-
Recently Browsing 0 Dreamers
No registered users viewing this page.
-
Similar Content
-
By Tema
My statement regarding recent events on EcchiDreams...
This probably isn't going to age well, because I think with what's going on in the world right now, we're experiencing some very frayed mental states after being locked down for so long and having lives changed because of pandemic. Now; I realise that this is an extreme minority of people that is causing the majority of the problems, so if you're just trying to do your thing, then please carry on, and I am sorry that this post was necessary. Who knows, this post might have absolutely no meaning in a years time and we'll all look back on it and say "Ah yes, that was a bit of an embarrassing period, oh how we've gotten better since then. I don't even know why I hated X." Ha. One can hope.
I know that Aura has put up a status in regards to some of the recent firestorm that's been going on here over the last few days, yesterday. It's honestly quite well worth the read, because he's right on quite a lot of points, especially when it comes to issues of what's being posted on here. There are other statues made by other dreamers on the various subjects that I will be covering in this, and people who have posted replies to those statuses that I want to address directly as well. But this has been building up, and there's a few things I've noticed over the last month or so.
Firstly; we are all supposed to be adults, but we are also all human, and all make mistakes. Not a single one of us can claim that we're perfect, unless it's perfectly imperfect. It is a shame that no one has apparently read my recent news article where I said:
Read more: EcchiDreams Newsletter (April 2020)
Political Activism on EcchiDreams
EcchiDreams should not a place where you do your political activism. Should doesn't mean that it's against the rules, and absolutely not allowed by the way.
Politics has become so highly charged and polarised over the last decade and it's not showing signs of stopping this trend any time soon. If you are one side of the political spectrum and you're doing your political activism here, you can expect someone on the other-side to do their political activism on here too, and this is where things are going to go tits up very quickly, because seldom can one side respect another sides personal or political views and not get branded every buzzword under the sun, "Racist, Sexist, Cuck, Simp, Facist, Commie" etc, etc... Even what might seem like a politically neutral or a politically universal statement can be twisted into proof that you're an X, Y and Z. Which is extemely unfortunate, because everyone is going to have different opinions or view points. Just because it doesn't match up to yours or your purity tests, doesn't mean that, that person is sub-human or not even worth talking to. Just agree to disagree and move on.
As I keep saying: We're not going to stop you from discussing politics here on EcchiDreams, however my advice is to do so in EcchiTexts or something. Whilst political opinions are allowed to be discussed openly by nature of Section 15 (Freedom of Speech; so long as it doesn't violate the universal rights of another person) just be aware of what you're getting yourself into by sharing your political views, and that other people on the site might not want to hear them, for one reason or another, or have opposing views that they're going to share... If you can't take it, don't dish it out, but ultimately that is your choice to make, not ours to make it for you. And I stand by that.
I do not think it's feasible to outright ban political discussion on EcchiDreams even if I "personally" wanted to, which I don't despite how divisive it is and how it's causing more problems than it's worth because just about everything can be turned into a political matter. Political activism that bullies others no matter which side of the political spectrum you're on isn't really against the rules on the face of it, but don't expect it to be tolerated (on a social level) here. Free Speech does indeed have social consequences, yes, but to start an harassment campaign on the other hand is against the Terms of Service. If you can't handle it, ignore the Dreamer in question and move on. Stay ignoring them and don't use it as a shield to hurl abuse and harassment at them, we will be working on the Terms of Service to cover this in future.
Note to those who have been a victim to this: Due to the nature of our Terms of Service, we can't retroactively punish people for a rule that didn't exist when the offence was committed. Which is why we are trying to work on this as quickly as possible.
I will also say that we've had a number of reports about political stuff being posted in statues, but we're not going to do anything about it. At the end of the say what people post in their statuses, is their business, and it's allowed so long as they're not actively calling for the violation of someone or a groups universal rights, we won't do anything about it.
Free Speech on EcchiDreams
We prided ourselves that we've had free speech on this platform for a long time, and that people have been able to say what they want (So long as it isn't a violation of someone elses universal rights) and they've chosen to use this to spread positivism and happiness without being compelled to. Compelled speech is not free speech, that is you being forced to say something that you don't think is true, as if you don't have a free-thinking mind, and that to me, can be just as bad as censorship, because you're not allowed your own opinion, and you have to say what the other person wants to hear because of their sensibilities and apparently yours can go fuck itself.
You're not going to agree with everything you read on here, hell I don't agree with half of the things that goes on here, especially when it comes to roleplaying certain subjects, or certain political opinions that are spouted as gospel, and if you stray from that path you're a heretic that must be struck down.
Free Speech doesn't mean freedom to post what you want without social consequences, even if it doesn't violate the rules. But there's a fine line between voicing your disagreement (Which you have a right to do) and harassing that person for it (Which you don't have the right to do).
There are options if you don't like what you're reading and you don't want to cast your opinion:
Roll your eyes, stop reading and move on. Literally ignore them. Ignore them through the ignore system (https://ecchidreams.com/ignore) Although I am aware that it doesn't block their statuses from appearing in the activity feed. The mitigation for that is to make your own activity feed that you have a bit more control over what is on it and what isn't, you can block statuses from appearing on it for example full stop (https://ecchidreams.com/discover/?do=create) or create an activity feed containing content of people you follow only. If you want to post your opinions, then again be aware of what you might be getting yourself into, and feel free. If you're respectful and courteous and the other person descends into insults and chaos, everyone will see that and it will say more about that person than it does about you.
Or set up a blanket policy for yourself that you won't talk about certain subjects, I do, and I try to stick by it nowerdays. For example, I am religious, yet I don't feel the need to constantly bring it up and tell everything to seek the path of the divines and all that jazz.
However you want to deal with it, is ultimately up to you, but please recognise when the right time to pull away is.
Roleplays in Statuses
The same thing I said about political posts applies here too: we've had a number of reports about people roleplaying in statues, but we're not going to do anything about it. At the end of the say what people post in their statuses, is their business, and it's allowed so long as... you get the point. I don't personally like it, but my feelings on the matter doesn't matter, because it's not against the Terms of Service, and just because I'm one of the Community Administrators, and I don't like it, it doesn't mean I'm going to stop it.
