There is a lot of work going on behind the scenes to identify bots and scammers.

Please keep in mind that the site is coded by just one person and managed by a handful of moderators.

Scammers literally work in call center environments, attempting to create hundreds of accounts every single day.
We actually catch the majority of scammers the moment they register. For the few that do get through, we have systems in place to identify and ban them.

I can safely say that most scammers that get through are banned within 24 hours.
You can help us improve our systems by actively reporting these accounts. When new scammers use entirely new information, we have to constantly adapt, update, and record it. There are many members who get contacted but never report it, and flagging these to us would be massively helpful.

Scammers do not run this place, so please do not make assumptions. Hard work happens behind the scenes from Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 every day, to keep this site secure.

Take care,
c00kie
FF Team

Hi,

You’ll be pleased to know that this is already included in our work schedule. The aim is to bring the story content section in line with the picture section, which already has an AI filter/tag.

As I explained in my message, having a “No AI” tag sounds like a great idea, but there is one issue I can see with this approach. It would mean that older stories, which were written before AI became widely used, would be assumed to contain AI simply because they don’t have a “No AI” tag. Obviously that isn’t the case, and we don’t want older stories or authors to be negatively affected by the way the tagging system works.

For this reason, it is more likely that we will introduce an “AI” tag instead, just like the picture section. This would allow you to search for and filter out stories that contain AI if you don’t wish to read them.

You will also be able to report stories that you believe contain AI but haven’t been tagged correctly. Admin can then review the story and update the tags where appropriate, so that the content is correctly labelled.

We’re still working out the details of how this will work, but the ability to distinguish between AI and non-AI stories is definitely on our work schedule.

Thank you!
c00kie
FF Team

Hi,

Apologies that I hadn’t noticed this forum thread earlier.

We are getting video uploads, so I don’t see an issue with people being able to add videos to the site.

I do know that the processing bar doesn’t always load correctly, but the video is still processing in the background. So, even when it uploads and then goes to processing (which it does twice), it may stay at 0%, but it is still processing the video.

If you just wait, it should eventually take you to the next part of the process, where you can choose a thumbnail.

I can see that you have now successfully uploaded a video, so hopefully the issue has resolved itself.

c00kie
FF Team

Story formatting has been requested, but it hasn't been added as of yet. Hiccupx is currently away, so I can't ask directly whether this is still something we plan to implement or not. At the moment, though, formatting can only be used with BBCode in the forums.

Hope this helps,
c00kie
FF Team

Hi,

Sorry I missed this. It was posted in the general forum, so I've now moved it to the correct forum and can answer your question.

It's not a bug as such. What's happening is that when someone sends you a message and then their account is deleted or banned, all of their content is removed along with the account.

The issue with messages is that they're also linked to the active account of the person who received the message. Because of that, the message can still appear in your inbox, but when you try to open it, the actual content has already been removed because the sender's account no longer exists. That's why you see the standard "Item not found" message that appears when content is no longer available.

I do think we could improve this by removing those messages from the inbox completely when the sender's account is deleted or banned. It would make things much clearer and avoid having messages sitting in your inbox that you can't actually open.

It would just need to be added to the site's work schedule, as we're always busy working on different improvements and fixes. I'll speak to hiccupx about it and see if we can get it added to the list.

c00kie
FF Team

Content here is created and uploaded by our users. We don't ban AI, but we are looking at how we handle it because while AI can be a useful tool for people to use, we also don't want the site to become flooded with AI generated images, stories or videos.

AI is obviously still relatively new, and it's now very accessible and easy for people to experiment with. Naturally lots of people are going to play around with it and share what they've created, and that's fine.

We've already introduced an AI filter/tag in the photo section, and we'll be bringing the same functionality to the stories section. This will allow people to filter AI generated stories in or out, depending on their preference.

The aim isn't to ban AI but to find a sensible balance that allows people to use and share AI content without it overwhelming everything else on the site.

Hope that seems like a fair solution to all.

c00kie
FF Team