So ever since James announced chat coming to FetLife I’ve felt betrayed. I recall vividly John Baku saying that Chat would not come to FetLife. That there would never be a way to show who is online. This was a different experience than other sites. A fun place to get your kink on. A place to connect with new people.
Now apparently they are rolling out a feature that does both. And it is on by default. I felt betrayed. I got that feeling you get when a company does something sleazy. Let’s call it that “FaceBook Feeling” because that’s how that site makes me fee with the way they change settings and eliminate privacy without much complaint. And I feel even less motivated to donate to support the site. (Actually I feel motivated to not donate, so I that I will not get features I neither want nor need.)
I thought about deleting my account. But really, would that matter? Would anybody else even care? Who would even notice?
In my analysis, it seemed that the only person who would suffer is myself. I gain nothing from killing my account. Staying with a site I now consider to be in the same league as FaceBook when it comes to my trust. I’ll still be there when ASL Search comes. I’ll still be there when they sell my info. Why? Because it is a trade off. I get something. I can control most of what FetLife sees about me.
I’ve come to learn companies lie. They do what makes the most money.
And they lie. When it is convenient they change their story. I had hoped that fetlife would be different. Time has shown me that they aren’t really all that different.
So, I will be turning that feature off. Turning off scripting on that site. I will probably not recommend FetLife to anyone in the future, at least until I am convinced John means what he says. Our reputation and credibility is important. More so in this shadowy world of kink we live in. I feel most disappointed because I have been there from the warily days, my blog started within a month of FetLife’s start. It felt like family.
And now, it feels more like FaceBook.
If you have any thoughts or feelings about this, or FetLife in general please feel free to post in the comments. ( And if you feel like I am full of it, let me know that too. )
The House of Void 
I’ve been reading complaints on various blogs the past few months and I have to say I agree that Fetlife is turning into a Facebook clone of sorts. In terms of the privacy issues, I didn’t care at first because I use a pseudonym. However all these changes pose deeper questions, but that’s another thing entirely.
Another thing worries me mostly. I see that Fetlife is slowly turning into this separate ecosystem. Unless you’re part of it you can’t be part of a wider conversation about kink-related matters. It’s the same complaint I have about Facebook actually. It kind of goes against the spirit of the internet in my opinion. It’s very strange. I was hoping these social sites would complement whatever else the internet has to offer. I realised how serious is was when I noticed that many bloggers reduced their writing or increasingly wrote about their Fetlife lives.
Anyway I’m very ambivalent about the role of Fetlife.
I’ve written about this a lot and I’m glad to see others beginning to do so, as well.
Fetlife is very disappointing. I have recently been subject to defammatory claims on a profle and attempts by a gilted ex to out me. The remarks are very clearly in breach of the community guideline: Fetlife even admit so. I have no way of responding and Fetlife won’t remove them…why? because the person publishing them is a paying member.
In my experience, fetlife hasn’t paid contributing members that much lee way, but each of us has different experiences. You might want to reach out to @JohnBaku on twitter and see if he could look into it.