rawTOP

FYI… Yes, this is something I'm aware of, but I'm not sure when I'll be fixing it. At some point I'll disable the current chat and have more niche specific chats – general bareback, poz fetish, oral, fetish, etc. (including one for "fem pigs" which you'll probably like). At that point (or sooner) I'll fix the underlying problem – that my new system doesn't check to see if your display name on this site differs from your original profile name (which is retained even after you change your display name). I'll get to it in the next few months, but there's a bunch of other stuff that's more urgent that I need to deal with.

It sounds like a caching problem. You probably had one bad login and your browser is remembering the error page as the URL to go to on logon.

Yup. Reactions are limited. I searched pretty hard and couldn't find the exact setting that controls the number per day. I don't know whether it's per calendar day or number in the past 24 hours, but based on the comments above it seems it's per calendar day. And yes, the calendar would reset at midnight eastern time. Ultimately it's not a bad thing. For starters it's a way to control spam (e.g. disgruntled users down voting everything they see). But it also means likes mean something since they have to be used judiciously. Oh, by the way, while I was looking at the settings I enabled additional types of reactions – Thanks, HaHa's, and Confused… And if you're wondering down votes are negative (obviously), confused is neutral, and all the others amount to a +1. So a like and an up vote have the same point value.

I'm just wondering if any of you are still having this problem? Looking at my daily stats, the % of bots dropped from being regularly around 40% to ~10% about 10 days or 2 weeks ago. I suspect it took Google that long to figure out what "normal" looked like for my sites. Now that it know what normal humans do, it's finding less suspicious activity, which, if true, means fewer of you would be blocked when trying to go to sponsor sites. I should also mention that I checked the code and my code was only blocking people who were rated as the most suspicious. Google's rating scale goes from 0 to 1 with 0.1 meaning "almost certainly a bot". Those were the only folks I was blocking. Given that no one else has posted in the thread I'm assuming the problem solved itself. If that's not the case, please let me know.

Bottom line, you can't prove you own the accounts and this has been the case since before GPPR went into effect since I started accommodating account deletions when GDPR went into effect. In cases where people can't prove ownership of an account, GDPR says I should not delete the account. You've been notified of this both privately and now publicly. I've looked briefly at the accounts and don't see anything in either account that could be used for claiming ownership. GDPR specifically discourages websites from collecting and holding personally identifiable information. So this is a catch 22 that's actually created by the privacy laws. Websites are discouraged from collecting the data that would let you prove ownership and you have to prove ownership to have an account deleted.

We have regional forums here, though none are dedicated to the Caribbean. The Central & South American Forum is probably the most appropriate one. Honestly, given how hostile the Caribbean is to gay folks, and the relatively small population, I don't expect a Caribbean forum to have much activity. If you start getting many threads in the Central & South American forum, I can create a Caribbean forum and move them there.

Did you set your browser to delete cookies when you close out of your browser? Or are you in privacy mode? Both of those would make you login again. You need cookies in order to avoid the logins.

Late last month I installed reCAPTCHA v3 on the new sites I'm developing. All the links go through a script on the new sites, which is why you're encountering the problem with links. Then about a week later I installed it here, but it has a different function here. Let me back up and explain… reCAPTCHA v3 never actually shows you a CAPTCHA. The idea is that it monitors your activity on the site to see if you're doing things that seem suspicious. It's looking for patterns of behavior that a bot would make that a human wouldn't make. It then combines that with what Google knows about your IP (reCAPTCHA is a Google service), and probably some other details, and then gives me a score back whenever I ask for it. So installing it here lets Google see your pattern of behavior and should help them figure out you're human. According to reCAPTCHA, about 40% of the traffic on my sites is bot traffic. Clearly some of the traffic they label as bot is human, which is why you're complaining. The issue is that bots were throwing off my stats, and another webmaster I know actually had some of his sponsors close his accounts because the bots were using his outbound links to find sites to test stolen credit cards. I need to think about what to do. One option is to give you a reCAPTCHA v2 challenge (the "I'm not a bot" things you're probably familiar with). It will be a few days before I get around to doing something. I possibly won't get to it until after the holidays. And just for reference… Men.com is also using reCAPTCHA v3 for logins, though they do revert to v2 when it says you're a bot. Guess I'll need to do the same, unless I think up something else.

FYI… I just did another round of deletions. Took HOURS. There were over 300 that needed to be deleted and I had to check each one before deleting the profile.

