stevenkesslar

What You Should Know About the Possibility of COVID-19 Illness After Vaccination I agree with the point made above about asymptomatic infections. This suggests vaccinated people who get infected but are asymptomatic and have no idea they have COVID are going to be giving it to unvaccinated people who are maskless. Is this math right? It seems like the risks to the unmasked and unvaccinated go up. They have the same underlying health exposure they had before. But now there are a lot fewer people wearing masks. And there's some chance those people may have asymptomatic COVID, even though they were vaccinated. We'll know more in three or six months. But while the risk for the vaccinated clearly goes down, for the unvaccinated it may go up. This is especially true if it is in crowded indoor spaces - a bar, an airplane, a crowded work space, a concert. If I'm right, hopefully the people who choose to stay unvaccinated are ones that are younger or healthier and feel they're not really taking a big risk anyway. If the bet pays off - they get COVID, and sail through it - it actually moves us closer to herd immunity. The people who could really pay for this are the ones who are unvaccinated and older or less healthy. The pressure will be on them to stay masked, or get the jab. Pollster Frank Luntz was just on the Daily Show and he said his polling shows three apolitical messages that are effective in persuading the vaccine hesitant: 1) Listen to your doctor, who knows what it good for your health. 2) 9 out of 10 doctors have been vaccinated. What do they know that you don't? 3) Do it for your loved ones. Those are all good statements.

Nope. Hasn't happened again. I'll let you know if it does. Thanks Rob.

I know I'm the asshole that keeps wanting to bring things back to the big picture. But let me bring it back to a few big picture things. First, I think of innovation and growth as good things. In a different post you actually used the word "growth," Rob. As in it's a desirable goal to grow this website. If that is what you meant, I agree with you. It's not clear whether a different software helps with innovation and growth, or not. I'm ecumenical. But I really, really, really like what you are doing. Second, the obvious thing about this website is that it had very good moderators who have been moderating for years. So it was a no brainer to me that they would keep doing that, and now the moderating team has been expanded. This is good news, good news, and good news. The missing piss was a technical wizard, which we found in you. That is great news, great news, and great news. Third, I understand why we are maintaining the legal position that Bill owns these websites. So if somebody asks that question, I'll say, "Oh. A guy named Bill owns these websites, and he is deceased." Beyond that, I don't see that fact as a reason to slow down innovation and change. If a legal argument for change is needed, which I don't think it is, we are simply preserving the value of Bill's websites to its users as the legal issues play out. Fourth, there are two bad outcomes to worry about. The only really bad extinction level outcome is if a judge says these websites go in the dumpster fire, given their content, or Aunt Edna mysteriously shows up to claim them. My view is we are all acting as if that is not going to happen, and we should keep acting that way. If and when it happens, which is unlikely, we can deal with it. The more likely problem is timing. I'll quote @Lucky when he says these kinds of things can go on "forever" in probate. That's a long time. For that reason, I'm excited with the new energy and ideas and hope you and others keep bringing it on. I think it's great. Even if we had a crystal ball and knew it would take six months or one year or three years to get this legal stuff resolved I don't think there is any reason to wait to make these types of changes. If a legal reason is needed, which it isn't in my view, we are simply updating and preserving the value of the websites Bill still owns.