I would *personally* prefer that roleplays were done in the designated areas, but that's not going to be enforced. If you prefer roleplaying in your statuses then be my guest, I guess.
However don't rail topics on the forums with it, especially where it's not called for - such an example is the Lets be Honest about Sex topic where I actually moved a lot of that and other off topic posts to Ecchia's Collection of Off-Topic posts. To which I issued a polite notice and have been happy that it's not happened again.
Now; I completely understand the argument of not wanting to read scat stuff. Personally I think it's absolutely fucking nasty, but I rather think that when someone says (And I am literally quoting here):
That it really doesn't take a big brained genius to figure out where that's going. If you're uncomfortable with it, then it's probably best to just leave them to it, and ignore it. Individual replies as far as I am aware don't appear in the activity feed, unless it's under the direct status and even then it's only the last few replies, so I really don't see the problem here.
We did once have a system before the clubs where roleplays took place in forums where if you were doing a side story you had to tag the subjects that would be touched upon such as (For example) Rape, Drugged, BDSM, etc. Or if it had particularly extreme content to state it in the opening post "This topic contains: Scat - if you don't want to read it, don't.", for example.
This is a little difficult with statuses, granted, but not impossible, and again - not enforced.
I would also ask for some consistency, if you're going to bemoan someone from doing X, and yet when its your friends that are doing it, you don't utter a single word... That, that comes off as extremely hypocritical and therefore it shouldn't come off as a surprise when you're called out on that. I've seen this happen about four or five times in different areas this year and I figured it was right to put this in here.
Inconsolable Disagreements with Other Dreamers
We are not always going to see eye to eye, we're a wide range of people from a very wide range of different backgrounds, we have everything from people who are unemployed to people who work in professional careers on here. I know of Dreamers who in their day jobs they're solicitors, programmers, doctors, police and security, fire fighters, business owners and so on, I also know that there are a few who work retail like supermarkets, fast-food chains, and so on as well as people who are unemployed and both looking and not looking for work, disabled and otherwise. I've found that some of you are on some kind of autistic spectrum, or have some other mental issue that affects you, but none of this... Not any single difference I've pointed out is an excuse to act like an absolute narcissistic arsehole and cause other people, trouble. But at the same time I would ask that everyone is mindful of this.
It's therefore not difficult to realise that a number of people here are going to have wildly different political views, and some even polar opposite. It's my experience here that most people are either Centrist in their views, or more right-learning, but there are also more left-leaning people and (I say this from a very centrist point of view), outright far-left and far-right views, although the latter two are very fringe on here.
There is also going to be a wild difference of opinion on what is and isn't acceptable. What is and isn't acceptable is largely laid out in the Terms of Service, it's not perfect - because it was created by humans who aren't perfect. But we work on it, and update it as and when it's absolutely required, and we generally inform the users when it's been updated and what sections have been updated.
What I don't like seeing is when these differences pop up and people start getting blocked is to then go out of ones way to contact that person that's been blocked to start shit with them and then use the blocking as a shield to prevent them from saying "Excuse me, could you not contact me anymore, please?" We're going to be tweaking or putting into policy ways of dealing with this abuse as I stated earlier, but it's going to take us a little time. If you don't like another Dreamer to such an extent, then ignore them (Either literally or by the systems in place) and put them out of your mind. Otherwise they're living rent-free in your head, which is not good for you or your mental health.
We are all here because we have something in common. Just because we don't agree to everything doesn't mean we can't have fun in the one thing that we have in common. I wish we could just leave our differences with each other at the proverbial door, and just get on like adults, but increasingly it's becoming apparent that not everyone seems to be capable of this which is why these systems are in place.
Miscellaneous
Some other things that I wanted to point out that don't need entire paragraphs:
You are not allowed to ban specific people from posting on your topics, and I don't know where the idea that you could do this has come from. Even if you've told the person to stop contacting you, and they post on your topic to take part in the topic without addressing you, that's perfectly allowed under the Terms of Service. Pictures of real life minors are not accepted on this site, or it's discord server. There is literally no excuse why you should be posting up pictures of real life children/teenagers under 18, on this site. Please read Section 18 of the Terms of Service. The Tag System is not supposed to be abused to put in your hate towards other people, or enforcing authoritarian standards. The tag system is used to describe the content of which is tagged so that it can be easily searchable, tags that fail to do this will be removed at a staff members discretion. You are not allowed duplicate accounts on here, if we're absolutely sure you're duplicate accounting, we will take action. If we suspect we will be keeping a very close eye on your account(s) and collect evidence. We make this very clear on the registration page, and we also make this very clear in the Terms of Service. The excuse of "I wanted multiple personas and accounts to reflect my different characters" isn't going to wash. Although we do have a feature coming up that will satisfy the apparent demand for this. GIFs are not allowed on the Gallery (/gallery/) This is something that is clearly stated in the categories of the gallery. Just because other sites and platforms allow you to do X, doesn't mean we should, could, or do. You should read the Terms of Service. I bet we do things that other platforms and sites don't do. It's not their responsibility to make their platform like ours, and it's not our responsibility to make ours like theirs. Different sites have different rules, and procedures, don't like it? Well, we're a private entity and we can do what we like (Within the bounds of the law) including dictate our own polices, so... yeah. You're free to make suggestions by all means, but when you're caught out on bad behaviour; the excuse, that's been used time and time again of "I'm allowed to do this on (Some other website)." Is not going to wash, has never washed, and frankly it's immaterial. Closing Thoughts/TL;DR
Look. I would like you guys to make more of an effort to get on with each other. If you can't do that you should just ignore (or literally ignore) the other Dreamer in question and just move on, don't keep making things hostile after doing so because that's not ignoring them. I'm not going to force you all to play nice, but the time has come where I have to put my open my mouth (Or in this case move my fingers and press a few buttons) to say 'Stop. Enough is enough. Act your age.' We've had a lot of people over the last month deactivate their accounts, and I can see why from the reasons that they've left, and can't blame them. Because it's becoming a very hostile environment, where your not allowed to even voice your opinions on anything without the bullying. Because that is what it comes down to: Bullying. You can disagree with peoples opinions and that's fine, and social consequences and all of that, but at the same time there needs to be line drawn somewhere. If you disagree with me to the point that you want to close your account then by all means do so. But this is not what EcchiDreams is supposed to be, granted it's not supposed to be a safe-space echo chamber either, but why can't we have disagreements and still act like adults? I want to hope that you can do this, but over the last month or so, I'm not so sure that some of you really can, and ultimately... That's disappointing.
