Today Tumblr officially banned porn. I made Sharesome.com, a place where everyone is free to share hot stuff. Ask me anything!

Do you have a way to distinguish between hotdog and not hotdog?

Not yet, but that's a great idea!

How are you going to tackle the issue of child pornography? That was one of Tumblr's main issues, and surely you can't manually monitor all the posts if your website is "going viral."

EDIT: Vote cheating. Is the website "going viral" also bots visiting the site? Lol.

This is a a serious issue and we've been addressing it from the start. We're actively moderating content as well as integrating AI to detect on upload, prevent, and report illegal content.

Check out these resources: https://projectvic.org/ and https://www.iwf.org.uk/

PS: Also check out our article on the Tumblr ban: https://medium.com/sharesome/why-tumblrs-porn-ban-doesn-t-come-as-a-surprise-deef2269ba5f

How effective is this method, and what plans do you have for if this website explodes?

I would say it's quite effective, but we also have other methods in place, including human moderation (unfortunately there's no way around that, at least until AGI comes :) ). If the website explodes, we'll keep upgrading our infrastructure. We know how important website speed is for users, so this is one of our primary concerns.

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We're running tests with age-detection algos as we speak.

There are several words that essentially mean "jailbait" in other languages, are you banning those words too?

Not yet, but good idea.

Another data sucking octopus rears it's head. This will end badly and it's technology will be shown to be ineffective. Research who you give your data to.

Better yet: don't give our your personal info!

What do I have to do to get a job “monitoring content”

We're good on that front, thank you. Currently looking to expand our dev team.

This needs an answer.

Edit: I'll leave it up because I hate deleting posts, but I wrote this before it was answered.

Not really. You can’t expect them to have a foolproof auto detect feature as a brand new website. Things like that take time to build and I’m sure it will be boots on the ground for a while. Any new media platform will have this problem from launch.

You can, actually. Child porn isn't something you learn along the way, with an acceptable learning curve. You have a system in place when you start, or you don't start. I understand this is a big hurdle for new companies, but sexual victimization of children trumps.

Ensuring there is no underage content on our platform is priority number 1.

Is this site strictly porn only? I know a lot of people are upset about tumblr changing because they like to blog about sfw and nsfw content on the same blogs, or between two or more blogs shared on one account. The sense of community amongst kink groups was really strong on tumblr and tons of people used it for spreading awareness about safety and important non-sexual roles in kink lifestyles. Will this side of those communities get to show through your site? Or is it more just for nsfw content?

Definitely not porn only, we have SFW topics as well. It's mostly about kinky content, but you can decide what type of users/topics you want to follow.

Will there be a mobile app?

Due to heavy restrictions on adult content in app stores, we are not currently planning any mobile apps :(

Or build one and let people sideload it.

Or make sure your webpage is super mobile friendly

We're looking into PWAs.

Build a general purpose browser app that users can configure to load content from your site. Maybe contact the “fast feed” app author

Hmm, will look into this, thanks!

Have you considered writing an adult themed app store?

There is at least one that we know of: https://mikandi.com/

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Consider building one and letting people download the APK or IPA

Yeap, we're open to the idea, but currently not on our roadmap.

Sharesome is kind of unusable right now for me as a man who is exclusively interested in men. Even though I've set my topics as such, my news feed is flooded with 'promoted posts' which are almost all of women.

For example, I saw a photo I really liked of two cute guys, scrolled down, and was smacked in the face by a collage of four extreme labia closeups.

I don't want to yuck anyone's yum, but that was definitely a heck of a mood killer for me, just as I imagine it would be a pain for exclusively hetero guys to be browsing their feed only to be bludgeoned by a hardcore dick pic or four.

How do you plan to resolve this issue?

I agree, this is currently an issue but it will be mostly solved this month. Working on 2 things: users to be able to set their macro-preferences (gay, lesbian, straight etc); we'll also better filter/display sponsored posts.

How is this better than Reddit’s 18+ community? Honest question, at work so obviously can’t look at it. How are the selections and different categories?

We love Reddit, so we don't see it as a competitor. Just like Reddit, Sharesome has moderated communities (we call them Topics), but there's also a large emphasis on following individual content creators. Content is organized in feeds, in a typical social-media-esque fashion.

Did you have this planned prior to Tumblr accouncing they would be removing adult content?

Yes, we initially launched the alpha version almost a year before the Tumblr announcement.

How do you plan to monetize and grow Sharesome? Have you addressed the problems many businesses online have when dealing with porn and payment processing?

Right now we have implemented a tipping system where users can send voluntary tips to posts. On top of this, we made a tagging system that allows us to allocate most of the tipped amount to the content owner (so if someone posts your OC on Sharesome, you will still get most of the tips). As for payment processors, we are experimenting with a number of alternatives.

