coming from someone whos been here since the beginning its wild

I think a lot of the "old guard" furries (myself included) are looking at the way we're heading and shaking our heads.

pretty much..

Indeed. And considering the people who own FA are "old guard" furries themselves, it's really a shame. They seem to lack any sort of spine

Capitulation. To a very vocal minority that is seemingly inescapable if one's socializing is done chiefly through the currency Social Media.

That's my presumptive theory on why these purges are happening. A very small handful of like-minded individuals see something as offensive or distasteful and proceed to use the tools and language of right-minded protection for voiceless people ("The Children", in this case) to advance their own selfish perception, and those in power either elevate these fools, or are easily swayed by these fools.

Frankly, to me, it's just another novel rendition of the binary reasoning of Burned Furs: Censorship, for the sake of the small-minded, under a smothering cloud of peer pressure. Because if you're against it, then clearly you must be in favor of filth and harm, right?

Sign of the times, I s'pose.

https://inkbunny.net/s/1812215-p6-#pictop Someone oughta make a law! j/k
(There was one called the Communications Decency Act - reference might have been missed by younger or non-US people)

That is such a good comic, thanks for sharing!

YW, haha. Yeah, I was like... Wow, that author shared a good comic.

Super-belated in saying but hah, yeah, thanks for sharing that!

It's keenly apparent, especially after the bevy of "clarifications" without expression of how these policy changes will protect minors exactly, that it's not about protection. If it were, then weight would be given to non-sexual harm (the concepts of abuse, death, etc.). Only sexual concepts are targeted, and that drops this in the zone of deviancy-curtailing and decency enforcement under the guise of protecting minors.

If this ordeal were all about certain mods wanting to snuff out art--or drive away artists--of specific interests instead of the nebulous claim of protecting youths, then come out and say it (and deal with the backlash honestly) instead of leaving folk to infer such beneath what's either a falsehood, or an earnest effort from really misguided people.

It's disingenuous and, as continues to be seen day by day, poorly-executed due to how many fractures it makes in a solid understanding of what's okay and what isn't.

I have seen people not even in violation of the rule change suddenly banned who happen to be artists the staff seem to hate, possibly over political reasons. Seems like subterfuge to ban anyone they don't really like as a happy little convenient side effect of the rule.

I would have no sense of shock nor surprise if this whole thing was an op, yea.

While the issue of puritanism within the fandom is certainly an issue, I don't think that's actual the root cause of this.

There's also an anti-porn faction that's been collecting power within the finance world and using access to the banking system (including access to payment processors) to enforce their social agenda on companies. I suspect that what's really driving FA is fear of losing access to the ability to transfer the money they need to pay for the site if they can't accept payments for ads/subscriptions/donations any more

im too young to be a old guard furry, but I was born into the fandom so stuff like this makes me sad since Twitter seems to now be the be all end all for anything ranging from politics to art

I feel like you should be fine...but we'll see...

Yah I am going to have to agree with you, the stuff they are coming up with is more and more following the idiot crowd. There are artists whos whole gallery would be removed by the desire to remove pokemon and stuff like that.

Yeah, there's no way to construct a policy like this without incidentally making whole swaths of art illegal simply because of the art style. Whether they act on that when it becomes law is to be seen, but there are whole galleries full of art of adult creatures and characters which "present as children" if you apply a ridiculous proportion guide as your only measure, as they seem to be trying to do.
It's unbelievably stupid.

Oofiter... The weight of this truth.

Let's found a new VCL. Raw directories, no algorithm, reels, no rules. I'm not even being that sarcastic...

That brings us to the other issue, why do we allow internal politics of one country to negatively affect the experience of every person on the internet? If you're not in/from the US, these asinine neo-Christian restrictions shouldn't even affect you

The world is not enough, it seems.

I realize the us is in a bad place politically speaking, but the rest of the world it's not exactly freedom heaven... This kind of economic based bigotry where you must appeal to the market can be found everywhere.

But the market that could affect some artists in a bad way is literally non existent. It’s still the bad mouthing and yelling over twitter causing some backlash.

