An Open Letter from a Long-Term Fet Member

[cr****]

Dear Fet,

we need to talk.

Over the years, I have lost trust in Fet. Today, I no longer feel safe or respected as a member.

I have struggled with writing this post for a long time. Not because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say, but because criticism on this forum often disappears quickly and is redirected to support. Support is useful for individual issues, but the concerns I want to raise are no longer about individual bugs or isolated incidents. They are about the overall direction of the platform.

I am writing this from the perspective of a dominant male member in my 30s from a large city in Germany. I am primarily looking to connect with female submissive members, so my experience is naturally shaped by that perspective. Members with different genders, locations, ages or BDSM preferences will experience Fet differently. I can only describe what I have observed over the years as a long-term member.

I have been using Fet for several years. The first years were genuinely good. There were already limitations, but they felt reasonable. I could still get in contact with interesting people, have good conversations and build meaningful connections. That is why I stayed.

What I still believe in today is the core idea behind Fet. A BDSM community where people introduce themselves instead of relying entirely on matching algorithms is, in my opinion, still a much better concept than endless swiping. That idea is the reason I stayed.

Over the years, however, my experience has slowly changed. Existing features became less reliable. New restrictions were introduced. Fake profiles became increasingly common. None of these developments alone would have motivated me to write this post. Together, however, they have reached a point where I no longer believe the current member experience reflects the promises Fet makes about itself.

Fet presents itself as a safe community where people can meet, discover BDSM and build meaningful connections. I still believe in that vision. The problem is that my experience today increasingly differs from that vision.

That is what this post is about.

It is not about one bug, one unpopular feature or one bad support experience. It is about the growing gap between what Fet promises its members and what I experience when I use the platform today.

None of the issues I describe below would have made me leave on their own. Together, however, they slowly changed how I experience Fet. More importantly, they changed how much I trust it.

One of the first things I noticed over the years was that starting a new conversation became increasingly difficult.

Fet introduced several protection mechanisms that are primarily intended to reduce the number of unwanted messages members receive. New members are temporarily harder to contact. Popular members can become unavailable for new conversations. Members can use message filters to control who is allowed to contact them. If somebody doesn’t reply, there are also limits on repeated contact attempts.

I understand why these systems exist, and I support the idea behind them. Nobody should feel overwhelmed by unwanted messages, and everyone should be able to decide who can contact them.

The problem is that today’s reality has changed. Even with all of these protection mechanisms in place, female members are still likely to receive a very large number of messages. The systems may reduce that number, but the remaining volume can still be overwhelming. At the same time, the restrictions are highly visible to legitimate senders, who encounter them repeatedly when trying to start genuine conversations.

If the burden remains substantial for recipients while the friction for legitimate senders continues to grow, I think it is worth asking whether the current balance is still the right one.

The biggest difference between these protection mechanisms, from my perspective, is both their transparency and whether they can be bypassed. If a member is new, Fet tells me clearly that this is why I cannot start a conversation. If a member is considered particularly popular, I am also given a clear reason. As a Subscription member, however, I can bypass both of these restrictions and still send a message.

Message filters are different. In that case, the contact attempt is actually blocked. I am only told that I do not meet the member’s filter, but I am not told which criteria are responsible. Am I one kilometre outside their distance range? One year too old? Not verified? Or do I fail several criteria within that filter? The platform does not tell me.

Protection mechanisms only create trust if members understand them. Today, message filters are largely invisible to the people they affect. If you don’t already know they exist, the platform gives you very little reason to discover or understand them.

That starts with how message filters are introduced to new members.

Many new members appear to start with message filters already enabled by default. In principle, I have no problem with that. For many new members, especially female members, some initial protection against an overwhelming number of messages is probably a good idea.

The problem is how this is communicated. If message filters are considered an important safety feature, they should also be explained properly. Instead, they are introduced through a single screen during account creation that is easy to skip. If someone skips it, the filters can still be enabled without the member ever understanding that they exist or how they affect incoming messages.

A safety feature should not depend on whether somebody happened to notice a single screen during registration. If it is important enough to be enabled by default, it is important enough to make sure members actually understand it.

