Been a while

Have done a monthly update for a while mostly because of being busy, but also taking stock of what people are DMing me.

Scams

Yep, that problem never goes away. There is an uptick lately, but I will say that compared to the other R4R subs, we are doing a fairly good job of removing troublesome posts, without being in a situation of inadvertently outcasting genuine people. But copy and paste from the post that was here:

Anyone, anywhere, can create any number of accounts, once we ban them they can get back into the community and potentially manage to strike again, and we only know once it's happened.

If you are requested to share explicit images, be sure to wait a period of time before and check if their account is still live after a few days. Heavy reported accounts get booted, quickly.

Stay on Reddit as long as possible. If you take the conversation off Reddit to Instagram/Snapchat/Telegram etc. then there is nothing we can action here. Scammers jump off of the platform as fast as possible because they know their accounts have a limited life span.

Don't call people out for being scammers in the comments, that only helps scammers in the long term. Report them as normal and one of the mods will have a look. If you call out in the comments you will be banned.

As a tip, many scammers are often not from around here, so ask questions about London to gauge if they are from the city or not.

M4M crowd

My messages and DMs have been brimming with people posting M4M having to deal with a ton of timewasters, people flaking on them, pic hoarders, etc. For the same reason above, and also anonymity plays a massive role in the M4M posts, then leads to people who have no intention of meeting exploiting the desire of people wanting to meet for their own ends.

So a couple of things:

1. Culturally we have to change. If you genuinely wanted to meet at one point but subsequently changed your mind, then tell the person you are arranging a meet with "I'm sorry, I can do this". Be polite; be honest.
2. We are going to start banning people. If you are a M4M poster or responder to a post and the person you are talking to is quite evidently a timewaster, let me know with a screenshot of your conversation and I will look into it.

Moving Forward

We will continue to try and keep people safe and get you folks to have the meets and experiences you desire. We are very much a square peg in a round hole here, Reddit is not designed to do what we do, but if we come together as a community we can definitely have a lot of success out into the world.
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Encounters London is a place I am building, looking to launch in the next couple of months, to help us fulfill our shared purpose; like-minded people meeting for mutual and consensual experiences in London.

It's the start of our journey, and you can join us here to learn more.