The Cautious Kinkster

Here’s the bit that pinches my butt about FetLife’s lack of privacy: FL’s business model (stated rather more nakedly than FL mgmt states it) is predicated on getting its user-base to disgorge as much personal data as possible, particularly in the form of pictures (which drive quite a bit of the free membership inflow — free kinky porn! woohoo!) & in the form of videos (for which it charges a premium membership fee for access). That they ‘tickle’ as much content out as possible while playing down the very public nature of the site (‘free membership is our firewall’ seems to be mgmt’s mantra) to the rubes, er, users of the service, that bothers me. It’s all a little shady, a little hucksterish, for my tastes. It lacks the ‘fully informed consent’ that I like, & that is supposed to be one of the primary shared values of out-&-organized kink ‘community’ (such as that is).

What I’d like to see is highly unlikely, given that whole built-in business-based conflict of interest previously mentioned, but I’d like to see something more like:

• “Hey, by posting content to FetLife you expose yourself to anyone who opens a free account here. We’d like if it were just us kinksters, but those after the lulz may access large amounts of the content our users post any time they want & post it anywhere on the internet & there’s not a heck of a lot we can do to stop that. We do try to clean up messes after they happen, but we can’t keep the messes from happening.’

This sorta ‘privacy disclaimer’ would seem to do a lot more good than that endless page of gobbledy-gook they’ve got, the one that slyly implies much greater ‘security’, ‘privacy’, & etc than TeamFL (or pretty much any commercial entity) is capable of delivering. Here, another suggested ‘privacy warning for FL’:

• “Here’s the thing, fellow FetLifers, this being the internet & all, there’s really nothing we can do to stop the /b/tards from 4chan, the lulz chasers from SomethingAwful, or worse coming along & mining this place for material. We’ll stop it when we find it, but if it’s going to bother you or be a problem to have that kind of thing happen, you should keep your contributions to a minimum. & keep in mind that there may very well be a ‘People of Walmart’ type [private] mailing list out there that’s showcasing FL’s specialness right this moment.”

But I think FL mgmt is way more concerned with keeping the picture- & video-posting tap fully open rather than slow any of that info disgorgement down at all . … . ..