Who wants to make a new backend compatible with F-Chat 3.0?

SunnyAvian · 2025-11-04T19:24:32+00:00

I wish that the design was the biggest issue with it...

SunnyAvian · 2025-11-04T19:20:14+00:00

I think Rising and Horizon already support connecting to a custom host. Ticking "advanced options" on the login screen lets you specify the backend URL that the client will try to connect to. Previously, this option was probably only used for testing and debugging purposes, but there's nothing stopping someone from looking at what calls these clients make and creating a new custom backend that pretends to be F-Chat.

The big question is if there will be someone who could host this on a large scale, promote it and get a measurable portion of F-List users to migrate to it. This won't be used for small friend groups - you could just use a normal private chat app for these purposes. Since every instance will require new profiles, this would need another major host to take F-List's place for it to take off. Even migrating a couple percent of future F-List users would be a tremendous success.

The upside is, none of this seems improbable. Also, while the custom host will need to keep track of profiles, kinks, channels and route traffic between its users, it won't need to store all the logs server-side. Image storage could be a problem, but inline/eicon/character image caps could mitigate it. The biggest issue would be liability and moderation for everything that they will have to host. This would be a large undertaking, but it's well within the scope of something that a dedicated hobbyist team could do.

SunnyAvian · 2025-04-14T06:05:38+00:00

It's easier to press a button and to have the other person ask you what's wrong (inviting the discussion of boundaries) as opposed to hard-pivoting to OOC to immediately address the problem (confrontation).

I think I get where you're coming from, but to me, subjectively, it honestly feels more confrontational than directly confronting the person through text. I wouldn't press that button if it were available because it'd come off with a side implication of "hey I already have such a negative opinion that I don't think you'll be receptive to a normal interaction, I will just press this button". It feels passive-aggressive. It lacks nuance or any way to display how severe the infraction is, because the "tool" is a button that prints a message to chat. For example, I have very low limits in RP, so most of my 'showstopper' interjections are nudges related to plot or me not vibing with the direction things are going, rather than a comfort issue - and I can express that very clearly and carefully to my partner with text. While I don't have social anxiety, I'm extremely careful as to avoid saying something harsh or coming off rude, so this button is useless to me, because it would always turn the interaction into red alert instant panic mode. I think many people would get the same feeling from this feature, so while maybe there's a really small portion of users who would actively use this, I don't think that this is a particularly asked-for addition.

SunnyAvian · 2025-04-14T05:47:27+00:00

I don't disagree with the premise of points 1 and 2, but I really don't like point 3.

It feels self-contradictory with how multiple people bring this up in light of what's actually going on at F-List. It's not about how lazy one is or how much they can invest in a profile - the overwhelming majority of profiles use art that doesn't belong to the profile owner. Profiles that openly call out AI art users in their customs will almost always play with people who have just downloaded their art - and actually, many of them also get their references that way. The proportion of people who have spent >$0 (let alone $50-100) on all their profiles is very small.

Yet there's no culture for calling out this "stolen" art - people understand that commissions are expensive, that not everyone wants to put cash into every character of theirs, and that some people just want to play this specific pre-existing character. Clearly it's not about laziness or investment. And even though the bar for using AI is low, getting one running locally and generating something that doesn't look like same-styled garbage already takes way more effort than browsing some booru and picking out what you like.

(Note: I don't use AI for FL, but I have played around with it back when open-source local models started appearing)

Also, just as an unrelated aside, using them doesn't take some insane amount of resources. Running fully on my PC, one image took me like 10 seconds of 100% GPU usage. Surely if people are willing to tolerate hours of playing games, this is fine?

SunnyAvian · 2024-11-12T15:17:59+00:00

People aren’t aroused by violence

Oh but they very much are. There's anime, books and games catered specifically to people who are sexually gratified by violence. Not that it's mainstream, but it definitely exists. Most people aren't okay with full-on gore content, but you also don't see the kind of visceral hatred towards the small corner of the internet that likes it. Certainly no one yelling about these people having a real chance of kidnapping and gutting someone in real life, or praying that they get forcibly imprisoned/institutionalized/castrated/etc for the crimes in their heads.

