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Language is Ambiguous + Why it matters for Policy Update
2 years ago
NOTE: I am giving live updates by editing this journal whenever I learn something new about the situation.Scroll to the bottom to see my comments with any live updatesSo a lot of people are worried about the INTERNAL update to AUP Section 2.7
Are you worried or angry? Do you like sexualizing minors? Are you Fur Affinity staff? This journal is for YOU.
THE PROBLEMSo I'd like to spread some awareness first.
The better we can understand the big picture, the less stressed we will all be. So let me give you my current best understanding of the history.
So years ago, FA banned cubs. At the time of writing this journal, I'm not actually sure why! https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/History_of_Fur_Affinity
But no doubt that FA staff will be under pressure to comply with US regulations, from advertisers / search engines, and that a payment processor actually dropped FA citing that reason.. but also because it's a real problem on platforms like these and we need to protect the young'uns. Funding is important for FA, it is THE biggest furry website right now with the largest and most active community and so they need to maintain it.
At some point, they added a very ambiguous clause in order to address the "1000 year old lolis", to address that trop because it is still risky enough to generate a lot of outside trouble. But at the same time, FA staff are only human and Language. Is. Ambiguous. so they also had internal confusion with their own moderation. So this internal policy update is not scary, it's actually GOOD NEWS because it means that they sat down and agreed upon internally, what exactly constitutes a minor?
So, right now, let me provide a framework for discussion for what I think FurAffinity intended for their definition of What is a Minor. Yes, to disambiguate what FA is REALLY trying to achieve here and for you to decide whether your "childlike proportions" are a problem to the platform or not.
The problem is not the childlike body alone: but rather, a childlike body coupled with a fascination with age
See ADDENDUM 1 for a constantly updated list.
Examples of "non-obvious" cases that will fall under this:
- The 1000 year old loli, aka "shes actually 1000 years old isnt it cute that she looks so young but is actually 1000? ;)"
- Asserting a characters age from a place of fear has no indication on whether they are fascinated with the age component.
- Minor identified by Duck Typing, aka Childlike proportions, No mention of age, specific emphasis on several Child-like behaviors (goes to school, is vulnerable, dependent on a caregiver, naive)
- Child-like behaviors are behaviors displayed by vulnerable people. Adults can also display child-like behaviors, hence terms like "manchild". What we are REALLY interested when we describe """childlike""" behavior is that there is an indication that this character is vulnerable and can be groomed BECAUSE THEY ARE YOUNG.
- Minor identified by publicly available evidence of the artist believing that it is ok to sexualize minors
- Type 1: "ok they may be technically a minor, you can't hurt pixels, only IRL pedos are bad"
- Type 2: Clear Agenda "I'm 'genuinely interested' in discussing it even though I have a 100% track record of explaining away evidence that disagrees with me, and will always blindly agree anything that supports my opinion, and my opinion is, whatever it is, loosen the definition of what a Minor is."
- Type 3: The Bad Eggs - Draws childlike bodies, but is coupled with a history of, especially when an upload policy update happens regarding minors, starts to: Threatening to leave FA, regularly is seen on journals panning the FA staff for factual (or even made up) mistakes, spreads mistrust ("Oh, FA doesn't actually give a shit about you, they want advertiser money"), regularly encouraging other platforms "Oh there's other websites that actually care about you, that's where I go ;)"
To those who feel wrongly accused and caught in the crossfire.Yes. Yes, it's extremely frustrating and ironic. FurAffinity was founded so strongly in the idea that we're all furries, the last thing we want is to be judged.
So, let us go to the FurAffinity Staff and have open and honest communication. If FurAffinity is telling you that your content is cub stuff and you don't agree, we need to get people discussing. Maybe you might be right. Maybe you might be wrong.
But throwing your arms in frustration and losing trust in FurAffinity doesn't help you look good and will polarize the community further. The community is big, important and has a lot to offer to you. So yes, even if you genuinely believe your entire gallery is wrongly under question (it could happen!), it is in your interest to have open discussion about this.
