10/16 Edit: Efforts are underway to secure a new domain name, bbw-chan.link, to ride our remaining months until server shutdown. Do not be too alarmed if the site blips a bit as I experiment with redirecting bbw-chan.nl to bbw-chan.link.Hello all. LtBarclay with a status report here.
An unholy storm of circumstances is converging which will considerably impact operations in this sector
early 2024 NOW.
The continued plague of CP reducing visitor numbers, which stymied ad revenue, combined with the long-standing crypto bear market making our ad network pay out less on top of that, a user-base that is mostly about not paying for things and generally use ad-blockers, price increases in our hosting, and all manner of other things has lead us to circumstances which do not support the life of the site any longer. In the next 90 days or so, without either a massive, historic crypto bull run that increases our ad revenue astronomically, or an unprecedented amount of donations, BBWChan will pass into annals of internet history.
THE PLOT THICKENS. See >>37432 We are likely losing the domain name as SIDN has requested registrar data (likely due to constant reports of CP), which of course isn't going to happen. Be warned, our original .NL domain name may, AT ANY TIME, cease to function. See you at https://lemmynsfw.com/c/bbwchan if the worst happens and the server itself is affected.For reference, if our current .nl domain name is seized before our server hosting is up, we "should" still be accessible at https://bbw-chan.link until 1/29/2024, but honestly, I have no idea at this point.It was, perhaps, completely unwise to be open about having pre-paid for 6 months at the last crisis point. In truth, it may have been better to obfuscate that fact and act as if we were on verge of shutdown right then and there to drum up funds for the future, but I opted for the advanced-advance notice, which has not induced the expected reaction. So, rather than spring it all on you a week before it happens...
After running the numbers, I am announcing the (barring a miracle) shutdown of BBWChan effective 1/29/2024. At that time we will have burned through our current pre-paid server months that were only possible based on completely cashing out our prior donation campaign funds. Based on current ad revenue and donations we will be unable to pay our server bill for the month of February 2024. Could someone swoop in and donate enough at the last minute to get us another month? Maybe, but lets be real here. That shit won't last forever. Everyone is short on money, the last thing anyone needs to be spending money on is a site like this. My electric bill was three hundred fucking dollars last month, food costs are through the roof, housing is insane: I am not at all surprised or disappointed that donations are not exactly flooding in especially considering the nature of the site and crypto. It is what it is. It's honestly surprising the site has gone on this long, in this way (entirely funded by crypto). But times change, sites like these are a relic of the past, but the internet is no museum, it's just a river. Things get carried away all the time.
I want to thank all anons for their years of patronage, especially those who tried to keep the spirit of sharing alive even through the worst of times. I have enjoyed my time being 'admin' here since 2016, though the past year has been especially difficult. I also want to give very special thanks to all mods and janitors, past and present, for putting up with me and the site and your years of service.
I also apologize to all those who believe I did not do enough to save the site: you're probably right. It's kind of like any job. Sometimes, you burn out. I'm being real here, I'm a little burnt out. My life took a real, shitty hard turn the last few years. Brother axed himself. I got divorced, then outsourced. I also have some IRL shit that makes it difficult for me to get another job now that I've been outsourced. Shit sucks man. I had to cash out my 401k to buy a fucking shack in the middle of nowhere literally across the country after my landlady sold her beachhouse that I was, tbh, paying nearly nothing in rent for but still. My savings are gone, all my contacts and work friends are lost. With all this going on, yeah you're damn right I could have done more to save the site but the energy just wasn't there.
What are the plans for the domain name after site shutdown? I'm not sure, perhaps I will redirect it to our Lemmy instance and we can just go legit with only /bbwai/ and /gen/ (no piracy) and have no server costs from there. In any event, I will ensure it does not expire and not eventually point to scams or malware like bbw-chan.net did.There's also the possibility of a much, MUCH smaller site being spun up that could survive on our current absolute meager ad revenue. I'm talking just images, no videos, three or four boards tops, 5 pages per board, etc. Like a tiny mini version of what we have now. Though I'd imagine a site like that would lose a ton of visitors, which would reduce ad revenue even further, at which point it would not be able to support itself and would die as well. It would also be running on shitty servers, and we all saw what that was like.
Will a site archive for download be made available? No. Please locally save all media you wish to archive in advance. A.architect.coffee will likely maintain their (partial) copy for some time after our shutdown, but I have to imagine they will cease operations shortly after we do. They do not archive full size images, just thumbnails that link to our full images, so their archive will be of limited use after our server goes offline.
What alternatives can I consume the same content on? I would suggest stufferdb.com, reddit's r/ssbbw, any of Lemmy's NSFW instances, as well as the any number of other chans which allow sexual content. Please share where you will be spending the time you would have spent here, I'm interested to know and will probably follow somewhere and maintain some presence.
Today, all boards have had their threads-per-hour limit reduced to (possibly) mitigate any unforeseen reactions to this announcement.
I have had many a belly laugh here on /gen/, and hope to see some of you in new places.