Here's an article on another option if you're looking for some place to have a blog after Tumblr… https://www.wired.com/story/tumblr-porn-bloggers-dreamwidth-pillowfort/ I don't know anything about them, so that's not a recommendation…

I'm really happy to hear your perspective and hear your interest in the site. I've followed you on Tumblr for many years now and know you know what you're talking about. And yes, I'd absolutely love to have you as a moderator Gifs will be supported from day 1. I have to experiment with resizing huge gifs. If I can't figure that out quickly there may be size limits on the gifs initially (since gifs can be as big as videos), but once I've got size issues under control they'll be fully supported. I'm also thinking of allowing people to enter URLs for .mp4 video files and then I'll put those in a player I control. It's more of an advanced feature since most users won't know how to find the video URL, but the ones who can figure it out will be popular since they'll have the videos other people will want to watch and share. I'm not planning on having a limit on the number of posts per day. But I will have checks to see if someone else has uploaded the same pic previously. And if Google's reCAPTCHA (v3 – the new one that's invisible to users) thinks your a bot, you won't be allowed to upload anything. Since it makes it's determination based on patterns of usage doing a lot of uploads could get you classified as a bot at which point you won't be able to submit anything on any of my sites since they're all tied together. And your mentioning it means I'll need to monitor the quality of the posts for people who do a lot of uploads. But if the quality is good, I don't care how much people post. As far as chat… The chat here is actually based on my new system. I've been needing to flesh that out into a more full-featured system that allows 1-on-1, and small group chats, as well as public chats. [The primary problem with the current chat system is the login from this site to the other site. That problem will go away when everything is on the same site.] Thanks for letting me know that that's important for the social site.

I tackled porn first because I needed to pay the bills. Porn sites convert better (they make more sales for a given number of visits). Social sites like this one or the new one I'm envisioning, and even hookup sites are "traffic sites" – they get a lot of visits, but don't make a lot of money. (Which is why sites like BBRT are so aggressive with paid memberships – which is something I'll try to avoid when I finally get the hookup sites rolled out). It's important for someone like me to have both kind of sites. The porn sites don't make sense without traffic and I can't depend on Google, Tumblr, Twitter for traffic – I need my own traffic sources. And the traffic sites don't make sense unless I have productive places to send the traffic to make money off of it (and banner ads to sponsor sites isn't enough). So it's a balance. At the end of the day making money has to come first. Only then can I do the more esoteric, community-oriented things. And BTW, if you spend time on here, you are spending time on social media. Forums were one of the first types of social media sites.

Good questions… I'm building a network of interconnected sites that will include niche porn sites, niche hookup sites, a fitness site, a social site, and an online store. Following each of those links will explain things more. But the division is due in part to the legal requirements for each type of content (which have been shifting even after I broke things down like that). In terms of just #BBBH – bbbh.com will be commercial bareback porn, and bbbh.men will be a hookup site. And there will also be Cumdump Network which will be a cumdump listing site where the tops don't have to register to fuck a cumdump (it will be the final home of the Cumdump Network listings on this site). I'm only envisioning one social site, not several niche sites. The way many people express themselves on social media is just more chaotic and fluid than niche sites will allow. That said, users can have multiple profiles for their many personas, and when they post something they can pick a niche. If their post turns out to be popular it will be featured on the other sites in that niche. In terms of videos… The lack of videos on Tumblr is because they banned new porn videos a few years ago. Some people had tricks to get around that ban, but most people complied and only posted pics. But I'm not trying to just replicate Tumblr. A LOT of videos are posted to Twitter, and Facebook loves showing it's users videos because they're engaging. So I will need videos eventually. But I may not have them initially.

SO… I've been thinking of launching a porn & sex-friendly social media site, but was trying to get my new porn sites finished (there are several, but bbbh.com is the one you guys would be most interested in). I'm actually "close-ish" to done with the porn sites. They're complete enough that I've moved all my porn blogs to the new platform, as well as all the commercial videos on my tube site – Raunchy Fuckers. But I still have at least a couple months of work before they're done enough that I can work on something else. I've been thinking about what comes next – I was planning on working on hookup sites next, but I could work on the social site instead, so I spent a while today thinking through the issues of doing a sex-friendly social media site, please give me some feedback on what I'm thinking… First off, the reason why other people aren't doing it is because of the legal issues. Tumblr got in trouble for child porn, but there's also prostitution and sex trafficking issues as well. (For the record, I'm fine with folks being prostitutes – if it's what they want to do, but the law isn't in most places, and I have to be compliant with the law). Those legal problems are far bigger on the straight side than they are on the gay side. So for starters I'm thinking if I do a social site it will only be for gay male and trans masculine content. The moment you try to appeal to straight guys (and trans feminine appeals to them), you up your problems about 10 fold. My experiences with the straight portion of this site were crazy. Just a fraction of the overall discussion on the site, but 95% of the big problems (including a call from the London police). I'd rely mostly on community moderation – much like I do on this site. You guys are excellent at reporting spam and other stuff, and this site wouldn't exist if it weren't for @drscorpio doing so much moderation (I need more guys like him! Any volunteers?) I've been trying to formulate some type of credibility score for users for my new sites. So people who've proven they can be trusted can do more. In this case the "more" they'd do is moderation so problem content can be axed from the site quickly. The other big issue for Tumblr is that mainstream advertising doesn't mix well with adult content. Even though experiments have shown that adult sites can be quite profitable for selling mainstream products, none of the brands want their ad appearing next to porn. And there's A LOT of money in mainstream – FAR more than in porn. Verizon bought Tumblr from Yahoo! last year and I think Verizon's trying to figure out how to get rid of the porn thinking that will make the site more profitable. Getting banned from Apple's app store was the perfect excuse for them to do what they wanted to do all along – ban porn. Problem is no social site has flourished after getting rid of porn. Getting rid of porn (after allowing it) is always a sign of weakness and decline. In terms of how I see the site functioning… There'd definitely be both pics and text. On the text side I'd have two fields – one shorter (160 to 255 characters), and one much longer. The shorter one would be visible in timelines, but when there's more you could click through to a blog post. Pics would be limited to 4 static per post or 1 animated gif. The question is videos. I'm actually thinking of launching with no (or limited) video capability. I definitely don't intend to be a tube site with long user uploads – but that wasn't Tumblr either. When I get to the hookup sites I'll permit video uploads there within the context of people sharing videos of their own personal sex life. But too often on the tube sites people are just uploading videos they think are hot and not thinking about the legal ramifications. The gay porn industry seems to accept that videos that are ~2 min or less are "promos". I haven't heard of producers complaining about the 2:20 videos on Twitter. Ultimately allowing ~2 min video uploads is probably where I'll wind up, but I need to do it carefully. Tumblr allowed 5 min videos (though they said no new porn videos a few years ago because they were taking too much bandwidth), but that was pushing the limits of "fair use" and definitely not OK with some producers. One other option is video embeds – like MyVidster has. In that case they don't host the videos – they're just hotlinking via other sites' embed codes. BUT as soon as I put a page from someone else's site in an iFrame on my site (which is how embeds work) all sorts of undesirable things can happen. I'll definitely let users embed anything that's on one of my sites, but I know they're gonna want more than that. But beyond that – expect all the standard social features (with some twists) – likes/favs, reposting, conversation threads, etc. So please let me know your thoughts – how do you think a site like I described would do? Is a gay site too restrictive? What are your thoughts on videos?