PLUS: being open to discussion and genuinely agreeing that you think sexualizing minors is wrong puts you on the right track to be in this community. The problem here is that what a Minor is hasn't been publicly defined yet.
To those who, deep down, know they like cub porn and are angry at FA for the hurt and guilt causedSo you want people to stop thinking so hard about something that is so simple to you.
You don't want to feel like a bad person. It's just a bunch of pixels?
Allow me to turn this on its head for you and not even talk about whether it's right or wrong to sexualize minors.
Let me propose to you, an alternative: have you considered that, you do not need FurAffinity to validate your stance on it? Use FurAffinity to post anything that isn't a minor, there's other things you can enjoy bonding with other users over here.
This transcends whether it is ok or not. Whether it is legal or not. This is about how you can get more out of FurAffinity, suffer less yourself, and cause less suffering.
If you traverse journals posting comments about how the FA staff is bad, you will only feel worse. People will tell you why you are a monster. People will fight you. People will come up with valid arguments that hold merit. You will spend many hours suffering and trying to reconcile whether you deserve to exist and be happy or not rather than actually enjoying your life.
Do you want to be happy in life? Then engage smarter. I'm not even going to enter the rabbit hole of discussion on why I think you shouldn't even like cub porn, because what I am saying here transcends that point.
We have to live with each other. You might as well do your part to make it less of a living hell for yourself, and people you get into touch with. You want to be remembered as someone who people liked. So engage wisely, take the stuff elsewhere, knowing that harrassing the FurAffinity staff and people is going to get you NOTHING but pain.
To the FA Staff: My recommendationsIf anyone from the FA staff is reading this, I have potential solutions for big picture problems like these!
So on one hand, you want your community to trust you, but you also do not want to give any more openings for people to find more loopholes. I may be wrong, but I am 95% sure that this is what's going on under the hood.
Leaving ambiguity in language sparks a lot of Bad Discussion. People start assuming what your intentions are and start to begin building a narrative of what FA's intentions are, either because they are scared that they're going to be the next false positive ban, or because they're operating under wrong assumptions, or because they're into minors and are bitter about the ban.
I highly, highly recommend open and honest communication here. Do things like creating megathreads where staff can go in there and see what kinds of ideas people are thinking - create FAQs about frequent misconceptions - make periodic updates to the AUP to update our evolving shared understanding on what is a Minor and Why sexualizing them is dangerous to this community
Like this, you leave little room for ambiguity - people will be less worried about being wrongly caught in the crossfire, and people who are trying to intentionally destabilize the community for the cub porn ban become far, far easier to identify. And if you identify edge cases? Ask for a temporary removal and discuss the issue with the public. You'll have bad eggs in the comments, they will try to do their harm, but once people *en masse* are more effectively educated on the big picture, these bad faith actors will find it harder and harder to do anything, and the people who are scared of losing their accounts will stop feeling scared.
Open and honest communication
Why did I write this?Mental health is #1
I cannot stress how important mental health is for not just me, but EVERYONE.
FurAffinity has given me my online social life, it has picked me up from a lonely, desolate, unhealthy IRL and put me down in a place where I've met so many fun people who validate me. So FurAffinity is damn important to me personally.
I feel that big picture problems are rarely understood because often times, topics devolve into what I call "Untouchables" - where people are often punished for contributing to discussion to the point that they become jaded and stop caring.
I have spent years, years passively and then actively trying to figure out how to have good mental health.
Through learning and constantly updating my best understanding of reality, I have realized that THIS is the "meta" on how to achieve mental health: Learn and Disambiguate, eliminate Unknowns
And part of my mental health is FurAffinity.
It's tough for me to give such a long essay on such an Untouchable topic and I foresee that I may get some backlash myself, buuuuut.. it's important to discuss these things you know!
