Online map communities

Maps have been organizing and meeting online for several decades. Online map communities are at risk of censorship - mass bans and deletion - so the history of internet map activism is full of blank spots.

Tumblr
Map community presence since early 2010s to the autumn of 2018. Contrary to the popular belief, the map purge did not coincide with the porn ban, but was ongoing since the beginning of the year and completed one-two months before it. The maximal number of active map accounts at the peak was approximately 150-180. The Tumblr map community was the birthplace of the map flag. After 2018 the bulk of the community integrated with Twitter.

Twitter
Twitter had probably the largest map community of all normative social media, with the maximum of active accounts at around 500 or even more. Open map presence on the platform has been steadily decreasing since 2020, when Twitter introduced new terms of service, prohibiting discussing minor attraction as an orientation. One of the signature features of the Twitter map community used to be open communication with mental health professionals who study mapness and also have Twitter accounts.

Discord
Discord used to be a popular chat service among maps, and a former home of Map Support Club. The purges started in the end of 2018/beginning of 2019, and now only small and private map servers exist on this platform.

Instagram
Initially Instagram was discovered by Tumblr maps in early 2018, after antis created several pseudo map troll accounts on that platform. It has been implementing ongoing, slow bans since the very beginning and did not become a very popular place, yet the number of map accounts stays stable.

Dreamwidth
This site, known for its freedom of expression policies, has been discussed as a possible map platform by Tumblr refugees in 2018. Yet its inconvenient mobile interface made most maps who moved there to abandon their accounts. There exists a DW map group, currently not used.

Vent
Briefly used by Tumblr refugees in 2018, immediate bans.

Medium
This site used to be one of the main blogging platforms for large text pieces, the old home of “Pedophiles About Pedophilia” (currently available here ). Map accounts were mass banned in late 2018.

WordPress
After Medium suspensions this site has become a replacement and is still popular as such.

Element
This chat platform has functionally replaced Discord in early 2019. There is a history of bans, connected to matrix.org, but the number of map accounts on other homeservers is growing.

Telegram
More popular with Twitter maps than anyone else, frequently regarded as a security risk and not used for anything long term.

Reddit
Similar to Instagram in its attitude to maps, this site bans map accounts steadily, but slowly. Dedicated map subreddits are typically suspended very fast, however, and that is why this place is not widely used.

Quora
Quora is an inflexible platform, geared towards a solely question-answer form of communication. It attracts maps who want to share their experiences with questioning people.

YouTube
This platform has always been less popular than text-based ones due to privacy concerns and is used only occasionally. Probably the most known map YouTube channel is Todd Nickerson's channel. He is publicly out as a map.

Virtuous Pedophiles
Virtuous Pedophiles is a private forum for anti contact maps, founded in 2012.

Map Support Club
Map Support Club is a private group chat for anti contact maps.

Pedofilie.nl
A dutch-speaking community for anti contact maps. Founded in 2004, it changed platforms several times.

Open Map Community
Open Map Community is an alternative to MSC, also hosted on RocketChat, but open to all contact stances. They maintain their own list of online map communities and resources.

BoyChat
BoyChat is a site for boylovers. It is one of the oldest map spaces online, founded in 1995, and it has set many map discourse trends pretty early on.

GirlChat
GirlChat is a site for girllovers, and one of the oldest GL platforms to exist (since 2000).

Visions Of Alice
Visions of Alice is a site for girllovers.

Dorian_in_chains
D0rian_in_chains (stylised to Dorian_in_chains in 2005) was an privatley owned and moderated anti contact MAP server and forum. Starting out on Yahoo forums in 2003 under the name Dorians_friends, the server grew to around 100 active members by the end of the year, at which point it was moved to a privately owned server coded by head moderator UB0ss. Primarily, it was a space for anti contact MAPs to discuss their friendships, crushes and the day to day realities of living in a MAP-miasmic society. At it's peak the website ran around 150 active users, although only around 75 of them were in the 'core userbase'. DIC was mainly used by Boylovers, and the majority of the moderating team identified as such, however there was a small core group of Girllovers who also enjoyed sharing their experiences on the forum, the most well known being Al1ce_Rube. The forum's firm anti-contact stance, which prohibited any and all sexual discussion caused controversy during it's time online, with many members later leaving the forum, citing the fact the firm anti-sexual contact or discussion rule was "censorship" and left them unable to communicate their experiences. DIC was eventually taken online at the end of 2006 due to a number of factors - decreased server traffic, the expenses of running a private server, the rise of contemporary social media and the Internet 2.0 and safety concerns towards those involved all led to the website being rendered unusable on Dec 31st 2006. Prior to this, the moderation team did host a small in-forum thread encouraging people to share any alternative forms of social media they could be contacted on, but this was wholly unsuccessful.

Map fediverse instances
Fediverse is a network of self hosted social media sites, vaguely Twitter-like in looks. After Twitter suspensions many maps moved to fediverse. Nnia.space was created in May 2020, freak.university and youjo.love followed. A special mention for phenomenal.masto.host, currently inactive. This fediverse instance was the first map instance that we know about (launched in 2019) and inspired nnia’s creation.

RocketChat
Yet another Discord replacement, the current home of Map Support Club and Open MAP Community. One needs more IT knowledge than average in order to set up a RocketChat server, so this platform is not as popular as Element.