Why is everything new being deleted from the "Fan Sites" category?

urx585

@marcustehkid - You're absolutely right about that, the studios and their agents file paperwork then torrents are deleted. That takes time.

Prior to the recent innovations, there were roughly three classes of takedowns:

Depending on what time of day they were uploaded, BBA torrents are usually taken down in less than two hours, sometimes much faster, so I always assumed the studio owner was on friendly terms, and was given a mechanism to delete quickly. These torrents are almost always deleted regardless of obfuscation. Together with the time-of-day dependency, that suggests a real live human is doing the work.
Torrents from studios with expensive porn guardian services (FX, SS, SR, EL, HYB, MM, BT, AF, etc.) are usually taken down in 2-12 hours. Some of these torrents were protected by obfuscation, so detection probably depends on both humans and algorithms.
Torrents from studios with less aggressive guardian services (CM, Stxs, Cdnt, Mn, etc.) are deleted within a few days, and obfuscation is highly effective, so these detections are probably machine dependent.

I've been watching very carefully for the last three days (Thursday/Friday/Saturday) and I've seen exactly the same thing happen every morning at approximately 9AM US Eastern time. Almost every torrent with OF content (and many others too) is deleted, starting with the most recently posted. Then, until about 5PM US Eastern, torrents with OF content are deleted almost as soon as they are posted, typically in less than 30 minutes, sometimes in less than 10 minutes, sometimes before they even start to seed. After 5PM Eastern, deletion of OF torrents becomes spotty and slow.

That is consistent with someone in NYC getting up and going to work from 9 to 5, scanning everything that was posted during the night -- page by page, starting with the most recent -- and clicking on the "delete" button next to everything that might belong to one of their clients. Once they've finished, they refresh the uploads page every ten minutes or so, and click on "delete" for anything new they see.

Filing paperwork takes time. These deletions don't. This is new and different.

If you want to see this for yourself, load every OF torrent that's posted between 5PM and 9AM Eastern into your seedbox, then watch their status change from 9AM to 10AM. You will see them become "unregistered", starting with the most recent. (If it's a single person, they probably only work 5 days a week, so there may be two days per week when torrents survive longer.)

I completely withdraw my suggestion that a porn guardian employee has somehow infiltrated the site. That was a silly thought, and I apologize to anyone reading this who might have been upset by that suggestion. The site operators are aware. That's why they're promoting and freeleeching so many old torrents. They know that some users will be disappointed at finding so much less new content, so they're trying to provide alternatives.

The popularity of OF has exploded in the last few years, especially during Covid. As most of the major studios had trouble operating under restrictions, individuals were still able to produce more and more OF content. Prior to the recent innovations, at least half of the new content posted to this site was from OF. Its absence will be sorely missed.

I love this site and I don't want it to change. I bet the operators don't, either. They must have been under tremendous pressure.

This site always had a terrible problem with torrent longevity -- most torrents die within a month or two -- but if the operators start re-promoting every old torrent when it gets down to 2 seeders, it could become a very impressive archive of gay porn history. I love libraries full of old books, so I'm sure I'll love a torrent site full of old porn. But that's very different from what this site once was, and us users will need time to go through the grieving process before we can accept what we've lost.

If I could make one request: please re-promote and freeleech more of the old amateur, homemade, and twink torrents. This site hosts a truly stunning amount of Asian porn, and it's very nice that so much of it has been re-promoted recently, but it only appeals to a subset of users.

raphjd

I think you guys are confusing, at least in part, DMCA takedowns with dupe removals.

We get a lot of dupes and other rule-breaking torrents.

MuscleLv1972

I wish something more could be done to prevent the sudden removal of fansite stuff right after posting. I mean there was a rip of Iggy Lopez's stuff and it didn't even begin to download and seed because it was removed so fast.

urx585

@raphjd - If I have a tab open for a torrent that's been marked as a duplicate, and I refresh that tab, I see "Access Denied" and the page title looks like "DUPLICATE https://gaytorrent..." (the word duplicate followed by a link to the original upload.)

If I have a tab open for a rule-breaking torrent that is in Themed Movies, but isn't gay themed, and I refresh that tab, I'll see "Access Denied" and the page title will say something like "NOT THEMED". Similar for "collections" that are determined to have no common theme.

These torrents aren't deleted, they're restricted so that no ordinary user can see them in the search results or download them.

This is different. These torrents are being deleted. If I refresh the tab, I'll see "No torrent with ID."

There were always lots of takedowns on this site, and as others have pointed out, if this site didn't comply with DMCA it would have been sued out of existence many years ago, just like TBP.