It affects the land on which the server is hosted. Just cuz a client accessing content might be from a free and open country, the server host has to appeal to local laws and rulings. Most of the time rulings like this are implemented so the server hosts can cover their own butts and not keep getting warnings from the Feds

Nice as that would be, the servers do have to be physically housed somewhere, and wherever they are, generally is subject to some kind of laws, meaning whoever's running the servers has to adhere to the laws... or just hope nobody cares to check too closely.

And there's always that looming threat of the few credit card companies just blacklisting you if they catch wind of what you're up to and don't think it's squeaky clean enough, at which point... well.

Short of starting up our own country somewhere, with its own payment processing system that the global system will accept, we kind of have to work within the limitations currently in place, and try to change them where and how we can...

Protecting our online spaces from the American neo-Christian authoritarian movement does not mean going full libertarian and rejecting any regulation, it's not a slippery slope.

I'm not saying it is.

If anything, we're on our way down a different one already, and getting back up the same way's going to be... tricky.

The old VCL's still around actually.

Yep, but sadly it's not managed anymore. I know because I've lost my password and there's no way to get one new...

Really sad how the proponents of this policy change are only a vocal minority, I cannot fathom equating a pokemon to a human child

Yeah, this seems to sum it up well. Vague rules that won't be applied fairly because how can you, with how meaningless it is? I guess rodents and other small creatures are just not allowed to have porn made of them, even if they're canonically adults? Or at least can be used as an excuse to ban users the mods just dislike? I see no upside to this rule, and a lot of potential for abuse of it.

If Disney and Beastars can make mice and other rodents looks like adults of their species, so can artists here.

It is the job of all artists to also be effective communicators, if your works requires you to state "these characters are adults" then you are not being an effective communicator through your art.

Eh, you can't apply human standards to nonhuman things and have it be foolproof. Part of looking at art as a viewer is assumption, as one doesn't have all the context and must gather what they can themselves. Some people will assume wrongly, and that's not an artist's fault

First artist that comes to mind is Carrot, who does a lot of small creatures. Very curious what will happen to their art.

While true, there are subtle feature changes that do occur in most species when going from child to adult. Reptiles in general would be a harder one and would largely have to go based on scale of the animal.

And like XNiroX has a piece with a Galarian Ponyta which tows the line between a twink type character and a younger character, though not necessarily a child. But the fact it is ambiguous is kind of problem as is.

So like, I don't really know where the lines are going to get drawn, but they are going to start being drawn, and frankly likely need to be to close loopholes, and it will likely start with case by case basis.

I really wish they could give examples, but posting links to actual cub porn might not be a good look for them either.

BS. That was only a notice added because of pedants and trolls. People did it as boiler plate for breathing and walking annoyances.

I mean if you say so, but are you familiar with the idea of "death of the author"

Whether you are a writer, musician, or visual media artist, you ARE a communicator. By making your art form, you are imbuing some idea or concept you wish to communicate. It doesn't need to be deep, it could be simply for the desire to share something pretty, hell it could be explicitly for the smut aspect of it. Entire smut books exist for that sole purpose. But you are still communicating something when you make art, whether you like it not.

Whether trolls did it or not, your work should be able to stand and convey what you intend on its own.

I wonder if I'm missing something or reading too much into it, but... I get these bad vibes in that reply.

Likely the latter, because "death of the author" is a concept as old as art itself. You cannot entirely control what people take away from your art, but you can control how you make your art to convey what you want it to convey.

Like if you want people to read something as an adult, don't draw a literal baby? As a sort of extreme example.

I meant the "if you say so" bit, mostly.

Ah, more just meaning, I am sure there is a lot more to it than just people trolling. Nothing is ever just that simple in my experience, if it is something that simple, it is extremely rare.

"Death of the author" is a actually a relatively new notion, and is not generally accepted. And blaming the author for things that the reader interprets isn't exactly ignoring the author's role, is it? That's more like "death and digging up of the author".

Now that I think about it, that sounds right for it being a more recent concept.