Most new members simply start exploring the platform instead of reading documentation. The sender only discovers message filters after suddenly being prevented from starting a conversation. The recipient doesn’t notice them at all. They receive no indication that someone was prevented from contacting them and may never realise that message filters are shaping who can reach them.

Almost every new female member I have spoken to has described a similar experience. Fet feels overwhelming at first. There are a lot of messages, a lot of features and a lot of things happening at once. None of them even knew that message filters existed, regardless of whether they were enabled or not.

That brings me back to my original point. Protection mechanisms only create trust if members understand them. Otherwise, they create confusion instead of making the platform feel safer.

This is why I believe Fet should not only look at broad restrictions, but also at the members who repeatedly create the need for those restrictions in the first place.

At the same time, it should become significantly harder for those members to return after being banned. Looking at the number of repeat offenders and fake profiles I encounter today, I cannot help but feel that creating a new account is still too easy. Protecting members should focus first on removing the people who repeatedly *** the platform, rather than making normal communication increasingly difficult for everyone else.

I also believe that part of the solution is taking faster and more consistent action against the relatively small number of members who repeatedly make the platform less welcoming for everyone else. From conversations with new female members, I have repeatedly heard about receiving clearly inappropriate or even potentially illegal sexual messages shortly after joining. Experiences like these shape a member’s impression of the platform far more than any onboarding process or safety feature ever could.

After sending my first message, I have a 25-minute window in which I can send as many messages as I want. Once that window closes, the conversation is effectively over unless the other member replies. If they don’t, I cannot send another message for four months.

The intention behind this system is understandable. If somebody doesn’t respond, there should be a limit on repeated contact attempts. That reduces unwanted messages, and I support that goal.

The implementation, however, creates the opposite incentive. If I can send an unlimited number of messages within those 25 minutes, the system doesn’t actually prevent message flooding. It simply compresses it into a very short period of time. Members who want to pressure someone into replying are encouraged to do exactly that before the timer expires.

At the same time, members who are trying to be respectful are often the ones being penalised. If I send a single thoughtful message and the other person simply doesn’t see it, is busy, takes a break from Fet or forgets to reply, I have no way of sending a polite follow-up for four months.

I believe a fairer approach would be to allow a small number of follow-up messages instead. For example, a small, clearly limited number of follow-up messages that can be used over time instead of an unrestricted number within 25 minutes. Whether those small number of messages are sent within five minutes or five weeks shouldn’t matter. After that, the four-month waiting period could still apply.

That would discourage message spam while giving respectful members a realistic opportunity to continue a conversation that may simply have been missed.

Immediately after sending that first message, Fet suggests highlighting it. Highlighted messages are pushed to the top of the recipient’s inbox and require Coins. The suggestion appears immediately, before there is any indication that additional visibility is actually needed. At that moment, my message is very likely already near the top of the recipient’s inbox, so I may be encouraged to spend Coins without receiving any meaningful benefit.

To me, this is another example of communication gradually becoming secondary to monetisation. Instead of helping members have better conversations, the platform increasingly encourages them to pay for additional visibility.

The same feeling appears when using the “Is Online” filter.

For months now, I have been shown members who are clearly not online despite using that filter. My favourites regularly contain members with a green online indicator even though their profile shows that they were last visible several days ago. From a member’s perspective, those two pieces of information contradict each other.

When I contacted support about this, I was told that the “Is Online” filter may also include members who have been active within the last month.

That makes the feature difficult to trust. If I only get one realistic opportunity to start a conversation before waiting another four months, I need to know whether I am writing to somebody who is actually online or somebody who last visited the platform weeks ago. Those are completely different situations.

For a Subscription feature that directly influences when members decide to use their limited opportunity to start a conversation, I expect much clearer and more reliable information.

This brings me to Kinky Gifts.

Whenever Fet prevents me from contacting someone, the response is almost always the same: send a Kinky Gift instead.

As a Subscription member, that happens when I don’t meet a member’s message filters or when I have to wait four months before I can contact them again. In both situations, direct communication stops, but a paid interaction remains available.

The recipient, however, receives almost no context. They are not told that I originally wanted to start a normal conversation but was prevented from doing so by a messaging restriction. Especially for new members, a Kinky Gift simply appears without explaining why it was sent or what it actually represents.

