I’m curious which ones you use, and especially “Why”?
There are tons of social media out there in internet land. Sometimes it’s as if there’s a new one born every day.
Everyone knows about Twitter, which so far is a reasonably good naturist place. That is: until someone decides your account is bad and reports you to the censor bots. Once your account is slammed shut, good luck in getting it back. (Been there, tried that, opened a new account.)
In less flattering ways people know of Facebook. It’s a huge, micromanaged universe (Metaverse :p) on its own, where porn and all kinds of nasty things are okay but honest naturism and nudism is banned as soon as it appears. As a naturist I don’t like the place and so I am mostly silent about it there. (Yes, I have an account there, to stay in touch with some family.)
More and more people seem to appear on Mewe, which is a rather safe place for naturists. More and more naturist groups are appearing there – which means that more and more perverts show up there too, under the guise of naturism.
Then we have Diaspora. Diaspora is part of a loose set of privately run servers that are all connected. As long as you mark your naturist posts there with the #NSFW tag, you’re good. There are almost no instances on Diaspora where you get banned for nudity or naturism as long as you follow their rules (which are quite sensible). No company here that dictates what is good and bad and Zuckerberg.
The same thing goes for Mastodon and the Fediverse. Mastodon etc. is another set of servers without a big company running them. It’s a kind of Twitter, that allows all the freedom, again as long as you stick to the #NSFW hashtag and you mark nudity image with a ‘content warning’. There is even a special naturist instance called “pl.nudie.social” where you can find lots of naturists.
Yes, I know all those places. I have accounts in many places. (If you want to know where, what and how let me know in a comment.)
What do you follow in naturist social media? And what do you get from those? Do you feel good there? Are you more ‘meh’ about them? How satisfied are you about those places and your choices, and do you know better places? Note that I’m referring to social media, not forums about naturism.
Let’s hear it!
Paul
I too, like Paul would be very curious to know of peoples experiences with socials and the like. Obviously the better choice is to be social IRL but for times when we can not, being connected online is almost a necessity! My experiences written below do segue from Pauls request of specific socials so Paul, if this does not add to the wider conversation i am happy for this comment to be deleted : )
Our big IRL naturist group, the one i have been in for most of my life runs a threema self-hosted (onprem) server, which is powered by renewable energy so it is completely secure and private (from any bad elements and the like) and acts like a closed social media/social feed, chat and event updates. This is far more secure than the self hosted matrix/riot/element etc system and has none of the issues that they have apparently and can be accessed via an app, either from the official play or app stores or can be installed directly by those who eschew big tech (and this is often a task completed by my generation for the older generations in our community. My record is 15 installs in a row!!! xD) or accessed via desktop securely.
Before that we had a closed, passworded forum run by some of the older, and surprisingly tech-savy members but as technology is getting better, it means we can chat, post articles or photos and privately call or even with anyone within our group on the go, without the worry of censorship, spying, or bad people. We can even create hashtags and groups to help organise things, it really is wonderful!
We all pay a monthly “due” which is just used to pay for the server costs and the initial cost of Threema on-prem (which was quite high)…Its a shame really, i would love for the more mainstream socials to be more welcoming but the social media which is welcoming is sadly just one data breach, or unethical operator away from causing all sorts of problems. If you’re not paying for it, you are (likely) the product and sadly enough that can be true in the open source world as for the proprietary source world.
I know this will sound kind of backwards a bit, i mean.. we’re naturists or nudists, we have very little to hide! but while we live in a world which still sees nudity as taboo, and while we must belong to a world governed by rules of the textiled world and our education, employment and advancement can all be affected by our personal lives, being sensible is just the right thing to do.
Some of the best moments of my life have been photographed or captured on video over the last almost eleven years and they are wonderful memories shared within our group and yet because of my age, even with the grey area protections for naturism and nudism in various jurisdictions, many places in the world would classify these as abuse material, which is why i completely understand why many naturist groups, retreats and resorts and organisations around the world restrict to 18+ We need to abide by their rules until tolerance becomes commonplace and the yoke of religious superstition and the thoughts of the taboo are no more.
I truly feel for people who live in heavily restrictive countries to whom in many cases, the online world is the only source of community, and the risks they take by being a part of nudist friendly social media from totalitarian or religiously inclined governments is beautifully admirable.
Heh, feels like i just wrote an essay, all formal-like 😀
Nice essay too, thank you. Yes, having a private group is the safest way to keep things nice, unfortunately…
Fingers crossed that this is not always going to be the case!
I use mewe Paul and I love to post your stuff at my group below in hopes that it steers more naturists to you.
Especially for all the work you did building a naturist library reference guide.
As for mewe, they only let us label our group under alternative lifestyles and we are difficult to find. (A subtle form of censorship).
I hope you don’t mind that I copy your posts to the group. Let me know if otherwise.
Hope you check us out and join.
Freebeacher.
https://mewe.com/join/freebeachers
Hello Dave.
No, keep copying and posting. It’s important. We need to get the word out as much as we can.
True, Mewe doesn’t make it easy to find naturist related groups.
Thank you for the invite. I can join but I don’t have time to frequent all the groups that invite me, unfortunately. Maybe in 6 years, when I can retire hahaha!
Because it is difficult to (real) naturist groups, I made a list. It is on http://www.natams.nl/MeWe
There are many more groups that use the word naturist/nudist, but not for the real meaning of those words….
Thank you for this list, Erik!
Hi, Dave,
I clicked on your link above, and it brought me to MeWe with an application to your group, but I wasn’t signed in so when I clicked the signed in button it told me it sent my application to join your group, but it was blank. How do I fill out an application?
Thanks,