One of the most voted for sites on our personals alternatives tool is doublelist.com, this post is my review of how well it compares to personals.
Here are the main features of doublelist:
- Allows images
- Classified ads format
- Free to post
- Requires phone verification
- Separate sections for M4M, F4M, M4F, etc
- Education section
- Sex Work Prohibited
After you've verified your phone number and email you'll get access to the main area of doublelist. From here you can browse the different ad sections. This is an improvement of craigslist personals in my opinion, there are more subcategories and it makes it easier to find what you are really looking for. They are also adding sections on sex education, which has the potential to be really cool I think (it's still not released yet).
Posting Your First Ad On DoubleList
Posting your ad is easy enough, just click on the top right hand corner and click "new post". From here you are taken to a screen where you can write the title and content of your add.
Post Filters
Here's another way DoubleList is different than other sites. You can't use any vulgar language in the title of your post. If you do it will give you a warning message that says you need to change it. This blocks any obscene words and is their attempt to make the ads more friendly to scan through. In my opinion, it makes it less fun than personals.
In the example below, the filters prevented me from posting an ad that had the word "suck"
To get around this, I changed "looking to suck you" to "looking to put my lips around your phallus". This got me approved! The solution is just to get more sophisticated with your headlines and use lots of big scientific terms for genitals. This may make titles less sexy than they could be, but it's kind of fun to think outside the box.
This ad passed the obscenity filters:
And we are in! Next you need to fill in the info of your location, age, and what mood you are in. I usually choose "Netflix & Chill", but there is also the option to "just do it" if you want to skip the soft stuff.
And finally you can choose to ad a photo to your post. Like with the title they are very strict, with doublelist you can't get away with dick pics like you could in craigslist personals. If you choose to not upload a photo you will get a warning message that says you are 4x more likely to get a response if you include a picture of some kind.
After you submit your post you'll also have to go to your email to confirm it.
Sex Work and Doublelist
If you are a sex worker looking for a place to post ads, then doublelist might not be the best place. They are a very strict website with lots of active moderators checking posts to makes sure they follow their guidelines, it is also easy for anyone to report posts which means they get taken down extra fast.
In their guidelines they mention that the following are not allowed:
- Underage ads
- Escorts
- Massage Services
- Hardcore BDSM stuff
Here is a quote about their terms on sex work.
"There is a STRICT policy of no advertisement and no transactions. This does not just mean DIRECTLY asking for money in your ad. Any 'alluding to', using code words, attempting to sell later, or trying to trick the system will get you banned quickly from this site. This is not the place for sex work, escorting, or getting paid for your personal time. "
So if you are looking to post ads you are better off trying a website like switter.at which is designed for sex workers, by sex workers.
The reason they are so strict is because of the FOSTA SESTA law. If doublelist is not strict in this area they risk going to jail and being taken down like what happened to backpage. They are just not willing to take any chances with the new law.
A Quick History of DoubleList
After personals was taken down, two gay San Francisco entrepreneurs had the idea to start doublelist to help meet the new demands created for a place to find casual sex. In an interview with the huffington post, they mentioned that they had used personals a lot themselves to find M4M relationships in the SF bay area. So they personally felt the pain after FOSTA SESTA changed things, and they set out to make the world a sexier place.
They started with only 3 employees in March of 2018, soon DoubleList was getting 100,000 visitors a month and they expanded to 40 employees by June to keep up with the challenges of moderating all the ads for sex work that could get them put in jail. Now as we approach 2019 they have 200 employees and over 800,000 monthly visitors. They seem to be winning the battle as the best new classifieds site for finding casual sex, but only time will tell. The site currently makes most of its money from small banned ads that appear at the bottom of the page. It is estimated they make about $500,000 a month from these ads which suggest everything from dating sites to physical enhancement drugs.
Looking Into The Future
So far doublelist seems to be doing a great job and they have a very useful and nice looking site. My only concern would be that they could get taken down for the same reasons that craigslist personals and backpage were taken down. Only time will tell, but we hope they are around for the long term.