Unlike normal messages, Kinky Gifts require Coins. Coins can be earned in small amounts through certain activities or included with some Subscription benefits. In practice, however, earning enough Coins to regularly send Kinky Gifts would take a long time. For most members, sending Gifts therefore means purchasing Coins with real ***. From the member’s perspective, every Kinky Gift represents real value, regardless of whether the Coins were purchased directly or accumulated over time.

This also creates a double paywall. First I need a Subscription before I can send Kinky Gifts at all. Then I need Coins to actually send one. Paying once is not enough if I want to use the only alternative Fet offers when normal communication is blocked.

The lack of transparency becomes even more noticeable when a Kinky Gift replaces a blocked first message. In a normal conversation I can see whether a message was read or deleted, and Gifts remain visible as part of that conversation. When the first contact is only possible through a Kinky Gift because of message filters, that transparency disappears. From my inbox, it is as if the interaction never happened.

There is still a Coin transaction history, but that is not the same as a communication history. It tells me that Coins were spent, but not in the context of a conversation. I can’t simply open a member’s profile and see which Gift I sent, how many Coins I spent on that person or what happened afterwards.

Ironically, the paid alternative provides less transparency than the normal messaging system. What makes this even more frustrating is that this information used to be available. At some point, it disappeared for Gifts sent through message filters without any obvious explanation.

Direct communication stops, but paid interaction remains possible. That fundamentally changes how these restrictions feel. Throughout the messaging system they are presented as features that protect members. Yet whenever direct communication is blocked, the only interaction that consistently remains available is the one that requires spending ***.

Taken together, these systems leave me with an uncomfortable impression. Genuine communication has become significantly harder, yet the original problems they were designed to solve still seem to exist. At the same time, I am repeatedly presented with paid alternatives whenever those restrictions prevent normal interaction.

From a member’s perspective, that is difficult to reconcile. If communication becomes harder while monetised alternatives remain available, it becomes increasingly difficult to judge whether these systems are primarily optimised to protect members or whether they have gradually evolved into something that creates unnecessary friction while also generating additional revenue.

On their own, the issues I described so far are already enough to make communication more difficult. Fake profiles turn them into a trust and safety problem.

I know Fet invests considerable effort into fighting fake accounts. There is photo verification, automated detection, manual moderation and probably many other systems I don’t know about. I don’t question that effort.

The problem is that, from a member’s perspective, it is no longer enough.

Artificial intelligence has made creating convincing fake profiles easier than ever before, and I believe this problem will only continue to grow. Every day I come across fake accounts. Some openly ask for *** in their username or profile description. Others advertise phone numbers, Telegram usernames or other social media accounts to move the conversation off the platform. Some wait until the first private messages before asking for *** more indirectly. Some use AI-generated or otherwise misleading profile photos, while others don’t show a real person at all. I also repeatedly encounter profiles with identical or near-identical descriptions, where only the username and photos have been changed. As a member, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell whether I am looking at a genuine profile or another fake or scam account.

What concerns me most is how common and increasingly blatant the financial aspect has become. These are not always sophisticated scams that are difficult to recognise. Many profiles make their financial intentions obvious from the beginning or introduce them shortly after contact. They ask for ***, gifts or financial support before any genuine connection has been established. When profiles displaying such obvious and repeated patterns remain active, it creates the impression that even relatively simple scam indicators are not being detected or acted upon quickly enough.

As someone with a technical background, I sometimes perform reverse image searches or AI image checks myself, and they often confirm my suspicion that a profile is using generated or misleading images. I also regularly see what appear to be the same people return with newly created accounts. Sometimes the same or closely related profile photos are reused. Other times a new account simply appears while the previous one is still under fake review or has recently disappeared. From a member’s perspective, it often feels like removing one fake account is quickly followed by another taking its place.

Most members won’t perform those checks. That is exactly why I believe more of this work should happen on the platform instead of being left to individual members.

Reporting fake profiles is another area where I believe the platform creates unnecessary friction. There are multiple ways to report a profile, and they behave differently. Depending on which button I use, I may have to provide different information, and for fake profiles the most effective way often seems to be reporting the profile photo instead of the profile itself. None of this is obvious.