Mmmmmmwah! That's all! 💙
ADDENDUM 1: Ongoing, Updated list of my current best understanding of what constitutes a "Minor"
LINKS:
- Bobler's post on things to consider RE: upload policy changesp
- Angelbird's big-picture perspective on the staff's communication from their understanding
- My first post on the FA Forums https://discord.com/channels/991855.....94880809910292
- a Minor is stated to be, by the artist, under 18 years old OR is under the legal age considered by the species
- OR the character is drawn with childlike proportions and the character is officially known to be underage in the medium it appears in. Yes, Digimon babies are also babies in the official digimon world.
- OR has a childlike body and the artist expresses a clear fascination with young age
- OR has a childlike body and the artist publicly, currently expresses interest with the Age component. They are interested BECAUSE they look so youthful
- OR has a childlike body and the artist expresses the opinion that Minors in fantasy are acceptable to sexualize because no-one is getting hurt (wsache)
# Childlike proportions is 6.5 heads high
# Fascination with young age is defined specifically as fascination with young age in the region of adolesence or lower
- Fascination with young age can be proven if their art has been tagged as loli on another website and there is no reason to believe that this was a coordinated attack specifically to get someone else in trouble
The rule as a concept is great. The rule as it is written is vague at best and puts innocent art at risk.
Because here's another thing: The rule that is written there? Is not actually what's internally happening!
So they can do a lot of good to clarify, publicly, under what conditions is something considered a Minor? Visibility is important and a big topic in the modern era when it comes to management, and this would be a quick, easy win for not only FA but everyone
FA should really set up a shortstack/chibi tag to avoid this potentially abusive rule.
We will be safe, but I just want us all to guide other people on how to approach this, we can even recommend things to the FA staff themselves as solutions and rn there's a lot of agreement that yeah, it'd be really cool if they updated the wording!
I still can't get over the one time that FA tried to get rid of sonic arts outright because of the questionable ages of the characters...which was a long time ago, but still was pretty much a huge outrage from it.
Okay, I might not be adding much saying all of that, but bottom line is, they really need to reword some of this stuffs so that a massive fire doesn't start over it. It's good that they're trying to crack down on this though, but yeah, they need just a smidge more revisions.
I didn't even know the Sonic characters was a thing, so far I know that it happened on DeviantART for sure but didnt know it happened in FA too xD Is there anywhere else i can read up about that?
It could be read about to a certain extent here at the link provided below, down at the "aged up" policy in terms of sonic characters (it's the one with the diagram of Sonic and Amy...really hard to miss. XD) But again, this was mainly the moderators trying to crack down upon 'art involving minors/cubs', similar to now.
https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/History.....f_Fur_Affinity
It's far too ambiguous to the point where even someone who only does SFW art is confused by the situation and may feel threatened over their artstyle .
In fact, it's not even clear if fetishes alone will do it or not... for all i know, I could be a target!
I do wish this gets cleared up soon.
For sure I can reassure you that their intention is in the right place, but they're amateurs that are trying to wrap their head around not only the complexity of how to moderate, but also the complexity of how to engage with your community in a healthy way. Hell, this is something that even massive companies with experts get wrong.
So the more we can tell them, "Hey listen, the policies being internal only isn't very visible and we'll feel more comfortable and trust you more if the community could have open discussions about this"
I feel the concerns have already grown far enough that we may never see such variety like this again in the future, even I feel this uncessecary in some respects because none of this ruleset is even gonna help actual exploited kids in the long run anyway. Which is why I do somewhat feel this is all mainly virtue signaling in some respects.
They need to erase the ambiguity completely because again; mods may have biases and aren't trust worthy either. believe it or not, a lot of sonic artists have been banned like crazy of the years due to that and have moved to places like IB, and most of these artists didn't do any sort of harm.
The rules back then were pretty vague due so sonic artists were banned left and right, some out right left out of fear, so given that track record, I do not blame anyone for trusting the admins and mods to do right by the community without harming those who weren't actually doing any harm, and you can argue that some of it was indeed following the rules.