I want things to change. I want things to get better. But importantly,
I want you all to stay safe and take care.
Lots of love (Because, yes, I am capable of that),
Temaelrin
P.s. Feel free to comment on this article, comments are open below as always.
-
By Tema
Hello fellow Dreamers,
Before I get stuck into this, there's an apology in order. I'm sorry that the last update news was way back in March of last year. I assure you that this isn't intentional, and we've not really gone anywhere either. We're still as busy as ever. But I'm going to try harder to keep everyone in the loop about everything that is going on here. I've decided to present these as newsletters, that I want to start releasing more frequently perhaps, I don't know. It's a new format I'm trying out.
This announcement will cover:
A message from the Community Administrators to everyone about the current pandemic The recent EcchiDreams Folding@Home Event against COVID-19 The situation with Politics on EcchiDreams and it's Discord UK's Draconian Age Verification on Indefinite Hold Changes to Section 18 violation enforcement Removal of Politics from EcchiDreams Promotion of Dreamer Content under "Our Picks" Welcome Pack Staff Applications Feature Updates Mood System Overhaul Upcoming Features Profile Items Profile Enhancements Roll the Dice! A message from the Community Administrators
We understand the community’s current concern regarding the COVID-19 situation, and even share those concerns. Whatever the outcome, come the end of the year, few of us are going to be the same again. It is going to test each and every single one of us in ways we never thought possible, if it has not done so already. Like yourselves, we are worried about our families, our friends, neighbours as well as all of you, the Dreamers of this awesome community. Some of the stories we've heard from Dreamers (some public, some privately via EcchiTexts/DMs on Discord, and so on) has been truly heartbreaking, and our thoughts are with you and your families during this difficult time. It is extremely important right now, in a time were we must remain apart, that we must come together in spirit. Now more than ever, we need to bring comfort and love to help and support each other.
EcchiDreams is absolutely here to escape from what's going on in the real world, and to try and keep you preoccupied during the lockdown that has been instituted by various countries. We are staying absolutely free of charge to use, and are going out of our way to make sure that our virtual doors remain literally open. We, as a community need to be understanding to those who may be affected by the isolation and the lockdown, as it is likely to start driving people stir crazy. To that end: as of the 21st April 2020, Neptune and I have asked the staff to relax a little on the enforcement of punishments when it comes to violation of minor rules on the site. This does not mean a consequence free free-for-all, but for minor offences content will likely be removed, offenders served a polite notice and no further action taken. This doesn't apply to repeat violations of the same offence, Section 8 or various serious violations. We ask that you remain understanding if you get such a notice, and to not take advantage of this.
We are not giving up, and neither should you. We hope none of you catch this virus, obviously. Your first priority is to stay healthy and follow your Government's advice, guidelines, apply some common sense if you get crazy advice, and of course laws. Just know that we're here for you, as a community.
The recent EcchiDreams Folding@Home Event against COVID-19
As many of you might be aware, EcchiDreams recently hosted a Folding@Home event in which: @Peculiarity, @Manni, @Alexander Bodide, @Neptune, @Rucio, @Sunstone, @Kerzin Kalamond, @Elena Ichinomiya, @Avengalyne, @Mr.X, @nicjomo, @Lawless Lawyer, and I all pulled together with our computers to sacrifice our CPU and GPU cycles, to help the Folding@Home project in their fight against COVID-19. This also means that everyone sacrificed their comfort when their computers started getting warm, their sanity, because playing games on them was out of the question, all during a lockdown with nothing else to do for 14 straight days. Some of them couldn't even use their computers, full stop. For that I can only say thank you! As a Team we contributed 29,481,528 points worth of credit and 1337 work units to the project. Woo! Go Team EcchiDreams!
Nearly 400,000 EcchiCredits were dished out as reward and, because of the success during this event, the 'Rave Blob' reaction and mood was introduced to EcchiDreams.
I am extremely touched that there was such a response to this event, and I salute you all for taking part. Each and every single one of you. This brings me to my point that when we work together - we can achieve something. This is exactly why we should all stick together as a community, despite our differences. We all have things in common, and it takes guts to celebrate those similarities, and tolerate the differences.
UK's Draconian Age Verification on Indefinite Hold
In the last article, I spoke about the UK Government's ill-thought out desire to make it so that every porn/adult themed website on the internet. Most of the article is moot and invalid now, but there are still some highly critical pieces of what I think about the UK's direction when it comes to personal freedoms and liberties, especially online, which is why I have not taken down the article.
You'll be pleased to know that as of October 2019 - the UK Government decided to scrap the idea, after repeated delays to implement it, and good. I think it should never see the light of day, ever again, certainly not in its current incarnation. I don't want to get too political so I'll leave it there as an update to the saga.
Changes to Section 18 violation enforcement
Some of you may have noticed that over the last few months we've been trailing out a new system to inform people of Section 18 Violating Content. This system replaced the previous which issued out first time warnings to people who posted this type of content on EcchiDreams. The feedback we got was that despite the fact that it was a 0 point "First Time Offence" that it was heavy handed.
So we tried out a new system, a new method of dealing with it:
When someone posts offending content up, we delete it, and send them a notice saying what was deleted, why it was deleted and how to avoid making the same mistake in future, with the flowchart. The first time is not a warnable offence, it's merely a "This is the situation, this isn't allowed, we've deleted, please follow these guidelines to help prevent this in future". The second time it happens, is when the first time warning starts becoming a thing. Although really we've seen a drastic drop in these kinds of offences after the polite notice, to near zero. As in we've hardly warned anyone for it since.