For a long time, I actively reported suspicious profiles. At some point, however, it started feeling as if I had reached some kind of limit. I could continue reporting profiles, but I stopped receiving feedback about what happened to many of those reports. Whether that was intentional or not, I don’t know. From my perspective, it simply became impossible to tell whether my reports were still making a difference.

That became even more frustrating when I reported a fake profile, included evidence such as reverse image search results showing the same photos elsewhere, saw the profile enter fake review, and later watched it become active again. I have also seen profiles that I considered obvious fakes leave fake review and continue using the platform, while other members appeared to struggle with the same review process. I don’t know why those decisions were made, but from a member’s perspective the process feels inconsistent and difficult to trust.

More importantly, I no longer believe reporting can realistically keep up with the scale of the problem. If I reported every suspicious profile I encounter, I could easily spend hours doing nothing else. That is not a realistic expectation for members. The platform should rely much more heavily on automated detection instead of expecting the community to identify and report such a large number of fake accounts manually.

Over time, that has changed my own behaviour. Today, I often no longer report suspicious profiles. I simply block them and move on. I don’t think that is a good outcome for the platform. Reporting fake accounts should be as simple, transparent and effective as possible. Otherwise, members will eventually stop reporting them altogether.

No detection system will ever be perfect, and I don’t expect perfection. AI will continue to make this problem harder over time. That is exactly why I believe the platform should minimise the consequences for legitimate members when fake profiles inevitably slip through.

Unfortunately, the consequences do not end once an account has been flagged, restricted, removed or otherwise become unusable.

I regularly find accounts that have already been removed, are under fake review or have been banned still appearing in my favourites. I also continue to see removed accounts appear as blurred profile pictures in the “Likes Me” section, creating the impression that somebody is interested in me even though the account is no longer usable.

What I find particularly confusing is that months after being marked as banned, I have occasionally seen some of those accounts appear near the top of my favourites again with a green online indicator or a recent activity timestamp. As far as I can tell, those accounts are still banned and cannot actively use the platform. I don’t know what is happening behind the scenes, but from a member’s perspective it is difficult to understand why a banned account can still generate new activity.

This is more than a cosmetic issue. Favourites are limited, even for paying members, so I have to spend time regularly cleaning them up. Instead of being a useful collection of members I am interested in, they gradually fill up with accounts that have already been removed or are no longer usable.

The platform already knows which accounts are under fake review, which have been removed and which have been banned. Yet much of the cleanup still falls on the member. I have to find those accounts in my favourites, remove or block them myself and keep making room for new profiles.

Even more surprising is that these actions can cost Coins. If removing a blocked or unwanted profile from my limited favourites requires Coins to restore or free the slot, even basic account cleanup becomes monetised. From my perspective, those are ordinary housekeeping actions. They help me keep my account organised and protect myself from profiles I no longer want to interact with. Charging Coins for those actions feels counterintuitive, especially when they are part of protecting myself from fake or otherwise unwanted accounts.

The same pattern appears when real *** is involved. If I have already spent Coins on a Kinky Gift and the account is later removed, refunds are generally not automatic. Instead, I have to discover that myself, contact support and ask for an individual review.

What makes this even more difficult to understand is that paid interaction often remains available even after normal communication has ended. Whether another member has blocked me, deleted their profile, is currently under fake review or has already been banned by the platform, I can still send a Kinky Gift.

If these systems are intended to stop unwanted contact and protect members, I struggle to understand why the only interaction that consistently remains available is the one that requires spending ***.

Whether intended or not, the financial consequences still remain with the paying member rather than the platform.

Every fake profile that remains active can generate profile visits, Subscription purchases, Coins and Kinky Gifts. At the same time, every fake profile that slips through increases frustration for legitimate members and, over time, may cause them to leave the platform.

That creates an uncomfortable conflict of interest. The same fake profile can generate revenue while it is active, yet also contributes to the gradual loss of trust that drives legitimate members away. From a member’s perspective, it is difficult to see how those two incentives are balanced today.