I can commend you though for giving another perspective on this, but however I believe the distrust people have towards the FA staff is not unjustified, and it's not easy to just start trusting them after everything, as I said I am uneased by this and I don't even like loli or cub shit.
I just like to draw lovely, endowed women in various heights. It's fun to draw variations and variety in this regard, without variety life is pointless, and I am concerned about that myself.
I feel instead of just doing an internal conversation, they should've allowed EVERYONE to speak not just within their own inner circle. Hell the fact the jounral about the update has the comments banned already says alot for some people which just adds to the distrust.
I'll say again, your perspective on this is somewhat refreshing, but it has done little for me hope wise. I will still be staying here for a time, but will look into other platforms incase the blind shotgun approach as someone mentioned happens and I get caught in all this. Been here on FA sense 2008, it is my home, and I am just very, VERY weary about it. u^u
The root cause is that the FA Staff are amateurs, trying their best to understand a complex MONSTER of modern times. We have to understand that they're kindda overwhelmed but they're open to learning. They've learnt in the past so they can learn again here.
And the big next step: Open and honest communication
SO YES!!! So much yes, THANK YOU, many trust issues can be solved by having public conversations and THEN making internal ones to process the opinions of the public.
***
So for me, I obviously draw a number of creatures with small bodies, be they anthro or feral. (in the latter case like a Pokemon for example.)
In no way am I thinking of this character being under 18. Since a LOT of what I like is consent amongst characters I obviously find it more appealing when the character is an adult, even if they are a small bat like my character Baphrim.
***
The other problem with the "childlike" figure is it ignores shortstacks, "little people" and dwarfs.
This 20 year old man, by intents and purposes looks like a child.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4K.....annel=GulfNews
But if you were to let's say make an lewd anthropormorphic animal version of him would that image have claims of it being childlike thrown at it? In context you are making an image of a full grown adult, who happens to have a "childlike" body.
***
Since I know what I am drawing is not children I do not feel targeted. As said above I favor consent and self control so everything I draw is of adults. Yes some of what I draw has a cute small body, but I think it goes along with a character being absurdly hyper. The bigger the parts in comparison to the person attached to them the more I enjoy it. Well at the same time the smaller (in terms of bodily proportions) the character is the bigger they parts seem in comparison. A small 2 foot tall creature with parts bigger than a 6 foot tall person is so enjoyable~
***
This point does no apply to me. As it is I have been a little more favoring my taller style I draw for most of my art anyway. Not that I want to give up on shortstacks, but it is interesting how my tastes have changed slightly.
***
I do agree that full transparency and being more clear is a good thing. Being vague is why people hate YouTube policies. They leave things vague, give you a strike, and won't tell you exactly what you did wrong so you won't be able to know to not do it again.
***
Even just talking about these things helps. That's why I sometimes post journals with my thoughts, even more personal ones like one of my recent journals. =P
Anyway, just figured since you spent the time typing this up I spend a moment reading and responding.
Yep I 100% agree! That's why it's Not Enough to just leave it at "childlike body".
I propose a better way to define it is the 3 steps I outlined, which is that yes it's a childlike body AND the artist is drawing art out of fascination by young age aspect
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And thank you so much for the thought put into this, bcos your input helps me and other people make up their minds to disambiguate: what is a MINOR?
https://discord.com/channels/991855.....13506530638650
I've identified that staff has been giving updates scattered in Discord, and that several people are actually misrepresenting and finding "contradictions and lies" where I am realizing, there are none.
Please check the FA Discord and see for yourself. You are safer than it sounds. They are also considering context already when it comes to art, so no it is not just childlike proportions alone. It's also in the addendum on the main journal.
https://discord.com/channels/991855.....38619748327565
https://discord.com/channels/991855.....86417000718356
https://discord.com/channels/991855.....85769492463737
Several of the discussions had been being aired in the general chat until they created a thread. This thread got locked and a new one was created.
I am evaluating different instances and I can confirm that it's true that many people are jumping to conclusions. I've identified Luffy and some others have been making some reassuring clarifications already scattered in the general chat.