What's different in the last few weeks is the speed and quantity of takedowns. Even the most rapid deletions used to take at least a few hours, and torrents often lasted for a day or two before disappearing. Now it happens very quickly, often in less than 30 minutes, and the number of torrents that are being deleted is much, much greater, covering a much wider range of material.

I tested this again this morning by looking through torrents posted during the night, opening them in tabs, then waiting a few hours and refreshing the tabs. At least two dozen of them were deleted, and some of them had nothing to do with OF. Some included amateur vids that have never been deleted before, i.e. part 2 of a Voyeur compilation from a site that doesn't exist any more and never had any copyrights over its user-contributed contents to begin with. None of them were duplicates or against the rules.

I understand that OF is on a takedown binge and it might last for a very long time; they have plenty of money to pay for takedown services. They've become the dominant source for porn, and prior to the last few weeks, more than 50% of the new content posted to GTRU was from OF. Why so many other torrents are also disappearing quickly is much more of a mystery to me.

In any case, the OF takedowns are having the desired effect. There is already much less content from OF being posted, and as more and more users see their uploads deleted in 30 minutes or less, they'll give up and go elsewhere. Of course, if "elsewhere" gets too popular, OF will go after it too, and the users there will go through this same frustrating experience.

bi4smooth

@musclelv1972 said in Why is everything new being deleted from the "Fan Sites" category?:

I wish something more could be done to prevent the sudden removal of fansite stuff right after posting. I mean there was a rip of Iggy Lopez's stuff and it didn't even begin to download and seed because it was removed so fast.

So unless I'm mistaken, once the connection is made between seeder and leecher, the tracker is no longer a required part of the equation. And the DMCA (as well as duplicate) removals just take them away from the tracker - they have no way to infiltrate the seeder's systems and remove content!

So: if you're seeing a torrent come up, and it's seeder starts to seed, and you get connected to that seeder, and while you're still downloading, the site removes the torrent (for whatever reason), your download should continue until completion.

Because the torrent was removed, you won't be "charged" for the download, but you won't be able to SEED it either, upon completion.

I know people are often confused about this part of torrenting: the tracker doesn't contain any part of the actual files! All of the content is on other users' computers! The tracker is just an "arbiter" - connecting people who want to people who have!

When you "browse" torrents here, you're just looking at a catalog of material people are seeding. (Thousands of users means many thousands of seeded items)... When you "download" from the site, you're actually just downloading a "descriptor" of the contents (including file checksums - to make sure you're getting valid content)... your torrent client program then use that descriptor, and a connection to the "tracker," to establish DIRECT connections to the seeders.

From that point on, all of the data transfers are between seeder and leecher - with no action happening on (or through) the tracker, except that both report TO the tracker that they are talking/trading data. (That is where/how the quotas are established/maintained).

So, when a torrent is removed from the tracker, the list of seeders the leecher got are still valid, and the seeders are still seeding (they don't need access to the tracker, except that the tracker is how leechers "hear/learn about" the seeder). Thus, the torrent is "unregistered" - not dead.

Long story short, once you are leeching, if the tracker removes the torrent, your leech should be able to continue... unless the SEEDER also (typically out of frustration) deletes the torrent from their client, in which case, they are no longer seeding and the torrent really IS dead.

mihaig110

DMCA notifications have been sent with a very unusual high frequency, sometimes even within the first 5 minutes from the moment the content was posted. This is very concerning, especially when I see admin replies implying we are confusing DMCA takedowns with dupe removals. Something changed on this site within the last weeks and it feels like a targeted move.

flozen

I feel as if half of the posters (guess) are late for their Ivermectin boosters.

bi4smooth

@flozen said in Why is everything new being deleted from the "Fan Sites" category?:

I feel as if half of the posters (guess) are late for their Ivermectin boosters.

Conspiracy?

Are the takedowns the conspiracy? Or are the wild-ass guesses about the takedowns the conspiracy?

Only the Shadow knows!

eobox91103

@flozen said in Why is everything new being deleted from the "Fan Sites" category?:

I feel as if half of the posters (guess) are late for their Ivermectin boosters.

You're right! Not only was I getting my booster, but I had to change my IV bag because it ran out of bleach. But now that I've had my litre of Clorox, I can return to the forum.

therock07

@rnd256 said in Why is everything new being deleted from the "Fan Sites" category?:

I'm not personally privy to the software behind the automated monitoring methods, but they likely utilize a combination of simple text and image scanning. Some basic obfuscation methods will usually beat the monitoring:

Word obfuscation: R3n0 G01d vs Reno Gold

Image obfuscation: flip or rotate the image

I would say this is likely correct. When you consider that OF videos contain the name of the site and the users themselves, it would not be too difficult to develop image scanning that could detect such text and respond accordingly. My guess is the recent upturn in DMCA volume and speed is the result of either OF putting greater resources toward such detection or, perhaps, a switchover to superior software that would be able to do this.