In regards to growth, most of our growth so far has been organic and due to word-of-mouth.

What are your limits on what can be uploaded?

Minors are obviously not allowed, bestiality etc.

How about incest? CNC?

In short, if it's legal and if it's one, two, or more consenting adults, it's a go.

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We're based in Europe and compliant with US regulation as well. Not sure what North Korea thinks about us.

To what degree do you compress images uploaded to the platform? Are people who view your work able to get full resolution versions of the images, even if you aren’t displaying them? Is there a maximum upload size for media?

There is a maximum upload size for media, but I don't remember off the top of my head what it is. We do resize images so as not to serve huge files. I like your suggestion for allowing access to the full resolution pics, I'll add it to the list!

Is this open for everyone and not require a account?

You can browse topics and profiles without an account. But creating an account is super easy & anonymous, we do not require an email address for registration.

How is password reset ever gonna work if there is no email?

This is one of the reasons why we encourage people to add an email address. Unfortunately, if you lose your password and you did not set an email address, you will lose access to the account. If you have ideas for new methods of account recovery, I'm open to any/all suggestions.

Are you concerned fosta/sesta laws will make it difficult for you to continue to provide the ability to freely share sexual content on your site?

FOSTA/SESTA laws are worrying, yes. We're keeping a close eye on the issues being debated and legislated.

How do you want to prevent people from sharing porn that involves minors and porn uploaded against someone's will?

Regarding illegal content, we're actively moderating content as well as integrating AI to detect it on upload and report it.

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We're responding to all take down requests for content that might have been shared without somebody's will. Also, we're encouraging people who contribute original content to verify as content creators.

What about people that make stuff like hentai? Can they use your site the same way an adult model can?

Yes, we love hentai. We already have very active users who post hentai. Here's one I'm familiar with: https://sharesome.com/svscomics/

Is there a shortage of adult content on the internet?

There's a shortage of platforms that allow content creators and performers to promote their work.

On Sharesome adult performers can signup, start growing their brand and sending traffic to their sites. This is not possible on most mainstream social media platforms.

There's a shortage of ways for performers to be well compensated for it, legally.

But that's mostly because banks refuse to work with groups that involve themselves in or allow adult content, by and large, so I'm wondering how they're going to deal with Visa and Paypal telling them to fuck off. (also its kind of fucked that visa and paypal can tell them to fuck off because they don't like their content but thats something else)

Yes, financial discrimination of sex workers is a major major problem. Personally, I don't see things getting better in the near future. This is why we're heavily looking into cryptocurrencies.

So you're picking up the gold mine that tumblr dropped, but what are you going to do about any hateful pages that tumblr wont touch ex: neo nazis, terrorism, race bashing etc. I know that mods and filters can only do so much, so what steps will you take to minimize or eliminate these problems?

Great question. As you can imagine, there can be a lot of hate speech on a porn site. We have a zero tolerance policy for neo-nazism and terrorism. This kind of harmful behavior leads to instant banning and account deletion.

Could you share your open letter here? Unsurprisingly, it’s been flagged and isn’t viewable (at least on mobile).

Of course, here it is: https://66.media.tumblr.com/4584131fe872e62dcfc09d3d3819816d/tumblr_pj7yfa40sC1wkkpgoo1_1280.png

How did you make it? What's the technology stack going on?

PHP and some Node.js on the backend, Vue.js on the frontend.

How do you handle issues such as ensuring consent for sharing by the photo/video subjects?

Won't lie to you, this is not an easy task. We're taking down content when people report it and making sure it never gets uploaded again (with media fingerprinting and check ups on upload etc). We're expanding our capabilities with 3rd party services to cover more and more of this issue.

Nicely done, but your homepage has porn on it.

I mean, it looks nice, but at least tumblr was going for a wider market.

Do you think focusing only on porn sharing is going to bring enough consistent activity to be successful?

Nobody watches porn. But it's a $100 BILLION industry. On Tumblr alone, about 30 million people were there for porn. Not concerned that our target audience is too small.

Nicely done, but your homepage has porn on it.

Thank you, we like it too! :)

How do I find nudes of my Ex, who I am secretly kind off not over?

Not on Sharesome. We condemn revenge porn.

Do you have any experience running a NSFW platform? How can you ensure the platform will be there a year from now, when you'll realise no payment provider wants to deal with you? (e.g., stripe wouldnt touch nsfw content with a ten foot pole).

To paraphrase - why should people invest their time in Sharesome if there's no guarantee you will be there a year from now?

We're doing our best, learning from mistakes. On the payment side, we're looking heavily into crypto.

Will there be an app for this?

We would obviously love to have an app but unfortunately, it would never get approved in the app stores. We are currently focusing on improving the mobile version of the website. We're also considering creating a progressive web app.

Is the main focus of the website live-action photos and video?

