Talk:Ask.fm

Moved

(cur | prev) 09:07, 15 January 2016‎ Calerusnak (talk | contribs)‎ . . (35 bytes) (+35)‎ . . (Calerusnak moved page Ask.fm to ASKfm) (thank)

Requested move 1 January 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Page moved to Ask.fm and redirect AskFM created. (non-admin closure)  sami  ^talk 08:53, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

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ASKfm → AskFMAskFM – Shouldn't it be "FM" that is capitalized? "Ask" does not stand for anything and has no acronym. JE98 (talk) 06:18, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

• Support alternative move to "Ask.fm", as used in RS. Generally sources use either "Askfm" or "Ask.fm", very occassionally "ASKfm" (but that's how the website seems to style itself) but never AskFM. "Ask.fm" is the most used. See Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:32, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
• Restore back to "Ask.fm", as all these In ictu oculi (talk) 17:49, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

What the Fuck is Going On Here

The page claims one of the NINE kids who was bullied to death on the platform sent herself hateful messages, making no note of the other eight, everything is written in garbage english, and the talk page is full of people asking about the best TMT bars in Kerala?

I think this doesn't need an overhaul so much as a legal investigation as to what Ilja is doing since his child suicide site got shut down lol

Heart Shaped L0x (talk) 17:14, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

2026 "revival"/acquisition claim — sourcing

Recent edits (9–18 August 2026, starting with this edit by Wokermany) added claims that the ASKfm brand rights were "reacquired" in 2026, that the platform had a "second incarnation", and that it is now operated by "ASKfm LLC" at askfm.app. The only source offered for any of this, throughout, is askfm.app itself — a primary, self-published source. Per WP:V, WP:RS and WP:SELFPUB/WP:ABOUTSELF, a self-published source is not sufficient to support an exceptional claim like a brand/trademark acquisition affecting a third party, and I could not find any independent (news or otherwise) coverage confirming this. That also raises WP:UNDUE and possible WP:COI concerns given the promotional framing and the direct link to the subject's own site.

I've removed the sentence and the related infobox changes (URL field, "first/second incarnation" launch date) and restored that content to the wording it had before 9 August 2026. I did not touch unrelated edits made in the same window (e.g. Axolitl's copyedit). If a reliable, independent source turns up confirming an acquisition or relaunch, please restore the material with that citation. ~2026-47367-65 (talk) 12:48, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

2026 "revival"/ASKfm LLC claim fails WP:V and WP:SPS

The article currently states that "In 2026, the ASKfm brand rights were reacquired by a group of entrepreneurs, leading to the platform's revival. It was relaunched at askfm.app in its classic form and is now operated by ASKfm LLC, a U.S.-based company," cited solely to [7] https://askfm.app/admin/questions/6036.

This does not meet Wikipedia's sourcing bar and should be removed until a proper source is provided:

• It's self-published (WP:SPS). The only source is the subject's own website, posted by its own admin account. A subject writing about itself on its own site is not independent, third-party verification.
• The claim is exceptional (WP:REDFLAG/WP:EXCEPTIONAL). "Reacquired brand rights," a change of legal operator to a newly formed "ASKfm LLC," and a change of jurisdiction/HQ to the U.S. are all factual claims about a corporate/trademark transaction affecting a third party. Claims like this need independent, reliable secondary coverage — a press release distributed via a wire service (PR Newswire, Business Wire, etc.) or coverage in an actual news outlet/trade publication. A post on the company's own admin panel is not that. Nor is Crunchbase — WP:CRUNCHBASE explicitly notes Crunchbase is user-/self-submitted and not a reliable source for factual claims; it should not be used to backfill sourcing for this either.
• Official trademark registry records contradict the claim as currently sourced. The relevant "ask.fm" marks — UK UK00913522685 and EU 013522628 — are both still listed, as of today, as owned by ASKFM East Limited, Hong Kong, with no assignment/transfer to any "ASKfm LLC" in the United States on record. If a real rights transfer happened, it would ordinarily show up as a recorded assignment at UKIPO/EUIPO; absent that, the claim is unverifiable and arguably contradicted by primary official records.
• The related infobox changes should be reverted along with it — "Website: askfm.app," "Traded as: ASKfm LLC," and the second "Launched" date (2026) all rest on the same single self-published source. The domain was always ask.fm; the article previously and correctly used that.

