Who told you that crap?
The disappearance of the Vivastreet profiles was simply due to tech issues with the database. It's happened twice in the last few weeks and each time the problem was sorted within 24 hours. At the moment its showing 14,762 UK escorting profiles - which is about right.
No cull. No new regulations.
What it looked like was that the profiles were still all there in the database, but weren't indexed properly so searches couldn't find them.
All back again now. However there are a few niggling changes over the search function, most notably that the "ethnicity" field doesn't work properly now, nor does the free text search. Makes trying to identify (for instance) all asians in an area problematic.
Adultwork introduced new rules regarding face photos and identification a couple of months back, but had to reverse the decision when girls started leaving the site. There were a few culled before the decision was reversed
But this thread is about Vivastreet, not Adultwork
Not crap at all
One of the things they do now that they didn't do before is that they run all pics added thru a photo checker system and if a pic comes up as being used anywhere previously the pic is rejected and if the pic was the first one loaded that was intended as the main pic the profile is rejected and the account cancelled and their cust services wont even discuss it just reading out the same condescending script every time apparently.
And they now only accept payment from a card in the same name as that given when the profile was created which isn't necessarily a problem going forward but it certainly resulted in a good number of profiles disappearing while the girls made new arrangements and it certainly caused a lot problems for the foreign pimps who had been placing his girls adverts and using his card to pay for them.
This has obviously also had an effect on anyone who was running more than one profile as you can only use a name once meaning you would have to have a card in each name that you were using which simply isn't possible. There is a way round the payment issue but it is apparently a right pain in the arse compared with just getting your card out and paying.
Not major things I agree and going forward now that people know about it probably wont be a problem but it certainly had an impact on the number of profiles being displayed in the couple of weeks after they introduced it.
And while we're on about changes there have apparently been a lot of changes to the AW payment system and the companies that process the payments for them and in addition it appears they may well now be based in Jersey the nearest to the UK that they have ever been based leading to rumours that the whole set up may actually have been sold.
