#pillowfortsocial

LIVE

Hi Pillowfolks,

We hope you are all staying safe and healthy this summer. We wanted to check in to let you know we are absolutely still around and sincerely apologize for the silence. A brand new Community Update will be available sometime this week and will include a new preview of the site-wide UI redesign.

In addition: A minor update to the Known Bugs & Prospective Features was pushed yesterday and an updated FAQ and Business Plan will be making its way to the site very soon (we’ll let the community know when those are live).

If you missed it from our latest Pillowfort101 we also announced we are in the process of creating a separate Content Guidelines page to make it clearer and more specific, without changing any of our content rules, on what is and isn’t allowed on Pillowfort.

Thank you all for the generous, continued support. As of this writing we are now 48% of our $6647 monthly goal to cover the cost of expenses to keep Pillowfort online and to compensate our teams working on the platform. A full breakdown of our budget is available on the Donationspage.

Stay tuned for the Community Update!

- Pillowfort Staff

Pillowfort101: NSFW

Hi Pillowfolks! Welcome to a very special edition of Pillowfort101. Today’s topic covers everything “NSFW (not safe for work)” in a safe for work format.

What does NSFW stand for anyway?

NSFW is shorthand for not safe for work. It’s used as a common warning for internet content a user may not wish to look at in public (such as a place of employment.). Examples of such content include adult content.

Pillowfort is a NSFW Friendly platform…

Pillowfort’s popularity has risen in recent years because we are a NSFW friendly blogging platform. We believe in providing our community the freedom to create and share diverse content.

It is unfortunate that spaces for adult creators continue to disappear. The ability on the internet to create & consume NSFW content continues to change at a rapid pace even as we write this. Since Pillowfort’s inception our entire team continues to maintain the stance of never relying on venture capital investors. Being user-funded allows us to continue to operate as a platform beholden to our user base, not to corporate interests. We can continue to operate without compromising our content guidelines.

…But that comes at a cost.

While Pillowfort doesn’t have investor funding, this does create many challenges. Relying only on user payments and donations limits our resources significantly compared to other sites that receive millions of dollars in investment funding. We also pay higher payment processing fees because we allow adult content. Our survival depends on the generosity of our community.

We need your support in order for Pillowfort to continue to exist.

We currently use Authorize.net as our third party payment processor. We do not handle or store credit card information on Pillowfort’s servers.

Note: The rest of this 101 is under the cut!

NSFW FAQ

What are Pillowfort’s Content Guidelines?

Our guidelines regarding adult content are available in our Terms of Service. We are in the process of creating a separate Content Guidelines page clearly stating what is and isn’t allowed that will be released in the near future.  (Note: this will not involve changing any of our content rules themselves, but rather making our content guidelines clearer and more specific.)

What is Pillowfort’s Privacy Policy?

Our privacy policy is located here.

Why doesn’t Pillowfort use PayPal?

PayPal ended their relationship with us because we allow adult content.

Will Pillowfort always allow NSFW content?

As long as we are legally able to, the answer is ‘yes.’ The current climate regarding adult content is constantly evolving because of restrictions that are out of our control. We are monitoring the situation and maintaining contact with our legal team on the topic.

Does Pillowfort allow sex workers?

Sex workers are welcome on Pillowfort. You will not be banned for simply existing. Sex work is legitimate work and destigmatizing sex work creates a safer environment for sex workers. On Pillowfort sex workers can participate on our platform like any other user. You can create Communities, share & create content, and build a sex worker support network. Because Pillowfort does not have restrictive algorithms, every user is allowed off site advertising as long as it does not violate our Terms of Service.

However, because of restrictions already placed by credit card providers as well as US law, we can not allow the selling or soliciting of the following on our platform: escort services, sex for hire, and phone sex operators. We also can not allow promoting any sessions on Pillowfort with professional dominants/submissives, etc. Thank you so much for understanding.

How is revenge porn handled?

We take all reports of revenge porn seriously. If you are a victim of revenge porn, send in a report to moderation@pillowfort.social and a moderator will get in touch with you as soon as possible.