I just did a big delete of profiles that asked to be deleted – probably about 200 of them. I'll be doing them in batches going forward, so do not expect your profile to get deleted quickly - it could be months before your profile gets deleted.

I've upgraded the forum software and the theme (user interface package) for the site. I don't know if that will fix the problem. Please let me know if you continue to have problems. If you do continue to have problems I need very precise steps to take to reproduce the problem since I really have no clue what you're doing when you encounter the error (there are multiple areas on the site where you might upload an image).

How can a 6 year old take dick up his ass? Is that physically possible? I mean take a look at what 6 year old boys look like on Google Images… I'm just not seeing it. Or rather, it would be rather massive physical abuse to even try what is being suggested (major bleeding, etc.) [And to be clear – do not even think of posting pictures of young boys on this site when the topic goes in directions like it's going right now. Porn and kids don't mix. I linked to a neutral 3rd party, Google Images – that's about as much as you're allowed to do on topics like this.]

This is one of those rare times when Dr Scorpio and I disagree. I probably would have questioned it as well. I've reversed SlutTony's infraction. Just as a case and point… Ryan Cummings… Clearly he gets A LOT of loads, but there are times I'd swear he counts the number of times dick is inserted into his ass rather than actual loads. I mean, I'd love it if his numbers were real, but I'm highly skeptical. But at the same time even if he "only" actually got 400 loads in a month when he said he got 1144 (to take January as an example), he's clearly in a class where the difference is somewhat immaterial. So yeah, I question it, but at the end of the day it's a difference without a distinction.

I just want to clarify that I'm doing deletions every few weeks. GDPR gives me up to 90 days to do deletions (and only some of you are covered by GDPR). Deletions do not happen automatically or even quickly.

This morning I also found a major reason why pages were loading slowly. I'm giving it 24-48 hours to see if it speeds things up for you guys. Fingers crossed!

Emails should now be working. I doubt the missing ones will be resent, but going forward you should be getting the emails you're expecting…

I think the main problem was videos. The software is supposed to block video uploads, but that constraint isn't working properly. The software running the site does resize the photos and there's a max size and the resized photos will probably be under 250K. So photos are probably safe. Though it's possible the size I was looking at when I did my deletions was original upload size, not the size after the photos were resized.

To be clear… Two changes were made last week – an upgrade to the server OS to enable HTTP/2, and an upgrade of the software that runs the site. The leaderboard issues and the email issues are forum software issues that are a bit out of my control. Presumably there will be a "dot version" upgrade that will iron those problems out. What I'm most interested in, in this thread are the general performance issues – how quickly pages load. I've looked closely at Google Analytics and I'm seeing a 3.7s slowdown overall in home page load times (125% slower), and just loading the HTML for the home page is 62% slower. I've made my host aware of the problem. We'll see if they can fix it. And when they fix it, how much better it gets. So page load times is what I'm working on – site functionality problems I'll look into later.

IPv6's main advantage is more addresses. But I have the IP addresses I need, and IPv6 maps to IPv4 addresses, so it's not like people can't access my site because I'm on IPv4. IPv6 has some theoretical advantages, but I can't see them making a significant difference in my site performance. So I don't see the need to support it.

I just want to say a huge thanks to all you Aussies who just chimed in. It wasn't the technical details I was hoping for, but since there were so many of you, it's just as good. Apparently, my host still hasn't completed all their tweaks, so please continue to monitor the speed and let me know your thoughts.