What in the world is M4M up to now?

[+ beethoven]

The other day, I reviewed a New York masseur who I've been seeing for five years. Today, I received an e-mail from M4M telling me that "your review has NOT been accepted." Seems that I violated their rules against sexually explicit descriptions of a massage. Here's the review (I've omitted his name), with what I assume to be the offending sentence in CAPS. I removed that sentence and resubmitted the review. Let's see what happens. The unacceptable review:

 

" ---- keeps getting better and better. I have been seeing him for five years, and he is more buff and toned than he ever was. Of course, he knows what I like by now, and he delivers! He is the only masseur I've ever been with who not only likes role playing, but is very good at it. This has kept our sessions more and more interesting and more and more fun-filled! HE KNOWS HOW TO USE HIS OILED BODY AND HOW TO OIL MINE. In addition to these "extras," he is a skilled masseur with a deft touch. I can't recommend him highly enough."

 

In case you're wondering about the "extras,", he does not provide escort services, nor does he perform oral. Maybe "extras" is the word that triggered the M4m automatic review process?

 

First the deletion of "sensual" and "erotic," and now this? What's going on at M4M???

[+ sam.fitzpatrick]

I find it surprising that your review was deleted. It feels to me that I've read reviews that are much more explicit. Let us know whether the revised version is accepted.

[maninsoma]

That does seem odd since your review isn't explicit, but I once had a review rejected and it was neither explicit nor negative. I still don't understand why the masseur would have chosen to "hide" the review (if that's what happened) or why massagem4m wouldn't have posted it, but maybe like yours I just used some term that their software automatically flagged and rejected. (In my case, though, I don't even think I was contacted about my review being rejected.)

[armadillo]

We should reject their reviews that they make up on the 'masseurs' they post that are only there to generate revenue for their Private Videos & Pictures.

[bigvalboy]

Is it possible that the masseur rejected your positive review and not admin? This happened to me once. On M4M, positive reviews are sent to the masseur first for approval, and they have the option of rejecting it. When it didn't post, I asked admin why, and they told me that it was too explicit, but were hesitant to tell me that it was the masseur who had rejected it for posting. When they finally admitted what had happened, I contacted the masseur

and he told me that the review sounded like the massage was too sexual, it was, but he didn't want that part published. He asked me to re-write it. I did, toned it down a bit, and he cleared it for posting.

 

Just a thought....

[Nvr2Thick]

HE KNOWS HOW TO USE HIS OILED BODY AND HOW TO OIL MINE.

 

The suggestion that a masseur engages in oiled body on body contact could be deemed inappropriate. It goes beyond what would be permitted for licensed massage, at least in some states.

 

Speculation: maybe gay male masseurs are being targeted off for stings off the M4M site, and maybe the reviews are helping law enforcement to identify targets. Just as the guidance for this forum states "Discussion about Masseurs. Please be careful so as not to compromise their licenses" maybe the M4M site has found that they need to protect the masseurs advertising on their site. There have been much more explicit accounts and implied accounts of release and penetration, but obviously something has recently driven them to clean things up.

[Ajac]

Maybe law enforcement needs to direct the tax dollars and efforts elsewhere.If this is truly why these sites have started changing what about Rent Boy and other sites of that kind. I can see the ads now. " Please come and join me for a lovely cup of tea. I would love to play a ripping game of Mahjong with you at my humble abode or yours. We can discuss fiduciary matters such as the state of finances in the current world market in a brief phone conversation before our meeting."

[+ beethoven]

Yes, that can happen. When I first met this same masseur, five years ago, I posted a rave review, and he asked me to tone it down so that he wouldn't get calls from kooks. This time, he thanked me for my review, which M4M had submitted to him in advance for approval. He found nothing wrong with the "oiled bodies" remark, but evidently the M4M software did.

[+ beethoven]

Just thought you might like to know that M4M has published my "edited" review. All I did was to remove the sentence about the oiled bodies.

[adriano46]

Yes, the reviews on M4M and MasseurFinder etc... are going to be more problematic to sift through in the future. We will have to learn a whole new hidden urban vocabulary that is not yet understood by the those out to sting masseurs and escorts. I have known for some time that the masseurs do have some input on what - if any - reviews are placed under their names, but lately find that the site itself is self-policing.

[armadillo]

At least we have this venue to communicate without censorship.

[cheyenne10]

I noticed recently that a lot of the reviews published in m4m in the past, now considered to be inappropriate, were removed/deleted.

[+ beethoven]

I just posted another favorable review of a masseur who I saw last night, and my final sentence is, "After the massage, there was more, but I'm not allowed to talk about it here." Let's see what happens.

[bigvalboy]

I just posted another favorable review of a masseur who I saw last night, and my final sentence is, "After the massage, there was more, but I'm not allowed to talk about it here." Let's see what happens.

 

Interesting how you worded that. Also curious how they take it. It is becoming increasingly difficult to disect these reviews now.

[adriano46]

As Armadillo rightfully says above, more and more a thread like this on "spas" will become the only place for a frank and open (within reason) discussion on the merits of masseurs.

 

I know it is a slippery slope (oh yes!) in discussing what happens aside from the legitimate (or not) massage. I seek out a massage 80% for the massage therapy, and so I want a guy who KNOWS what he is doing, is professionally trained, and is able to give me what I need (therapeutically) in 60 or 90 minutes (I discovered the hard way that anything over 90 minutes is too much -- you can barely walk for two or three days afterwards your body turning into pure jelly).

 

So I have a dozen or so very reputable, hot, handsome and professional guys I see in NYC, DC and other cities (all are worth repeat visits; all come highly recommended by others and by me, and each one is a real treat to see shirtless (or other-less)...