Thanks Rob. Some of the techno talk is lost on me, but I get the basic idea. That number 56 is surprising, because that error message I got didn't happen 56 times, or anything close. I was trying to figure out ways to cut and paste text to get it to post. So maybe once the firewall read something I did as malicious that triggered more of the same. I'll do what you said and see how it goes. But based on what I said can you think of anything specific I'm doing that triggered the firewall? It doesn't happen at all if I type a one sentence post. Nor does it happen with most of my long posts. That said, I'm not the only person who types longer posts and edits them. So I'm assuming if this is an issue for me it could be for other people, whether they report it or not. By the way, the problem does sort of self correct. I'll give you an example. This is very detail-oriented. https://www.companyofmen.org/threads/iranian-gay-man-beheaded-by-his-family.164886/page-6#post-2122004 There are two posts there one after another that were originally one post. While I was typing the post I repeatedly went looking for poll data or reports I hyperlinked to back up my argument. So maybe I spent an hour on that. By the time I hit "post thread" I got the error message. So I opened another browser and maybe about one third of the entire post had already been auto saved. So I was able to post the part of the text that had already been saved, which is what you see in the first of two posts. I repeatedly tried different ways to edit that post to add the additional text, and it kept giving me that error message. I then tried simply posting the rest of the text as a second post several times. That gave me the same error message, too. Since part of the error message was "please try again later" I decided to go post other stuff on other threads, which I had no problem doing. About an hour later I came back to that Iran thread. All that text I could not post an hour earlier was still there as saved text. So I hit "post thread" and it posted immediately, even though it wouldn't maybe an hour earlier. Because I cut and pasted the text it had removed the hyperlink to the Gallup survey I cited. So then I had to play around with edit to get the hyperlink back in, which I eventually did. At first I simply tried to edit and add a hyperlink, which it would not let me do. Then I edited a few spelling errors, which it would let me do. Then I tried to add the Gallup hyperlink again, and the second time it would let me do it. So it does seem like a firewall issue, that only happens when it involves drafts and edits and probably has to do with frequency. As you said, I'll just see how it goes. Thanks for your help.

@RadioRob occasionally since the site was moved I get this message which I never got before when I try to post something. Oops! We ran into some problems. Please try again later. More error details may be in the browser console. I have no idea what it means. Do you? I'm not even sure what "details may be in the browser console" refers to. It seems like it happens if I leave something I have not posted yet open on a browser. I know the software saves unposted text for a while because sometimes I might draft something one day and post it the next. So I might type a few paragraphs, then go to find some poll that supports what I said. And then do the same thing again in a later paragraph. So the draft post has been up on my screen for a while, but I have not hit "post thread." When I do hit "post thread" now I sometimes get that error message above. If I then refresh my screen I will see a draft version of what I have typed that was saved at some point along the way. But it's not all the text I had typed before I hit "post." So I can hit "post" and the partial text that was saved by the software at some point will post correctly. But then if I try to edit that post and add the rest of the text it gives me the same error message above. It seems to have something to do with how a draft post that has not been posted to the site yet is saved on the system. Do you have any idea why this happens and how I can avoid it? Thanks.

I like what I think may be the addition of "that can be viewed as." One time I posted a video of a teen kid coming out to Mayor Pete on national TV. I asked permission of Bill to post it at the beginning of the thread because at other points pictures were removed because they had children in them. Examples: a picture of Pelosi surrounded by the children of newly elected MOCs on the House dais. A picture of a migrant woman and her kids being arrested at the border. These were not anything anyone could view as pornography. I understand that there is an issue of a slippery slope. But as a practical matter I decided after a while this is about the only website on the internet where pictures of children simply don't exist. It seemed weird because these days a lot of Gay men are married to other Gay men and actually have kids of their own. This issue that should be of huge concern is child trafficking. Recently I noticed somebody called out a Rentmen ad that looked like it was a minor in The Deli. By the time I hit the hyperlink the Rentmen ad was removed. So perhaps there were complaints to Rentmen. Given the way Congress is moving there will likely be an increasing focus on child trafficking. So anything that smacks of that, whether it is images or words, should be cracked down on immediately.

An interesting choice of words. I agree with you that helping grow the community is a good objective. That said, it would be reasonable to feel perhaps less is more. My fear, which I know is shared by other escorts, is that if that escort review website goes away, it doesn't help this website. Shrinkage on either or both websites is bad for escorts. That's not my own concern anymore, but I know it is for others. My other foundational view is that growth is a good thing in itself, because the bigger we are the stronger we are and the less vulnerable we are. Similar Web Message-forum.net I didn't even know sites like that existed until Bill turned me on to them. On the face of it, this site has taken a hit in number of visitors the last few months since Bill died and the review website went dormant. On Similar Web I can't pull up data on Daddy's Reviews anymore. Prior to Bill's death, I hadn't look at these measurement sites in years. So I have no basis for a historical comparison. I also don't know whether there is a seasonality to it. When I checked back in a few months ago I think the October visitor numbers were similar to where they are now for April. So it could be this site gets more visitors in the Winter, simply because that is when people are indoors more. This website is ranked #4,262 currently out of all "adult" websites. If you compare it to the other sites most frequently visited by visitors to this site, they are either escorting or porn sites. No surprise there. This site has about 5 % of the traffic of Rent Men in April versus about 10 % of RentMen's traffic in December. I bring this up because I have had discussions with people who say it might actually be better to cut the cords with the review website. The thinking is that it creates risk for this website that would otherwise not be there. I don't think the facts bear that out. Even without Daddy's on the radar right now, this site is linked to these other sites like RentMen. So one way or the other we're in the public box of an adult site tied to escorting.

