Where did all the 257,000 FDS members go?

It's probably because of how things changed between reddit and this site, and the amount of users who were making "quality" posts on fds.

Fds as a whole was a strategy sharing community, you share you wisdom with others and hopefully get something back as well, you have a lot of newbies as well who couldn't share much or even anything, and you have a group which didn't really have a place to exist out there so they chose fds as the closest thing to a community they can have. The first group held the community together, they were the source of most wisdom, and whatever they're providing became a staple to the community.

Problem is whatever they were teaching is difficult to learn for newbies, it takes a long while for change to happen, also don't forget the fact that what the group is about is decentering men from your life, which makes the women here date less, leading to less insights to share (not to mention how worst dating has become lately contributing to less dating as well).

So if the holders of the community, the wisdom sharers, are not getting anything out of it, or even being harassed for trying to help, they're going to get pushed away, and slowly what remains is the newbies, which can't really share much as they're yet to have the experience, and the other group, which muddies the water of what the community is about.

This switch was obvious as the amount of strategy content dwindled over time as the wisdom sharers became less and less (also not to mention quality content takes effort which takes time), newbies in turn posted more questions, and the somewhat outsider posted irrelevant content.

This made the community that was already established feel different, new members were asking questions already discussed, which made it tedious for any remaining strategy sharers to answer, and provided no additional value to any member here even the newbies (because a lot of them already learned that).

The odd group interest was to share gossip, depressing content, or some random scrotes to complain about, this content is toxic as it worsens your mode and makes you depressed about how shitty the world is.

I haven't even mentioned the flaws of this site, like not being able to block certain members, having no way of filtering content, being buggy and difficult to use, etc etc

Lastly for me personally, the site was feeling a lot more hostile as time went on, on the original fds the vibe was that we were rightfully angry at the world, but we're not giving in and will make it work for us and be happy. Here the vibe was turning towards anger and hostility, even from "wisdom sharers" who I think is getting affected by the vibe of the site.

If we wanted to keep fds going we have to make central to the those who can help, and make it welcoming to those who want to learn but with boundaries, the platform has to enable users to be comfortable using it as well, especially since not everyone is tech savvy. Reddit as a platform has been perfect for that, not to mention how traumatized women on reddit would flock to fds for refuge, which helped it grow immensely, it was easy to rely on that to grow/keep the community rather than having to advertise it, which proves to be really difficult seeing the "controversial" nature of the content, and algorithms all around social media pushing propaganda and giving less visibility to this type of content.

Sorry for writing a novel, but I find the issue to be inevitable the moment fds moved from reddit, even though I totally sympathize with the moderators, their might've been better options than suddenly making a move unannounced, especially on a public forum, frankly speaking it felt like the moderators thought they "owned" fds, rather than it being a community enabled by its userbase to exist, had I been a constant contributer to fds I would've felt disrespected to have the rug pulled from under me without being consulted.

Lastly I want to make a quick point, the whole idea behind fds is to be a full person capable of sustaining yourself, this means whatever relationship or place you're adds to your life but ultimately you don't need it, you can remove it at any time, this applies to fds as well, if members needed this place then it goes against it's own message, and as we seen members have been welling to pull away if the place isn't providing value, the way events have folded showcases the message behind the community, it also highlights the fetal mistakes of us who "needed" fds, I'm totally talking about myself here tho lol.

FDS moved over here and none of the original members know how to find this place. The only thing on the reddit is links to paid content.

Ever since we went off reddit it went downhill. At least on reddit posts had to be approved, Reddit is better to use, more users, Ive said it many times before to save the ship from sinking further make a new sub on reddit make it private, do a voice video chat to prove the joiners are women. Or make a FDS discord.

And Ovarit is just male space in disguise, they defend men all the time and you can't even call a man ina dress a transvestite there.

There's a site called Ovarit that's similar and a subreddit called r/fourthwavewomen.

If FDS had stayed on Reddit, I think it would've grown much more since, for some reason, women who think alike don't unite to make a site off of Reddit yet complain about Reddit, but never take action.

This site and Ovarit are the closest I have seen that women have made on the internet that's women only.

All other sites or social medias made for women are usually run by men.

Are the mods for this site even active? I've been trying to get verified for over a year now and I haven't heard anything

we should have just stayed on reddit like idc at this point what anyone says about that, women need this more now than ever, this website has went to shit and half the women who were on reddit dont even know about this website. mods arent even active on here either, they've just seem to up and left. so yeah...we should have all just stayed on reddit.

I used to post a lot on the reddit. Because of the move, I felt the need to “diversify” to other subs for advice (on health, finance, etc). I would ask simple questions then get the most miserable, dismissive and sexist responses (why do they bother commenting when they have nothing nice or helpful to say?!). I only participated in the FDS subreddit so I had no idea how toxic and LV other subs could be. I’d get downvoted for the most stupid and irrelevant reasons. So I quit reddit entirely. I miss the many FDS-ers that I could reach out to for life guidance, big sister advice, etc… But at the same time it forces me to try and work things out on my own, trusting that the knowledge I gained from FDS is enough to point me in the right direction.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the FDS content that’s already existing, is already a wealth of knowledge we can work from. It’s not all doom and gloom that FDS isn’t as active as it once was.

i’m also curious about this as well. i thought having a separate FDS site would mean the quality of the content would be better since the users are more committed to embracing an FDS lifestyle, but anecdotally i think the content is the same quality or maybe a bit worse than reddit?

if the issue is discoverability, there are ways we could fix this. like setting up a bot to x-post the forum posts to the FDS reddit and restricting the comments so users would need to come to the website to engage.

if the issue is the convenience of the reddit app, there are ways around this too. my phone is setup so that FDS is a standalone app and it goes straight to the forum front page. imo this works better for me than reddit since FDS was the only subreddit i was interested in seeing anyway.

"It's just so sad to see that this site only has one post per day, and I can't find any other like-minded communities anymore."

I agree with your observations and don't have any explanations, but I'm here to say I'm not sure why FDS had to leave Reddit in the first place.

Think of the amount of those people who were just there temporarily venting because of xyz their ex/family/coworkers did, and hoping to find validation.