Like I don't think that the reader is always right "sometimes the curtains are blue because they are blue" without an deeper meaning sort of thing, that IS looking too far into it.

But I do think there is some responsibility of the author or artist to make sure what is being depicted is what is intended. Like I have seen on model Pikachu which do not look like children and other cases where certain choices were made in the depiction process that make the Pikachu look child-like.

I make A wide variety of art and music. It's not my job to censor myself or interpret what I do for others. I leave it up to the audience to interpret it for themselves, and I refuse to do so. I always have, and I always will. People are free to interpret it for themselves. I'm way past dumbing down anything I do or spoonfeeding it to anyone.

It's not for artists to censor or explain themselves. They'll always be misinterpreted no matter what they do anyway.

And if an artist's audience is constantly thinking the characters being depicted are child like in their appearance? Because that is something you do control irrespective of style, and it is your job to make sure that your depiction communicates in the desired direction.

No one is saying you have to censor things, but you do need to make sure it doesn't require a clarification beyond what is presented.

This can obviously get pretty fuzzy depending on one's style. They're saying that a clarification through a statement such as the characters age isn't good enough. I think that this is problematic.

A lot of artists with good and honest intent who never drew cub art are likely to get swept up in this.

Yeah, though it looks like the new FAQ is much more detailed and descript with specific examples, while not necessarily being an exhaustive list does give more of a general direction for what they meant.

Definitely an improvement, But I still foresee this as having a lot of negative results.

I can as well, but I don't think it will be as many as we think. Gatomon is a curious example where it sits more borderline to me personally.

It is good to know that they have potentially had way more than just a small group of complaints regards young child like Pokemon and Digimon.

Fun fact, the main cast of Disney's Robin Hood do not pass the test of the proportion diagram Luffy posted in the discord as a guideline in the past couple days. None of them.
In fact the *17 year old* Beastars characters were basically the only popular characters that did pass that test.
It affirms minor characters and disallows the adults. Whoops. In fact real life people like Danny DeVito failed that "proportions" test that one of the FA admins posted.
Maybe the problem is not the artists but that people who don't understand art at all are the ones trying to make the standards.

I haven't seen this chart, because proportions aren't everything, things are far more subtle than that. Cause I am sure a lot of people with dwarfism might not fit into the total body proportions either.

Like, facial features and structure are other tells that need to be considered. Overall scale, the species in question when talking about non-human characters, anthro or otherwise. Like....a good example is that we can tell a foal from an adult pony from an adult miniature horse from a regular adult horse. Or even like what a child Kobold versus an Kobold looks like. D&D has a lot of good examples of short stature species which still look like adults of their species.

And like Disney's Robin Hood's characters that are adults feel and look like adults despite not matching whatever proportions this chart has that Luffy posted.

Like, I looked at Argon_Vile's works, and there are pieces that even I mistook for not looking like adult versions of their species, namely a piece involving a Marowak and bunch of Gengar. Like before looking at the tags I thought it was Cubone, which is a species of Pokemon specifically coded to be a child in terms of it's on model depiction.

The issue is, when asked, some of the mods just repeatedly say "proportions" and insist entire species of non-humans, yoshis for a real example, are disallowed in their canonical adult form (which is wildly different from their child form and thus extremely easy to distinguish).

Different mods are giving directly contradictory answers when asked, and from what I can tell the one giving the least reasonable and most poorly considered answers is the one in charge of the whole thing.

It goes beyond needing a business communicator when one of the moderators is giving out charts to answer what is acceptable that are plainly entirely inaccurate, producing both false positives and false negatives in abundance.

At that point it starts raising questions on whether they actually use their alleged internal document for assessing these things. Because how could they--who allegedly assess cases as a group when it's an edge case--have such wildly incompatible understandings of their own policies unless it's actually just being done by intuition all along?

One mod says "evolution level" is not considered, just whether they seem to be a minor or adult for the level they are in. Another mod says entire categories of evolution levels are blanket disallowed.
That is beyond poor communication or misunderstanding, that's just straight up two mutually exclusive positions being simultaneously affirmed as authoritative.