It's not perfect. This seems - on the most part - to be better received. Although there is no unifying template that all the staff use for these messages, it's something that we're still working on. Each of the staff have their own templates based on circumstances which are modified to fit the situation. We're working on perfecting it, and we're going to set this new way of dealing with it - as official policy. Therefore it's no longer in the trial stages, it's going to become the way in which we deal with it.
Removal of Politics from EcchiDreams
In response to demand from quite a number of Dreamers, the Politics Channel has been removed from the Discord server, and the forum has been removed from EcchiDreams all together. This decision wasn't mine alone, but it has received an overwhelmingly positive response. Because it causes more problems than it's worth, and with how polarising it is, the amount of drama it has caused and so on... We're not going to stop you from discussing politics, but my advice is to do so in EcchiText's or something. Whilst political opinions are allowed to be discussed openly by nature of Section 15 (Freedom of Speech; so long as it doesn't violate the universal rights of another person) just be aware of what you're getting yourself into by sharing your political views, and that other people in the chat might not want to hear them... That is your choice to make, not ours to make it for you. On the forums we recommend using the Random Chat Chat, and use the tags to tag it as political, that way people can decide whether or not they want to view that content or not.
Really, one could argue whether EcchiDreams is really the place to get an informed political debate. Probably not.
Promotion of Dreamer Content under "Our Picks"
You may have noticed that I have started promoting content written by other Dreamers to the "Our Picks" section on EcchiDreams, which is also shown on the homepage. It serves as a promotion of good quality content that is on our site, reviews, news articles and so on. Dreamers who write something that appears under "Our Picks" will get an EcchiCredit award, and later down the line an actual trophy for their profile.
So if you write good content, it could be a good way to expose it to the rest of the site and be recognised for it at the same time. We could expand this over time to allow other Dreamers to vote for the content that they want to see promoted. What counts as content that is eligible to promotion in this system? Well this isn't concrete or set in stone. Perhaps we're going to want a clear set of standards as to what gets promoted, in the future such as "no txt spk lyk dis" or somewhat passable grammar or what have you.
Anyway, I'm putting it you guys to see what you think on the subject matter, and I'd be fascinated to read your comments.
Welcome Pack
If you had noticed that under every welcome topic, I was practically replying with the same template after saying my personalised bit, then you weren't alone. We noticed this and it came off as a bit impersonal, and repetitive. The welcome guide passes on a lot more information that what I was doing before, and gives people a very good run down of the community as a whole. All in all we see this as quite successful, although we can make improvements to it over time.
You can view the guide yourself here:
And if you have any suggestions, comments, or feedback for it, we'd be interested in hearing them.
Staff Applications
EcchiDreams has not looked into bringing in new staff since 2018, but in just two short years we've grown pretty wildly, with over a hundred active people per day. It has been crazy how far this site has come in a very short time. We would like to bring two more people into the moderating mix, to help us serve the community better. Of course, this position is completely voluntary (not even the Community Administrators are being paid for their roles), any money generated by the adverts are put straight back into keeping the site up and supplementing for server and licencing costs; the rest comes out of the Community Administrators pocket. Other staff aren't asked to help with the upkeep at all, either. It's not something we could ever, in good faith, request.
This application will close on July 1st 2020, those that are picked will be asked to read and accept the Staff Policy Agreement by the 6th July 2020. It is important that you read below in its entirety. You have to have:
A content count of at least 100 A reputation count of at least 150 Have been registered for more than 60 days Be 21 years old or older Be in the Dreamer, Gold Dreamer and/or Platinum Dreamer user group. Don't be offended if the application gets rejected, as it goes up to a staff vote later down the line. If we've not had enough suitable applicants, chances are it could be extended past the deadline. Primarily we'd want someone to tick as many - or better yet all - of the requirements as possible, and secondarily we would want English speakers, who can type English fluently and be somewhat competent in their grammar.
Feature Updates
We've kept various applications and modules up-to-date a per our responsibility to keep in line with bug fixes as well as security flaw patching. I accept that there are some quirks of EcchiDreams that don't always work right, but usually we get these bugs fixed depending on severity. There is still a bug bounty program in effect, and we welcome all reports, it lets us know that there is a problem and you get EcchiCredits for it. It's win, win.
Mood System Overhaul
We previously had 18 mood icons to express your mood to the world. Sure you could write whatever custom text you wanted in it, but there was a bit of a lack of choice. We've had a few suggestions over the years asking us to add more to it, and back in December we brought it up at a staff meeting, and agreed that we could totally do that, and upgrade the icons whilst we were at it. During the process, I kind of teased it, and we were asked to leave "Waffle Time" in there.
We did. You can thank @SMFoxy for that one.
Now you can express yourself even better than ever before with the mood system overhaul. We went from 18 icons to over 110. You can still write in what you want, but you have more range to pick the icons that better reflect your mood. Since the Folding@Home event, we also put in the Raving Blob. It is the biggest overhaul of the system since it first appeared on EcchiDreams a few years ago, and we're quite proud of it.
Upcoming Features
We don't normally like talking about upcoming features because there is a chance that things might not be implemented due to technical reasons, or implementation sucks, and what have you. But I wanted to share some upcoming features this time that I hope to have implemented by the end of the year.
Profile Items
To help you spend your EcchiCredits, we're looking at greatly increasing the range of items you can buy in the EcchiStore. These are 'Profile Items' that you can buy for yourself, or gift to other Dreamers. The feature works, and it works very well, however... The only problem I have with it right now is that I don't have any idea what kind of items to include, what kind of icons to use, or anything of the sort. It's something I'm going to be working with the staff on over the next few weeks/months but any help from the community, any ideas, would be extremely welcome. We will most likely have to licence the images that we use, which is not a problem. The forum icons, and the icons used in the dashboard are such icons that we've purchased a licence to use.