Our Commitment to Adult Content Creators

We want to reassure our community that in the event credit card providers, who we primarily rely on to receive funding, place Pillowfort in a dire situation where adult content will jeopardize our platform’s existence, we will exhaust all options in securing funding alternatives or adapting to new restrictions in a way that does not compromise our content guidelines.

If, and only if, we are faced with having to temporarily disable adult content on Pillowfort (for example, to put in place new moderation tools to comply with credit card provider demands), we will let the community know first before any decisions are finalized.

We are also in the process of creating a separate Content Guidelines page to make it clearer and more specific, without changing any of our content rules, on what is and isn’t allowed on Pillowfort. We hope to have that ready in the near future.

Our team takes transparency seriously at Pillowfort. That has been one of our core values since the beginning. We are committed to keeping an open dialogue of communication with our community and encourage everyone to continue providing us feedback & suggestions. All feedback is taken to heart because it assists the direction of our development process.

Safe Spaces For All

To ensure the safety of everyone on Pillowfort, we have developed extensive content and privacy controls. There are multiple ways to curate, share, view, and consume NSFW content because consent is important.

NSFW Filtering - Easily mark your post as NSFW and it will be automatically filtered so only users who choose to see NSFW can see it. Note: The ability to view NSFW content is set to ‘off’ as the default with every new account. You must turn on the ‘View NSFW posts’ toggle from the Filters & Blacklist setting located in the sidebar. If you are under the age of 18, you will not be able to toggle the view NSFW content to “on.”

User-created Communities - You can create community spaces separate from your curated personal blog here at Pillowfort. User Communities can be marked as NSFW, allowing them to be filtered. Communities allow you to find others who share your interests, kinks, hobbies, fetishes, fandoms, and much more.

Extensive Content Control -  Pillowfort allows users to have control over how others interact with their content.  For each post you make you get to decide who can view and engage with it, if and how it can be shared, and more. Any changes made to your content, including if a post is edited, will be retroactively applied.

Blacklisting & Remote Blocking - Pillowfort has a built-in blacklisting feature without the need for additional extensions or customizations. When you block someone, you are prevented from seeing their content on your home feed or in Communities. It also prevents them from seeing any of your posts or removes their ability to contact you through private messages and comments.

Concealed Mode - Users can limit their account’s accessibility to untrusted users in Settings. This mode makes it where a user’s profile and content can only be accessed by users who follow each other or have initiated contact with.

No Algorithms - Shadowbanning doesn’t exist here. Pillowfort does not have an algorithm that filters what you see according to marketability. Your content will not be suppressed.

How Can I Get Ahold of Staff?

Multiple ways, actually! Whether you have a question, a feature request, or a bug report do not hesitate to reach out to us.  We take transparency very seriously and are determined to keep a bridge of communication open with our users.

Contact Form - The surest way to get in touch with Staff is to fill out the contact form located here with your bug report, feature request, media inquiry, or question. Or, just email us directly at info[at]pillowfort.social with your bug report, feature request, media inquiry, or question.

Moderation - All moderation inquiries need to be sent to moderation[at]pillowfort.social. For information regarding Moderation Appeals check out our Moderation Appeals FAQ.

Private Messaging - Send the Staff account a private message! We will get back to you as soon as we can.

BetaUsers Community - Join the BetaUsers community today with other Beta Users and participate in the conversation. Send a bug report, ask questions, and submit feedback. Staff monitors the discussion daily and are seen interacting there on a regular basis.

Social Media - Interact with Pillowfort Staff, ask questions, plus learn about upcoming features and more on social media here:

Media Inquiries - For all media inquiries please contact Julia at jbaritz[at]pillowfort.social.

I’m not a member of Pillowfort. How do I join?

Pillowfort is currently free to join with an invitation key from an existing user. All users, including newly registered users, are allowed to generate up to three keys a week that never expire until used.

If you do not want to wait for a key you can join Pillowfort for a one-time $5 registration fee that helps cover the cost of compensating our team working on the platform as well as server expenses.