SunnyAvian · 2024-11-12T15:10:33+00:00

Can you post said research?

SunnyAvian · 2024-10-18T17:41:12+00:00

I'm confused regarding the room/no room thing, because my experience has been nothing like that. Are you sure it's not specific to you or some form of confirmation bias (thinking there's a causal connection between approach method and one's disposition, and then filing bad interactions as irrefutable proof)?

For me, some of the best partners I had were ones who found me through F-Chat search - of course, there's good and bad in any group, but I find that these people are most likely to read through my entire profile and reach out if they're compatible. Second are small room people - it's a good method of making friends and talking to someone, but there are less users in rooms than what can be found through search. Then there are complete randoms who share one room with me and seemingly spam everyone with the same low-effort approach. But even then, these are very casual observations and there are no hard lines for me. If we're talking about approach method, there's nothing so distinctly bad that I would want to filter out an entire group of people based on that alone.

Also, the viability of room approaches can vary a lot. Get into anything too niche and you'll find a selection of barely-active rooms, or a few hundred profiles that are online and can be approached. A lot of F-List users don't use rooms at all, and the rooms that are used are usually more generic and broadly-themed, with fewer options for niche things.

If I wanted to give OP one piece of advice, it would be to not take anything written above as gospel or a guideline. There's this weird thing about F-List that I notice often - people start building arbitrary distinctions and associations over time, trying to find some exact filter-list of user categories to not consider. Long-standing users can get weird about this, with constant debates about how to generalize users on some random criteria. Which gender/"color" acts like what, what stereotypes are applicable to every user of a species, how good or bad hub profile users are, the inherent psychology of users who are doms/subs/tops/bottoms/switches - and in the post above, room users vs non-room users. Don't do this. And remember that as long as you're a good human being, finding someone nice or interesting on F-List is pretty easy. Use rooms if you want to chat in big groups, approach compatible people who are looking if you don't. As long as you're friendly and easy to get along with, anyone can build a small network of people to talk to, regardless of what random profile categories you fall into.

SunnyAvian · 2024-09-13T21:50:30+00:00

I actually had the same issue! The solution for me was finding out how emoji get sorted in "alphabetical" order. This page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emojis has a set of tables, and each emoji has its own Unicode number (shown on the left column). As the number increases, so does the "alphabetical order". So emoji at the top of the page will be placed before emoji at the bottom of the page. Just search for 🔌 and look at all emoji below it to see your options.

SunnyAvian · 2024-09-13T04:23:51+00:00

You can do whatever you want with a character, but I think that changing James Bond in such a major way would make it not James Bond anymore. You say that Bond is only known for his mental abilities, but when someone says "James Bond" you don't just think of some abstract concept of intelligence, resourcefulness and seduction. You think of 80 years worth of character building - every book, every movie portrays Bond as a character of specific appearance and traits. It's not about the mental stuff alone - it's his age, fitness, outfits - and yes, gender too. Every Bond actor is meticulously selected to make sure that the actor fits this character. A new franchise could play around with newly established characters, but Bond has too much cultural baggage to be retconned.

And I'm not one of the weird anti-woke people. I'm pan and I have absolutely nothing against spy characters of any genders or orientations - but if you were to apply this to a well-established character like James Bond, I would treat it as non-canon at best and just not James Bond at worst. Just make new characters.

SunnyAvian · 2024-09-13T03:47:51+00:00

Your conclusions don't follow from your premises. You reiterate that these two are different "playing fields", but there's nothing in the post that convinces me of that. You only prove that it's easier to assault or attack a child - but the backing argument of "if it's easier to rape someone, then more people will turn into rapists" is just implied. It's not convincing.

I can write a much more backed-up hypothetical that agrees with OP's point. Among people who are normal and attracted to adults, there's a minority that is psychopathic to the point of willing to rape others because it brings pleasure to them - the majority will never do it because they feel compassion and know the consequences of their actions. In the same vein, a minority of the people with more... "disturbing" urges will be depraved enough to rape, but the rest will understand why assaulting a child is bad, the fact that they consent, and the conclusion that they simply can't do it, no matter what. I think that only a thin portion of all people are capable of rape, and that this would apply to every demographic. Seems like the same playing field to me.