That last statement, if true, and no reason to doubt it is not true, is really effing weird. Like, I could understand the literal baby pokemon, and select pokemon who are coded to be child-like would be on a disallowed list unless altered. But if it is all First Stage evolutions, that would be.....bad, to say the least.

Ugh......this is one of those moments where PR would actually be useful.

As someone whose particular form of weirdbrain makes me a natural born systems-debugger, this whole thing has me at the "laugh at how absurd it all is to avoid throwing things" level of infuriated.

Yeah, I read it initially before the addendum on the journal itself and I was like, "what are they talking about?" My first thought went to, okay, so they are excluding anything that is remotely child-like, or just specifically the pokemon and digimon that are coded to be child-like if they aren't altered to not look like children. the wording was the worst.

After the addendum, I was like, okay, I know what they mean now, but the wording still gives them a wide berth for interpretation.

"It's their platform, they can do what they like", is what you said before, I think?

It is their platform, ultimately would you be making the same complaints to someone's private Discord server is they implemented a similar rule?

FA is a General facing website that just so happens to allow adult content with guidelines. One of my other art friends who has had to see a lot of the back end decisions on other websites reminded me that we are putting extremely controversial material on a platform designed that you everyday grandma can use, for as odd as that seems. You cannot expect every person who is visiting this platform to have the same nuanced understanding that someone else might have. Where if you made a Pokemon/Digimon specific porn site, it could then be reasonably expected that the visitors would have the implicit context for the material, the same cannot be said for a more generally facing platform.

Not to mention that just hosting the content on this type of platform it is much more about not putting themselves into the crosshairs for issues that hosting this type of content tends to draw out.

I mean, look at the update from the 24th where they decided to ban all underage pregnancy, back in 2020 they wanted to make it so people could express a topic that might be relevant to the users when in the proper context, but people will be people and push the boundaries as much as possible and as a result people started fetishizing it.

A lot of this reads "we tried to be nice and give you guys room and leeway, and you have abused it, so now we are taking it away and clamping down hard to make it clear this was not acceptable"

Another IRL example that runs on a similar principle is the signs companies have had to start putting in Port-a-potties that read "Do not drink the blue fluid in the bottom of the port-a-potty." and the only way those signs would have any reason for existing is that someone did and then attempted suing the company.

As someone who has butted heads with mods of Discord guilds repeatedly, yes, I would be. I'd say your argumet is coded with the insinuation of "Being a moderator means you are automatically correct", but that would be a bit hypocritical of me, compared to saying: You are defending the thesis that being the moderator automatically makes you correct no matter what your decisions are.

Well, let's move away from underage stuff for examples. If a moderator or server owner wanted a place for artists to meet, but banned......for lack of a better example WS, Scat, extreme gore, IRL non-anthros (Dragons, Gryphons, etc are okay), and hate art.

Would you find these exclusions problematic? Gore, WS, and Scat tend to be on the "gross, unsanitary, etc" side of things where IRL non-anthros can cause conflict because most animals are not sapient enough to consent, where fantasy creatures and etc have been depicted as being fully sapient in more recent depictions. And hate art for the obvious reasons why that would be problematic. So in some cases, these are legitimately off the table to help foster a broader community of people that isn't going to turn into a very niche server. But also consider the sort of problems some of those topics tend to attract. With non-anthro content you can easily end up in arguments about whether or not is bestiality (there are some server mods who do think like this, for all non-anthros, because personal friend had to deal with one). WS and Scat tend to just have that ick factor and people arguing over that. And Gore, well not everyone really likes the idea of 'consented murder' or even just overly gory horror art as is. Honestly, do you think every moderator wants to sit there and constantly settle disputes over content that is already contentious, or just eliminate based personal and/or majority taste and expectations, and not have to worry about the inherently problematic content.