This concludes today’s Pillowfort101! If you have any questions, feedback, or simply want to let us know what other topics you would like covered leave a comment in the comment section below.

Site Update 7/7/2021

Hi Pillowfolks!

We’ve pushed the following changes to the site:

  • Users will be required to confirm their account’s email address before accessing most of the site’s features. While this may cause some inconvenience, it is necessary to ensure the safety of our users. An account with an unconfirmed email will be able to view & change its account settings, but will not be able to make posts, comment, follow other users, or view & participate in communities. You will also be asked to reconfirm your email if you change the email associated with an existing validated account to a new email address, but it will not restrict your account capabilities (although your old email address will continued to be used as your log-in and correspondence email until you confirm the new one).
  • Users will no longer be able to sign up for Pillowfort with a ‘disposable’ email address (such as 10 Minute Mail, Guerrilla Mail, Fake Inbox, etc.). Again, this is for the safety of our user community.

    If you experience any inconvenience or have difficulty with validating your email address, contact us at info[at]pillowfort.social and we will help you as swiftly as we are able. We hope these changes will make the Pillowfort community a safer place for all of our users.
 Pillowfort is a creator friendly blogging platform built with giving you a peace of mind. Join toda

Pillowfort is a creator friendly blogging platform built with giving you a peace of mind.

Join today for FREE with an invitation key! 


Post link

Hi everyone!

We’ve pushed a small update to the site to add a new feature to the Blocked Users page. At the top of the page there is now a text field where you can enter a username to block a User directly from that page, i.e. you no longer have to go to a user’s blog to block them. We are also still working on a couple other new features & improvements to address & mitigate trolling/harrassment on Pillowfort and will have those released ASAP.

Best,
Staff

Hi Pillowfolks. We’ve pushed a small update to the Site which includes updates to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.  Our developer team is still investigating the e-mail confirmation bug, notifications not loading for some users, and posts occasionally failing post creation previously reported during the 4/29 Site Update.

Site Improvements

  • Terms of Service Update - We’ve added a new clause to Pillowfort’s Terms of Service for our Bug Bounty Program. These changes go into effect immediately. Any questions regarding Pillowfort’s Terms of Service can be sent to [email protected].

  • Privacy Policy Update - To ensure Pillowfort and all of our users remain compliant with the EU’s GDPR policy we have also updated our cookie policy within our Privacy Policy. This update clarifies the types of cookies we use.  

Bug Fixes

  • Post Creation with Tagging Fails - Implemented a temporary fix for an issue where creating or editing a post with multiple tags caused creating/saving the post to take a long time or time out. Cataloguing post tags on creation or edit will now be delegated to an asynchronous process, so that the post creation/editing process will now be much faster. However, it may take several seconds or minutes for your post to show up in the results under the tags that you have entered. For example, if you were to create a post tagged “fish,” the tag will be displayed under your post immediately, but if you were to search the site for posts tagged “fish,” it may take some time for your post to appear in those results. We will continue to investigate why post tagging is slow so that we can implement a permanent fix as soon as possible.

  • Community Membership Bug - Fixed a bug membership information was showing incorrectly in Communities.

  • Post Creation Fixes  - Fixed a bug where post creation would fail when picture field is left blank on the “Picture” post type.  

Note: The known bugs & prospective feature post is currently out of date. We will be updating it as soon as possible. Thank you for your understanding.

image

Hi Pillowfolks! It’s time for a Pillowfort Community Update. It has been quite a while since we’ve done one of these. If this is your first time here: The Community Update is where we let you know what Staff have been doing behind the scenes, happenings within the community, and a preview of what’s in store for the platform.

Community Stats:

As of May 11 2021, Pillowfort currently has over 118,000 registered usersand8,600 Communities.

Welcome New Users!

Welcome to Pillowfort. We are so glad you are part of our community. If you haven’t yet, check out the Pillowfort101 Getting Started Guide.

Public Release Update

It’s so good to be back. We missed you so much. Please check out the 4/29 Site Update for a complete list of Security Revisions & Improvements.