 

The "massage and...?" varies and I have discovered that the more you see a guy again and again, and you both get used to each other (and the more the masseur sees you as one who is both respectful and appreciative) the more extras get thrown in, often without even a hint on my part. I learn to go with the flow when that happens, and remain a loyal and happy client. But part of this is the realization that what happens between me and the masseur may not be the same experience for someone else, which is why such recommendations have to be taken with a grain of salt.

 

Still, the reviews on both Masseur Finder and Massage M4M were helpful in the past as a gauge - now we have nothing, really except this site.

[corndog]

Still, the reviews on both Masseur Finder and Massage M4M were helpful in the past as a gauge - now we have nothing, really except this site.

 

I often have trouble deciding whether it is appropriate to review a masseur on daddysreviews.com. If the masseur is providing (or promising) an erotic massage, I think this is an appropriate place for a review. But, if a masseur is really more focused on giving a real massage, I'm not sure they would want a review here, no matter how good they are, or how hot the massage happens to get.

 

Given that our other sources of information about masseurs are failing us, should we be reviewing more masseurs here? Opinions?

[+ VeryHappyCustomer]

Cause = Google enforcing adult content restriction

 

The cause is a software update by Google, driven by a policy update, driven by cultural forces we all know well...

 

Many of the ads on massagem4m and masseurfinder contain what Google calls "prohibited adult content". Here's how it's described in the Google AdWords terms of service:

 

Prohibited adult content (never allowed) ...

Content that may be interpreted as promoting a sexual act in exchange for compensation

Examples: Prostitution, companionship and escort services, intimate massage and similar services, cuddling sites

 

Source: Google Adult content restrictions

 

For obvious reasons, Google needs to make a credible effort to exclude such content from search results. They will sell you the right to appear at the top of the page, but only if you agree that the ad they place for you will be free of objectionable content. Google can't "filter" live ads. They don't control the page a link points to. But they do analyze pages they've crawled. When they detect a violation by one of their paying customers (a website such as massagem4m) they act to enforce their terms of service. There are graduated responses, usually beginning with a warning to the webmaster. Then individual ads or sections of a website will become ineligible... Much more forceful is when Google stops selling AdWords to a site, effectively removing it from the first page of search results if it has any real competitors. A worse sanction is when Google applies a penalty not just to the site that's in violation but to other sites owned by the same corporation. In very extreme cases, Google will remove a site entirely from its public index. This is rare. Such sites continue to exist, of course, but are not discoverable.

 

A few months ago, Google started warning webmasters about erotic massage as a category. That's probably what prompted masseurfinder to rebrand "erotic" massage as "custom" massage. It looks like they've now tuned their automation to detect offers of hot massage inside individual ads and begun penalizing violators. You can see the drop in traffic to our favorite massage sites in the free version of alexa. Scroll down to the graphs entitled "Search Traffic".

 

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/masseurfinder.com

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/massagem4m.com

 

I'm sure the folks at masseurfinder and massagem4m are scrambling to bring their content into compliance with Google's terms of service. But I believe that will be impossible, because such changes are contrary to their business model. Most of the masseurs on those sites are, in fact, selling the product Google wants to remove from its search results. If you make the ads so ambiguous that they no longer describe the product you defeat their purpose. Meanwhile, weird site changes ("erotic" --> "custom"; "prostate" --> "abject"; vanishing reviews; vanishing pictures) are alienating both advertisers (masseurs, whose ads are being mangled by incompetent censors) and potential customers who cannot find what they want to buy. I'm sure the recent plunge in traffic translates directly to a decline in bookings for masseurs.

[armadillo]

VHC, thank you for the research and detailed explanation.

Curious to see how this all plays out in 2 months time or so.

[maninsoma]

Interesting information about Google. So I guess websites like Rentboy and Rentmen aren't Google customers and that's why they're not scrambling to change their content?

[rguer]

The cause is a software update by Google, driven by a policy update, driven by cultural forces we all know well...

 

What is Bing doing?

[luvsrubs]

This is fascinating info. I own a Kindle Fire and get the MasseurFinder newsletter in my email. I have to go back and look again to be sure, but in reading the newsletter on my Kindle browser I am directed to the MassuerFinder's mobile website, and it seems the ads still list massages as therapeutic, sensual or erotic. There are some pics on there of guys with full erections. Hmmmm.

[+ beethoven]

Just thought I'd keep everyone up to date: I submitted a favorable review of a WEHO masseur who was visiting NY, and my last sentence was: "There was more, but I'm not allowed to describe it here." The review just went up on

M4M, and my last sentence was deleted. (I thought that perhaps they use software that detects only certain sexual words, like "oiled bodies," but evidently they're more vigilant than I gave them credit for!

[armadillo]

Beethoven, thx for the report. WE need to be more vigilant also.

[Mocha]

I advertise on massage m4m and had one of my reviews deleted, but I'd only had 2 reviews in the 1 month I advertised with them, which is pretty good.

 

Needless to say, I'm very annoyed and made a call to customer service that it should not have been removed.

 

These websites are always up to something. It's hard to run your own business when having to constantly go thru a middle man. It's almost like you're working under them.

[natmas02]

I advertise on massage m4m and had one of my reviews deleted, but I'd only had 2 reviews in the 1 month I advertised with them, which is pretty good.

 

Needless to say, I'm very annoyed and made a call to customer service that it should not have been removed.

 

These websites are always up to something. It's hard to run your own business when having to constantly go thru a middle man. It's almost like you're working under them.

 

you guys do know that on massagem4m and masseurfinder they allow the masseur to delete reviews right?