This exact removal has been made and reverted three times now without an independent source ever being added:

• 12:46, 31 Aug 2026 removal — reverted 14:12, 31 Aug
• 02:25, 1 Sep 2026 removal — reverted 03:40, 1 Sep
• 17:59, 1 Sep 2026 removal — reverted 18:40, 1 Sep, then that revert re-reverted again 4 Sep

Per WP:BURDEN, the burden is on those restoring the content to supply an independent RS, not on editors removing it to keep proving a negative. Pinging Daniel Case as the protecting admin, and Bylock4 and Frutiesd79 as the editors who've re-added this content: is there an independent RS for this, or should it come out per WP:V pending one? ~2026-47320-21 (talk) 16:18, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

Sir, the page has already been protected by a Wikipedia administrator for one year because of the continuous vandalism you have been carrying out on the page for the past month. It is also quite apparent that you are attempting to attract users to your own AI-slop homepage, or rather your ASKfm clone application, whose homepage you have apparently taken from ASKfm itself, by deleting the information here: https://ventto.me/a/cmu3x3qsw00vzfg9nb07shi6r

I am not an administrator or an employee of the company. I am simply someone who has actively used both the former and current versions of the application. What you are trying to do is quite obvious from what you have been doing. This is not limited to Wikipedia either; you appear to be attempting the same thing on every social media platform where you have the ability to edit content.

In other words, what you are doing is not a request for legitimate editing. You are attempting to suppress the existing application through vandalism and attract its users to your own platform. In addition, you are not merely requesting edits; you are also making individual comments claiming things such as “this site is unsafe,” “do not sign up,” or “your information will be stolen if you sign up.” The application has been actively used by thousands of people for approximately two months, and you have provided no concrete evidence for any of these claims.

This behavior is neither ethical nor constructive, especially when the people responsible for the application have apparently not taken your claims seriously, yet you continue to pursue the same approach.

Furthermore, according to Wikipedia's policies, an independent source is not necessarily required in every circumstance. A company's own press release or official statement can be an acceptable source for information about the company itself. Crunchbase and LinkedIn should of course not be treated as substitutes for independent sources where independent sourcing is required. In this case, there is already an official statement from the site's management.

ASKfm is not a major or particularly prominent social media platform in the present day. Therefore, expecting its revival to be covered by major media organizations, especially the large publications you have mentioned, is not particularly reasonable. Even when ASKfm shut down, the event received coverage from only a handful of websites—perhaps three or four at most—and these were mostly blogs rather than major corporate or technology news outlets. If the closure itself did not receive significant mainstream coverage, it is unreasonable to insist that its revival must be covered by major news organizations in order for the information to be included.

Please stop the vandalism. The page has already been protected by an administrator, yet you continue attempting to make the same changes to it.

Finally, the information in question does not state that the current application is a continuation of the former company. It explicitly describes itself as a revival project. The historical information about ASKfm, including the closure date, remains in the article and has not been removed. Only two or three pieces of information concerning the revival have been added. There is no statement claiming that the current company is the continuation of the former company, nor has such a statement been added.

It is only a single sentence, and this type of information is also commonly included on Wikipedia for applications that are revival projects.

In addition, when the trademark registrations and their history are examined, it can be seen that the ASKfm trademark was transferred to another company in 2025. As a result of the transfer, the registration was automatically extended for another ten-year protection period, with the current protection period extending until 2034. Trademark registrations are also territorial and can vary by country and jurisdiction, which should be taken into consideration.

The existing ASKfm company itself was closed in 2025, at the same time that the trademark registrations were transferred. This can be seen in the following public company record:

https://www.solocheck.ie/Irish-Company/Askfm-Europe-Limited-551873

Therefore, the available records show that the former ASKfm company was closed, while the ASKfm trademark was transferred to another company in 2025 and its registration subsequently extended until 2034. The information in the article is consistent with this distinction between the former company and the current revival project.