Despite opening free public registrations in January, our team has decided not to re-open unlimited free registrations again for now. Instead, we will be introducing an automated rolling waitlist in the upcoming months. What this means is we will allow a certain number of new registrations per day and anyone who signs up for this waitlist will receive a free Pillowfort registration key when space is available. The ability to join via paid keys & user invitations will also still be available. This is simply a third option for people wanting to join that allows our site to grow in a more controlled manner.

By switching to an automated rolling waitlist we can allow the Pillowfort community to stay fresh and active while also ensuring our team can keep pace with the demands of maintaining & providing for our growing user base. Our developers also want to focus on optimizing our site during the remainder of the year. Further details are available in the Developer Update below. Finally, we want to take the time to rebuild trust with the Pillowfort Community that our platform is reliable. First impressions are important and we’re aware we let a lot of users down. Nonetheless, we are encouraged by the enthusiasm we’ve seen for the site’s return, and we appreciate everyone who still believes in us.

Developer Update

After a successful re-launch of our platform at the end of April, our team held a meeting to discuss our current developer pipeline and what we would like to complete by the end of the year.

In the interest of continuing to create a positive experience for both current and prospective users, we are going to continue to focus on the site’s long-term success by refining our existing features and making structural improvements to the site that will improve performance. Going forward, this means more of the updates pushed to the site will go towards the platform’s structural integrity and these changes might not be visible to front-end users, but we will be doing a lot of work behind the scenes to set the site up for long-term success. The good news is that when this work is finished, it will allow us to begin the initial preparations of exploring the possibility of a mobile application to be released in 2022.

The exploration of a possible mobile application does not replace our priority into making Pillowfort more mobile browser friendly. We’re not going to compromise out content policy for an app store.

In addition, we do still have some exciting things coming up for users to enjoy, such as the site-wide UI redesign which is nearing completion! Our goal is to have it live on Pillowfort sometime during this summer. The other features scheduled to be developed & released in the next few months include: improved blocking options, two-factor account authorization, multiple account linking, post queue & drafts, and organizational improvements to Communities.

Bug Bounty Update

We are still offering a Bug Bounty. If you find a bug on the site, particularly one that could pose a threat to the security or functionality of the site, contact Staff through our Contact form or directly at [email protected]. If you are unsure if we received your report, send us a DM to the Staff account here, or DM one of our social media channels to check on the status. 

Note: We sometimes do not receive all notifications from users on other social media.  DMing the Staff account on Pillowfort to check on the status is the preferred method. 

The first individual to notify us of a certain issue will be eligible for monetary compensation, depending on the severity of the issue found and the information provided.

We will be updating our Terms of Service within the next few days to add more formal details about our Bug Bounty program

Help Us Keep the Lights On!

At Pillowfort, we do not receive any funding from venture capital or other outside investors because we are committed to keeping our user experience a priority, and not being beholden to outside interests. Pillowfort has been entirely user funded since the beginning. Because users are no longer required to pay for a registration link, we are largely dependent on donations to help us pay the bills. If you would like to support us, you can make a one-time or recurring monthly payment to Pillowfort to help keep the lights onhere. Any money donated to us now will be applied as a credit to your account when we release paid features & benefits in the future.

Follow Us on Social Media

Interact with Pillowfort Staff, ask questions, plus learn about upcoming features and more on social media.

Coming Soon

Here is a look at the new features scheduled to be released sometime in 2021. The following list is not in any particular order.

  • Improved Blocking Options
  • Complete Site-Wide UI Redesign
  • Queue & Drafts
  • 2 Factor Authentication
  • Linked Account Management

A Special Thanks

Thank you for your support the last several months.  We express our gratitude every chance we get because this platform wouldn’t exist without your help. Pillowfort does not seek corporate investments, so it is entirely due to the generous financial support of our users that we were able to hire a consultant and keep paying our developers & fees while the site has been down. No amount of words written here can convey how wonderful of a feeling it is to return to working on developing a safe space for our entire community to share & create the content they want to create.

