rawTOP

There is no investigation. The site is generally GDPR compliant despite not being required to be since we have no business presence in the UK or the EU. There is also not a huge problem with registrations. The site gets about 400 registrations per month. A number that hasn't changed much in at least 18 months. However… a few people do have problems entering their birth date during registration. This has been going on for a while now. It's unclear why a few people have the problem while many others don't. I suspect it has to do with entering the year. If you have the problem 1) try a different browser, 2) wait a day or two and try again since once the cookie is st that you're underage you have to wait for the cookie to expire. But in general be very careful that the full 4 digit year is entered properly.

@OzzieCumdumpster & @Lonebottom - you've been put into the beta test group. There won't be any significant testing until mid- to late-January, however.

The block for the state of Louisiana has been enabled. If you're in Louisiana and not on a VPN, let me know and I can look into it. If you're on a VPN, turn it off and see if you can still access the site. (It's about making an effort to ensure it's working - helps the site legally).

I'm putting the block in place later today since I'll be out-of-town on the 1st. I've already put it in place on rawTOP.com and my porn sites (e.g. bbbh.com, spunkbud.com, etc.) The way it's implemented on rawTOP.com is most similar to how it will be implemented here, so those of you in/around Louisiana, please feel free to test it out and let me know if you're blocked. If you're not blocked I can look into what is going wrong.

The analogy I like to use is you're in someone's house and you make a mess and the homeowner has to then clean up your mess. It's no big deal if it happens once in a while by mistake. But it is a significant problem if you just don't give a fuck and have an entitled attitude as if your mommy still follows you around cleaning up your messes. The 2nd case is just flat out rude to the volunteer moderators who keep this site running. This is why I clap back HARD when people get offended by infractions. From my point of view the fact that you're complaining rather than apologizing means you're an asshole who I don't want on the site. Which then ties into the original question - prove to me that you understand what this site is about and its culture, THEN I'm interested in what you think is good or bad. Until then just watch and (politely) participate. (And yes, some interactions do affect other people's standing on the site - so I limit who can interact with posts. If I had designed the system I'd let everyone rate things and then weight the ratings based on their status on the site. So a newbie's rating might not affect anything while a senior member's rating could strongly impact things. And I'd probably go as far as making it so a newbie who gives the opposite rating of most senior members gets penalized for their rating. But that's not how the software works. )

Some good news… The Independent did an article on the bills that Sen. Mike Lee introduced… https://apple.news/AHdJq7h95TsONTKaKe3T8ew For starters the article clarifies that he introduced two bills (not one). SCREEN is about age verification, and the other is about redefining obscenity. The article does a good job of explaining each, in context (which I won't rehash here). Then it goes on… So this means that some adult industry people who were predicting that the bills could see significant support from both parties are most likely wrong. Luckily no one seems to like this guy. And if they don't like him, they probably can't be bothered to get his bills out of committee or vote for them. 🤞

And it get worse… A Senator from Utah is introducing legislation that would criminalize 99% of porn as well as this site. And there's a decent chance it could pass. Guys - this is why I keep saying WHO YOU VOTE FOR MATTERS!