Profile Enhancements
Everyone on EcchiDreams is looking for different things. For example, some of you are only here for ERP's, some of you are only here for deep, long term storytelling roleplays, some don't want to roleplay - you want to take part in the community as a whole, and some just want to lurk. Well, what I'm hoping to do is allow the Dreamer to set this preference as part of their profile, as well as a few other things that might be helpful, such as a "Am I taking on new roleplays right now?" kind of thing, perhaps.
The idea is that you'd be able to search this using our search system, to find someone who is after the same thing you're after. Although there is a debate going on about if we should allow the searching by Gender/Sexuality as well. I personally don't think it should matter what gender or sexuality the actual roleplayer is, if a male is happy to roleplay a female, or a straight person is happy to roleplay Yaoi/Yuri, why does it matter? But as we've seen, there are quite a few roleplayers who actually seem to care a great deal about these kinds of things.
This can be implemented quite quickly, but not in a format that I'm too happy with, and it's something I'm trying to work on and finalise. I'd rather have it looked polished and working, than for it to look like it's working and barely functional.
Roll the Dice!
We're thinking about introducing a feature that will allow roleplayers to make dice based roles for a more D&D like roleplaying experience. These dice would be "Thrown" upon posting in a topic. Right now the code is largely untested, and very much in alpha stages, pending tests, so we don't actually know if it works or not. Or if it even works for the clubs or not. It is likely that the first iteration of this will be extremely basic, and therefore something that we can build and improve on later down the line.
Lets us know what you think about that one!
Image Source: 士由(シユ) (Pixiv Account Deleted)
This was just the kind of neutral picture that I wanted for the announcement. It screamed "It's Spring Time" and "It's going to be a warm one!" to me, which spring here in the UK started off with a spring time heatwave. So it felt appropriate. It's got a vibrant picture, and I think that right now people could use a little vibrancey to brighten up their lives. The artist is quite talented at doing landscape art and I want to promote their work for more people to seem unfortunately they appear to have deleted their Pixiv account. If anyone knows if the artist is operating under a different name or alt Pixiv account let me know, and I'll happily link it. It's a very well done picture and I for one would love to see more of their work.
-
By Tema
Article Update (26th June 2019): There has been some more news that has come out in the last week or so that suggests that the law has been delayed (For a third time), and thus will no longer be implemented on July 15th 2019. Multiple sources have suggested that it's been delayed for 6 months, others say indefinitely and a few of them are saying it's been withdrawn. I will be leaving this article up however for prosperity, and in case it does come back. As usual, I will keep you all updated. - @Temaelrin on 26th June 2019 @ 22:00hrs
Article Update (17th October 2019): After repeated delays to implement this; the UK government has decided to scrap this stupid idea after all. What it will be replaced with, we don't know. But for now, this is a big win for us, and a big win for online privacy. There will be no age verification and this whole article is now moot and pointless. - @Temaelrin on 17th October 2019 @ 15:25hrs (UTC)
Hello everyone;
I've been trying to put this off for quite some time now, however I've recently had it made clear to me under no and uncertain terms that I cannot put it off. This is something I didn't want to talk about, and I had hoped that citizens subjects in the United Kingdom would have raised their voices and told the Government to go fuck themselves, but apparently that's not going to happen and now we (as an industry) have to deal with it.
I am of course talking about the UK's Porn Pass - A.K.A: Government Permission to Wank. If I am going to be forced to implement this - which is looking increasingly likely at this point, then I will be speak very fucking candidly about it at the end of the serious thing, I will deliver my thoughts – open, raw and uncensored.
On July 15th 2019; the United Kingdom’s age verification law for pornography sites, will go into effect. The aim is: The UK Government want its citizens subjects to prove that they are over 18 to access adult content, and apparently putting in your Date of Birth will no longer suffice anymore. To prove that you’re over 18, you’ll either need to enter your credit card, passport number, mobile phone number or by an age verification pass from one of your local newsagents/shops. This is part of the 2017 Digital Economy Act. This law surrounds adult content, I believe it also applies to gambling sites, and tobacco/alcohol, but I’m not sure on that. In the adult site category, it applies to media (Pictures, videos and so on), cartoon porn (Hentai), and text (Roleplays for example. Sex Stories, etc).
Sites that do not comply with law will face fines of up to £250,000 (At the time of writing this works out to be around $318,000 USD) and/or getting their website(s) blocked in that country.
I want to make this clear that I do not like this, and I find this is to be an obviously unacceptable overreach by the UK Government, and as I’ve said previously, I’ve been told that I cannot ignore it. I also want to make this clear: This isn’t a Brexit issue. This isn’t a left/right issue. It seems that all mainstream political parties are in favour of this because of the age-old pearl-clutching trope of “Won’t somebody think of the children?!” That and the UK seems more fixated on being first in the world to do something like this, and that somehow makes it good, which is a logical fallacy in-on-itself.
This announcement isn’t to talk about how we can resist it or block it. But what will happen and what I am looking into going forward. I will be speaking candidly after this to share my thoughts and concerns on the matter. But for now, I will share with you what my choices and options are. I will say that I have no intention on purging EcchiDreams of all smut-content and confine it to EcchiTexts, so I am not going to start deleting all images, public sex side stories, sex stories, etc. This isn’t an option.
I could refuse to comply, in which case I think EcchiDreams might just end up getting blocked in the UK, but let’s face it, if I do comply the UK Government will probably find a way of doing that within the decade or so, at current course. I could also be fined a quarter of a million GBP, that is not a small amount.