Most of my preferences are drawn or animated (because the stuff I'm into isn't very achievable IRL), and my second favorite kind is written erotica.

I know that my preferences are not universal, but I think there is a significant portion of Tumblr users that feel the same way. Certainly a lot of the content creators are artists and authors.

I scrolled through the feed for a few pages and mostly saw promoted posts about things I didn't care for. I tried to search a couple of my fetishes and came up with about 7 pictures in total.

Great question and input. I would say currently most of the content is from real people, and less from fantasy artists. But I get you, and we're more than welcoming to all NSFW creators, be them illustrators or writers.

The nice thing about Sharesome is that the more you use it, the more it learns what you like. So if erotica is your thing, it will show you more of that. And if you don't like something, unfollow liberally! As for the promoted posts you're seeing, those are getting pesky nowadays, we're scaling them down.

Is there a way to view the site without creating an account?

You can view all our topics and user pages without being logged in (example: https://sharesome.com/topics/ ), but you cannot interact with the content (like/share/comment), nor can you browse the newsfeed without an account.

What kinky fetish categories are you planning to include for a quick one?

Open to suggestions my brother!

What is your ballpark estimate about how much of Tumblr's traffic will be lost with this policy change?

Any traffic gains for them due to being more family friendly?

Finally, how much traffic are you prepared for?

They'll be losing up to 30% of their users. Most of them moving to Twitter (while it still allows porn), but also forums and Sharesome.com

How much is it costing you for this endeavour?

Is it profitable?

Not at the moment, as monetization has not been our #1 priority. We are now focusing on the product and we'll see what the future has in store for us :)

Have you thought about making an easy way for people to import their tumblr blogs? I guess a lot of work is being shut down right now, and people would love a way to make the transition easier

Yeap, you can now import your Tumblr blog into Sharesome.

What about video? Think you could make a decent yt replacement? You could have nsfw and sfw videos.

Neah, building just another tube site isn't exciting for us. But we do allow and encourage videos.

How did you tumble across this idea?

I see what you did there :) I actually launched the site several months before Tumblr's announcement. However, the recent Tumblr ban on porn has accelerated our growth significantly, so that's good.

Why did you choose to create your own site instead of letting people just come to Reddit to share their posts?

edit nevermind just saw another of your answers saying you started this site a year before the tumblr takedown

I think Reddit, Twitter, Snapchat, will at some point ban porn altogether. So we're building Sharesome with the long-term in mind.

Why do I have to create an account?

You don't :) You can browse user profiles and topics without an account, but if you want a smart feed with all the content you follow, as well as being able to like, comment, share, save, etc, you need an account. All you need is a username and a password though, no email required.

What is your LGBTQ support like?

Getting better and better, I would say. Sharesome was quite dominated by straight content, but now it's getting more and more diverse. Users can pick their gender from a multitude of choice and very soon will be able to set their content preferences, so they see more of what they like.

Why did tumblr ban porn?

tl;dr They don't make money off of it.

Long story: https://medium.com/sharesome/why-tumblrs-porn-ban-doesn-t-come-as-a-surprise-deef2269ba5f

Is there a way to filter gay content?

Right now I'd say just follow users and topics you like and unfollow users/topics you don't like. We're adding very soon the option to set your macro-preferences (like gay, straight etc).

Could you share(me)some bread?

I mean sure why not.

Is this the second coming of is anyone up?!

Sorry, not sure I get the reference.

Is it really going viral, or are you hoping it does so you can quit your day job and cash in on moderating bad furry porn?

Hahaa, although that sounds interesting, Sharesome is already my day job.
Check out the links in the original post: #MoveToSharesome on Twitter, the open letter on Tumblr etc.

Why should anyone trust you and your site with their personal pics?

It's a good approach not to trust us. We let consistent actions speak for us.

Any adult can see photos posted on Sharesome, so don't share stuff you wouldn't want seen.

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Not really. Check out this article we wrote: https://medium.com/sharesome/why-tumblrs-porn-ban-doesn-t-come-as-a-surprise-deef2269ba5f

tl;dr
"All these platforms are not run by NGOs, they are run by companies and the only measurement for the success of a company is profit. As simple as that. And all these millions of people consuming adult content, and all these tens of thousands of adult content creators, do only one thing to these companies: They produce traffic that they can not monetize."

could you get the porn off reddit and take it to your site too?

i mean a bit of porn is ok. but i dont see why there needs to be 100 subs for buttholes and traps and girls with pale nipples or what the fuck ever constantly hitting the top of hourly.

I get what you mean :) We welcome the Reddit community with open arms. It will be interesting to see what Reddit's policy on porn will be in the long-term.

how long till you decide to sell your gimmick website?

Sell? We're a dedicated team doing this as our full-time job. We love the opportunities, our users, and the vibes. We're growing to be the biggest adult social platform in the world.