So circling back to underage art, while I think there is a place and context, I don't think FA should be that place, they tried to allow somethings and it backfired, hard. The site is something like 80% SFW art, those who think this is giving the middle finger to the community that built it are kind of just mad that they can't post stuff that has become problematic. Like does anyone really think that underage NSFW art really helped build up FA in any significant manner. NSFW art and artist are truly the minority on the site, and our perception is very much biased because for some people, it is the only part of the site they interact with.

I think the content they are banning is fine, but not perfect, especially because it is already extremely controversial topics and material, they have gotten feedback from that a lot of people were circumventing the spirit of the rule in the first place, they gave an inch on teenage pregnancy, and people started fetishizing it. Like, to me, it seems more like the people who are mad are almost condoning underage NSFW content because what they like ends up on the chopping block. And I am not saying that is what people are actually advocating for; but I think most people would agree with the general idea that minors in sexual situations is generally wrong, and it is generally wrong because minors cannot give informed consent. Sadly there are a lot of characters, that without context or some level of implicit knowledge happen to look underage.

They DID say that context is a major part of this.

But this is all still WAY too vague and subjective, which just leaves it open to abuse and misinterpretation by users and admins.

Depending on the mod.

I was told to delete three images I submitted for review, because, although they contained adults, and the canon of the show confirmed it with things like drinking alcohol in public places and one character stating her age as 26 while working a convenience store job, I was told it was unacceptable because the style of the show made small animals smaller than large animals and they had cute looks.

So, best pray you get the context mod and not the proportions mod.

Prime example of how this could be abused or subject to a bad interpretation.

Have you pointed this out and asked for reconsideration?

It feels like users were abusing the loopholes and system as is.

Some very small group of people may be, but this is quite different. It could open things up to anyone with a personal beef or prejudice to abuse this in an effort to persecute people.

People have done this anyway. False reporting is just generally been a problem in the community. But like I said new FAQ seems to have made things more clear.

This is likely to make that a much worse problem by a major factor.

Being they weren't taking action before with what was otherwise violations with the child coded Pokemon and Digimon, it could make it worse for select individuals, where before they were getting away with it.

At this rate only time will tell.

Time will indeed tell, but I don't see this as being an improvement.

"Child coded" is so vague and open to interpretation as to be meaningless.

I see this as a neutral change. And Child-coded is not entirely meaningless, most of us kind of can tell a child from non-child just by looking at a face and other cues. Like....it is one of the subconscious things that humans are pretty good at. It is kind of why we have dog breeds like pugs, specifically to have that child like face and overly cute features.

We get it, you think that owning a platform makes every decision you make about it correct in all senses.

"X-coded" is just a ten-dollar word for "I've decided it looks like X but can't actually defend my decision"

Most people generally know what children and child like features look like even if we have a hard time describing them. Can you come up with a sufficiently precise definition based on feature descriptions alone, that doesn't rely on lore based knowledge, that also doesn't generate loopholes, while making allowing the inclusion of certain material while excluding others?

Example would be how the ATF differentiates a regular firearm from a machine gun, but unintentionally created a loophole for bump stocks. But now try to do that but for a concept that is a bit harder to define, doesn't require pre-requisite lore knowledge, and hopefully doesn't make too many loopholes. And part of why it is harder to define, is that there is a bit more subtlety depending on the depiction.

It is impossible to avoid loopholes. At best you will get bizarre edge cases. The best you can do is push the edge in question over to a weird corner.

This applies to damn near everything in which a low-granularity discrete output must be made from an input that is or approximates continuous. Everything.

And that doesn't make "X-coded" any less of a cheat. The ATF wouldn't say that something is "machine gun coded" because see how stupid that sounds? They'd be called on that instantly. Generally you can at least begin to articulate.

Right, which again, this is why that left the wording as "childlike body" because this gives them enough room to remove anything that is clearly breaking the rules where if you were to get as hyper specific as you might see in legal definitions, you open the door for loopholes and now you will have a harder time punishing obvious cases. They did, in the previous journal give examples of specific pokemon and digimon that look excessively childlike. So generally using that a rubric would give an idea of what they are looking for.

