is an trying to kill spacehey??

honestly, this has been on my mind for a hot minute. every update to the site seems to just hinder it further, and nothing users actually ask to be done ever seems to be done. there have even been instances of users publicly talking about development issues with the site, and yet nothing gets done about them.

for starters, there was An's post about the UK Online Safety Act. while i agree with his decision to bar the site from the UK and other regions with similar laws in place, the reason is that he hasnt yet come up with a way to verify users' ages without infringing on privacy. ive seen a handful of people in the top blogs mention FriendRewind, so i want to point out these two rules:

if An wanted to keep SpaceHey open for all regions, he could have implemented this feature as well. i cant say for certain why he didnt, but it would not shock me if it were to make it easier to let the site go.

second, there's the recent updates to the site. An setting the site to be invite or waitlist only during a point at which discourse involving other websites (napo) was taking place only made the issues with people spamming advertisements and agruments to the top blogs worse, since nobody would want to invite a friend to a site while every post is another argument in the comments. 

third, theres the lack of resolve for development issues on the site. the only issue that was fixed was the reports having been down for a week, and even then it was fixed after a user brought awareness to it. people's PFPs have been gone for a while in most regions*, the layouts are still gone, and by now An is entirely aware of the fact that users have been exploiting the spam-click exploit. he has not fixed three out of four of these issues. 

lastly, there's the new moderation system. may i remind you it has been over two months since we were told about it, and he still hasnt actually shared any information about it. im going to lead by example and give as much transparency as i can: if you get enough people to report someone for violating the guidelines, they get banned. that's what "community based moderation" means as of now. all someone needs to do to get another person banned is go through their content (which is still possible if the account is private by the way), find something that qualifies as a guideline violation, and tell people to spam reports to that person. better yet, they can do the same thing i did to bigots and bullies back on tiktok: bait them in the comments to say something out of line, and report them as soon as they get the reaction they want. THAT is why Vela was banned: a comment that (as funny as it was) was less-than okay in terms of SpaceHey's rules in response to racism against him.

In Conclusion?
An probably wants this site to die out. he's barring it off in every region that passes the Kid's Online Surveillance Safety Act when there's already an alternative that doesnt violate users' privacy, he hasnt brought back layouts or pfps* despite the majority of users begging for them, new users can only join through a friends' link if they want to fast-pass it, and the current moderation system will just lead to everyone eating each other alive. i have many mixed feelings about this site, but if my theory is true, then ill hate to see it go out by the hands of the man who built it.

*note that users in certain regions are able to see people's profile pictures, however this has not been the case for the vast majority of users as profile pictures are still gone on their end. on top of this, profile pictures are still visible through links to users' posts or accounts sent to other platforms, but not visible on the site in most regions.