We’re going to do everything we can to rebuild trust with our community in the upcoming months with more transparency, more focus on improving Pillowfort’s current features, and improved communication with our user base. Stay tuned.

Best,
Pillowfort Staff

Are you unable to load notifications on Pillowfort? Our developers are collecting more reports to assist in their investigation.

If you are impacted by this bug please respond to the following thread: http://pillowfort.social/posts/2095747

Thank you.

pillowfort-social:

Pillowfort.social is back! We’ve missed you so much.

If you previously had an account you do not need to re-register. A full change log of site revisions is now available.

 http://pillowfort.social/posts/2048570

Pillowfort.social is back! We’ve missed you so much.

If you previously had an account you do not need to re-register. A full change log of site revisions is now available.

 http://pillowfort.social/posts/2048570

Pillowfort.social returns tomorrow (4/29)!

Users who previously registered before our shutdown in January will not have to re-register. Your login credentials remain the same.

A change log will be available on our PF Staff account when we are back with further details on what changes our developers made. See you soon!

Pillowfort returns April 29.Our team is excited to announce that our security assessment is completePillowfort returns April 29.Our team is excited to announce that our security assessment is complete

Pillowfort returns April 29.

Our team is excited to announce that our security assessment is completed and Pillowfort will be making its return on April 29, 2021. To control the anticipated amount of traffic on that day, we will not be opening free registrations again right away. Prospective users who wish to join Pillowfort on April 29 will be able to do so for free with a user-generated invitation code, or they can directly purchase a key for a one-time $5 registration fee. Once we are assured that site traffic is stable and no other issues arise, we will open free registrations again.

Nonetheless, we are anticipating the possibility of heavy traffic from users eagerly returning to our platform the day of our re-launch and the days after. This may result in some site slowness and intermittent downtime. We’ll keep everyone updated on our social media channels regarding site stability. Thank you for your patience and understanding. 

Your continued support during this challenging time left a positive impact on all of us here at Pillowfort. We appreciate our community deeply, and while words alone can not fully express our gratitude, our team will continue striving to create the best platform we can with our users in mind as a way of showing our commitment to you.

Our Customer Service team will still be processing refunds and account deletion requests. We offer refunds for up to 30 days after a transaction is made. Send an e-mail to [email protected] to begin the refund process (or contact us through our contact form). If you want to delete your account we will need your Pillowfort username and e-mail address. 

Users wishing for a text backup copy of all of your posts can also request one from our Customer Service. Please note that the backup file is not in XML format so it can not be easily imported into other websites. Posts containing images will directly link to the image file. You will need to download the images manually.


Post link

Good afternoon.

We’re happy to report that our security assessment has been completed and we are now just working to finish up a few final tasks to get the site ready to go back online. Our developer team is confident in our current trajectory of re-opening Pillowfort before the end of the month. We’ll make another announcement soon when we have a precise date for our re-opening.

Thank you so much for your continued patience and support while the site’s been down; it genuinely means a lot to us. See you soon!

Good news! Our Customer Service Team can now send you a text backup copy of all of your posts. Please note that the backup file is not in XML format so it can not be easily imported into other websites.  Posts containing images will directly link to the image file. You will need to download them manually.  

If you would like a copy of your content as backup, send us an e-mail at [email protected] or use our contact form. Include your Pillowfort username and e-mail address associated with the account with your inquiry in order for us to send the file containing your post data. 

Best,
Pillowfort Staff

Pillowfort will return in April.

On January 25th, Pillowfort launched free public registrations for the first time. Unfortunately, some security-related issues were brought to our attention, and our team ultimately decided it was in the best interest of our users to take Pillowfort offline to conduct a full investigation, as well as an overview of the whole site to make sure no further issues arise.

We have experienced some scheduling delays which unfortunately means we will not be able to meet our goal of re-opening the site by the end of March. However, we have finished the onboarding process to hire a security consultant to conduct an evaluation of the site, and this audit is set to begin within a week.  With that now in progress, we are aiming to re-launch Pillowfort sometime before the end of April 2021.