Realistically if I want to keep EcchiDreams accessible from the UK, I will need to comply and believe me – I don’t want to for reasons I will share at the end of this. There are a lot of concerns that I have; such as:
Privacy Concerns – Will the details of porn users be held on some kind of database? With cybercrime so bloody rife nowadays… Do we really want to support something like that? Liberty Concerns – They came for X but it didn’t affect me, so I didn’t say anything. They came for Y but it didn’t affect me, so I didn’t say anything. They came for Z but it didn’t affect me, so I didn’t say anything. They came for me, and there was no one left to say anything, kind of thing. Let’s not delude ourselves that this is for protecting children – this is straight up nanny-state bullshit. This is Government Overreach – There is a reason that this is being dubbed as the “Wank Permit”, “Permission to Wank”, and so on. This is the Government telling us what to do because apparently parents in this country aren’t responsible, or the current block system isn’t working. It is draconian – I’d expect this in ‘The Peoples Republic’ of China or North Korea; not in a liberal democracy, and certainly not in the United Kingdom. Boomerville – This is obviously created by boomers who have no idea how the internet works. What next? Will VPN’s become illegal? Or TOR? What about proxy buying cards? Will this really stop those that are dedicated enough from accessing porn? I think not. And that’s just to name a few…
What I’m looking at is a company called AVSecure who have AgePass - https://avsecure.com/ which apparently secures age verification by using blockchain (Based on Ethereum Chain). They say:
The AgePass Platform uses a zero knowledge proof system in combination with our customized version of the Quorum Blockchain (an Ethereum-based chain with added privacy features) which is capable of processing thousands of attestations per second.
Our core concept delineates 'creating trusted statements about a known person' and 'the use of those statements'. Users go through a one-time initial validation process to produce their credentials which they can onward use in a way that will only be known to them.
The user’s credential then generates ‘one-time’ use tokens when they visit websites in the future. These tokens are passed to the website providers which enable them to demonstrate compliance with the Law whilst also ensuring that their consumers leave no additional traceable information.
I am considering using this as we won’t be holding your personal data in that regard, and UK Subjects can buy anonymous cards for £10 which from what I can tell will give you a one time use code or something that you can use for an anonymous account on any AgePass wall. They have other age verification means too, so it’s really up to you how you’d go about it. If you don’t care about your privacy, they can do credit/debit card verification, mobile, and various others.
I think this is best thing we can do given the circumstances… I don’t think this will trigger for anyone outside of the UK, so if you’re an American for example, you won’t get ID’ed on the landing page for EcchiDreams, and you won’t be affected. But if you’re from the UK you will see something similar to this:
When you come to EcchiDreams, if I can get it coded in time. If not then we might be forced to close our Digital Doors to people from the UK until such a time that it is coded and properly integrated. If this does happen you might want to seriously consider our other option:
Get a VPN
I personally use Private Internet Access as a VPN, and I’ve found it to be quite reliable and fast, I am not affiliated to PIA (Private Internet Access), nor am I receiving money from them, but I personally like the fact that PIA lets you tune the data encryption, authentication and handshake protocols of your connection, and does a damn good job of anonymising your browsing. I’ve been using it for a year and I’ve never had any problems with them.
This can also be used on smartphones (Apple and Android alike), although the only criticism I have of it, at least from my perspective and experience is that on mobiles it can be a little temperamental especially when switching between WiFi and Mobile Data, has a habit of disconnecting every now and then, and finally the battery is drains quicker. But that might not be a problem for you.
I’m not shilling for PIA; there are other solutions out there such as; NordVPN, ExpressVPN, CyberGhostVPN, IPVanish, SurfShark, Hotspot Shield, and so on, I’ve not used them so I can’t attest to them. So I ask that you please do your research and find one that suits your needs. EcchiDreams doesn’t block VPN’s, and we never will. This has other benefits, that you might want to consider this as a viable option. Please take a look at: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/ to find the VPN of your choice. I highly encourage everyone to do this.
You can also use TOR, but EcchiDreams does actually block TOR registrations (But you can easily use TOR after you register).
I just wanted to give you all a heads up, and UK Dreamers will receive an email in June letting them know about this as well.
----
Now… My personal thoughts on it? The gloves are coming off, and this is going to get quite political.
You’ve just got to love the sheer hypocrisy, ladies and gentlemen!
The politicians tell us what to do and say 'you must live a wholesome puritanical life, that's rude, you can't look at that, citizen’ like they have the power to run and control our personal lives, telling us what do, what to say, what to feel and what to think. Nanny-State doesn’t even cut it anymore… At the same time as them trying to act like our moral superiors, they are misusing their expenses, having affairs with their staffers and other high ups... Orgies and kinky sex parties that include some of the richest in any given industry who are doms and high-class escorts, who have a LOT of clients who are top police chiefs, politicians, judges, lawyers, officials and so on. It’s nothing short of Hypocrisy at its best. Welcome to Brave New World.
I highly doubt that the main reason for this has anything to do with protecting children online, and everything to do with Government control over its citizens. They have forgotten that they work for us, not the other way around. I say this because it seems to be part of a wider problem with the Government which seems to be trying to take control over the internet. You only need to take a look at the UK’s white paper on “Online Harms” released last month. http://archive.is/3MuDH
Or the Investigatory Powers Bill; in where ISPs are forced to keep a full list of ICR’s (Internet Connection Records) for a year and make them available to the Government if asked. These ICR’s in effect serve as a full list of every website people have visited. Articles appeared about it in 2015/2016 – and there was silence. Hardly anyone spoke up about it. The full list of agencies that can now ask for any UK citizens browsing history (As laid out in Section 4 of the bill) Is as follows:
Metropolitan Police Service City of London Police Police forces maintained under section 2 of the Police Act 1996 Police Service of Scotland Police Service of Northern Ireland British Transport Police Ministry of Defence Police Royal Navy Police Royal Military Police Royal Air Force Police Security Service Secret Intelligence Service GCHQ Ministry of Defence Department of Health Home Office Ministry of Justice National Crime Agency HM Revenue & Customs Department for Transport Department for Work and Pensions NHS trusts and foundation trusts in England that provide ambulance services Common Services Agency for the Scottish Health Service Competition and Markets Authority Criminal Cases Review Commission Department for Communities in Northern Ireland Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland Department of Justice in Northern Ireland Financial Conduct Authority Fire and rescue authorities under the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 Food Standards Agency Food Standards Scotland Gambling Commission Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority Health and Safety Executive Independent Police Complaints Commissioner Information Commissioner NHS Business Services Authority Northern Ireland Ambulance Service Health and Social Care Trust Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service Board Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Regional Business Services Organisation Office of Communications Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland Police Investigations and Review Commissioner Scottish Ambulance Service Board Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission Serious Fraud Office Welsh Ambulance Services National Health Service Trust Or even the UK Digital Economy Bill of 2017. I am rather cynical. At the risk of sounding conspiratorial; I think Brexit is a convenient smoke screen for all of this, a nice little distraction, including all of the current PM’s blundering and fuck ups.