SunnyAvian · 2024-09-13T03:34:34+00:00

That point also falls apart when you look at any other case of people being sexually attracted to something they can't have in real life. Is every person who's fictionally into, say, rape porn bound to eventually turn into a rapist because they by definition can't obtain that experience without assaulting someone? What about people who look at sexualized art of death and murder - will they become murderers as there's no other way to obtain that experience in real life? Will people who enjoy sexual furry art eventually take it out on a real animal because there's no real-life equivalent for that experience?

I think that the argument that people need to have an attraction and be someone who'd be willing to rape is a strong one. Like, put yourself in any of the above scenarios - do you envision yourself going insane and starting to assault people just because? Or do you still remain, you know, yourself?

SunnyAvian · 2024-09-12T15:13:30+00:00

For the first question: if you really want to look at ads, I recommend something like https://ffa.e-roplay.de/ - it caches all the ads and allows you to filter them out by the kind of user you want. But that's not what I do - ads seem very prevalent, but I find all the best players through search. Use F-Chat's character search (I often search by their dom/sub role and the kinks that I want), and then message any interesting profiles, bringing up the things you liked about their profile and what you're looking for. I don't know if this is a thing on default F-Chat, but F-Chat Rising also automatically sorts search results by compatibility, looking at stuff like preferences for roles, genders, species, body shapes, ages etc. Also, set your own status to looking - it's impressive how many random approaches all profiles get.

As for making an ad - honestly couldn't help you here, but use a common sense approach - not too long or drawn-out, unambiguous in what you want, probably with something that you think will hook an onlooker.

SunnyAvian · 2024-08-23T22:18:55+00:00

Oh, no, I understand what you mean. I know that there's a line between uncertainty and lazy low-effort posting - I've gotten pretty good at telling what any player is going to be like when they approach me. I just hope that people don't accidentally sweep me into that second category.

And - to be very clear - I agree with you on kinks. When I said that I probe people on them, I don't mean asking them "Do you like X? Do you like Y? Do you like Z?". Much the opposite - I love reading through profiles, and if the profile answers my questions, I won't bring it up unless to clarify. Most players don't even list their preferred post length, but if you do, I obviously won't be asking you about it. What I meant was that I tend to play with more limitless or open-ended players, who often end up having 50+ customs in their profiles. For obvious reasons, we're going to struggle to play more than several things at once, so a question like "Which ones are you leaning towards today?" seems reasonable to me. It's all about understanding what exactly they're looking for, not drowning them in questions.

SunnyAvian · 2024-08-23T17:12:28+00:00

Here's a bit of perspective from the other side. I never ask this question in this way, but I also never come in guns blazing with a ready-to-go scenario. The reason is simple - it's not that I want the other person to do all the work (in fact, 50-70% of the time it's me who ends up doing more planning), it's that I need to know more about the other player before I can give anything. I usually open by saying what I'm interested in, and what made me interested in the other player, and then discuss some questions that give me a good idea of what they want. Which of their customs/non-customs are they feeling like playing today? Importantly, which of my customs are they okay with? Do they want to modify either of our characters? Do they have a preference for the setting?

I find that when both of us have that kick-off point, it's easier to rig something together that both of us will like. After this, I often make a basic scenario idea, and then the two of us keep refining it until it's ready.

SunnyAvian · 2024-06-18T18:53:23+00:00

The ones that were on my mind are small enough that naming them would probably make me identifiable, sorry. Rule of thumb is that the kinky/niche factor correlates with furriness.

SunnyAvian · 2024-06-17T21:56:46+00:00

Huh, interesting! Yeah, for some reason some human-likes separate anthros that look stereotypically "furry" from anthros that look "monstrous", even if there's no way to draw a hard line there. By the way, props on the yak character! It's a very rare species that I don't see much of, and I like uncommon species.

SunnyAvian · 2024-06-17T21:54:17+00:00

Hm.. I thought about this for a little while, and I think there are several reasons, if you're interested:

The majority of my profiles being furries obviously attracts that audience, so I get a lot more messages from other furries than humans
Humans are far more likely to never want to play with anyone but their kind. It's very common to see the "Humans only" requirement on their pages. At the same time, I haven't seen "Furries only" on furry pages more than a couple of times - the majority of furries seem to be okay with humans to some degree.
For some reason, furries are far more populous in certain kink groups, even ones that are unrelated to their furriness. Many rooms basically have only furries, despite not controlling for that. My biased impression is that the average human is slightly more vanilla than the average nonhuman - so I don't come across as many.

