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.

Maps on mainstream social media

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. Infrequent bans occur, seemingly at random.

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. The site has a history of banning maps and child protection experts who support them.

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.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia has maintained a longstanding policy to falsely label maps as a danger to other members and ban them on the basis of attractions, regardless of their actions or the quality of their contributions to the website.

In 2023, a number of detailed articles related to maps, sexual abuse prevention, and similar topics appeared on Wikipedia, largely due to the efforts of 2 editors. While it's unknown if these editors were maps or even map allies, the resulting coordinated effort by Wikipedia admins to censor all content created by these users and ban some users who objected to the deletions made it clear that Wikipedia is not a reliable source for information about maps, child protection, and related topics.

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.

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.

This section is a work in progress.

Phenomenal.masto.host

Launched in 2019 by an ex member of map Tumblr, this was the first known map Mastodon instance. It never gained publicity and was shut down by the admin after a couple of months.

Nnia.space

Nnia.space was co-founded by a former member of phenomenal.masto.host in May 2020 and became the starting point of map fediverse. This instance has anti bigotry rules, does not permit NSFW images and arguments in defense of the pro-contact stance.

Nnia.cc

Nnia.cc is a daughter instance of nnia.space. It has the same rules, but is not connected to other instances and has a more private atmosphere.

Dlf.social

This instance was run by a pro-contact Twitter activist Rel. It was created a couple of weeks after nnia.space and existed for a brief period of time.

Freak.university

Freak.university is the longest-living instance in a series of vaguely school-themed map instances. It has an anti-bigotry policy, similar to nnia, but allows NSFW and pro-contact advocacy.

Pedo.house

This is the first iteration of freak.university, suspended by providers after mass reports from antis.

Pedo.school

Made after pedo.house and before freak.university, it was unavailable for a long time due to problems with domain transfer and later co-existed with freak.university as an almost inactive instance.

Youjo.love

Youjo was first made in summer of 2021 by a former member of map Twitter, Chizu. This site had much more lax content policy than nnia or freak.university and allowed several openly fascist or transphobic members. At some point it was actively used by Newgon administration and members. After its domain suspension in autumn 2023, it lost most of its users, but retained partial functionality.

Youjo.observer

This site briefly served as a replacement after the old site's domain suspension, but similarly went down within a couple of months.

Mapsupport.de

This instance was made by Consuela in March 2023. It has German-speaking users.

Paravielfalt.zone

This is an anti-c instance, made by Sirius in September 2023. The name is a play on the words "paraphilia" and "Vielfalt", the German word for diversity. While the instance is primarily for German-speaking people it also accepts registrations by English-speaking members.

Childlove.space

This instance launched the day youjo.love had its domain suspended. It was created and moderated with participation of Newgon members. It was advertised as a free speech space and quickly attracted Nazis, who the administration refused to ban despite multiple complaints. In addition to that, some members used it to post CSEM. The instance went down after a short spike of activity.

Childlove.su

This site was meant to serve as a continuation of childlove.space, but inherited all of its problems and did not stay up for long.

Other self hosted map spaces

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 offline 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.

Pedophilia.info

Pedophilia.info was an informational site for anti contact maps with groups and a forum. It was briefly active in the first half of 2020, before being deleted by its admin due to harassment.