So a little history shall we? We’ve always had some kind of national webfilter and I didn’t have a problem with that because it targeted Child Pornography and stopped people from accidentally wandering in on a site back in a time where it was a very easy thing to do, and be exposed to it. I have no problem with that to a degree. It drove child pornography underground, and never wiped it out, but I don’t think that was the intention. I firmly and fervidly agree that we should eradicate child porn, and prevent its access. It is a noble goal. Even if it’s not totally achievable.
But things started changing after 2010 at the hands of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Government.
At first David Cameron wanted ISP's to implement a child safety web filter at an ISP level that would be an opt-in thing, so that parents could use it could use it to block adult content for their children, and promote applications that could protect devices. This is good because it affirmed that it was the parents responsibility to protect their children, it was more of an order to ISP’s to make tools available for parents to protect their children. I have no problem with that. However it very quickly morphed into “Oh no; this will be an ‘Opt-Out’ thing. So people had to make an ‘Unavoidable decision’ to protect children.” Well I wasn’t happy about this… But I told my ISP that I wasn’t interested and they respected my wishes. Clearly - this hasn't worked either because apparently lots of people have either opted out or bypassed it.
Now they're introducing this Age Verification thing.
The UK has had a firewall of Great Britain installed almost a decade ago now. There was an uproar, but we were told that it will only be used to block sites like Pirate Bay, torrent sites. Originally we were told that this would be an open and transparent thing (As far as I can recall) that would have to be done by a court order… By the following year (2013) hundreds of sites were on it, including non-torrent sites - like TV Streaming sites, MP3 Download sites, etc. By two years after that it encompassed a metric fuck tonne of sites, oh and good luck getting a list of sites that has been blocked. That’s kept secret now as well. So we have no idea what’s censored or not. Some sites that are blocked have an ISP blocking screen that says that this site isn’t available because it’s been blocked by court order. Some sites however don’t show this and show an error message in the browser, but are magically there and online if you use a VPN.
Now they're threatening to start blocking sites that aren't in violation of copyright. I’m sorry but it is not the Government’s job to implement these draconian actions it’s the damn parents of these children be the ones who are responsible for their children.
And we're already seeing what else they're doing in terms of the online space. People getting arrested for jokes, sex stories that they've written, lyrics that they've posted online, expressing opinions on Twitter will apparently get you a visit from the local police (Such as there are only two genders) and so on. I’m not going to lie. I am quite worried about this increasing encroachment on our rights online. There seems to be an increasing curtailment of our rights online, and I honestly think it’s only going to get worse. As they justify the reasons to censor sites, it seems to be getting increasing easier for them to keep doing it which is exactly what I said would happen in 2009 on the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. I don’t think this is going to get better and with the Online Harm’s white paper, I think it’s going to get much worse.
I won’t even go into how AgeID is owned by MindGeek which also owns several of the largest porn sites and porn companies so yeah… We’re not using them. No conflict of interest there…
EcchiDreams has always upheld one of its oldest rules: Section 8 Paragraph 1, we have a zero tolerance towards members who are underaged, and upon discovery they get banned extremely quickly. We don’t want people who are under 18 on this site. We’ve always been responsible about this, and it honestly seems like we’re being punished for doing so, because “It’s not good enough.” I suspect that it will never be good enough for the industry at all.
I think we need a digital bill of rights. Urgently.
Who knows I could be overreacting, but as someone who’s been using the internet since the 90s, I don’t like the direction it’s gone in, and I don’t like the Government’s increasingly draconian laws to attempt to regulate something that they clearly have no idea of how it works.
-
By Tema
This topic is for people who don't want to make a topic for something EcchiDreams related. It's for everything EcchiDreams related, but if you think it deserves it's own topic outright then you can do so by clicking/tapping here.
-
By Tema
Hello fellow Dreamers,
It's that time of the year again, and this update has been focused on fixing as many bugs as possible, rather than adding new features or changing things. Some of you may already be aware of some of these changes, as I softly announcement them via my statuses, and this acts a sort of "This is what we did this season." This is not as big as the previous "2018: Spring Updates", but there have been a number of changes.
This announcement will cover:
New Staff Site Changes EcchiCredits Club Changes Chatbar (EcchiChat) Changes Official Discord Server Two-Factor Authentication Reminders Semi-Technical: Bug Fixes Known Bugs that Still Exist New Staff
EcchiDreams is continuing to grow beyond our expectation, and as such, we took on new staff earlier in the season. It's with joy that I'd like to formally welcome both @Aura and @Sunstone to our site staff. Furthermore, I'd like to welcome @Kalvoras Vertal (AKA: Shuya) as our official Discord moderator.
Site Changes
We've made a number of updates both in the background and in the foreground this season. One of the main changes in the background is the transition over to HTTP2: this should now speed up the loading of site resources, as well as improve on security a little too, although the site is backwards compatible with the previous protocol. Most browsers happily accept HTTP1.1; although there is a bug for people who use BitDefender, where these browsers will not use HTTP2. This isn't a problem with EcchiDreams at all, as BitDefender does this to every HTTP2 site, thanks to it's "Scan SSL" or "Encrypted Web Scan" feature - which they say is more secure, but ironically they make things less secure when enabled because it disables HTTP2. Geniuses. To find out more information on HTTP2 and what it means, click here to see this infographic.
In addition to this we've also tried to improve the speed and loading times of EcchiDreams, which has been getting to be a noticeable problem - especially if there are 20-30 people online at the same time - due to how resource heavy the site is, especially with the likes of EcchiChat. However these teething problems have been resolved for the most part, and everything is starting to run more smoothly again.