We need to be careful people. We have people that, either from a place of freaking our or out of anger, are definitely destabilizing discussions.
I don't understand what those proportion measurements are. "6.5 heads high" sounds like an average adult height to me. I'd have to see it in an isolated png, not a discord thread link.
I'm not fascinated with young age. I make it a point when looking for attractive material to favorite things that I believe show a reasonable maturity to them.
But I also know sonic characters have been targeted before, and my attachment to those is not so easily... Severed.
Plus who knows what they'll target next? I have like three years of submissions to filter through before this all goes down. And if they take issue with me for whatever reason, well... There's not much I'm going to be able to do about it but I very much so disagree.
This is good news people, this is proof that their new internal policy is nuanced enough that they will not ban you unjustly.
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/46530694/
https://discord.com/channels/991855.....90300144529568
People have interpreted this as a sign that that's it, whatever document is going to be published is what they are going to adopt and no feedback is allowed.
https://discord.com/channels/991855.....49927670796358
I remember a claime (source?) that there is going to be an admin backed discussion thread but I lost the source for that so don't quote me on that. Please look in the FA Discord, I might actually be wrong but i implore you to search whether this was said or not but I have a memory that it was said by a moderator.
Sciggles has apologized for being confusing things further.
I personally think that we should calm down as this is wearing down the Staff's psyche.
https://discord.com/channels/991855.....49927670796358
Luffy has also apologized for bad communication. I believe this shows that they are open minded and ready to accept feedback.
https://discord.com/channels/991855.....06134983548959
https://discord.com/channels/991855.....88484879876118
Personal conjecture based on my understanding: They won't just "remove all the policy changes and revert to their previous internal policy" but they will work with us to create a better, clearer understanding of What is a Minor and What Is Ok and What is Not Ok. That way we can calm our nerves.
People on the FA Discord are angry and scared and they have every right to be, I am scared too, but the fact that there's gonna be open and honest communication brings me a lot of comfort. FurAffinity means EVERYTHING to me and I want the people who are rightfully pointing out mistakes to keep doing that, cos they help FA Staff run the site better.
But I also want people to fight less, I want us to be united, I will be giving a few shoutouts to people I've identified have helped me a lot emotionally ;w; And btw this includes people who disagreed with me and changed my perspective by correcting me when I was in contradiction / assumed something wrongly! I'm thankful to those ppl cos they help me understand the big picture better
This journal clarifies that there is "No blanket ban on specific species"
But also
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10553682
No, we don't have a specific "list" of Pokemon that we will remove regardless of how they are drawn. However, some do appear canonically as children, and therefore, would likely be removed depending on how they are represented in artwork posted. For example, pichu, in its canonical form, appears childlike. Therefore, we would remove NSFW content of a canonically-represented pichu. Pikachu and raichu do not appear to be children canonically. They just look like mice.
In addition, Sciggles (staff member) has posted a personal conjecture on the topic. This may or may not reflect the actual policy and needs to be disambiguated, but it is indicative that it might be part of it of what is going to be in this document. However, this is purely conjecture and we have to understand this as purely conjecture.
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal.....2#cid:59900649
My understanding its if their proportions look like that of say a kitten or puppy vs cat or dog. Even small dogs have "puppy" and "adult" differences. So like, draw an eevee with proportions of a vaporeon . A kit vs a fox.
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Remember that what staff members are saying is not necessarily what is currently in the policy. But currently, this is a contradiction / ambiguity that exists and they need to clarify this.
By the way, different moderators have different understandings on this. And this is why an internal policy update is so damn important, and we as a community can do our part to help FA Staff all get on the same page on What is a Minor
https://discord.com/channels/991855.....07712722837544
Personal conjecture: Let's not be hard on Sciggles. Remember that this is a complicated topic and even the moderators, even people with years of experience can make mistakes and we want to reward people for learning and being open minded.
It's ironic as well how almost every single mod has art in either their own gallery (Neer...) or their likes (Neer.... Luffy... etcetc) that would 10000% be stricken by this new rule.
