On July 4th, I went into VoA chat to talk to starlet_Luver and tell him about this site. He warned me that a site created out of spite will not last, and I agree with him. This site is not prepackaged forum/chat software that I installed on a whim and will abandon when I lose interest. It is all new, custom software that I have been developing for many months, and am actively working on every day. It was not created out of hate, it was created out of love. I created it because I want there to be more legal, safe, clearnet GL communities that do not force everyone to have an anti-contact opinion. I created it because there were too many things I could not do on VoA for technical or political reasons. I created it because girls really are, at least in my opinion, the be.st.
Over the next two weeks, it became obvious that sL was making moves to forcibly remove me from my role as Tech Admin, so, on July 15th, I sent starlet_Luver and doodah a PM with the URL and an invite code for them to join GATB. In this PM I tried to clarify 5 things:
I had never posted the URL on VoA before.
I did not make the site in response to drama, but I did open it earlier than I had planned to give people who left VoA somewhere to go. You can check the dates on this domain yourself: https://www.nic.st/whois?domain=girlsarethebe.st
It had always been my intent for GATB and VoA to have a friendly relationship, and I had been encouraging everyone else to do the same.
I was not interfering in any way with VoA trying to recruit new staff, and was encouraging candidates to disregard the drama.
I did not want to leave VoA, but if he asked me to leave, then I would leave peacefully.
He immediately responded that he did want me to leave, and asked me to turn over access to everything to the hosting provider. I emailed the hosting provider with instructions how to make an account on the encrypted and audited service which admins use to securely share passwords and other sensitive information.
In our earlier conversation, he said things that I had since begun to interpret as threats: specifically, that this had all happened before, and that the owners of the new forums that sprung up in the past either gave up or got raided. The more I thought about what was happening, the more it sounded like the intended message was "Surrender or die."
Out of concern for my own safety, I deleted all my posts and PMs from the VoA forum, and deleted any trace of myself from the servers, before officially handing over access to everything on July 16, 21:00 UTC. This "handoff" really just consisted of reminding them that they already had all the access to everything, and could give the hosting provider access to the passwords themselves, and didn't actually need me to do anything. I also gave them the command to use to lock me out of the server, and offered to keep checking my VoA email for a few more days in case they really did need something more from me.
They characterized this as "sabotaging" the forum, but anybody is welcome to go look and see that the forum is perfectly intact, just without my posts. They claim that I deleted threads with important passwords and server information, when I would never in a million years store passwords or important server information in a forum thread. They are all safely encrypted and accessible in the service I mentioned above, that sL, doodah, and the hosting provider all have access to. They claim I changed how the forum works, for my own nefarious purposes, when the only changes I have ever made were at their request.
The most insidious lie that they have spread is that I was in some way responsible for the arrest and legal charges faced by various members and friends of VoA. This is unequivocally false.
As tech admin, and hidden admin before that, I had full access to every aspect of VoA for over a year, and most of it for over two years. With this access, I took proactive steps to enhance security and protect users: I scrubbed the servers from top to bottom after the Anonymous hoax to make absolutely certain their claims were false. The detailed and transparent analysis you may have read about everything we found was my research, and my writing, and published at my insistence. I moved us to new, hardened servers, with tightly controlled access, extensive security measures, and secure logging for every action performed, authorized or not. I detected and protected the site and community from countless bad actors who tried to do us harm.
I've designed this new site with the same care and concern for the safety of GLers. The reason I don't ask for an email address and have gone to extraordinary lengths to make every part of this site work over Tor with JavaScript disabled is that I don't want any information that can be used against you.
The truth is that starlet_Luver is just angry and afraid of me, solely because he and doodah could not dig up any real life information about me that they could use to control me.
When I joined VoA, I was suicidal.
It is because of VoA and the friends I made there that I am alive and happy today, comfortable with who I am and doing what I love most to share that love with the world and support others who are like us. I will never forget that.
I do not hate VoA, or starlet_Luver, or doodah. I do not wish to see harm come to any of them, and I especially do not wish any harm to come to members of the community. I do not want us to fight.
I am not posting this message to hurt VoA, I am posting it because you have a right to know what happened.
VoA is wounded right now, but VoA will survive. We will not turn on our friends for joining, participating, or helping out there. We will just be honest about what happened, and encourage every person to draw their own conclusions and participate in the spaces that fit their needs.
We will keep our doors open and do our best to make sure that GATB is a welcoming option.
We will move on from this to focus on what really matters: loving girls, and loving girl-lovers. Because... well, you know.
Girls are the best.