Meanwhile, our developers are using the downtime to complete a thorough assessment of Pillowfort and finish systemic improvements of our site’s security & permission checks from the top down to strengthen our platform in the long term, and to ensure such issues do not occur again.

In order to provide further detail over the events of January 25 we have published a new Q&A available on our Twitter and Tumblr.

Our Customer Service team is still processing refunds and account deletion requests while the site is down. We offer refunds for up to 30 days after a transaction is made. Send an e-mail to [email protected] to begin the refund process (or contact us through our contact form). If you want to delete your account we will need your Pillowfort username and e-mail address.

For those who have expressed an interest in supporting Pillowfort while the site is down, you can donate to our Venmo account here. We will only be using Venmo temporarily until Pillowfort is back online in full.

Signed,

Pillowfort Staff

Hi Pillowfolks! We have had a lot of questions regarding the current status of our product. In order to provide further transparency our team wanted to take a moment to answer some of the questions we have received since January 2021.

Is Pillowfort closing down for good? 

Absolutely not! Pillowfort is currently offline for a limited amount of time to conduct a thorough evaluation of our site security and implement improvements in order to make the platform more secure in the short and long-term. We hired a security consultant as of March 2021 to assist our team in conducting another security audit. Pillowfort will return as soon as the evaluation is completed and any remaining issues have been repaired. Our new trajectory for re-opening is April 2021. 

Why has Pillowfort been in beta for so long? 

Pillowfort launched in 2017. The first year and a half of its existence consisted of being a mostly single-developer project with valuable assistance from volunteers. Despite passionate work being put in by the developers, the site’s development was slow due to the small team & lack of resources. It wasn’t until a successful Kickstarter in August 2018 that we were able to contract a handful of part-time developers. As of March 2021 our team is still relatively small (7 part-time contractors total). The majority of our developers contribute to Pillowfort in between their own separate jobs & attending to life’s other demands. 

Pillowfort will remain in beta until our team determines it has reached a point of continued sustainability and development.

Pillowfort was offline for security reasons back in 2018 and it is back offline again in 2021. Why have security issues occurred again? 

In late 2018, during a time when Pillowfort garnered a lot of interest in a short amount of time, a security issue was brought to our attention. At the time we made the decision to bring Pillowfort offline to conduct a security audit and to look for additional issues our developer team may have been unaware of. The investigation revealed the initial issue in 2018 was not a severe issue compromising the site’s integrity, and some other vulnerabilities were discovered and patched.  Once the audit was completed, our team thoroughly believed the site to be safe from such issues going forward.

During January 2021 new issues, including ones that either were not present in 2018 or were not captured by the 2018 security audit, were reported. In the best interest of our users we decided the best course of action would be to complete another site audit and to restructure certain parts of Pillowfort’s coding, as well as our development process itself, so such issues will not arise again.

While completing this process is lengthy & inconvenient to our current user base due in part to limited resources & staffing, we are confident the end result of our new audit & site restructure benefit’s Pillowfort’s long-term longevity. Doing so will mean that Pillowfort will be much more secure going forward and that we will be better equipped to prevent such issues from occurring again, as well as better able to detect issues before they are released.

What is Pillowfort doing with all of the money it’s fundraised so far, and why is Pillowfort continuously asking for money? 

It takes a significantamount of money to support a website as it grows, especially when it comes to compensating our contractors. While Pillowfort has brought in enough funding through user payments & donations to continue thus far, it is still not enough to pay for even one full-time salaried web developer. All of our staff and developers are part-time due to this. This is why our development is taking longer compared to a social media site with Venture Capital investments behind it. Pillowfort has intentionally chosen not to pursue VC investors because it would put enormous pressure on us to turn the site into a money-making product without regard to user experience or the original intent of the site. Relying solely on our own user’s contributions allows us to stay true to the site’s original mission and develop it according to our own priorities, but it means the size and capabilities of our team is not comparable to that of VC-backed social media enterprises.

Hi Pillowfolks!

We hope you have been staying safe and warm. We are happy to announce our team is aiming to re-launch Pillowfort sometime before the end of March 2021. Once we have a solid date we will make another announcement with further details. 

