Primfeed, Social Media Platforms, and Censorship

Primfeed, the new kid on the block, seems to be going great guns. People are jumping on the bandwagon, and according to the latest announcement from the owner and developer, Luke Rowley, there have been some staggering numbers of users signing up and images being uploaded. Hats off, Mr. Rowley.

Nevertheless, I've already had some issues with censorship which make me wonder just how much time and effort I should invest in this platform, recalling with great distress other blogs on other platforms where I have lost everything, not just images but my time and effort in curating the materials. Once bitten, twice shy. Thrice bitten, ah, screw it, I'm going to find something else to do with my life.

I tweeted about this. Luke Rowley saw my tweet and contacted me, inquiring about my issues. As per his instructions, I IMd him in-world and he got back to me in a short period of time, clearing my confusion over the rules of the platform. I commend him on his customer service as I can't imagine how busy he is. I had a thirty year career in I.T. and have developed my own systems over that time, so when I look at Primfeed, I think about all the moving parts, the lines of code, the testing, the debugging, and the pulling your hair out at 2am because something is malfunctioning. Thank God, I'm retired!

Some Thoughts
I suppose first off: full disclosure: I'm an old man, well, an older man with a love-hate relationship with social media. It is a time suck, but maybe my problem is more about personal guilt as to how I spend my time. Is liking and commenting the best I can do with my life? My tombstone: I wish I had spent more time on social media arguing with strangers about politics.

Primfeed is an image platform for Second Life. I see a community developing, likes, follows, reposts, etc., the common fare of any social media. Notifications become our intermittent reinforcement, and we (mindlessly) return, looking for our fix.

This isn't just about Primfeed. I have accounts with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. under more than one identity, compartmentalizing my life into personal, business, and Second Life. Any one of those things takes time; the bunch of them can take a lot of time. Just what is the return on my investment of time and energy?

Before I go on, let me give a little history.

Tumblr
This picture site was started in 2007. (Wikipedia) In 2013, Yahoo bought it for $1.1 billion. In 2016 when advertising sales goals were not met, Yahoo wrote down $712 million of Tumblr's value. In December 2018, Tumblr banned pornographic content. By March 2019, it was estimated the site had lost 30% of its traffic. Tumblr was sold in August 2019 reportedly for less than $3 million.

I had an investment in Tumblr and lost everything in December 2018 when they banned anything pornographic.

newTumbl
In 2020, a plethora of other websites sprung up to fill the gap in pornographic images created by Tumblr: BDSMlr.com, reblogme.com, Mastodon-based offerings, and newTumbl. On June 7/2022, newTumbl pulled the plug, supposedly because it could not make a profit. FYI: BDSMlr continues but has an annoying number of pop-up ads unless you buy a premium account for $20 per month.

I had two blogs (image galleries) on newTumbl but lost everything on June 7, 2022, when the site shut down. (See my article in References below for a more detailed look at this platform.)

Flickr
Flickr was and still is popular in the Second Life community as an image platform. However, a number (many?) had free accounts. In the spring of 2021, Flickr introduced a new policy for free accounts: only "safe" content was allowed, no Moderate or Restricted. Any violation of this policy saw not just individual images being deleted but entire accounts.

WARNING: If you have a free account, I can't recommend strongly enough that you upgrade to a pro account. ($9.49 USD per month or $72.99 USD annually. It's not what I would call exorbitant.) I know several people who have had their free account summarily terminated because one of their pictures has been reported. I find this odd but apparently the Flickr community squeal on one another. I thought Flickr was scanning its repository of images, looking for offending materials, but I've had former Flickr users tell me they had been in contact with Flickr support and discovered somebody came across one of their images, took exception to it, and reported it. Really? These purveyors of moral standards take it upon themselves to turn supposed ne'er-do-wells into the authorities?

I had a free Flickr account, but when they changed their TOS in 2021, I thoroughly read the fine print, decided termination was too big of a risk, and deleted my account. I'm not a photographer and felt paying for a pro account was not worth it for me; I am merely a hobbyist. I still have another free account but I only use it to log in and look at stuff. I never like or comment; I just look. (See my article in References below for a more detailed look at this platform.)

Where am I now?
Actually, I'm not. After losing three investments, I am more than just hesitant to start anything else. Oddly enough, this journal at Google Blogger continues humming along uninterrupted since 2019. (I've had another blog for my business in service since 2010.) Out of all the platforms I'm discussing in this article, Google remains tried and true. It seems to be the only thing I can reliably count on.

Twitter's Free-For-All
Elon Musk buys this platform and in declaring himself a “free speech absolutist”, seemingly removes all content moderation; anybody can say anything. Good? Bad? There was quite the hue and cry with some advertisers pulling out of the platform, complaining their ads were being displayed next to questionable materials like neo-Nazis. From a cursory search on Google, it would seem the company is no longer profitable. How long is this going to be sustainable?