Please stop repeatedly removing this information and instead discuss any specific sourcing or wording concerns on the article's talk page. Frutiesd79 (talk) 23:26, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

Frutiesd79, a few corrections:

I did not add any content to this article. Everything I've done is captured in the edit history: I removed the "reacquired brand rights"/"ASKfm LLC"/askfm.app claims that were added starting 9 August 2026, because the only source for them was askfm.app's own admin panel, a self-published, non-independent source, which fails WP:V, WP:RS and WP:SELFPUB for a claim of this kind (a change of legal owner and jurisdiction affecting a third party's trademark). I laid out the sourcing and trademark-registry issues in the section above; none of that has been addressed with an actual independent source in three re-additions of this material.

On the accusation itself: yes, I run Ventto, an app in the same space. I'm not going to pretend otherwise since you've already posted the link. What actually happened is the reverse of what you're describing: some of our own users flagged the askfm.app "revival" to us, which is what led me to look into it in the first place. After checking the UK and EU trademark registries and reaching out to the parties who actually hold the ask.fm marks, I couldn't find anything supporting that askfm.app or "ASKfm LLC" has any legitimate claim to the brand, which is consistent with what the registry records still show. I also raised this with Wikipedia's own volunteers/staff, separately from this talk page, because the sourcing problem exists independent of who's pointing it out.

You also claimed my homepage was "taken from ASKfm itself." That's not accurate. Ventto was built from scratch, it doesn't use any ASKfm code, it isn't affiliated with ASKfm in any way, and I have never claimed to have acquired ASKfm's IP or told anyone to "come join this app" on that basis. If you have something specific backing that claim, post it, otherwise I'd ask you not to repeat it.

Once I saw this turning into a repeated back-and-forth revert war rather than getting resolved through sourcing, I contacted Wikipedia administrators directly and brought the issue to the wider community, because this isn't just an editing dispute, it's unverified information sitting on a page people actually rely on for accurate information. Letting unsourced claims stay up because of edit-warring rather than sourcing does a disservice to readers who have no way of knowing better.

Whatever my personal interest in this space, it doesn't change the fact that the article currently states a corporate acquisition and change of legal operator on the strength of one post from the subject's own admin account. That's a WP:V problem regardless of who raises it. If you have an independent reliable source for the acquisition, please post it here, that resolves this immediately. Absent that, per WP:BURDEN the material shouldn't stay in the article. ~2026-47320-21 (talk) 15:37, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