It does mean there are going to be things people disagree with getting swept up in this because of style and other features, but that puts more emphasis on the artist to be a better communicator when drawing out their ideas. I have looked at some of the artists who have complain, and a number of that basically have a brand of "childlike" morphology within their style. If you hand it to a stranger, some of the characters just straight up look like a 5 year old whether they were intending it or not. So it does create a slightly higher bar when it comes to depicting things in art. which is a double edged sword.

But outside of using some anatomical chart with key features called out for something to look child like, I feel that would be even more detrimental for a lot of reasons, because it would produce a lot of false positives or force things into some pretty hard line ratio/proportions measuring. Some common features is small jaw, large eyes, stubby limbs, rounded body, large forehead. I mean, go through your childhood photos and look at how your facial structure alone changed over the years into adulthood. Like I said, when you are trying to define something as "childlike" trying to be too overly specific has problems, and being too under specific has its problems.

Hopefully, they'll post the diagram in their amended TOS for everyone to see.


FA admins : "Here, dear artists, are the guidelines you'll need to follow closely during the expression of your creative process"
Feral artist : "Do you have a version for four-legged characters?"
FA admins : "Nope, sorry, feral art is against our new TOS. As is your existence 🐕 💥 🔫 "

FA is headed straight over the edge. Begging people to subscribe, but lashing out with the whip. Let me know when it starts making sense.

Yeah xD the post about the policy update concluding with a solicitation for donations "to help keep FA free and independent" or whatever sure is some shameless gall

(* nods, nods *)

"Can I pay you instead to keep FA free and independent from the idiots making these policy decisions?"

The beatings will continue until morale improves!

Now, where've I heard/read that, before?

;-P

I dunno, one of the Spanish Inquisition dungeons?

>Part of me is hopeful it was just their communicational ineptitude that caused a shitstorm, that people overreacted because the admins didn't explain things properly and it's an uproar for no reason

If this guy's claim is true (he posted a ticket screencap as well), then it is as bad as it sounds, that pikachu being illegal makes it unclear where they draw the line https://www.furaffinity.net/journal...../#cid:59909266

Not to mention that whichever staff member is running the twitter account and whichever staff member is actually answering the trouble tickets are directly contradicting one another.
The former says they absolutely are not disallowing entire species and judge them within the context of their species meaning if they're on model as adults are depicted in the source they're fine. The latter says yoshis are categorically disallowed because they have "child proportions" even as adults.

2023 is not a good year for furry artists, lol

Why? That technology that is also not allowed to be discussed didn't hurt furry art, might have even helped it

Absolutely not. Unless you consider low effort same looking trashy spam that's generated off the backs of actual artist by delusional clowns to be "help". And I don't see a reason why someone right in the head would think that. One glance at ArtStation, DeviantART and Inkbunny is enough reason to see why exactly some sights forbid it.

Meant to say Pixiv, not inkbunny

Because someone who used that tech to directly interact with furry art for the first time will come back for more - maybe commission someone, maybe just hang out, maybe even learn to draw.

Ink Bunny is going to be so busy!

I saw somebody yesterday say that they were basically DDOSed by an influx of new members.

Shame they have an anti human policy.

Yup.

Just anti-human sex I think, and just anti-human sex hosted on their site I think, they seem to be perfectly cool with users linking to it off-site and submitting black-barred versions on-site, because it's not a rule based on their personal distastes but on the rules of their supporters or bosses or something. So it's not so bad of lines to stay within as the prejudicey style of banning going on here.

Regardless of art style, it is our job as artists to also be communicators. Bellwether from Zootopia would fit into the kids cartoon style, but still feels like an adult member of her species.

And then you have D&D Kobolds who also feel like adult members of their species.

If you have to say "They are technically an adult," then you have failed to adequately communicate that they are adults of their species regardless of what you style is. It is sort of similar to how some anime will intentionally draw their characters to look child-like, but then excuse things because they are 1000yo. "If it quacks like a duck, looks like duck, moves like a duck, it's probably a duck."