In the long run, I believe trust is far more valuable than any short-term revenue generated while fake accounts remain active. If members stop trusting the platform, they stop recommending it, they stop subscribing and, eventually, they stop returning.

To me, that is the opposite of what a trust and safety system should do. When those systems fail, the platform should absorb the financial consequences instead of expecting legitimate members to do so.

Reading through everything I have written, I keep coming back to the same impression. More and more product decisions seem to favour monetisation, even when they make genuine communication more difficult.

I believe Fet works best when genuine members can easily find each other while bad actors are removed quickly and consistently. Today, it often feels like the opposite. Legitimate members face increasing friction, while fake profiles and abusive members still find ways to exploit the system.

If I had to summarise my suggestions, they would be surprisingly simple.

- Make protection mechanisms more transparent so members understand how they affect communication.
- Focus on reducing friction for genuine conversations instead of repeatedly offering paid alternatives.
- Invest more heavily in automated detection of fake profiles, especially AI-generated content, repeated images and obvious scam patterns.
- Make reporting fake profiles simpler, more consistent and more transparent.
- Remove fake, banned and deleted accounts from the member experience much more quickly.
- Stop charging Coins for normal account management such as blocking unwanted members or cleaning up favourites.
- Automatically review or refund Kinky Gifts sent to accounts that were later removed for violating the platform rules.

At its core, Fet exists to help genuine people meet each other. Every system on the platform should ultimately support that goal. If legitimate members increasingly struggle to start conversations while fake profiles continue finding ways to exploit the platform, then it is worth asking whether the current balance is still the right one.

I believe it is time to fundamentally re-evaluate some of these systems. Many of them were introduced with good intentions, but today’s platform is very different from the one they were originally designed for. The goal should not be adding more restrictions. The goal should be creating systems that genuinely protect members while making meaningful communication easier instead of harder.

Edited July 10 by crane_

[NathalieG]

 

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Hey @crane_,

first of all: thank you for this post. I read a lot of criticism here every day, but something this thoughtful, level-headed, and free of anger — that's genuinely rare, and I want to acknowledge that before getting into the specifics.

On message filters for new members: Part of this restriction actually isn't a free product decision on our end, but a requirement from the app stores (Apple/Google). If we don't comply, we risk getting kicked out of exactly those stores — and that would make Fet disappear for the vast majority of mobile users. So this isn't a "we wanted it this way," it's a "we had to act just to stay online at all."

Where I fully agree with you, though, is on how this gets explained to new members — that's simply not good enough. I've felt this way for years and actually proposed internally, a while back, introducing something like a friendly little guide that shows new members in plain language how their filters work and how to set them up. Unfortunately that was never implemented, but your feedback is motivating me to bring it up again.

One important reason you're not told the exact reason a message filter blocks you (distance in km, age, etc.) is precisely what you'd actually do with that information: if you knew exactly which criterion you were failing, you'd simply adjust it — and suddenly you'd get through the filter, regardless of whether the other member actually wants that or not. That would make the filter pointless. So the lack of transparency here isn't sloppiness — it's deliberate, so the filter can still actually filter something.

On the 25-minute window: Here I have to honestly disagree. If a message was good enough that someone wants to reply, they will — regardless of the time window. A "hey, did you forget about me?" follow-up days or weeks later often feels like added pressure rather than politeness to the recipient, especially when they made a conscious choice not to respond. This system is deliberately designed to protect the recipient's side, even if that sometimes feels unfair to senders like you.

On your other points (fake profiles, Kinky Gifts, coin mechanics, reporting) — I take a lot of this seriously and I'm passing it along internally, even if I can't or won't address every detail publicly here. But I do want you to know: your critique is genuinely one of the best member-perspective write-ups I've read. That said, there are connections, trade-offs, and constraints (legal, technical, platform-side) that simply aren't visible from the outside — that doesn't mean your observations are wrong, just that they can't show the full picture.

Since this isn't something we can discuss further out in the open here, I'll be closing this thread shortly. But I definitely wanted you to know that you're seen, and that we take constructive criticism like this seriously.

I really appreciate you taking the time to write this out.

Keep Kinky 💜

Nathalie - Community Team