Send a smile and contact request buttons removed

We recently added back functionality to allow all members to send each other smiles and contact requests. This would be a good way to see if someone had a mutual interest in you before paying for the ability to send messages.

Well as soon as we turned it back on, several new members joined the site, did not write anything about themselves, did not upload a photo and left their year of birth at 1894. They then proceeded to send smiles to as many people as possible as if this website was some kind of game. Every smile results in an email being sent out and we do notice when there is a surge in our server activity. There is nothing wrong in sending tens of smiles, but some kind of discernment is necessary. This is not the unvaccinated version of the dating app Tinder! A very small number of people can wreck this site for everyone else.

This website does not make a profit, loses money and is only a part-time venture. It is unsaid, but part of the reason for having low prices is that people here think about what is reasonable.

We could add functionality to prevent this, but this website loses money and we have lots of other tasks to do first.

Most people on this site want to find people in their own country or at least a neighbouring country on the same continent. Finding someone whose profile resonates with you is what this site is about. It is not about a shotgun approach to contact everyone on the site regardless of whether they are on the opposite side of the world or not, unless you have firm plans about relocating to a farm or ranch.

If you want to pass a message to everyone on the site, you can post a comment on our Introductions page or make a new post in the forum. If there are not enough people from your country yet, please contact us about how we can advertise on Twitter/X.com and on alternative news sites.

We’ve decided to renable these buttons as they serve a useful function, but people need to think before they start clicking them without filling in their profile first.

If you don’t want to receive email from this site concerning unread messages, contact requests and smiles sent by other users, go to Meet People->My Account, scroll down the web page and check No email from this site. Click Save.

There is something we have noticed over the past year. A couple of people have complained to us that there aren’t enough people in their cities. At the time we checked and there were at least seven people of the opposite sex in their city. This was in a country where we paid for three newspaper adverts and were given two free adverts on top of that. So an unusual case. However they declined to buy membership. Yet, if we have messages, contact requests and smiles available for free, people will contact others on the opposite side of the world. In turn, they will tell us they only want to talk to local people.

Between March 2023 and July 2024, our website was totally free to use. During that time we did speak to a handful of members, especially those from countries not well represented on this site. The consensus was that those members prefer to message others in different countries, rather than donate to this site’s advertising costs, which would in time increase the number of members everywhere. From our point of view this, if done in the extreme, will make the site unusable.

Our site is moving from being small and unknown into being somewhat popular at times. On average we now receive a message once a week from a new member telling us our site should be free. With advertising costs this site costs several thousands dollars a year to run. Without getting subscriptions and donations, we wouldn’t have the money to do this. The social media sites and apps you use for free are funded by billionaires, the stock market (this means your pension funds), university grants and government. As our website is labelled as being for unvaccinated people, we don’t have access to any of these funding sources. Free will just mean our site will disappear eventually.