Also, we want to open up channels of open and honest communication with them.
We want them to tell us what they think so we can raise concerns and fears, cos you know, they may be wrong about something! Or we may be wrong about something!
So yes, we can't blindly trust them (bcos ppl make logical fallacies / can operate under wrong assumptions / can contradict themselves)
But if we want this problem solved we also cannot threaten open communication by building a narrative that nothing they say can be trusted. Because they're trying, but it's a complicated situation that they aren't adequately prepared for and are currently learning how to do better.
Ok, about the irony, let's clear this one up and get what we know: Scroll up and see what Luffy's post of a chibi character that has boobs by the way. That is not a bannable submission. We gotta realize that this is good news cuz that's not because of "preferential treatment", it's literally because the policy itself deems it as OK.
The rules are a lot more lax than some are thinking.
But there are some worrying ambiguities and we need to keep encouraging the FA Staff, not emotionally punish them, to perform open and honest communication. It's happening, they already released some new clarifications in an official twitter statement that they've written more carefully this time.
I hope maybe this better understand can help you calm down, cos remember, we can teach the people upstairs as well.
It's not doom and gloom, there is hope and you can be damn well sure that FA Staff is getting more nuanced over time as people correct them for faulty systems and unhealthy communication
How does that make you feel? Does it make you feel more hopeful about the situation? Mental health is extremely important so that's why I'm pouring heart and soul trying to figure out what the hell is going on and making these things more visible while FA Staff slowly imbibe the lesson that, maybe next time - open and honest communication, and that will make things soooo much more fricking comfortable.
https://twitter.com/furaffinity/sta.....56224141991937
They're taking steps in the right direction and that is so reassuring
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10557600/
Take a note IN PARTICULAR of this that they said
This is an ongoing learning experience for us on how to prepare to handle announcements like this. That doesn't fix what's happened and we know that, but we will continue to improve so that we can provide a better experience for the community in the future.
This is very, very good news! I hope everyone realizes that this means the staff are open minded and we need to reward them for this.
I think there may be some clarifications I want to make but I'll evaluate them first before making them.
A common misconception that's going around is that "Pokemon and Digimon are banned". This is an attempt to fan the flames and is not helping. There are some Pokemon and Digimon that cannot be drawn in forms that look too "baby like". Prior to 1st July, these would have been immune to AUP 2.7 but this is the internal change, they are no longer immune.
Another common misconception is that people can get banned AT ANY MOMENT - when in reality, it will be handled more gently for quite some time. Maybe far in the future they will start dealing with it with more of a "You should know this by now" attitude, but that is just my personal conjecture.
https://discord.com/channels/991855.....52501734195241
Users are encouraged to prefix Edits To Add with the text "ETA" so that when staff go to review the staff policy, they can look all Edit To add comments to see whether it makes sense to tweak the policy with the change.
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My conjecture so far:
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This will give a chance for highly refined feedback. Remember, if I post an ETA(Edit To Add) I may not necessarily be 100% correct, they may or may not add it. Or they may realize, "Oh right, yes this makes sense to clarify"
This is a truth seeking exercise between the staff and community and an excellent way to close the feedback loop. We can together make it not only easier for the staff to moderate each case (ambiguity cleared i.e. mental homework has already been done) but also less stressful because this means YOUR ART, MY ART is less likely to get falsely flagged.
Yes, that's right, you can research and philosophize and emotionally look into yourself and others to help the furry community in a genuine way. Hell yeah to that!
Plus, a moderated paragraph-style extreme slowmode thread is an excellent way to shut down unconstructive feedback from both sides, e.g. "Oh you're just a pedo get off our site" or "Literally nothing is going to change, so why try". This type of feedback only destabilizes the community, distracts from the real discussion and only creates more hurt.
Minors can no longer be depicted as pregnant.
Very good, they're listening to the community!
Notice these words in the journal:
However, based upon user feedback and with the community’s best interest in mind, we are updating the rule