While I have your attention, @RadioRob, I do plan to post something thoughtful, or at least verbose, relating to a few options to consider for ownership of the escort review site. I'm not interested in the quantity of people reading it, so much as the quality of people reading it. Meaning people who want to see that site survive and prosper, and have ideas to put forward about how to do that, basically. You or somebody moved the discussion to this "site news" forum, which makes perfect sense. But I can't post a thread there. So if I want to post a thread about ownership of the escort review website, where should I do that?

That's okay. Remember, I was an escort. I've spent more than my fair share of time in sex clubs. It's okay to be a voyeur. And, no. I'm not implying you'd ever try to open up anyone's package in private. Even if it's been around forever.

Let me guess. I'm about 5 % of that? No sweetie. I think he's calling me fat, but diplomatically. You look just fine.

I'll add this to put what make sense to me, at least, in context. In the three weeks in February ending with Bill's "I have a cold" post, a total of 6 escort reviews were posted over three weeks. So on two different days there were three reviews posted. And on 13 days the message is "No reviews available for this date." That's not meant as an opinion, or a judgment. It's just a statement of fact. In my heyday, there could easily be six reviews a day. I've been checked out of the review site for years. But I have friends telling me it has nothing to do with their business. They're all working off RentMen or a few other websites. So this tends to confirm to me what they are saying to me. I'd be interested to ask around more escorts and get their observations. Meanwhile, I've heard limitless amounts of comments for years about how there were less reviews than before, and the reviews were watered down to nothing. Those two things of course feed off each other. To the degree people felt I can't say what I want to say, why say it? Or read it? Precisely because of politics, meaning Bill's risk of prosecution based on what he did, my sympathies tended to lie with him. At least in terms of the review content complaints I heard. So if we're putting a "political" label on this discussion, it is "political" to talk about the content of those reviews, because it goes right back to FOSTA/SESTA. You simply can't talk about the review website and the content of those reviews or all the pro-decriminalization stuff Bill plastered on the front page without talking about the political environment that drives it. I view this as good news/bad news. The good news, first and foremost, is that the site survived thanks to @RadioRob and Team Washington. Because there were six reviews posted in February, that means we have time to figure this out. @RadioRob said there were a bunch in the queue. But if I understand his thinking correctly I agree with him, strongly, that getting them posted is not an urgent priority. If we're being conservative and careful, it's actually potentially dangerous to post something without vetting it. The bad news is the number of reviews posted seems to confirm what some escorts are telling me now, and what a lot of clients told me in the past. I think now is a great time to let 1000 opinions about that website bloom. Isn't that what this forum is for? And since one of the major things I heard is the content of those reviews, I just don't see how you can talk about it without talking about these political components that drove Bill to do what he did. Or how you can talk about whether that website is more or less likely to survive and avoid prosecution if HRC and the ACLU are standing behind it? I quickly scrolled through January 2021 and it was pretty much the same as February. There are two days in which reviews were posted, by my count. Again, this is not an opinion, or a judgment. On his front page Bill talked about the health issues and medical tests he had going on at the time, so that may have had something to do with it. I'm just focusing on the facts, the facts, and only the facts. I'll happily go with what most people think. But I don't think we know what most people think.