i'm a user of askmos myself, though i normally never used ask.fm. i came across this friend's app called "ventto" on askmos a few weeks ago. he was going onto people's profiles, asking questions, and practically begging them to come to his app his name was kai, i think. because he was nagging members and begging them to visit his site, he even got a bit of a reality check from larry, one of the popular members of the platform. those questions are still up on the wall, i checked. anyway, that's not even the main point, but looking at this guy from the outside, he genuinely looks ridiculous, and his intentions are far from good. even though he constantly spams advertisements to other members on askmos and ask.fm from time to time, the owners of these platforms don't take him seriously at all. despite his continuous spamming, i've never seen him get banned because he is simply not a personality worth taking seriously. the management of both sites doesn't view him or his ai-slop app as a competitor, nor do they take him seriously. both of those other apps just focus on their own platforms and operate professionally in fact, askmos is getting a new update right now. meanwhile, instead of actually developing and growing his own app, our friend hangs out on askmos nagging people and talking nonsense about ask.fm’s current app, claiming things like "your data is being stolen" or "you're getting hacked." yet, the site is actively used by thousands of people right now and nothing like that has ever happened. i just started using it myself two weeks ago. it’s already obvious that there is a corporate structure behind it, which is why they don't even bother to take him seriously or acknowledge his nonsense despite all his ranting. he claims he built his app from scratch and that it’s not an ask.fm clone, but what he actually did was right-click on ask.fm's pre-closure 2024 interface in a browser, "save as," threw it into claude, and tried to make an ask.fm rip-off with zero coding. there's a world of difference between his site's interface and the actual site, even after logging in. the whole site is completely ai slop. even the current version of askmos is better than that, despite being older. on top of all that, he tries to sell people paid features, coins, ads, and blue checkmarks for money on ventto. there's nothing like that on askfm.app or askmos.me. plus, he constantly tries to obsessively mess with the owners of the other sites. a guy named daniel, who is a wikipedia admin and one of the wikipedia owners, even saw his vandalism and put semi-protection status on the page for a full year because of it. despite that, he was still crying and whining to other wikipedia editors, asking them to change the article back. getting the article reverted temporarily doesn't change anything anyway; two days later, a different editor will just come along and revert it back. also, at one point our friend kai started bullshitting that he tried to buy the rights to ask.fm and they wouldn't sell. he supposedly has the money to buy the rights to ask.fm, but he has to steal ask.fm's interface and get claude to code his site? so professional, lol. in his latest post here, he claimed he spoke with the owners of ask.fm, and honestly, his whole life is a lie from top to bottom, so there's no need to take him seriously at all. his goal is clearly to try to make money by acting unlikable like this to pull members to his site and sell them stuff, but while the other two apps are growing rapidly, nobody cares about this guy's app. i even suspect that the 2,3 accounts hanging out on his site are just fake accounts he opened himself to make the site look active. anyway, my friend, try to be a bit original, drop this obsession and ridiculous behavior because you look extremely unlikable, and you have no entrepreneurial or corporate qualities whatsoever nobody is going to come to your app this way. kai is simply not someone to be taken seriously. ~2026-50526-05 (talk) 20:47, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

A few things, briefly, and then I'd like to get this back to the actual question.

On sourcing: Frutiesd79's point about a "corporate structure" or "official statement" being enough doesn't hold up under WP:SELFPUB, which exists specifically for claims like this - a change of legal operator/jurisdiction affecting a third party's registered trademark is exactly the kind of claim a subject's own self-published statement about itself cannot establish. "ASKfm isn't prominent enough to expect major coverage" is an argument for WP:TOOSOON, not for lowering the sourcing bar - if independent coverage doesn't exist yet, the material goes back in when it does, not before. And on the trademark point specifically: even taking the 2025 transfer/renewal at face value, nothing in that record connects it to "ASKfm LLC" or askfm.app - a renewal under existing ownership doesn't establish that the site making this claim is the same or an authorized successor. That gap hasn't been addressed in over a month of this being raised.

On the personal claims in the post above: I didn't copy ask.fm's interface, saved page, or otherwise. Ventto wasn't built that way, and I'm not going to individually run down every unverifiable claim in that post - "fake accounts," "not taken seriously," and so on aren't sourcing arguments, they're personal attacks (WP:NPA), and repeating them doesn't move this forward. I've already disclosed the Ventto connection here; that's on the record and I'm not hiding it.

I'd ask that replies from here stay on the sourcing question. If there's an independent RS for the acquisition, post it and this is resolved. If the next reply is another round of the above instead, I think it's worth an uninvolved admin looking at the thread as a whole, not just at content patrolling. Pinging Daniel Case again since you're already familiar with the page. ~2026-47320-21 (talk) ~2026-47320-21 (talk) 22:01, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

i also looked into the trademark registrations you provided, and you keep citing the same registrations everywhere. askfm was shut down at the end of 2024, and a few months later, the trademark registrations you provided clearly state that the trademark was transferred to another company in 2025. the only issue is that they do not explicitly identify which company or individual it was transferred to. that information was apparently intentionally kept confidential during the transfer process, and the records reflect it as a confidential transfer.

the editor already explained above that, during the period when the trademark registration was being processed, the askfm company in denmark had also been officially liquidated. in other words, the company was officially closed after the trademark was transferred. looking at the current situation, it is already clear that the former askfm company was officially dissolved, the trademark was transferred, and the current owners are different individuals or entities. however, because the transfer was kept confidential, their identities are not explicitly listed. therefore, it is completely normal that you do not see something like “askfm llc” or similar information there.