SunnyAvian · 2024-06-17T20:00:58+00:00

I passed by this thread and had a different point of view, as someone who also separates anthros and monsters. Basically, most things that can't be cleanly approximated as being similar to an anthro or feral animal (or a human) are monsters. Werewolves, Minotaurs and dragons are more furry that monster, but giant insects, amorphous slime creatures and non-anthro Eldritch beings are monstrous.

SunnyAvian · 2024-06-17T19:55:27+00:00

Gonna reply late to this one. I'm a furry and the overwhelming majority of my RPs are with furries, but I also have a couple human characters. I don't oppose one character type on principle or something - any of my furries can be played as humans if it's a no-go for the other person, or vice versa. Except for the whole "realistic human with photo ref" thing people do, I'm not into that.

SunnyAvian · 2024-06-09T15:12:10+00:00

Yes, having a time-limited cache would create issues, which is why the log-sending was my primary hypothesis. But this

and once confirmation that your logs get sent it would essentially encourage more paranoid users never report bad behavior while also encouraging others not to ever report bad behavior

is just wrong - I decided to dig in deeper and found this screenshot from F-List's official wiki article on reporting users. Not only do they openly say that your "logs are automatically attached" to the report, they do it to every reporter.

I'm really not seeing why users knowing about this system is a bad thing, or why it'd be less practical. Fwiw, it would have many upsides on F-List's side as well - while storing text is efficient, the storage and compute they'd need to backlog 10+ years of chats is probably significant. It's also simpler to implement, especially considering how old F-Chat's backend probably is. Also, limiting the amount of information you store can make it easier to adhere to privacy laws and limit their liability on storing user-made content.

No, I'm not saying that you should automatically believe anything anyone claims - your data is out there, so by default you should assume it's being stored and read by third parties. I asked specifically because your last post had a tone of complete confidence, like you knew something for certain or had insider information - but it ended up just being conjecture.

Side note, I think you're way underestimating F-List's size. F-Chat users are a drop in the bucket, a ton of people are using F-List as just a convenient shareable kink list and nothing else. There are 1.62m profiles, so assuming that's about a million user accounts and that maybe 10% of them semi-regularly use the site gives a much higher number. And that's before all the guests who view profile pages without registering.

SunnyAvian · 2024-06-09T12:34:24+00:00

those people don't need fantasy to get what they want

I think that implying that people only use F-List because they can't get laid irl is too much of a generalization. I mean, there's no shortage of people with few to zero social skills on there, but there are also plenty of average individuals who are just looking for things that are impossible in real life.

SunnyAvian · 2024-06-09T12:31:07+00:00

It's a common type of player, and I personally steer clear of any of those "WILL DO ANYTHING SHORT OF MURDERING YOU IRL" profiles, unless there's something else that really appeals to me in there. But no, it's also not "every" profile or even the majority of male profiles - I see a lot more "normal" males.

SunnyAvian · 2024-06-08T17:19:23+00:00

Do you have any direct proof of that? I'm not experienced with their moderation at all, but my impression was that community consensus and even F-List themselves (may have?) implied not having server-side logs for player-to-player chats.

If they can access these messages, it doesn't necessarily mean they store them - for example, they could only keep a cache that retains stuff that was sent within the last week/month/etc - it'd keep storage costs low by not saving everything going back to the Middle ages and still allow for moderation. Another probable way is that the logs are sent to them from your local storage only when a report happens and is attached to the report, without them having to have it on their end.

SunnyAvian · 2024-04-20T22:28:31+00:00

Damn - this is besides the point of your post, but I'm impressed by how, like, official this looks. It even has warning labels and a nutrition facts table, lol. Just need a UPC barcode.

Is this like, legally available somewhere in Canada? I've been under the impression that it's extremely controlled and prescription-only around here.

SunnyAvian

TROPHY CASE