The Index of Safe Spaces?

I’ve been sitting in the middle of a tension that everyone in our communities feels but few want to name.
We’re told “the rules keep us safe.”
But anyone who’s been around long enough knows that rules on a page don’t stop harm.

What matters is enforcement, accountability, and intention.
And right now most of the platforms we use are failing us.

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What I Built

I’ve created something I’m calling the Safe Digital Engagement & Harm Reduction Index (SDEHRI).
That’s the research backbone: methodical, detailed, weighted, rigorous.

But for the rest of us there’s a simpler name: the Safe Digital Community Engagement Score (SDCES).
That’s the public-facing grade that tells you at a glance whether a site is actually safe to use.

A = Safe and Reliable
B = Safer but Still Developing
C = Needs Significant Improvement
D = Unsafe or High Risk
F = Actively Harmful or Unreliable

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What It Measures

Every platform is scored across eleven categories like:

• Access and Membership: Are you forced to expose your birthdate? Are role and orientation options inclusive?

• Consent and Messaging: Can you report unwanted kink messages or only if you’re the direct target?

• Privacy and Safety: Can people download your photos without consent? Does the site expose your location?

• Moderation and Enforcement: Are rules enforced consistently or only when convenient?

• Sex Work and Monetization: Are sex workers criminalized, erased, or supported?

And here’s the key.
We don’t just check if a rule exists. We ask:

• Is it clearly defined?

• Does it explain what counts and what doesn’t?

• Does it name consent boundaries?

• Are edge cases like racial fetish terms or roleplay addressed?

That’s what makes this different.

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What the Scores Tell Us

This isn’t theory.
I’ve already run the Index against some of the biggest platforms you use every day:

Facebook → 85.6% (B+)
FetLife → 63.7% (D)
Twitter/X → 57.4% (F)

On paper, FetLife looks like it has rules.
In practice, those rules don’t protect us. They protect the platform.

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Why I’m Doing This

I love this community.
But love without protection isn’t care.
And visibility without accountability is just performance.

This Index is my way of pulling the mask off platforms that profit from us without protecting us.
It shows what safety really looks like in practice.

Stay tuned. The first deep-dive breakdown is coming soon.

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Capt. Chaos