An odd observation: While the hue and cry was about allowing "deplorables" to spread their "alternatives facts", I have to remark that at no time in my use of Twitter have I ever had anything censored. Maybe Twitter allows neo-Nazis to speak their mind, but Twitter also allows me to speak my mind. While some are against neo-Nazis, I never listen to them. Maybe Twitter allows them to say whatever neo-Nazis say, but I just don't pay any attention. They have freedom of speech; I have freedom of listen.

Primfeed and the future
I'm sure the creator, Luke Rowley, will find it presumptuous of me to discuss the future of his endeavor. Nevertheless, I feel the need to ask myself some questions of where I go with this platform.

How is Primfeed going to sustain itself? How is it going to be profitable? I've looked over the information page on Primfeed Pro and can't help feeling the perks for a pro account are insufficient to convince the average user to buy in. The 4-week cost of L$1,680 or $$6.72 USD (exchange at L$250 = $1 USD) is an insignificant amount of money, the cost of a couple of coffees, but do I care if pictures are only at a resolution of 1500 x 1500 as opposed to a pro resolution of 10000 x 10000?

Will Primfeed be forced, like Flickr, to change its policies to generate more revenue or run the risk of going bust? Heck, right now, I have to wonder how much Luke Rowley, the creator, has invested out of his own pocket to get this website off the ground.

Primfeed is an SL image platform. I didn't say image platform; I said SL image platform. I posted an RL image to the gallery and had it removed. In re-reading the TOS, I see the Public Gallery is only for SL images. But I asked about RL photos in general. Luke Rowley responded:

it really depends on what your profile is about. Primfeed is requiring you to have 80-90% of your profile to be SL related, so if you don't post only RL pictures, and your main content is SL, then you should be fine. - Luke Rowley, 2024-07-21

I hate to sound like a pessimist, but this strikes me as open to interpretation. While seemingly okay right now, will this policy evolve over time? Even though I'm writing a blog about Second Life, there are many times I use an RL image to illustrate the point I'm trying to make. Why? I've said over and over again, that while we are playing in this virtual fantasyland with avatars, new identities, and anonymity, we remain irrevocably our RL mind. In talking about Second Life, I'm also talking about real life.

Final Word
Let me be clear: I think Luke Rowley has done an admirable job. Considering the problems SLers have had with Flickr's free accounts, he may very well be offering a viable alternative to all those looking to publish their photos. I wish him luck. I hope he succeeds.

I have a free account on Primfeed. I log in to look but I don't see any reason to post. I'm not really a photographer, only rudimentary at best, and I don't feel any great urge to present my supposed artistic chops to the world. My main gig is writing a blog; I'm literary not pictorial. Somehow, Primfeed doesn't seem to be for me. For two weeks, I tested the waters and posted images with links to my blog. I had virtually no hits. People may have glanced at my pictures and even liked them, but they did not click on the links to read my articles. Primfeed is a picture platform like Flickr; it is not necessarily a word platform. But like most social media platforms, Primfeed works within itself, and people don't usually click on links to go outside that platform.

Where does Primfeed go from here? Where do I go from here? Like the Public Gallery, we need to keep a close watch on things as they're going to scroll by in the blink of an eye!


UPDATE 2024-07-23
Shortly afrer I published this article and posted the link on Twitter, I got the following Twitter response from Luke Rowley

Luke Rowley @lukerowley_sl

Hey,

I appreciate the article and the time you took to write it, and I will answer a few points to explain why, and how Primfeed will evolve in the future.

Primfeed Pro may not be worth the features currently for everyone, but the current pricing is set in mind that, in a few months / years, more features will be added to Primfeed Pro and the price will never change.

I've been building EasyBloggers for almost a year now, and the original pricing hasn't changed, but the system got a huge amount of new features and updates that you can find here: https://kynno.app/release-notes/easybloggers

Money wise, Primfeed and EasyBloggers allow me to work full-time on both projects, so they are not going anywhere soon!

About the SL content policy: I can understand it's not for everyone, but I truly believe that Primfeed has its full potential in bringing a true SL experience, something different from what other social media may bring to the table.

I don't want to do any censorship, any SL type of content is welcome to Primfeed, but if you decide to join Primfeed and use it, yes, your profile must be mainly about Second Life.

Primfeed might not be best for article type of content currently, but @InaraPey seems to have an overall positive experience?

Thank you so much for the recognition of my work, Hugh!

References

To Blog Or Not To Blog (1,000 words, 4-minute read) - Jun 21/2023
On June 7, 2023, without prior warning, newTumbl shut down, and I lost my blog comprising not just pictures, but my time and effort in curating all that material.

Flickr: What is the risk of having my account terminated? (1,400 words, 6-minute read) - Oct 26/2021
On Monday, October 25, 2021, I clicked on the bookmarked URL for D’s Flickr and was met with a Page Not Found error. My friend is the admin of a Flickr group, and I discovered her name had disappeared. I contacted D, and she was surprised and shocked by the news. Was this a computer glitch? What else could have gone wrong? She said she was contacting Flickr.