We are taking this time to do a thorough evaluation of the site and make improvements to the site’s security and permission checks from the top down. In spite of only a handful of issues being brought to our attention during our public launch last month, our developers want to conduct a thorough assessment of the entire site and develop a more in-depth suite of testing procedures. While it would not take long for our developers to fix the current known issues themselves, using the downtime to do systematic improvements will strengthen our platform in the long term and help prevent such issues from occurring again.

Our Customer Service team is still processing refunds and account deletion requests while the site is down. We offer refunds for up to 30 days after a transaction is made. Send an e-mail to [email protected] to begin the refund process. If you want to delete your account we will need your Pillowfort username and e-mail address. 

For those who have expressed an interest in supporting Pillowfort while the site is down, you can donate to our Venmo account here.(Note: We will only be using Venmo temporarily until Pillowfort is back online in full.)

Thank you so much for your continued patience. We understand the frustration of Pillowfort being offline for this amount of time. This has been a very challenging time for everyone. Our team truly believes everything our developers are doing will make Pillowfort much stronger going forward and will be worth it in the long run. 

Signed, 

Pillowfort Staff

Hi Pillowfolx!

Did you know yesterday (4/22) was Earth Day? Earth Day is an annual event that began in 1970 to show support for the environment. More than 193 countries recognize Earth Day.

Many of our Pillowfort Staff members, including our founder Julia, are very personally concerned about the climate crisis, and we want to take this opportunity to bring awareness to our community about this issue and encourage you to get involved in the cause. We want to stress that although we are a social media platform (not an advocacy organization), we feel morally obligated to use our platform to try to make change on something that affects literally all of us.

TheUnited Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released a new report on the climate crisis impacting our world as we know it. Earlier IPCC research pointed out there would be more frequent extreme weather, increased wildfires, and mass extinctions if we did not act on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions are the highest they have ever been, as stated in the report. (source)

This sounds frightening, we know, but the point of this post is not to bring anxiety to our community. The good news here is that hope is not lost. Progress is being made: the IPCC report found 18 countries have been able to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions within the last decade. This progress can and will continue if as many of us as possible work together to help save our planet for future generations. This is an issue much larger than us as individuals, but we can tackle it as a united populace. So, we want to highlight a few organizations we have found that are working toward fighting the climate crisis and wanted to share them with you.

350.org- 350.org is an organization founded in 2008 that is building a grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis. It is a planet-wide collaboration of organizers, community groups and regular people fighting for a fossil free future.

Citizensclimatelobby.org - Citizens Climate Lobby is an nonprofit, nonpartisan, grassroots advocacy climate change organization focused on national policies to address the climate movement.

Drawdown.org - Project Drawdown® is a nonprofit organization founded in 2014 that seeks to help the planet reach “drawdown”—the future point in time when levels of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere stop climbing and begin to steadily decline.

Onetreeplanted.org - One Tree Planted is a nonprofit organization focused on global reforestation. They plant one tree for every one dollar donated.

Finally, if you are a US resident, you can use this directory to find your local & federal representatives to let them know that you care about climate change and want them to pass legislation to address it.

Since we are only novices at climate advocacy, we would love to hear from our community about what else we can promote or do ourselves to improve our contributions to climate activism. Feel free to leave comments in this comment section below pointing us to other resources and organizations that our users may want to look into. We would also love to get in touch with experienced climate advocates who may be willing to consult with us about how we can leverage Pillowfort to bolster this cause. If you are an experienced climate advocate and would like speak to our staff please reach out to us at [email protected].

Thank you,
Staff

February 2022 Community Update

Hi Pillowfolks! It’s time for a Pillowfort Community Update. If this is your first time here: The Community Update is where we let you know what Staff have been doing behind the scenes, happenings within the community, and a preview of what’s in store for the platform.

Community Stats:

As of February 2022, Pillowfort currently has over 123,900 registered users and 8,700 Communities.