Also, there are a number of Pokemon and Digimon that from their original designs are coded to be children or child-like for all intents an purposes. Namely Cubone, Togepi, Other "baby" Pokemon, Riolu, and etc. So using the "but their technically not because [insert reason]" Is a flimsy argument at best, and at worst enables people who are actually drawing child porn to use it as a means of getting away with it.

I don't think you're necessarily wrong, but the sweeping vagueness of rules like this leave the decisions entirely in the hands of moderators, who could delete said Bellwether or kobold arts if they felt like it simply because they're having a bad day, and the rules would support them, because the rules are badly constructed.

Personally i think if a rule is unable to be enforced with fairness and balance, and it will make some people more vulnerable than others (to being banned in this case, based on their style) then it should not be a rule. The amount of potential abuse by heavy-handed moderation far outweighs any small amount of good it could conceivably do to the user experience, which is arguably negligible anyway

And I don't disagree with that point either, but I am wondering if there is a multi faceted reasoning for this, and I have some suspicions.

1. Changes to certain State Laws within the US, namely Florida, which IIRC is where Dragoneer calls home? But it wouldn't surprise me if this but a small part of it, and this is the most speculative.

2. There are people who have been actively exploiting it as a loophole for Pokémon and Digimon specifically, and instead of playing ball with the intention of the initial rules from 2015 and the most recent addendum in January. Basically the equivalent of the high school kid going "You can't punish me because it is not explicitly stated in the rules."

I think the latter is the most plausible reason for this rule update, and from AngelBird's link to the journal that is chronicling the Admin responses from Discord, they apparent have a 100 page internal document version for the AUP guidelines, so.....I am thinking that is the basis for how they are ruling on things, and we are getting the ultra condensed version of the AUP only because people are not going to read a 100 page document.

Edit for spelling.

But I also think some of the vagueness is explicitly made to leave room for things that are clear violations so that they have the latitude to enforce the rules, rather than having to add a giant ass list of addendums each time a someone finds another loophole. This is also why so many contracts in the business world are basically entire books unto themselves, So that everything is crystal clear and minimizes exploitation of the rules, BUT again, who on the internet is going to read an entire legal document?

Writing a rule that causes people not know what is allowed and what isn't is ALWAYS worse that writing addendums, what the hell you're even talking about.

Do you think we, as the users, are going to read a 100 page legal document or even a research paper length update journal? And do you think the moderation staff don't have other RL jobs besides moderating FA that take time?

I don't disagree with this sentiment in principle, but we also need to be realistic about how much time moderation staff have and how likely people are going to read an update that is more than 3 paragraphs long let alone a lengthy set of bullet points.

I am going to say they are epically failing to communicate what their plan of action is, and how the rule change is intended to be applied, which wouldn't surprise me if they didn't take speech classes or communications classes when getting their education.

> Do you think we, as the users, are going to read a 100 page legal document or even a research paper length update journal?

People who have a well-established presence (say 1000+ watchers) certainly will

> And do you think the moderation staff don't have other RL jobs besides moderating FA that take time?

Doesn't sound like the user's issue to me

I feel you are grossly underestimating how many people will. Most people don't even read the Terms of Use that comes with almost every program these days.

Not saying it is the users' problem, but it is a problem when it comes to realistically running a website that doesn't exactly generate tons of revenue, and sometimes barely covers hardware upgrade costs at times. Like, we as users need to understand that if we want this website to stay active (which I know some people don't care either way, but it will ultimately fracture the community onto half a dozen different sites), then we need to make sure they can keep it running and be understanding that people's time is limited, and trying to write an addendum for every time a loop hole comes up would be very labor intensive and not good for anyone because now you would have a flood of users submitting more trouble tickets which would then overload the staff, now repeat ad nauseum for how however long this takes, which depending could be years.

Basically it would make more work for EVERYONE, user and staff alike.

It is not great, but realistically they are kind of stuck between a rock and hard place without a good solution that will make everyone happy.

No, there actually is a good solution that would make everyone happy, it's to revert this rules change.

Except not if people were abusing loopholes by being the high school ass hat kid who are intentionally breaking the intended meaning of the rules but then going "You cannot punish me, because you didn't explicitly state it as wrong" type BS.