I addressed that above. Decriminalization and how either of these websites defend themselves from being shut down touches on politics. But this isn't about my political opinions. It's about Daddy's websites. In this case the review website. I've suggested that at some point we might have a forum specifically on Escorting Health and Safety, including decriminalization. But the immediate context is broader than that. It's about the future of the escorting website itself. That's why I posted this here. Just so it's clear. This is about the future of the escorting website. Politics is in fact a part of that discussion. If you don't talk about FOSTA/SESTA you are missing a big piece of the challenge Bill faced and editorialized about constantly. But its not just about politics. Relating to whether this is political: That is the website's owner's own language, stated directly under the words "Our Goals." Where did he get that language? From this: Who said those words? Chuck Schumer, in the FOSTA/SESTA floor debate. Bill asked me to draft something about this website's goals that incorporated that. I intentionally suggested he draft the words. My view was that it was his website, so I thought it should be his own words when it was something as important as "Our Goals." So is this about some tangential political issues, in your view? Or is this about our goals? I think it's about our goals. My premise in this post is that when it comes to "Our Goals" that is something we should now be talking about and planning openly. Do you disagree, @azdr0710? Do we not want to have a broad and deep discussion about that escort review website and its future? That's what this is about, which of course includes politics if we are being thoughtful about it. If this is not the right post for it, sorry. I could have started a new post. I agree with @RadioRob that this is NOT a time to make changes. That is particularly true with the review website, since that was a one man show. I think this is a time to get informed, and talk about where we'd like that website to go. Do you disagree? I've been reading past front pages and past reviews to get a sense of where things were at before Guy/Daddy fell. My biggest goal right now is I think we should be having a very open discussion about where things are at relating to the escort review website. Do you disagree? I've been having lots of private conversations with people I view as leaders and good thinkers on this forum. Here's some language I thought was helpful on this point. I won't say who wrote it because it's a private conversation: I'll make a minor quibble. Saying we should not put the forum "in the middle of that debate" is a bit inconsistent with saying this is a place to "have the conversation" about that topic. But I thought the idea basically makes sense. This should be a place to talk about things and plan. I like the idea that this is a place to discuss and debate. NOT a political action committee. We could perhaps decide that Bill was wrong, and the escort review website should NOT be a tool for advocating decriminalization. But we would then have to decide he was wrong. He constantly used that website as an advocacy tool. Go check out what articles he posted, and what he said about them. I wrote a few of the articles. I think I know how he felt. So the way I take that quote above is that the other website has been and I think should be a tool for continuing to do what Bill did. That is, of course, my opinion. But it's my opinion about the basic goals of that website. I like both the tone and spirit of saying this forum is a place "to have the conversation about that topic." Do you disagree? Do you think we should not be having a conversation about the future of that website, including Bill's habit of using it to consistently promote decriminalization and the health and safety of escorts? That's not my opinion. That's simply a fact. My most immediate concern is about the danger of posting any new reviews without anyone, to my knowledge, knowing anything about the age verification systems he had in place. Is that okay to talk about, and where is it okay to talk about? While we're on the topic, I'll put this out there too. Several posters here have suggested Oz could buy Bill's websites. There's a discussion about that going on at Gay Guides. I personally think, and have posted, that it makes no sense for these forums to merge with what Oz has. That's my personal opinion. I think we're doing exactly the opposite, actually. But I have been planning on posting about the idea that perhaps it would make sense for Oz to buy and/or help run the escort review website, at least in the short run. My view is we have Three Wise Men who started this operation. Two are now deceased, and one is living. To my knowledge, Oz probably is the only person around with a day to day practical knowledge of how to run an escort review website without getting caught up in FOSTA/SESTA or EARN IT. Is that politics? Or is that about planning for our survival? Is it okay to talk about? And if so where can we talk about it?

