2025
Originally posted in Discord on 2026-01-12
TL;DR:
No TL;DR this time. No shiny updates either — just reflections on 2025 and a look into 2026.
Hey @everyone.
I don’t even know where to start. I’d love to open this with something victorious — how great everything is, what an amazing year it was. But I won’t lie. This year wasn’t easy. There were more problems than expected, and fewer achievements than I wanted. Life isn’t smooth, never was — but I’m still here, and I’m not giving up.
I’ll split this into a few messages — not because it’s convenient, but because there’s a lot to say, and none of it fits into a short update.
One man army
Some of you know this, some probably don’t: right now the entire project is run by one person — me. That has two consequences. First, a massive amount of my time goes into pure administration: digging through Google Analytics, reading every single “contact us” message, monitoring systems, chasing anomalies, fixing things before they explode. The list is long. Because of that, I often don’t have as much time as I’d like for “nice” things — shiny new features you can directly see and touch.
At the same time, there’s a huge amount of work happening behind the scenes. Things you don’t notice, don’t feel, and probably never will — but without them the platform simply wouldn’t work or wouldn’t be stable.
There is one major upside to developing everything alone: the entire project context lives in one head. That gives me a full-picture view of the platform, and it’s exactly what allows me to use AI effectively to speed up development without turning everything into a mess.
AI
We’ve entered a new era, gentlemen — and honestly, it’s beautiful. The world is changing fast, and in my opinion mostly for the better. AI dramatically accelerates development, eats routine tasks, and acts as an insanely usable knowledge base.
There are more and more AI creators now, and — subjectively speaking — the amount of genuinely good-looking content has exploded. At this point, over 50% of all images on the site are AI-generated. You’ve probably noticed that I’ve also started generating images for news posts.
To be honest, I always wanted to learn how to draw. Zero talent. Completely hopeless. But AI gives me this strange feeling that I might still become some kind of AI-artist — not for money, just for fun, for myself. So if you have experience with this and feel like sharing knowledge, feel free to DM me. I’m sure we can find a way to collaborate.
Tightening freedoms
Ah yes. The bright future.
For many years now we’ve been confidently marching into the age of total “de-liberalization”. Freedom of speech has been dead for a long time — we’re just slowly tightening the screws on everything else. Governments are squeezing control wherever they can, and recently I was forced to join this circus myself by blocking access from the UK. This wasn’t a choice, it was a requirement — comply or get crushed.
And let’s be honest: this won’t stop here. The list of blocked regions will only grow, year after year, law after law.
The platform is becoming more closed. More logins, more confirmations, more “Terms of Service” no one reads but everyone must accept. Step by step, brick by brick, we’re calmly constructing Orwell’s wet dream — a clean, regulated, sanitized digital cage. Welcome in. Please enjoy your freedom, and don’t forget to tick the box.
Uploads
I read all your suggestions. I really do. I try to add almost everything you ask for — except one thing.
Right now, around 80% of all requests are about enabling content uploads. I’ll be direct: this is not happening within the next year. There are many reasons for that, and I want to be transparent about why this feature is not trivial:
- Uploads existed on rule34.xyz in the past, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that around 90% of user uploads were either low-effort trash or straight-up prohibited content.
- A proper upload system requires a serious moderation pipeline, with role-based access, trusted moderators, and some form of consensus instead of single-person decisions.
- There must be a rollback mechanism in case a malicious or incompetent moderator starts doing stupid things.
- Duplicate detection is mandatory — either to prevent re-uploading existing content or to allow replacing it with a higher-quality source.
- You need a full post editing system with tags, sources, links, and proper versioning.
- And if you’re doing it right, that also means tag editing, tag creation, and alias management.
As you can see, this is not a “small feature” and not something that can be hacked together in a weekend. I’m not saying uploads will never happen — but it’s definitely not a 2026 problem.
2026
Global plans.
Each of my sites currently has two frontends built with different frameworks: Angular and Blazor. Same backend, same server — different UI. From the outside it looks simple. Internally it’s not.
Without diving into boring technical details: I’m planning to move away from Blazor entirely. 2026 is the year of a massive web-side refactor. Visually, you probably won’t notice much — and that’s intentional. This work is needed to unify the web layer across multiple sites so they inherit the same features, and to clean up internal tools like the admin panel and post processor.
If I pull this off, it opens a very interesting door: a TikTok-style post viewing mode. For the main sites it would be an optional mode. For sites migrating from Blazor to Angular, it would become the default — with the old mode still available.
That’s the main goal for 2026. Everything else will come along the way.
My prediction for 2026
just my opinion, not claiming truth or objectivity
We’re standing on the edge of a major financial crisis and a new large-scale war. A serious economic downturn is coming. Everyone will feel it — regular people will get poorer, and projects like mine are no exception.
During crises, companies cut costs first. Advertising budgets don’t disappear — they get brutally slashed. And sites like mine depend on advertising more than people realize. It’s essentially the only sustainable source of income that keeps everything running.
I’m not panicking. I’m ready. Every crisis opens a window of opportunity. A crisis is like a forest fire: it burns everything old and rotten, and gives space for new growth.
Still… I won’t lie. It hurts to watch hard times approach.