Since September 2021 we have…

  • Upgraded numerous frameworks & libraries that Pillowfort software is built on to ensure the site’s ongoing stability & security.
  • Added the ability for concealed users to reblog their own posts.
  • Began the initial testing phase of our site-wide UI redesign.
  • Created and added new profile badges and a profile frame to Pillowfort. Click here for details
  • Built more of our upcoming premium features suite.

Welcome New Users!

Welcome to Pillowfort. We are so glad you are part of our community. If you haven’t yet, check out the Pillowfort101 Getting Started Guide.

5 Year Anniversary Video

We are putting the final touches to our upcoming 5 Year Anniversary video which will include a special Q&A segment by our Founder & Lead Architect Julia Baritz. We’ll make an announcement when the video debuts.

Now Hiring: Experienced QA Tester!

With the UI redesign nearing completion, we are looking for a QA tester to join the team to help us do QA testing on it. If interested, you can also join the team on an ongoing basis. This will be a fully remote, part-time contractor position.

We are looking for applicants who have at least some professional QA experience. Pay will start at an hourly rate of $25, but can be negotiated upwards based on your past rates and experience. Please email us at info[at]@pillowfort.social with your resume and any other details you’d like to provide if you are interested! Feel free to ask us any questions you may have.

Public Release Update

We want to remind users our team has decided not to re-open unlimited free registrations again for now. Instead, we will be introducing an automated rolling waitlist during 2022. What this means is we will allow a certain number of free registrations per day, and anyone who signs up for this waitlist will receive a free Pillowfort registration key when space is available. The ability to join via paid keys & user invitations will also still be available. This will simply be a third option for people wanting to join that allows our site to grow in a more controlled manner.

By switching to an automated rolling waitlist we can allow the Pillowfort community to stay fresh and active while also ensuring our team can keep pace with the demands of maintaining & providing for our growing user base.

Help Us Keep the Lights On!

At Pillowfort we do not receive any funding from venture capital or other outside investors because we are committed to keeping our user experience a priority, and not being beholden to outside interests.

While we are given more freedom to retain our ideals and content guidelines our team is met with many challenges, such as limited resources, because we do not receive investor funding. As of this writing we have received a fraction of the cost of our current expenses.

Our survival depends on the generosity of our community until we can implement a long-term business plan such as our premium features suite.

Please consider supporting us with a one-time or recurring monthly payment to help keep Pillowfort online. Any money donated to us now will be applied as a credit to your account when we release paid features & benefits in the future.

Bug Bounty Update

We are still offering a Bug Bounty. If you find a bug on the site, particularly one that could pose a threat to the security or functionality of the site, contact Staff through our Contact form or directly at info[at]pillowfort.social. If you are unsure if we received your report, send us a DM to the Staff account here, or DM one of our social media channels to check on the status.

Note: We sometimes do not receive all notifications from users on other social media. DMing the Staff account on Pillowfort to check on the status is the preferred method.

The first individual to notify us of a certain issue will be eligible for monetary compensation, depending on the severity of the issue found and the information provided.

Coming Soon

Here is a look at the new features scheduled to be released sometime in 2022. The following list is not in any particular order.

  • Complete Site-Wide UI Redesign.
  • Various Improvements to Communities.
  • Better functionality for uploading & arranging pictures in posts.
  • Premium Features Suite.
  • Post Queue & Drafts.
  • Two-Factor Authentication.
  • Improved Blocking Feature.
  • Multiple Account Management System.

Follow Us on Social Media

Interact with Pillowfort Staff, ask questions, plus learn about upcoming features and more on social media.

Pillowfort:Staff
Facebook:Pillowfortsocial
Twitter:@pillowfort_soc
Tumblr:pillowfort-social

A Special Thanks

We want to take a moment to thank you for your continued patience, encouragement, and support. Our team is all hands on deck to get the site-wide UI redesign ready for our user base. We are so close to completing it. We hope you will love our makeover as much as we do.

Our team is eternally grateful for all of our users, both old and new, who have made Pillowfort their home. Stay tuned for new features and improvements coming down the pipeline in 2022.

Best,

Pillowfort Staff

loading