EARN IT Act of 2020 The bill did not pass. But like FOSTA/SESTA it has strong bipartisan support. It's all part of the "protect our children" campaign which for obvious reasons is great positioning, reflecting what is in fact an enormous moral problem. But it tends to leave things like internet freedoms and sex workers in the dust. Once again, Wyden is one of the brightest guys in the room. His wife must hate the asshole! In my own judgment this bill, which I'm guessing could eventually become law, is as much opportunity is problem for us given the changing climate and where we are right now. One of my favorite organizing mantras is always try to find a way to turn a negative into a positive. One of of the huge negatives of Gay men is we are all child predators. One of my minor disagreements with Bill is that this website - meaning the forum - is one of the few on the Net where you won't find pictures of children. Like teenagers at a school rally to stop gun violence. I understood his point, which is it's a slippery slope. He didn't want any picture of any child in any context. I personally think it's a bit backward-looing. But on the other website, he's absolutely right. Any picture of any actual child in any context would be a fatal error. This proposed law is a reason why. If Wyden or his staff actually ever looked at a male escort review website, I know what I would want him to see. I'd want him to see the HRC and ACLU logos alongside the ones Bill already has there. I'd want him to see the sort of minimal "check the box" anti-trafficking page RentMen has. If you read the language of the boxes you have to check to get into Daddy's Reviews it does include such minimalist language. If it were me, I'd take a truck and drive it through that. In addition to a profile of Bill, I'd have a profile of Paul and Sheila Wellstone, and talk about why the reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA). I'd write an essay about how Sheila was like Jesus. She stood with female prostitutes, who were victims. I knew her husband way better than her. But my friends worked in his Senate office and I know she was very good at apolitical language directed at the wives of Republican US Senators. She was as good an organizer as her husband. So that website could be updated in a way that honors Bill and other Gay heroes and also makes it clear that the people who we don't welcome at all are child sex traffickers. In fact, we'll turn your evil ass in. That's not a safe harbor. But it's a safer harbor. I think what we should be thinking about now are how to create safer habors that move us toward our goals.

I'm going to keep posting escorting stuff about decriminalization and child sex trafficking and stuff like FOSTA/SESTA here. It touches on politics. But more importantly it touches on the core purposes and potential pitfalls for Bill's two websites. So to me all of this is basic and critical information about our future. That means everything from short term: does an escort review website continue? And how? To long term. Like are we swimming in this coalition stream of groups like HRC and the ACLU that would like to see prostitution decriminalized? Eventually I think it would make sense to have a forum specifically for all these issues and laws relating to Escorting Health And Safety, including decriminalization. But now is not the time. One thing I am convinced of is that escort review site should not be viewed as a "fun hobby." I actually think "fun hobby" captures the spirit of THIS website. For most people, this should be and is a "fun hobby." But running that escort review website is anything but. I know Bill viewed it as a potential reason to go to jail if he wasn't careful. We should do the same, I think. I've been doing deep dives to bring myself up to date. I know several years ago I reached my own decision that we were going to be in defense mode for a while. So anything other than that didn't make much sense. Bill's own website offers reminders that he felt the same way. This is from 2017: Bill's libertarianism wasn't a great match for coalition building. Although he was intrigued by the idea of reaching out to HRC and what I describe as "the Gay mafia." They are political donors behind LGBTQ issues and groups like HRC and I'm pretty sure many of them hire escorts. Not that I would know anything about that sort of thing. Bill had coalitions he was part of, if you check out the right hand side of his front page. The Free Speech Coalition is the porn industry, basically, and the political statement is "Leave Us Alone." The RTA logo (Restricted To