own fault didn't know about blocking and I have been here since 1996. I'm so glad there is these options in placed and so glad for everything MM has done and will continue to do for this site.

I've been quietly observing everything from a distance to see how things were:

1, handled
2, the community input
3, the general consensus of models
4, the results

I think progress has been made and enough light has been brought to the issue. UMD is what allowed me to build my following and I have had messages from fans asking what I'm doing regarding my store.

I've spoken to a few people I trust and this thread has implemented some much needed and now required changes.

As a model myself I will always do everything to advocate the safety of fellow models and if something is proven with enough proof to be beyond doubt then so be it.

Just my few pence worth.

This community is amazing and we have all come together for positive change.

I really like the ideas being put forth with this. The only thing I can echo is to move the report, block feature. I just went and looked for it. To find it, I have to scroll through the users pictures, comments on their profile, etc all the way to the bottom. The twitter link is bigger than the block/flag icon. I would love it at the top and the flag a little bigger. Maybe even make it a button like the friend and follow buttons are.

Thank you to Violet for raising this. I have just 'blocked' a few users based on recent mysoginistic and hateful posts they have made.

However, when doing so on the buried away button on their profile, I have to click 'send feedback' to submit the block so it's a rather unclear process to just being able to block without needing to give a reason.

When someone is blocked from messaging or muted, there is still an issue where their name and picture appear in forums when they have posted, even if their messages don't. This would be much better if these simply said something like 'this post is from a user who you have blocked' so we don't need to see them at all.

Also, even if someone is muted, their original message can still be seen if/ when it is quoted by another user in the same forum- which is something to address.

I very rarely if ever post but visit every day and didn't even know there was a block button. Reading this thread I started searching for it but was at a loss as to where it was. I was trying to search for it on profiles but the ones I clicked on (simply to see if I could find the button, not to actually block them) turned up blank. This I think is due to it being buried away as highlighted by Messystars. It was only on Messystars profile I found it as theirs isn't busy with info and pics.

Sorry that's a long way of saying it's not prominent enough.

MM, I know I'm a fairly quiet user on here, but in my day job I'm an IT geek with a particular interest in the psychology of user interfaces - what makes them easy to use, what puts people off etc. If you'd ever like some feedback on layout etc. you're more than welcome to ask

"The reason I won't get rid of the box is because having feedback from each user has always been SO important to helping me research what's going on. Like I said, I review and research every flag. Showing the box is my visual request that they please help me out and give me a little information about what's going on"

Speaking as a user, I feel put on the spot and interrogated by 'why are you blocking this person'. You're restricting your pool of data on problematic users to feedback from people who don't give up at that point and leave altogether.

"We do have a forum block function, but you access that on the thread listing itself by hovering their username and clicking the red X"

Even without a touchscreen on which 'hover over the username' isn't an intuitive interface, this feels like hiding a key safety feature. I've had issues with the little red X suddenly appearing and not being sure if I've accidentally blocked someone. This feature feels like reinventing the block/report button with unnecessary stealth.

Thanks for your feedback. I actually have a pretty sizable pool of data in my logs and stuff, but like I said, feedback from users who report stuff has also been essential to me in keeping this site safe. I don't know how I can stress this enough. Even the mods don't see this feedback that comes my way. There are *actual* harassers and child pornographers who I have had to remove from here, and much of it was made possible through the tips that people send me on that form. I don't know what makes one feel interrogated by the mere existence of the optional form field that lets us hear your voice, but I'll try to make it less intimidating if I can and like smaller....


Not the best design huh. That was the very first type of user filtering that we had and it only worked on the forums. I added it years ago so that people didn't have to see posts of people they didn't like. Since then I've expanded the filter to affect content in other areas of the site, and added more links to invoke it (directly on their profile, from the Wall, and more coming). I left the forum username-hover in there as a legacy feature because people were used to it and I couldn't think of a good reason to remove it... but at the same time I also don't want permanently visible "x" next to every username. I'm thinking of ways to make blocking more visible. Also, we shouldn't think of the filter as a "safety feature." If a person is being *actually* unsafe in a way that threatens another user, then they will be removed from the site!