discussion Anti-Social & Lurker - Hideout spot

[Sneylor]

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[Abere Lucifer]

Sad to see ATF go. Though I understand what the poor guy is going through.

 

[Hupecki]

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i need to wait 139 seconds before reacting to your post, sorry dude

 

[2wa]

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there you go

 

[Sneylor]

What was the reason for shutting down? I just knew this from the last messages lol

Spoiler: closing down the site

"I'll splinter the ATF into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds".

This is not the first time I've thought about calling it quits.

Hosting a site of size and nature does take a toll on you, even if the challenge on itself has been a major motivator to keep going.

And it's only getting a steeper uphill still.

If the so-called "basics" are covered from technical / hosting side, you have to worry operating within bounds of the law, keeping the bad actors at bay as well as malicious attempts to bring the site down by DDoS, deplatforming, doxing and so on.

With laws and regulations tightening not only on pornography, but what can be done with AI, as well as in general what you can do or say online, and platforms are increasingly held as responsible what any given member does.

The operating costs are getting higher.

For optimal performance the site would need a full 10Gbit/s throughput and I'm falling short from paying for it, having to settle to something like 80% of that. There's fees for co-location, VPS, bandwidth, emails, backup systems, all adding up to easily over 20k/year. Not to mention how much has been spent on hardware.

The server responsible for the forum is running out of space in 6 months. All bays are taken. If the RAID level is dropped, then maybe additional year of time could be gained. Even without the price hikes of RAM and SSDs, I wouldn't be able to afford a new server with even more storage than what it has now (7.68TB x 6 on main array).

I am not looking for additional financial support. If you have an old crypto address from me, don't use that as there's a high chance it doesn't reach me. Those who are currently supporting me via subscription, I would ask if you can stick around for a bit as it really does help to keep the lights on. And sincere gratitude to past donators as well.

The users themself are getting more troublesome.

In the beginning of my reign I was all aboard on the idea of "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend". The problem is, as your numbers grows, there is less cohesion. There's a lot of people who will take advantage whatever platform you offer them and they will exploit it to their selfish needs without no concern to it or others.

Thankfully I've had a lot of help from our staff, past and present, without them the site would implode within a day. I just wish I could somehow reward you with more than words, or make the users truly appreciate what they are here for, even if they might disagree sometimes on how they govern.

I hope to keep the site operating long enough for people to backup what they deem valuable and migrate elsewhere. I cannot give any spefic date yet. Hopefully people can do organized effort on this, like a specific sub-section. There are other communities like this that can welcome you as long as you respect them in kind.

For the ambitious ones out there wanting to build their own community, I recommend focusing on your core offering, and doing that well. A niche site that is just a platform for stories or another for game creations / mods would do great. Gray topics should have their own community, focusing on help and support. Think carefully what kind of community you want to foster.

For the migration as well as for existing or future site operators, I might be able to offer help or consultation, technical or otherwise.

The site has grown too large for it's own good, I don't personally really care for the influx of some of the newcomers, there is too much relying on just me, I am not going to be around forever. It's better to call it quits when it could still be done gracefully.

Support the existing sites, be it financially or even just with your activity.

Finally, I think it's important to say that I am not doing this under sudden legal pressure or such duress,

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. The site has received maybe 5 subpoenas in total when I've been in charge. None of them were any blanket requests, but reasonable in their justification, focusing on individual users, all of which I have fulfilled. None came with a gag order other than not to disclose while an investigation is underway. If desired, I can make more verbose disclosure on these.

 

[DarthSpectre]

What was the reason for shutting down? I just knew this from the last messages lol

Some angry mod had database of peoples information or something, so they went with nuclear option and bringing whole thing down in addition to some other struggles as far as I can tell

 

[BrodyPresto]

i need to wait 139 seconds before reacting to your post, sorry dude

When you reach Elite rank, you’ll unlock zero cooldown.

 

[Sneylor]

Now I'm a proud Member+

 

[strika13]

Anyone want to take bets on how long it will take to get to 750 coins? I'm guessing 2 weeks

 

[2wa]

When you reach Elite rank, you’ll unlock zero cooldown.

So at that point you can just like and post whenever you want

 

[BrodyPresto]

@Sneylor got Member in just 3 hours. Might be a record lol.

 

[Hupecki]

When you reach Elite rank, you’ll unlock zero cooldown.

okay yeah but thats like 10000 messages away

 

[kendall]

new latest updates page is in effect, go to latest updates page and refresh

Sorry if this question has already been asked, but why are you redesigning the LU page again? Apart from a few alignment errors, the old version looked fine. Now it just looks inconsistent...

What was the reason for shutting down? I just knew this from the last messages lol

I can only quote others:

Post in thread 'Anti-Social & Lurker - Hideout spot'

Feb 23, 2026

It seems like it was worse than I imagined, the stab in the back came from the staff itself. I feel sorry for Vistarrr :/

Spoiler

Back in May, 2025 I was suffering from health problems and burnout, due to which my absence from ATF was long enough for the staff to get really worried. Contingency plans were made, @JohnMolotov (who had been removed from the staff earlier) was brought back due to his technical knowledge to make a backup of the forum's database, just in case. This was possible by gaining shell access by leveraging Xenforo's plugin system.

Not too long after I finally resurfaced...

• Yoriko

• 
• 
• 

 

[ObservantShadow]

what type of games did atf have mods for?

Games like
Sims 4 alot of them
Rim World
Stardew Valley
Genshin Impact
Stellar Blade
Skyrim alot of them
CyberPunk
Fallout 4 alot of them

 

[BrodyPresto]

Anyone want to take bets on how long it will take to get to 750 coins? I'm guessing 2 weeks

It’s 250 coins to become a Member now.

 

[DarthSpectre]

@Sneylor got Member in just 3 hours. Might be a record lol.

Someone get that man a trophy! lool

 

[Hupecki]

@Sneylor got Member in just 3 hours. Might be a record lol.

the only difficult thing is that I need to reload the page each time to see new messages

 

[justrand0m10]

Some angry mod had database of peoples information or something, so they went with nuclear option and bringing whole thing down in addition to some other struggles as far as I can tell

Saw the database breach post now, that's crazy jesus

 

[Sneylor]

@Sneylor got Member in just 3 hours. Might be a record lol.

I need a new speedrun achievement.

 

[BrodyPresto]

the only difficult thing is that I need to reload the page each time to see new messages

Oof, @Hupecki might tie, or be an hour late, getting Member.