EcchiCredits
In the last update, I touched on an exploit with reactions for EcchiCredits, which you can click on and see in the article posted next to this text titled "2018: Spring Updates". But to basically summarise the problem: this exploit would essentially break the EcchiCredit economy, by allowing a group of friends to like and dislike each other's statuses. This would add the EcchiCredits to the accounts each time it was done, and not take them back if the content was unliked again.
The developer of the original application had gone AWOL with there being a massive exploit that had been known about for quite some time; some people on the developers site had pointed this out way back in February, with some pointing it out in December of last year, and the developer had done absolutely nothing about it since then.
When the exploit was independently found on here; I was able to find out who abused it, and to what extent, and deducted the ill-gotten gains manually. The feature was also disabled due to this.
However, this has now changed. Another third-party developer (the one who made the background software behind the EcchiStore, which was originally two different applications made by two different people) has basically stepped in and introduced the features of the first developer to his application, which is properly supported and a well trusted source of our advanced development needs. He realised this problem and had already taken steps to preventing it, after he realised that telling the first developer was going nowhere.
So TL;DR, what does that mean for us?
Well I'm happy to announce that FINALLY reputation for EcchiCredits is back online, working, and not exploitable. The new developer is reliable, so should a problem like this crop up in future, and I cannot fix it, we can be confident that the developer actually will.
Club Changes
There has been a minor change to the amount of clubs that dreamers can open. Previously it was set to four universally; however after receiving feedback from certain Dreamers, we've changed this up very slightly. Now it is dependant on what user group you're in, so it gives yet another (albeit small) incentive to our premium dreamers. Currently it is set to the following:
Dreamers: Six clubs. Gold Premium Dreamers: Eight clubs Platinum Dreamers: Ten clubs. This can increase universally (like +2 on each one), or in part (like +2 on just Gold and Platinum), later on, depending on how the clubs continue to evolve. To clear up yet another misconception: no, you cannot pay for premium membership with real life money; you pay for it via Ecchi Credits in the EcchiStore, which you get as a contribution credits. The reason there are limits is pretty self evident: we would rather have quality over quantity and, if for whatever reason a club owner falls inactive completely, then the "damage" is rather contained.
Chatbar (EcchiChat) Changes
As you would have been aware, we've recently changed our chatbar software (EcchiChat) from Cometchat, a company that I can no longer recommend to anyone. As I announced here; we were in the middle of an active licence with them that entitled us to receive updates for their software, which we were also allowed to host on our server. This privilege cost us around $64 a year; reasonable eough in my opinion. Rather unexpectedly, this company suddenly changed their pricing and ceased to support the software on hosted solutions. It gets worse...
Cometchat now wants $299 a month ($3,588 a year) for the same functionality we had before at $64 a year, and we were no longer allowed to host their latest software. They "have to host it", which means all messages sent are stored on their servers and not protected by the EcchiDreams Privacy Policy; this is absolutely unacceptable. Considering the software was extremely buggy and practically non-functional 'out of the box', and required lots of intense and heavy modification just to get it to integrate properly with the forums, most of the testimonials on their site at the time of writing were written way before this change happened, and they're claiming big name sites use their software - of which there is no evidence when you look up their sites. You can see why we dropped this like a hot potato...
Sketchy business practices aside, I realise that "They're a private company and can do what they like" in regards to pricing; so I will say that "And I can choose not to accept it and move on to a better provider", which is what I did. Instead we're now using a US based solution that allows us to host it on our own servers, and unlike Cometchat; it actually works.
Official Discord Server
EcchiDreams now has an official Discord Server, which you can only join by linking your Discord Account up with EcchiDreams via this link here. In the past we had an unofficial one set up by @Kalvoras Vertal (AKA Shuya); however, it became very apparent that a closer integration with EcchiDreams and the Terms of Service was required. You don't have to come and join us, but you are welcome to. It's still very much a work in progress; but it's mostly up, and we're happy to take suggestions.
Two-Factor Authentication Reminders
Currently only one Dreamer who isn't staff has activated Two-Factor Authentication; this isn't good. You can find out how to do it here. We've added little reminders to sensitive areas of the site (for now), that will nag remind you to set it up when you enter it for the first time. This includes:
Managing Authorised Devices Changing your Password Changing your Email Address You can absolutely choose to opt-out, but we'll try one last time to advise against it with the following warning message. If you click on OK, the site won't mention it again to you:
Semi-Technical: Bug Fixes
We have made the following bug fixes since the previous release:
Changed: Moved the signout button towards the bottom of the navigation menu on mobile devices, due to the amount of times people were voicing their completely valid feedback that it was too close to the notifications/EcchiText buttons. This was a design oversight on the UI menu, and whilst it's not perfect right now, we'll look at continually improving it. Thank you. Fixed: All Cometchat related/caused bugs - Fixed by ditching Cometchat completely. Fixed: A MySQL Table limit bug when entering a description for a Gallery Image, which prevented roleplayers from entering more than 65,535 bytes (including formatting), which either presented a strange error message, or simply cut off the text. We also told IPS about this bug and they've included it as a standard fix in their latest IPS Suite release. Fixed: Rare bug with Avatar Upload that would cause a (ERR_NO_CONTENT) failure when uploading. Fixed and Improved: Performance of the Activity Stream has been enhanced. Fixed: Registration is now scrollable on mobiles. Known Bugs that Still Exist
Sometimes there is a menu overlap with the new position of the Logout button and some menu elements on mobiles. We're working on getting this fixed and has become a top priority for us. When buying a lottery ticket, or really doing anything in the EcchiStore, it seems to automatically redirect you to the homepage. Which is annoying. Premium Memberships brought from the EcchiStore still don't appear to be working properly. Whilst they're actually usable this time, they're expiring, even though they shouldn't be. We can still manually promote people to Premium Membership status upon the purchase of a Premium Membership, so it's not so much a problem as an annoying bug. We hope to have these fixed by the Winter Updates (2018), and we apologise for the inconvenience.
Source: けこちゃ
For many of us in the northern hemisphere it's been way too hot to be cooped up indoors roleplaying and the like, so I thought a nice picture of a cat girl with a water gun might cool some of us down a little. 😄
-