Of course, it's all possible human detection could be in the mix. Either way, there doesn't seem like there's much that can be done to curb takedowns. The best advice may very well be to hold onto your videos for as long as you can until if and when things would change.

For those frustrated by getting to content too late, I would recommend an RSS reader that would be able to filter incoming content by category and/or specific text coupled with mobile or desktop notifications. Personally, I use Inoreader for this purpose, although awhile back they made significant changes to their pricing model so that filters and other advanced features are only available to paid subscribers. For me, this is not an issue as I use the service mainly for my business, but for casual users this could understandably be a deal breaker. And even then, with some torrents disappearing within minutes and us not always being available at a moment's notice to download new content, it's not an ideal workaround.

therock07

Did some quick digging around on Google purely out of curiosity. A couple of things I noted:

If you go to the following webpage (https://transparencyreport.google.com/copyright/owners/279096) you'll notice that the number of URLs requested to be delisted from Google for OF content has substantially increased in recent months. It's also interesting how the number of takedowns requested seem to go through significant peaks and valleys.
Digging further into the link above, the DMCA Force---whatever that is---is by far the largest reporting organization. It's 4th biggest copyright owner? OnlyFans. It shows the last requested date as 11/16/21
Found the gaytor.rent specific page of the Transparency Report site which shows each of the recent takedowns requested (https://transparencyreport.google.com/copyright/domains/gaytor.rent). From what I can tell, it looks like OF itself makes a request on the first of each month. The rest of the takedowns come from interests representing the industry as well as subscription services utilized by individual performers at various times. Also, without question, the number of requested takedowns has increased in recent months. To be a bit more precise, from <50/week pre-covid to ~100 early 2021 to 250+ currently.
Some of the more popular detection services look to be Rulta and Ceartas. Their detection methods? "If the algorithm finds a result with photo or video content containing these terms on a leak site or subreddit,". Just thinking out loud here, but I wonder if one possible path forward would be to somehow scrub the site and username from each video? I don't think a simple cross out would work since the text would likely still be searchable by algorithms. Perhaps a reencoding would work?
Another method: "“Apart from websites, we also search through Google search results,” continues Kerem." Anyway to prevent individual torrents from being indexed by Google?

dorftimbre

@therock07 wow never knew about that! The things one can find on the internet. gay-torrents.net does not seem to be tat affected as this site. I have never seen their search results pop up on Google. I guess I'll be using them instead

eobox91103

@dorftimbre said in Why is everything new being deleted from the "Fan Sites" category?:

@therock07 wow never knew about that! The things one can find on the internet. gay-torrents.net does not seem to be tat affected as this site. I have never seen their search results pop up on Google. I guess I'll be using them instead

I think gt.net has fewer takedowns because they don't permit posting of torrents with material from quite a few sources--for example, EnglishLads can't be posted there. They also have a much smaller collection, usually less than 50 torrents per day, so there's less likelihood that they'd have takedown-prone material. (But I'm not criticising the site: It's well-designed, the content it has is good, and the forum has nice discussions.)

krad3434

@urx585 said in Why is everything new being deleted from the "Fan Sites" category?:

@raphjd - If I have a tab open for a torrent that's been marked as a duplicate, and I refresh that tab, I see "Access Denied" and the page title looks like "DUPLICATE https://gaytorrent..." (the word duplicate followed by a link to the original upload.)

If I have a tab open for a rule-breaking torrent that is in Themed Movies, but isn't gay themed, and I refresh that tab, I'll see "Access Denied" and the page title will say something like "NOT THEMED". Similar for "collections" that are determined to have no common theme.

These torrents aren't deleted, they're restricted so that no ordinary user can see them in the search results or download them.

This is different. These torrents are being deleted. If I refresh the tab, I'll see "No torrent with ID."

There were always lots of takedowns on this site, and as others have pointed out, if this site didn't comply with DMCA it would have been sued out of existence many years ago, just like TBP.

What's different in the last few weeks is the speed and quantity of takedowns. Even the most rapid deletions used to take at least a few hours, and torrents often lasted for a day or two before disappearing. Now it happens very quickly, often in less than 30 minutes, and the number of torrents that are being deleted is much, much greater, covering a much wider range of material.

