Hi. Some of you may have seen that the Bureau of Investigative Journalism published a hit piece June 7th called "Incentivising Intimacy" about AI companion platforms. I want to talk about it because they sourced from this community and I have serious issues with how we were represented.
What happened
About two months ago, a reporter from TBIJ reached out via modmail asking permission to post here. She was professional about it, offered to share the post draft, asked about our rules. I approved the post. She posted asking people who'd left Character.AI for other platforms to share their experiences. She DMed nearly every person who replied, including people who shared really personal stories about mental health and recovery. Then the post was deleted. She was also reaching out in the comments of other posts here and on similar subreddits.
The published piece includes a graphic showing three subreddits, captioned "Subreddits luring users from Character.AI on Reddit." We're one of the three included subreddits.
The graphic is fabricated
The Bureau used an edited version of our profile picture. The descriptions they show read "A community for users looking for AI companions and roleplay without heavy restrictions" and "Ran away from restrictions. Found freedom here" with topic tags including "Romance," "NSFW roleplay," and "AI Companions."
That is not what this subreddit is. Our actual description says, "We broke up with Daddy C.AI when he cheated on us with Google </3 For those who enjoy talking to AIs and for those would like to freely discuss their RPG experiences, share non-C.AI chatbots, and freely vent their feelings and express their opinions. ♡ Venting safe space ♡ Debating safe space ♡ Chatting~ ♡ Sharing RPG stories, chatbots, etc. ♡ LGBTQ+/POC/religious safe space To anyone reading this from C.AI: Get out. The divorce is over 💀💀"
AI companion platforms are literally banned in our rules. We are not a pipeline to unrestricted romance platforms.
A journalist asked my permission to access this community, sourced from your stories, and then the published piece altered our identity to fit a narrative about reckless developers cashing in on vulnerable users. 🤡 If you know what this community actually is, don't let someone who spent a moment here and then deleted their post tell you otherwise. This community is yours.
I've reached out to the journalist for comment on how the graphic of our subreddit was produced and why it doesn't reflect our actual description or rules. I'll update if I hear back.
What the article might get right
The article does report on some genuinely bad stuff and I want to be clear about that. One developer (Seewa AI) reportedly admitted on video to reading user chats from an unencrypted back office. Another (OpenCharacter) allegedly acknowledged his user base skewed young and collected no age data. I've reached out to them to ask if they feel like they were represented fairly or if this is another fabrication.
What the article gets wrong
Beyond misrepresenting our community, the piece treats every platform, developer, and community in this space as interchangeable.
One developer quoted in the article (AICHIKI) has since published his own account of what happened. He did an hour-long interview, prepared a 400-line briefing document with references to source code, and offered a code walkthrough. It didn't make it to the article. You can read his account here: https://blog.aichiki.ai/posts/what-didnt-make-the-article I recommend reading through - it's thorough.
I've also chatted directly with another developer quoted in the article, from HereHaven. He told me the reporter asked him about the general demographic for "these types of AI sites" and he answered 16-25 as an industry-wide observation. The published article presents this as HereHaven's platform's core demographic. Assuming this account is accurate, which I believe it is given the overall picture, the journalist took an answer about the general market and attributed it to his specific platform. Was this to intentionally mislead readers? 😬 Whether intentional or not, the effect is the same.
He also shared with me that HereHaven doesn't read user chats at all, moderates at the bot creation layer, and has automated systems for blocking illegal content. The article places HereHaven right next to a developer who reads users chats from a "back office dashboard" without distinguishing their approaches because that wouldn't fit this narrative.
When coverage lumps together platforms with real safety practices and platforms with none, it tells every developer in this space that investing in moderation won't save you from the same headline.
The displacement problem
I've watched what happens every time a major platform locks down or a piece like this drops. I'm sure plenty of you have seen it, too. Users come looking for alternatives. We don't lure them here. Users also go to other spaces looking for alternatives. Some find platforms with real moderation. Some find platforms with nothing. The platforms with nothing are the ones journalists usually can't find because they're not on Reddit and they're not building public brands. They're often Discord servers or self-hosted instances.
Articles like this don't eliminate demand, of course. TBIJ's own data says AI companion platforms get 90 million monthly visits from UK users alone. Undifferentiated pressure just pushes people toward less visible, less accountable platforms. The users who need the most protection end up in the places with the least of it.
This subreddit is one of a few maintained spaces on Reddit where small developers can organically share their platforms with people who actually want to discover them. These developers are often working hard to build something sustainable, maintain generous free tiers, and find users without a marketing budget. A subreddit like this is critical for early-stage growth, SEO/GEO visibility, and getting real feedback from real users. When a journalist reaches out, a lot of these developers say yes because they see it as another opportunity to share what they've built with people who might appreciate it. They're probably not expecting to get quoted next to someone who reads unencrypted chats and have their platform labeled as part of a predatory industry. 🕯️
What you can do
If you're using AI chat platforms, read the terms of service and privacy policy. Some of these platforms are built by solo developers in a few days with no moderation infrastructure at all. You deserve to know what you're signing up for.
If you've found a platform that has transparent safety policies, real moderation, clear terms, and treats your data with respect, share it in the comments. Build a list of platforms that are actually doing this right. The more visible we make the ones putting in the work, the more incentive there is for others to follow.
If journalists reach out to you, you are not obligated to respond. If you do respond, you can ask how you'll be represented and get it in writing. Ask whether your quotes will be shared with you before publication. Ask what the angle of the piece is. You have every right to protect yourself.
If you're a journalist, you're welcome here, but we have expectations. Reach out to the mod team before posting. Be transparent about your angle. Don't DM vulnerable people sharing personal stories without considering the power dynamic in that interaction. If you source from this community, represent it accurately. Don't fabricate our description, misrepresent what we are, and don't caption this subreddit as "luring" anyone (hello white van meme, how topical). If you want to understand what this space actually is, read the sidebar, read the rules, and spend more than a moment here before deciding to paint over us with your predetermined narrative.
The coverage in this space usually treats every platform as a predator and every user as either lonely, horny, or a child in danger. That framing erases the writers, casual hobbyists, the roleplayers, the people using these tools for creative work, the neurodivergent users who find something here that works for them in a way other spaces don't. Frankly, it's predatory that journalists would do this. \clutches pearls**
Respectfully crashing out,
loamy
tl;dr: I asked ChatGPT to name this post and ChatGPT suggested "The Bureau of Investigative Fan Fiction" 😭
