Fetlife

FetLife is a social networking website that serves people interested in BDSM, Fetishism and Kink. It describes itself as similar to Facebook and MySpace but run by kinksters. It is also private, in that membership is required to view content. The site is not indexed by search engines.

Membership is free and includes all features except access to videos uploaded by members. Donations to FetLife give the member access to videos as well. As of November 27, 2009, the site claims the following statistics:

297,251 members
985,069 pictures
3,960 videos
328,158 discussion threads
11,669 discussion groups
964 event listings
165,473 blog posts^[1]

1 History
2 Features
3 Technology
4 Banned Users Controversy
5 References

History

FetLife was launched in January 2008 by John Baku, a software engineer in Montreal, Quebec, in imitation of Fetish Social.^[2] Frustrated by his attempts to find women who had the same fetishes as he did, Baku created a website in 2007 called “FriendsWithFetishes”. While working on release 2.0 of FriendsWithFetishes, Baku decided to launch it as a separate site and named it FetLife.^[3]

Baku designed the site to be an online community rather than a dating site. Unimpressed by existing dating sites catering to alternative sexuality, he set out to create an “non-dating site”. For example, he deliberately limited the search feature to prevent the site from being used only for matching users with specific characteristics. Another community feature Baku added is a group of volunteer greeters that welcome new members individually.

Visitors to FetLife see a front page featuring photos submitted by members specifically for the front page.^[4]

Features

Members may create a personal profile and list which fetishes they are into or are curious about. They can also upload pictures and videos, including explicit ones often rejected by other sites. They can write journal entries called Writings, and send and receive private messages called Conversations with other members.

Groups on FetLife are subject categories in which users may start Discussions. Events are listings of in-person events such as conventions, workshops, parties, and meetings to which members can RSVP as going, maybe going, or not going.

Technology

FetLife runs on a custom NGINX variant of the Ubuntu/Debian distribution of GNU/Linux; it was adapted from the brightbox version.^[5]

Banned Users Controversy

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Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2010)

In September 2008 a user of the site registered a complaint against FetLife and John Baku with online fraud website Ripoff Report, The complaint alleged that FetLife arbitrarily banned 30-40 users who were originally members of dating site Bondage.com, due to disagreements with FetLife administrators ("caretakers"). Since then there have been numerous other complaints about similar violations and which also include discriminatory behavior though it did not say what classes may have been included in the discrimination. It was noted that Fetlife administrators had forwarded letters to the original claimants however that fact is in dispute.