Vital Reading – The Future Of BuddyBate
As some of you may be aware, online adult entertainment and communities are facing a significant threat from many areas, primarily driven by special interest groups influencing government policy.
More than a dozen US states have implemented new restrictions on adult entertainment, and the UK is following this lead.
The passing of the UK Online Safety Bill has resulted in access restrictions being legally required for all UK-based services displaying adult media or facilitating communication between visitors. These restrictions are set to be enforced by July 2025.
Assuming we don’t change anything about this community we will soon be required by law to age-check every visitor.
As you can probably understand, this is no easy feat. Not only is the government passing these requirements without considering the impact on smaller businesses, they’re not specifying any affordable way to implement age-check requirements.
As a result, we have 3 options:
Option 1 – Free ID Check: You’ll have to upload a photo of your government ID or perhaps take a selfie in order to be “cleared” for access. This is also with only one service, meaning that it doesn’t transfer to other online services. You’ll probably have to do this several times for different services going forward. We know this is not convenient for you, and it threatens your online security. We have no control over the databases where your sensitive information will be stored and we have little faith they will all be secure going forward.
Option 2 – Self Censorship: We will be a text-only website. We will have to remove the ability to upload image content to the forum and end private messaging. Posts here will all have to be reviewed and edited to remove adult visual content. We don’t think it’s viable to operate a community centered around the enjoyment of male masturbation while not being able to display a penis.
Option 3 – Subscription: We will be able to carry on as normal, sharing all the great content we all enjoy here, but you will have to sign-up for a low-cost (monthly or annual) subscription to access the site. Just like any other online adult website, you’ll have a login page before you can access the forum, the events calendar, the experience posts and fiction etc. We believe we have a trusted name in the business able to facilitate this, with decades of experience.
This third option also potentially means a more stable income for the community. Instead of having to rely on book sales, product promotion or affiliate sales for sites like IslandStuds, EnglishLads or EastBoys, we will have that foundational income every month to invest back into developing the community. While we expect the community to shrink slightly during this time, the quality of engagement is likely to increase.
We understand that no one wants yet another subscription service. We fully understand that all of these changes are affecting your freedoms and rights, just as much as they’re impacting small communities and websites like ours. It would be great if BuddyBate could continue to operate as we have been for more than fifteen years. Unfortunately, we have to make changes in order to survive as a community.
However, we also see this as potentially a good opportunity to make BuddyBate a tighter community, and to be able to offer you more in the long-term.
This subscription model will potentially allow us to develop into more of a social network.
We have a little time before we have to implement restrictions this summer, so we would love to see your opinions on this.
Please drop a comment below. Let us know your thoughts. We really do need your feedback on this.
Brad
