![]() Today, it has 7.3 million users from all over the world - from the U.S. Since 2017, the site's grown by almost two million members. In fact, when sites like Backpage and Craigslist shut off its personals and adult services section, it took away sex workers' ability to screen clients, and made their life and work even more dangerous.įetlife, on the other hand, survived its credit card fiasco. In April 2018, President Trump signed the controversial FOSTA/SESTA (Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act) bills, which were ostensibly designed to stop sex trafficking (by punishing publishers for incidences of sex trafficking discovered on their sites). While child pornography is never acceptable, banning all adult content from the site seemed an inordinate measure (adult content drove up to 20 percent of Tumblr's traffic, and it was one of the few platforms remaining on the web where sex blogs could be based around building knowledge and community, and not just getting off). In December 2018, Tumblr, which had been home to a vibrant community of sex and kink blogs, banned all adult content, a week after Apple removed the Tumblr app from its App store for incidences of child pornography. Today, the climate for sexuality online is worse than ever. When Baku first got the news, he said, "I felt like my world just fell apart." Without card payments for the latter, the site's revenue dropped overnight. Fetlife was funded by ad sales (which weren't enough to cover the cost of the site's servers) and paid memberships. But Fetlife's decisions could no longer revolve around the needs of just its members-it was about protecting the survival of the site itself. The site's newly updated guidelines weren't intended "to be a negative comment against your kink or your fantasies," Baku wrote. "We've been one of the most liberal, if not the most liberal, adult site on the web which makes us the perfect target," Baku wrote, especially in the increasingly hostile political climate. To protect the community, Fetlife decided to remove any content that the credit card companies could deem obscene. The bank had given the team vague reasons for the denial of service, including "illegal or immoral content" or "blood, needles, and vampirism." He apologized for the deletions, for leaving everyone in the dark, "and most importantly, I apologize for letting many of you down." According to the post, Fetlife had just lost its credit card processors. "I have a lot to apologize for," Baku wrote. It took a month after the fetishes disappeared before John Baku, Fetlife's CEO and founder, finally explained the changes in a site announcement that shook the community. Still, Sandra remained optimistic - she told HypnomasterD that she thought the group must have just been hidden, not completely gone. "I'm really a good person, so why would someone think this is a bad thing?" "People are thinking what I enjoy is harmful and taboo, very very dark," she told me. When the Erotic Hypnosis group suddenly disappeared (along with over seven years of archived stories and discussions and research), she began to question herself. The hypnotist could make her remember or forget, feel hot or cold, get goosebumps or feel someone's touch. She loved erotic hypnosis as a submissive - how HypnomasterD could get in her head to make her do things. Fetlife was where she met HypnomasterD, the founder of the Erotic Hypnosis group. "I wanted to support the kink community and look back on any videos and everything no restriction or whatever," she said. "I like that, I really do." Two years and a half ago, Sandra became a lifetime supporter of the site for $240. "You can be so much more honest with people who are in kink because everything is out there," she said. She used it to find local in-person events like munches and play parties. Sandra joined Fetlife nine years ago, shortly after she discovered her budding interest in kink. Some of us were scrambling to go to other places, and people were so fragmented and lost." "We felt we lost such a community of like-minded people. "It was like Fetlife was cut in half," Sandra said. The weeks after disappearances were a turbulent time. The erasure had come without warning or explanations, and Erotic Hypnosis wasn't the only victim: groups and fetishes involving needles, blood play, race play and consensual non-consent also went away. In March 2017, Sandra, a 48-year-old submissive living in Alberta, Canada awoke to discover that the Erotic Hypnosis group she'd been a member of for years had suddenly disappeared from, the largest online kink community in the world. ![]()
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