Adults) is thoughtful and forward looking, and we should take that one and run with it. It's part of ASACP, which is the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection. I think that plays heavily into our future. It's estimated that about 20 % of kids on gaming platforms - gaming platforms! - are sexually propositioned. COVID has actually driven more child trafficking online. Polaris, which is seen as the best source of national sex trafficking data, said trafficking rose about 20 % in 2019, the year after FOSTA/SESTA passed. Anecdotally, it looks like 2020 and COVID was great times for traffickers. Meanwhile, federal prosecutions of trafficking declined in both 2019 and 2020. Can any of you guys who are good at math explain this to me? More trafficking, and fewer prosecutions. How well does that suggest FOSTA/SESTA is working? This suggests to me that if we tried to open up that review website for new reviews without adequate systems in place some asshole who trafficks 17 year old Honduran boys crossing the border in 2021 would be more than happy to posts reviews about "Marco" or something like that. So this is something for us as a community to think through and plan carefully, I think. If you have 45 minutes I'd recommend listening to against FOSTA/SESTA in 2018. He was right about almost everything. And it is a blueprint for the future, I think. He mentions that HRC and ACLU and the CATO Institute are all aligned on this issue, in defense of internet freedoms. I think that's a good coalition to be in. That's opposing FOSTA/SESTA. The decriminalization coalition includes HRC and the ACLU but not CATO. The one thing Wyden was wrong on is we didn't have the explosion of lawsuits. Thankfully. There was an immediate chilling effect, like the loss of Craig's List ads. My own view is it castrated the review website. But I don't begrudge Bill for not wanting to risk slammer time. I think if they really wanted to nail Bill, they could have. I've been reading reviews from 2021 that state what rate someone paid for an overnight and vague things about what went on in a bedroom. Does anyone think a judge or jury or a smart guy like Wyden would not figure that out? I think Bill was protected in part by being a non-profit, in reality if not in law. And if anybody ever took the time to figure it out a Gay men and former drag queen who would have been an awful political target. In fact, I think a new and revitalized website should profile him and others as one our community's heroes. Michael is another obvious one, although it sounds like his family could have problems with that. Another good reason to not have gone after either of Bill's websites is that trafficking is up, and prosecutions are down. So if more and more actual sex traffickers are getting away with it, why pick on websites that have nothing to do with sex trafficking? It was one of the weakest parts of the government's case against Rentboy in the public eye. And now the facts are even more on our side. That is part of HRC's message. Why pick on Gay men when we don't have a sex trafficking problem? In fact, we should do the opposite. We should actively make sure we DO NOT have a sex trafficking problem. Wyden was right about almost everything else. FOSTA/SESTA did NOT "Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers", as the law purported it would. At least anecdotal information suggests it made life harder for sex workers, up to and including murder. His proposed solution in 2018 was provide more money for federal agents who have the best skills to prosecute sex traffickers to do so. Does what has happened since suggest he might have actually been right? If you read that Polaris report above most sex trafficking happens in places like cheap hotels and underground strip joints and adult massage parlors. This story suggests underage refugee girls are being held in Queens and driven to up to 20 "appointments" a night by sex traffickers. I think the anti-trafficking crowd throw out lots of unvetted "facts" that sound extreme, and may be wild exaggerations. But the overwhelming evidence is that Wyden was right. There's more trafficking, not less. Prosecutors don't have the tools to handle it. A lot of it is happening on gaming platforms and Instagram and Grinder. Is anybody surprised? Polaris says "escort services" are a major venue for sex trafficking. But they don't provide any data to back that up. I'm curious which services they might be referring to. It may or may not be "escort websites." I think we need to understand the situation we are in before we plan how to move forward.