As I mentioned in my thread about blocking the state of Louisiana - Utah has been blocked for a while now because they've been aggressively anti-porn. Well, one of the Senators from Utah just introduced legislation that will do two things… Require sites with porn to verify the age of visitors. Redefine "obscenity" to include 99% of porn. You can read about it here: https://www.xbiz.com/news/270761/utah-republican-senator-mike-lee-introduces-bill-to-outlaw-all-porn-nationwide Age verification (#1) has a whole host of problems. The UK has been trying to figure out how to do it for YEARS and they keep failing. In their case their idea is to have ISPs ban sites that don't comply, but that's becoming more and more impossible technically. Once "Encrypted Hello" matures and is widely deployed it will be almost impossible. The issue for a site like this one (and my other porn sites) is expense. I'd either have to pay a service to vet every visitor to the site, or I'd have to do it myself. Both are cost prohibitive and the number of visitors who'd jump through the hoops is miniscule so the drop in traffic means less revenue - which makes it even more cost prohibitive. There's no way this site or my porn sites could continue in anything close to their current form if that happened. But the real problem is that the guy wants to redefine what's "obscene" (#2). Right now only things like scat and blood are clearly obscene. Most porn is just a form of free speech / sexual expression. But his new definition of "obscene" is basically anything that has the primary purpose of giving you a hardon - which means pretty much all porn. If his bill passes it means all porn will need to have some aspect of "artistic merit" or other form of legitimacy. If you ever watched Paul Morris' original "What I Can't See" it's weird because he juxtaposes the blindfolded cumdump with a guy alone in a room jacking off. The compare and contrast between those two extremes made "What I Can't See" somewhat of a documentary - or a kind of editorial on male sexuality. That approach gets around the new definition. The problem is we have decades of content that don't meet the new definition. And distribution of those older videos will become a felony. As you can see this is FAR beyond the silly, amateurish game of whack-a-mole that UK conservatives are trying to play. This is full-on "American Taliban" or the US version of Iran's Morality Police. It's actually criminalizing porn. The problem is that the bill is likely to get a lot of Democratic support. Take a moment and read the article in Deseret News about the bills (Deseret News is a well-respected, Mormon-affiliated newspaper) - it's all about "protecting the children". What Democrat is going to pick pornography over protecting children? I mean Kamala Harris co-sponsored FOSTA/SESTA which was a disaster for sexual freedoms and has made the lives of sex workers far more dangerous. The Democrats are better than the Republicans on sexual freedom, but they're not great. So it's actually likely that this bill will get a fair amount of Democratic support. As a result I won't be surprised if it passes. Then there will be lawsuits. But those will end up at a stridently conservative Supreme Court. This entire thing started because Clarence Thomas asked Congress to redefine obscenity back in 2020. He knew that with a different definition of obscenity he could outlaw porn. So the legal challenges are doomed to failure - all they'll do is delay the inevitable. As stupid and trite as it sounds, outlawing porn will be to men what Dobbs was to women. In some ways it may be worse since porn is part of the daily life of most men - so the effect will be felt constantly. So what happens if it passes? Well, we're all kinda fucked. Presumably the idea of a paysite could still survive. They'd just have PG-13 pics and videos on the tour. BUT will Visa & Mastercard want to process the transactions now that the content has been legally declared "obscene"? Even certain types of piss play can cause sites to lose Visa/Mastercard right now because they might be obscene. If the credit card companies pull out of adult, then you're left with crypto - but it's against the terms of service at places like Coinbase to use their service for porn. Zelle won't be an option since that's organized by banks that don't want to be involved in porn either (even when it's not legally obscene). Assuming some sort of payment service is available a company like MindGeek (which owns most of the major tube sites including PornHub as well as many paysites including Sean Cody) could possibly survive. They would have their own age check service (they already built it when they thought the UK was going to mandate it), and there would be enough content on their free and paid sites to make it worth the hassle for guys to get verified. But I don't see a viable solution for all the little sites (like mine). Move to another country? Maybe - but we're talking felony-level offenses and most countries have extradition agreements with the US. This kind of existential threat is why I've come down really hard on right wing comments on this site the last few years. This was sadly predictable and if you voted Republican over the past ~decade you brought us to this point. When Trump got elected I said at the time that the danger was what he would do the courts. Well, it's happened. All I can say is "fuck you if you voted for Trump!" (or you didn't bother to vote). 🤞

Starting January 1 a law (Act 440) is going into effect in Louisiana which could compromise this site. It requires age verification on all adult content. While people in the adult industry feel it's impossible for most sites to comply with the letter of the law, it is at least possible to take steps to try to block all users from Louisiana and thus show that there is no intent to violate the law. To block the state of Louisiana I'll be relying on a database that tells me the location of your IP address. The database is imperfect (which is why complying with the letter of the law is impossible). And because it's imperfect if you're near Louisiana and your Internet provider assigns you an IP that's mapped to Louisiana, then you will be blocked as well. The use of VPNs also makes it impossible to comply with the letter of the law since VPNs obscure where you're coming from. That said, be very careful about VPNs. The general rule on the Internet is that if something is free - then you're the product. This is absolutely true with VPNs. Free VPNs track what you do and then sell the data. You want to pay for your VPN (they're not terribly expensive) and you want one with a strict no logs policy (diagnostic logs are probably OK, but there should be zero traffic logs collected). Oh, and I should mention there's already a block on the state of Utah. They've had a similar law on the books since 2017. I'll be making sure that block is still set up properly when I set up the block for Louisiana. I'll put the block in place after Christmas. Just wanted to give everyone a heads up.

These are the members I have on the beta tester list at the moment. @anoncumdumpsub @hornyguyindc @Boinxdoor19 @JimInWisc @EricX @PG1961Canada @phukhole @Blake @ricohio @thejadoman (plus the moderators) Let me know if you think your name should be on that list and I've messed something up.

@phukhole - you've been changed to a beta tester.

Since there seems to be a theme here - I'm NOT looking for cumdumps, I'm looking for beta testers. This isn't just about Cumdump Network. This won't necessarily get your cumdump ad listed any faster.

@anoncumdumpsub - you're all set up. And setting you up taught me a bit more about how GMail addresses work…

@ricohio you've also been changed to beta tester.

You're both changed to beta testers. Thanks for being willing to help.