I tested this again this morning by looking through torrents posted during the night, opening them in tabs, then waiting a few hours and refreshing the tabs. At least two dozen of them were deleted, and some of them had nothing to do with OF. Some included amateur vids that have never been deleted before, i.e. part 2 of a Voyeur compilation from a site that doesn't exist any more and never had any copyrights over its user-contributed contents to begin with. None of them were duplicates or against the rules.

I understand that OF is on a takedown binge and it might last for a very long time; they have plenty of money to pay for takedown services. They've become the dominant source for porn, and prior to the last few weeks, more than 50% of the new content posted to GTRU was from OF. Why so many other torrents are also disappearing quickly is much more of a mystery to me.

In any case, the OF takedowns are having the desired effect. There is already much less content from OF being posted, and as more and more users see their uploads deleted in 30 minutes or less, they'll give up and go elsewhere. Of course, if "elsewhere" gets too popular, OF will go after it too, and the users there will go through this same frustrating experience.

It's funny Ive had tabs open to check torrents out later and have noticed the same thing you did with the tabs reporting "dupes" vs not.
To top it off, like most if not all content in the Fansite category is doomed. Like no other section of the site I think has 1 hour old torrents then 2 weeks old on the same page. There are currently TWO torrents in that category from last week lol.

It's fine if it can't be addressed directly, I'll just say it's weird that a gay sites getting this much direct heat. Even weirder I've recently seen some of the torrents that were posted here and deleted in hours pop up on another site and not only last longer, but get reposted here because the original was deleted so fast.

therock07

@krad3434 said in Why is everything new being deleted from the "Fan Sites" category?:

Even weirder I've recently seen some of the torrents that were posted here and deleted in hours pop up on another site and not only last longer, but get reposted here because the original was deleted so fast.

I think that's a pretty clear indication of what some had suspected: that GTRU either got big enough to finally draw more serious scrutiny or additional scrutiny was brought to it for other reasons.

massafera

@therock07 GTRU should make the website more anonymous. I'm sure there are options that can be done. If they will do it I don't know...

massafera

@rnd256 said in Why is everything new being deleted from the "Fan Sites" category?:

Part of the popularity of GTRU is that much of its torrents are publicly available, which is a double-edged sword. If something is public on Google, that means the torrents can be found by porn fiends AND automated bots.

GTRU is one of the biggest gay porn torrent (maybe the largest?). If OnlyFans or performers or their paid DMCA representatives were to repeatedly infringing sites, this would be it.

I'm not personally privy to the software behind the automated monitoring methods, but they likely utilize a combination of simple text and image scanning. Some basic obfuscation methods will usually beat the monitoring:

Word obfuscation: R3n0 G01d vs Reno Gold
Image obfuscation: flip or rotate the image

Some other thoughts:

There are categories that are more high-risk for copyright violations than others (like Fansites). I don't know if the torrent site is capable of it, but maybe the site could make certain categories (like Fansites) private and only viewable by members?

I agree that the torrents should NOT be publicly available.

And Fansites category should be more protected and hidden. Also instruct uploaders to edit the preview images before uploading them and edit the title of the torrent, videos, description etc... If nothing changes then well, I don't see the point of keeping an FS category.

massafera

This "N/A" company is the one deleting the OF Videos from Gaytorrent.ru. GTRU it's their biggest target.

Request: 12943641, Date: Nov 19, 2021
Specified domain: gaytor.rent
URLs requested to be delisted: 269
https://transparencyreport.google.com/copyright/request/12943641

Request: 12890732, Date: Nov 13, 2021
Specified domain: gaytor.rent
URLs requested to be delisted: 87
https://transparencyreport.google.com/copyright/request/12890732

Request: 12731605, Date: Oct 25, 2021
Specified domain: gaytor.rent
URLs requested to be delisted: 372
https://transparencyreport.google.com/copyright/request/12731605

"Rulta OU", another DMCA takedown company, seems to be hired by individual models, but they are only a few models taking their torrents out of GTRU. This N/A company seems to be the problem.

They request URLs to be delisted, so why not hide GTRU from google search mechanisms?

PS: All this information I posted here is publicly available and part of Google Transparency, therefore I'm not doing anything wrong by sharing it here for you all to see.

RyanRility

@raphjd I have raised it before without reply but still wondering: would you consider stopping google (or bots) from indexing gt.ru?It is literally one click away since the site is already on cloudflare, and I think it may very much prevent/decrease DMCA bots by a huge amount. The downside is that it would bring the site to the private side for a bit, which should not be a huge problem.

eobox91103

@massafera There is another LGBT torrent site (something.org...I won't mention the name) that is not publicly accessible, and has lots of torrents from sources that send takedowns to gt.ru. As a member of that site I have no problem using it. Whatever they're doing should be done here.