you also say that there is no askfm llc in commercial records. but “llc” means a u.s.-based limited liability company, and in the united states, except in a few states, the owners of privately held companies and information about their legal entities are generally not publicly available in the same way they are in the uk. so it is completely normal not to find this information through a simple search. for example, the company's office could be located in california while the company itself could have been incorporated in a state with stronger corporate privacy protections, such as new mexico or a similar jurisdiction. alternatively, the owners of the website could be operating the trademark through an unrelated third-party entity such as “example brand inc.”, “ltd.”, or “llc,” just as instagram and facebook are operated under meta inc.

the trademark registration you provided is only uk-based. it is not a global registration covering the united states, other countries, and europe as a whole. trademark registrations are territorial; this was already explained to you. furthermore, the registration covers the askfm trademark, not the ask.fm domain itself. askfm has operated under the name “askfm” since 2016; the brand is askfm, not “ask.fm.” the fact that the current domain is no longer ask.fm is also likely because the new operation is not intended to be a continuation of the old company, which would make this a deliberate choice.

there is also another important factor. until ask.fm shut down, it had been associated with numerous cyberbullying and suicide-related lawsuits, and the company had hundreds of legal cases associated with it. that is why the company remained up for sale for about a year before shutting down in 2024, and nobody wanted to acquire the platform and the existing company in its existing form because of the lawsuits and liabilities. simply acquiring the trademark and starting with a clean slate under the brand name would have been a much more logical approach. acquiring the existing company as a whole would mean taking on its previous reputation and legal liabilities as well.

as for crunchbase, you are correct that anyone can submit information to it, and therefore it should not automatically be treated as an infallible source. however, you are overlooking an important distinction here. if you actually examine the askfm profile on crunchbase, it is the original ask.fm profile that has been present in crunchbase's database since 2010, with its historical employee records and other information. the page was not simply created from scratch as a new subsidiary profile.

in fact, this means you cannot simply create an account and freely modify such an established company profile. in order to make changes to an existing company page, you generally have to demonstrate that you are affiliated with or authorized to represent the company before crunchbase grants you administrative access. otherwise, unauthorized users cannot simply rewrite the information on an established company profile.

this is important because the askfm page is not a brand-new crunchbase page created yesterday. it has been part of the database for more than a decade. in that respect, for historical company pages, crunchbase can actually provide more structured historical information than wikipedia. on established company pages, you cannot simply create an anonymous account and rewrite everything. administrative changes generally require verification through a company-associated email address or other evidence of affiliation. it is not comparable to wikipedia, where anyone can make anonymous edits.

they also appear to be managing the askfm social media page, which has around 10,000 followers. so, when you look at all of these pieces together, the argument you are making does not really hold up.

at the very least, a reasonable position would be: “yes, the trademark was transferred and it was probably acquired, but the available sources are insufficient to determine exactly who acquired it.” that would be a fair conclusion. instead, you are going as far as denying the underlying evidence, even though the trademark registrations you yourself provided already show that the trademark was transferred.

askfm's shutdown was barely reported in the first place, so expecting a major news announcement about its return is also unreasonable. the editor already explained this point.

and regarding the “reliable sources” list you provided, many of those websites publish paid pr and promotional content. paying for publicity is not particularly difficult nowadays. the fact that an independent source does not exist does not automatically mean something is false or unreliable. even many of the sources commonly cited by wikipedia can publish paid promotional material; there are hundreds of agencies online that specialize in arranging this kind of coverage.

even major media organizations such as cnbc and time publish sponsored content and press releases. therefore, the mere fact that something appears in a major publication does not automatically make it an independent, organically reported source. ~2026-50417-00 (talk) 22:44, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

Noting that Frutiesd79 has now been blocked for sockpuppetry, see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Wokermany. --JBL (talk) 20:59, 19 September 2026 (UTC)