2024-07-23

To Blog Or Not To Blog

1,000 words, 4-minute read

For the past year or so, I've had a blog on newTumbl, dedicated to the more scandalous part of my psyche, where I've posted erotic photos (read: dirty pictures) with captioned thoughts on life, love, and pursuit of happiness. Why newTumbl? This Google blog (Blogger) is text-oriented — I write stuff — while the platform newTumbl, like Tumblr, Instagram, and Pinterest was image-oriented. I can post pictures here in Blogger, too, but newTumbl was dedicated to pictures, and, as I said, for more scandalous things.

On June 7, 2023, without prior warning, I, like everyone else, went to the website newTumbl only to be greeted by this page.

Like many (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands?), my newTumbl account was summarily relegated to the dustbin of history. My floral prose disguises first the stunned shock then the torrent of profanities accompanying the realization all my carefully curated postings had vanished without a trace, leaving me with nothing to show for my erotic hobby. Do I start over? I'm hesitating, worried about seeing another investment of time and energy snatched away from me. I suppose one could argue that like performance art, the pleasure is in the doing. Nevertheless, I'd still like to have something to show for my efforts.

Now what?

I looked at various alternatives and discovered "reblogme.com". I signed up for a free account and have been perusing the site, contemplating future endeavors.

To blog or not to blog, that is the question.

Tumblr bans all adult content in 2018. newTumbl shuts down on June 7, 2023. Do I see a trend? Do I commit to something only to have the rug pulled out from under me?

In another life, I have had a blog on Google Blogger since 2010. However, I'm not posting adult content (read; dirty pictures), but writing about everything else in life like politics, science, my views on the world, etc. Like many, I have some need to express myself. However, my blog on newTumbl would indicate I also have a need to express the more scandalous part of my psyche. There's a sense of being sexual, maybe being badass, when clicking on Post and showing to the world not just an erotic photo, but an idea, a desire, a representation of myself. Hello, world! I'm a sexual creature, and this is who I am and what I'd like out of life! It feels good being naughty! Considering the millions of similar endeavors out there, I'm not the only one, and I have to conclude this seems to be a common part of the human psyche.

The problem here seems to be about adult content. Facebook tries to remain family-oriented; offenders will be prosecuted. Pay services like VISA have declined business involving sex work, jeopardizing sites like OnlyFans. Good? Bad? Do we have to accept that this is the way of the world?

"Eroticism is what turns me on. Pornography is what turns you on." -Al Goldstein

"Pornography is somebody else's erotica that you don't like." -Erica Jong

I return to my original question: What is the risk of once again losing my work? Any of these web sites must make a profit to stay afloat however, I have no idea what kind of advertising model they use to generate income. The website BDSMlr.com has implemented an absolutely annoying quantity of popup advertisements that one can make go away for a monthly fee of $20. I don't remember seeing ads on newTumbl at all and so far, I haven't seen anything on reblogme, unless I'm missing something. What are the risks of a website having to shutter its business? According to Wikipedia, Yahoo bought Tumblr in 2013 for $1.1 billion. In December 2018, they banned porn. By March 2019, the site had lost 30% of its user traffic. The site was sold in August 2019 for supposedly less than $3 million. I mention porn as it always seems to be in danger of being banned, but it would seem that Tumblr's problems over the years stem from an inability to properly monetize the website through advertising.

Social media is a time suck, defined as an inefficient or unproductive activity. Could I better spend my time? But it's not just this, erotic materials, I see this everywhere. Facebook and Twitter both have their share political commentary, and I've witnessed and been guilty myself of howling at the moon, posting all sorts of screeds with links to various newspaper articles, railing against the state of the world. Is this a good use of my time? Does any of this do any good? Am I or anybody else making the world a better place by howling at the moon? Maybe I should be writing my congressman, lobbying local politicians, or organizing community groups as a more effective means of producing change.

Sorry, I went off on a rant and drifted off topic.

I amusingly compared this to performance art. The objective is not some tangible result like a painting or a sculpture, the art is in the doing. Creating a post, gathering erotic photos, writing a caption, and possibly researching associated materials, is the pleasure of doing. The results may provide pleasure to others (I love Likes and comments!), and that's a good thing and appreciated, but for myself, it's that doing which tickles my fancy.

Final Word
For the moment, I continue to look around, research on Google, and consider all of my options, including not returning to erotic blogging. I do have other projects in life, and if I spent less time on adult content (read: dirty pictures), I'd have more time to devote to those projects. Ha!

But let me end with this thought. A bit of passion, an erotic photo, a naughty thought, flirting whether on social media or in real life, can give me a tingle. It puts a smile on my face, and a spring in my step. The day is a little sunnier; the sky is a little bluer. It is a reminder that I'm alive. :-)

2023-06-21