VICE - July 8 - In 2001, Rick Burton launched a website called HIVNet, one of the first STD-focused dating communities on the Internet. "It was started for purely selfish reasons... I thought it would last six months or a year," he recalls. "I could meet some people and shut the thing down." Burton was first diagnosed in the 1980s, when much of America was still treating HIV and AIDS like a problem that didn't matter much because it supposedly only killed gay people. More than 15 years later, HIVNet is still going strong. Its membership is restricted to people who are actively living with the virus but it's far from the only site of its kind on the Internet. There's PositiveSingles, Hope, POZ and PozMatch. Disclosure is the most important part of dating with an STD. There is strict legislation across the U.S. that punishes the failure to disclose STD-positive status with prison time.
by Luke Winkie
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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team
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