Silly. Both! Isn't it obvious? I may be ignorant, but I am a whore. But if I had to pick one, I'd go for Harry. In his Titan outfit. At least to start with.

Seriously guys. Can't we just make her the new owner and forget about the rest of this shit? It's just getting boring.

That would be interesting in itself, since it would underscore my main point. I would not be surprised if Rentmen had different legal strategies for different countries, based both on the laws of the country and the perceptions of risk relating to prosecution. Clearly after Rentboy and Backpage and FOSTA/SESTA the US would have to be perceived as a riskier market to operate in than Amsterdam or Germany or perhaps Canada. I should also note that I have never advertised on Rentmen and I'm getting my info from a few friends who are frequent advertisers there. So they could be wrong, but I doubt it. But when I look at the sites (US version) I see nothing about rates. This is very tangential and speculative but here's another thing I suspect could factor into the calculations and perceptions about risk from Rentmen: Post-MegaUpload Hollywood wants more blood That story's headline says it all, I think. That's from back in 2012 during the file server wars. The FBI and DOJ targeted Megaupload as one example of these companies that were making a fortune by allowing individuals to upload and download films and music for free. The arrest was actually conducted by the New Zealand police. I believe the owners were living in a fancy mansion in Auckland or someplace like that. I think the headline is dead right. When you are messing life up for very powerful interests like Hollywood, you're not safe anywhere. If the US FBI or DOJ really wanted to get Rentmen, I'm pretty sure they could get them just like they dealt with the file server situation. I'm guessing Rentmen just wants to lay as low as they can while they make as much money as they can. If I'm right about the rate stuff, the calculation would be why wave a red flag in front of the American bull? There is a script here, I think. And it is driven by politics more than law or anything else. The thing Megaupload and Rentboy and Backpage all have in common is that they went down as attacks on rich fat cats who were making a fortune by being predators of one form or another. In the case of Megaupload and that whole industry it was predatory to Hollywood, which has a lot of political power. I really don't have a good theory why Backpage was targeted. Many news reports stated they had a record of cooperating with US law enforcement. Once they were targeted, though, they were painted as rich White men whose site facilitated the abuse and murder of a young Black female prostitute. My theory with Jeffrey is it was the dumb ass idea of submitting a visa application to DHS. There was an interesting political lesson there, I think. The initial complaint was written by a woman, I'm guessing a Hispanic Catholic based on the name, that clearly saw Gay sex as gross. So there was a lot of backlash, including from the New York Times, about how this criminalized Gay sex. Then DHS got the memo and tried to make Jeffrey look like a child sex trafficker. Once he was targeted and arrested it was relatively easy to make a case that this had something to do with prostitution, which is what he plead guilty to. The thing I would say Megaupload and Rentboy and Backpage had in common is they were all relatively if not completely politically isolated. What that all says to me is this is much more about politics than law. Duh! The thing to avoid is being isolated and a rich White guy who makes a lot of money off things like prostitution. Our best defense is that is an attack on a website like this or the escort review site is a frontal attack on the Gay community. What harm are we doing? Why are you picking on us? DECRIMNOW I've been checking out the websites of groups in this large decriminalization coalition that ACLU and HRC are at the heart of. That website is for a group that is one of the fringiest in the coalition, I would say. Some conservatives may bridle because it's got Black transgender prostitutes who tell you their very own "woke" correct pronouns to use. It's an advocacy website, not an escort review website. But shouting "Sex Work Is Work" is pretty much saying "Fuck You" to FOSTA/SESTA. And yet, in my opinion, Chuck Schumer kind of gave them a "get of jail free card." He made a point, as did others during the floor debate, of saying they'd never intend to target groups like this, who are working for the safety and health of escorts. And they are also working for ................... wait for it .................decriminalization. I find it interesting and educational that they also shout who their allies are: the ACLU, The National Center for Lesbian Rights, lots of other groups. On the escort review front page Bill would editorialize about various efforts like this and various supportive legislators. But in my own opinion he just skimmed the surface. He was a private guy more than a coalition builder. There's no way to avoid risk in escorting, other than to not be an escort or not hire. There's no way to avoid risk in an escort review site. But my own political calculus based on a lot of experience in working Congress and a few State Capitols is that the safe harbor isn't found by not showing pictures of cocks or which variation of the word "escort" you use. The safe harbor - or safer harbor - for a community like us is what kind of allies we have. And how powerful they are. That was true with the same sex marriage campaign. I think it's also true with operating an escort review site, and eventually whether it is decriminalized to do so.

Thank you for your endless hard work. ??????????????

You're doing an amazing job. Thank you.

Thank you Rob. I wonder if I am doing something wrong or if there is something with the server. A couple time I either tried to post something, or did just post something. And I get this message: Oops! We ran into some problems. A server error occurred. Please try again later. Right now for example I can open some threads fine. Other ones if I try to open the thread I get that message??? This has never happened before.

Not to be demanding, but if you can eventually restore the tag under my name to the way Bill had it that would be great. It had the verbose icon rather than "?" . The "?" doesn't fit because I think I know who I am. And how verbose I am.

I'm going to be the guy who keeps saying I'm confused. Why are we doing this? I've been involved in lots of grassroots fundraising and other fundraising. So when I was doing this with Bill I had some very specific short term and long term ideas, some of which he liked and some of which he didn't. My mantra was always, "Your website, your rules." But the way I take the discussion is we're moving away from that model of fundraising. @Coolwave35 has said he wants to fund the site and he's not interested in a community-funding model. I'm reading the room as people generally accept that. Speaking only for myself, I'm not complaining that I don't have to give money or raise money for this website. Meanwhile, there's a massive blank slate about the escort review website. At one point @Coolwave35 said something about that might be a place where a donor's group could get together and work on a plan. If that's a correct characterization of what he said, I tend to agree. But the general sense I get is there's a lean toward making as few substantive changes as possible while we're in legal limbo. Which makes sense. I'd suggest that ideas like that are ones that go on the drawing board. Instead of doing anything now, it might make more sense to use this time to plan what we want to do in the future as our legal drama plays out and, hopefully, gets resolved. Same thing. I'd already made the point and @RadioRob suggested now's not a time to add or subtract. I'll go with Rob on that. Eventually I think we probably can just get rid of The Cabana. But it would help, I think, if we decided now is a good time to be thinking and talking about new ideas and new directions, and we'll get to making the actual changes later.