The MPOX state of public health emergency looks like it will come to an end in late January… https://apple.news/AgZMuvCU1TbGMMwJ8r-Cp-Q While there are still a few random cases (and you should get vaccinated if you haven't already), it's good to see this is finally behind us.

The two major sponsoring organizations are IAVI (which sponsored the trial above) and HVTN. The HVTN site is particularly good at explaining how to get into a trail. A whole section of their site is dedicated to that. Start by looking at their Study Clinics page and find the study center nearest you. Once you have the name of the center, Google it and you'll usually find a list of studies they're participating in and sign-up pages for the ones that are enrolling participants. If you don't see sign-up pages, call them and ask questions. And regarding "people outside the US or who don't live near a major metro area" a big issue in vaccine research is the tendency to only study familiar groups. As a result most studies try to have at least one location in somewhere different - like Africa or Asia. They just need to show that the results in the non-standard group mirror the results in "the usual suspects" to say the findings should be generally true for all populations of people. But yeah, major urban areas with lots of gay men (and others in the queer community) are the best places to do HIV vaccine research since you can recruit a lot of folks quickly and easily.

Gizmodo did an article on the vaccine and it's much more readable / understandable than the articles I quoted above… https://apple.news/A4K_MQR-JTCCsqc0DbGNsYg [And just a reminder - posting fringe conspiracy theories about COVID or whatever will earn you infractions. We don't tolerate statements that contradict the vast majority of scientific findings - especially when it could impact someone's health/life.]

I've changed your user group to Beta Testers. Nothing to do quite yet, but hopefully soon… And thanks for volunteering! Not being an expert user is useful too since you're probably like most of the guys on the site.

@PG1961Canada You've been put into the beta test group. Thanks! Not sure there's much to do quite yet, but…

BTW, I loosened things up a week or two ago and New Members can now send a small number of messages. But it's still quite limited. But at least it's not zero! If that proves to create problems then I'll put it back. I didn't mention the change since I wanted to see what would happen before announcing it.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add6502 (The actual study) A phase 1 clinical trial with a new HIV vaccine achieved a big step forward for vaccine technology in general that may revolutionize vaccines for a number of pathogens beyond HIV. Here's the logic of broadly neutralizing antibodies (warning - it's "dense")… And the results… In layperson's terms HIV vaccines have been elusive because of how much variation there is in the different strains of HIV. This vaccine is promising because it produces an immune response that can fight most, if not all, strains of HIV. That's a first. And the hope is that a similar approach can be applied to other pathogens (think about how new SARS-CoV2 variants are able to get past immunization - this could end that type of thing.) Yesterday was International AIDS Day. While AIDS had a horrible toll on our community, the silver lining is the advancement in medical technology that's come out of it (once Reagan and Bush Sr. started taking it seriously - the delays were unforgivable). Even the COVID vaccines we have now are thanks in part to research into HIV. The things that were learned in HIV research often apply much more broadly. More here: https://interestingengineering.com/health/hiv-vaccine-triumphs-phase-1

As mentioned above “Full blown” is not a medical term. I’d say it’s most commonly used for guys who have progressed to AIDS and look “AIDSy”. Most of those guys are on meds (or they’d be dead). So sex with them is actually really safe since they’re undetectable and can’t infect you. The most dangerous guys are guys whose last test was neg and don’t know they’re poz. Which is the opposite of “full blown”.

Given how few features are needed, Cumdump Network and Public Urinals will come first (among the hookup sites).

Maybe I wasn't completely clear… I see starting with a niche audience - people who have an overwhelming desire for a particular fetish - poz fetish, being a cumdump, piss pigs, etc. And working from there and gradually getting a more vanilla crowd (the audience for which is much much bigger). But I don't want those vanilla guys to drown out the niche. It's like going on BBRT and finding guys who just want to suck dick. Ummm… BBRT is a bareback fucking site… So the idea is to have one inbox for many sites. You'd have multiple profiles and when you login in you'd activate the ones you're interested in at that moment. But you'd bet watching a mailbox that would include messages for all your profile. So at that moment you might only be interested in oral and piss so you activate those profiles ('cause you haven't cleaned out) so they show as active, but someone might still hit up your anal cumdump profile which would be inactive at that moment - but you could still respond to them quickly 'cause you're actually online at the moment. IMHO, the problem with most sites is you're just logged in under one profile. So you probably pick the most generic and miss the messages from the other profiles. IMHO that's one reason why BDSM isn't nearly as popular as it used to be. People don't login to Recon as often as they login to something like BBRT. So the guys that might be up for say flogging just gradually get out of flogging because there isn't enough activity on Recon to bother logging in. Where if they got Recon messages while logged into BBRT - then they might do more flogging.