I'm going to be the conservative on this one. I don't know that anyone knows what Bill's age verification process was. Other example of blowups that have happened before is somebody writes what the escort says is a fake review. But the one that could be a fatal error is something relating to age. After the blowback on the first Rentboy complaint they reframed it, weakly I thought, to make it sounds like Rentboy was promoting underage escorts. Now that the review site is up, here's an interesting flashback to 2017 and Bill's thoughts about the defensive environment framed by FOSTA/SESTA. I've just been doing homework and research. So here's an interesting factoid. One thing you see everywhere on Rentmen you don't see on Daddy's is cocks, cocks, and more cocks. But escorts who advertise on Rentmen are telling me one thing you don't see there and can't talk about at all is rates. On Daddy's some escorts post rates and some don't. My strong hunch - not a fact - is that Rentmen has better lawyers than Bill did. They probably said cocks are everywhere on the internet. Having a cock is not prostitution. But once you say anything about rates, it gets dicey. My big picture point is that I think the situation warrants a big and gradual rethink. Mostly, I think we want to think about how to move from defense, circa 2017, to offense and moving the ball forward. I think that's mostly a discussion for another day. The energy now is on this site, and it's all good energy. This approach that we'll make small changes now and big changes later generally makes sense to me. Does anybody really believe that now that both sites are up and running we would actually pull the plug on either if we get news we don't like out of probate? I don't. I don't think this community wants to die. Or that it will commit suicide, technological or otherwise. Hopefully this is a non-issue as probate plays out. But I'm very glad we are acting like this is a community with a future. I think we can use this time to plan and organize.

Makes a lot of sense to me. I'd encourage the same with the escort review website. I'm going to post a much longer thread about legal/political risk in that review site thread you started. What you've done in terms of simply preserving a historical data base is amazing. Once you go down the road of changing or streamlining the management of how the reviews work, it's a slippery slope. As a legal matter, as I'll say in the more verbose thread, I personally think it's a non-issue. Who cares? Who's going to sue? My view is we are simply preserving the value of two sites that would have no value if we let them die. Case closed. As a practical matter, I'm guessing a lot of escorts and clients would welcome improvements to the review process. The more important risk and opportunity to me is I think it would be dumb ass to simply assume open season on escort sites is over. Even though the political climate seems to be moving in our direction. So I think we'd be wise to use this time for a broad rethink of that site. The first thing is it was essentially a one man show, and that show has closed. So we have to make sure we don't do anything that gets us in trouble. That was part of Bill's job, and it's a very slippery slope. The more important thing to me is rather than looking in the rear view mirror based on past risks we should be evaluating what lies ahead and how we can improve the site in ways that get us to where we'd like to go. That assumes that we know where we'd like to go. Or that we can figure it out along the way.

Do we need The Cabana? As was noted, that emerged when Bill and I were working together on ways to develop a more systematic model for a website funded by voluntary donations. The Cabana was a reward for people who gave. @Coolwave35 is being very clear he wants to fund this website, and that a community funding model is no longer needed. When Bill set The Cabana up he informed me I was selected by him to moderate it. I had zero interest in doing that. I was interested in fundraising, not moderating. There are several new moderators and I'm guessing they either volunteered, or were asked. I think it's great. My perception is the metric of who does the "over and above" work on this website is changing from "who donates" to "who volunteers" which at least as of now means "who moderates." In my eyes this is all really healthy. New leadership, new ideas. I'm lovin it. But unless there is some new purpose for The Cabana other than as a reward to donors, I'd say get rid of it. Since @RadioRob notes that The Cabana is limited to donors, one thought to put on hold is that a community funding model may still make sense for the escort review site. I think the first thing needed is more discussion about what people like and don't like about that site. We also need a group of escorts and clients who either view that site as their bread and butter and want to see it survive and flourish, or who write reviews on it. A team like that can do something like what is happening here. Except I think that website needs a much deeper updating than this one. "Daddy" was a one man show, and that show is over. It's possible, I've thought, that something like The Moderator's Forum could be set up over there, including people who either volunteer or donate to that website. But that is putting the cart before the horse. I think the start is to begin at the 30,000 foot level about what we really want that site to be. And right now the energy is all on this website, which I think is great.