Like, I am 99% certain that is the reason they specifically called out Digimon and Pokemon, because there are species in those two franchises which are coded to be children. Like Cubone, Riolu, Togepi, the other handful of baby Pokemon.

People were intentionally abusing the letter the rules to circumvent the intended meaning of the rules that were originally laid out.

I don't trust unpaid jealous furries to enforce it as intended, and even if they do, the next batch of mods won't.

the costs of running a website, like, this is largely a no-win scenario at the moment. Like, they can't let people abuse the loopholes, but they also want don't want to have to go through this song and dance every 6 months, so they wanted to make sure there left some wiggle room to enforce obvious violations.

Again, think of FA like a high school, there are certainly enough people on the site who act like rebellious high schoolers.

They've just banned Zaush without using any rule other than "we have the right to ban anyone for any reason". So your whole argument that they couldn't otherwise punish people abusing loophole for trolling purposes went out of window.
https://twitter.com/Zaush/status/16.....345217/photo/1

Yeah, but he has been caught several times in the past for posting stuff to IB labeled as "cub" "underage" etc. and then posting the same damn image here but without those labels.

He is not a reliable narrator; and this more vindicates my statement of the policy change being made to punish people who were other whitewashing (not in the racial sense) their posts to make it so they could avoid scrutiny and use the lack of an internal policy as a shield to protect their work.

https://twitter.com/ExposeTheFV/sta.....73905547124736

Others personal experiences in one case and additional information.
https://twitter.com/GayVinJackal/st.....68174773633033

https://twitter.com/StrawbabyKitty/.....25303786172416

Also not to mention that having anything that could be remotely considered minors in such situations is a huge liability for the website, even with Section 230. Because Section 230 only protects a site if the site is making good faith attempts at moderation.

It doesn't matter. I wasn't advocating for him, i unwatched him almost a decade ago.
The point is - they don't need a rule to ban someone, and they do ban people they don't want here without using any rules.
So your argument about reasons they could need the ridiculous rule we're discussing here for is proven false.

Uh....yeah, I am sure it pretty much has to do with that fact that Zaush has been posting tons of underage content without labeling it as such for a while. So, no, not proven false. Like I said, high school teenagers going "You can't punish me, you don't have the explicit rules to do so." so now they do because they made the update specifically to crack down on the people who should have been getting flagged this entire time but the lack of an internal policy prevented them from doing so because people would use the trite refrain of "All characters are adults" when they clearly are not depicted to be as such.

Also his complaint about e621 would likely stem from the fact that it would be too hard to shield himself from scrutiny, when e621 thrives on community tagging, so that all relevant tags are listed to better account for their blacklist. So that people can't just not tag something to avoid having their art screened by people's blacklist. Like people can do here on FA. And trust me, it sucks when I search for something and kind find it, because the artist didn't tag their shit.

Are you pretending you don't understand what i'm saying?
Again, they did not use that rule to ban him.
They just banned him on the grounds that they can ban anyone who is disruptive to FA. Which means that they could easily do it to people deliberately presenting pokemon as cubs for trolling. Which means that your argument that it is the reason for the rule is false.

The access denied message reads like a standard automated message, they are not going to have it generate a custom "you have been banned for X and Y reason."

"Not fit for our community" is the same stick you get from companies that don't hire you. "You are not a good candidate for this position." "You are not a candidate for our team"

None of those messages read you out why you were not picked to be hire, why should this message be any different?

Also, he is assuming he got banned for no reason, unless he emailed them and got a response he would like to publicly share? Also, no he didn't even ask: https://twitter.com/Zaush/status/16.....91736858836993

Even he says it is a general message, so his assumption for "no reason" is his opinion, and he is not a reliable narrator unless he can post proof it was for something stupid. But basically have a brand of underage or near underage is kind of a problem.

The rule is not in effect until July 1.
But yeah, i see, your only counter argument is "he must be lying". We'll leave it at that.

So....just wait until then to ban these people who have been repeatedly problematic and made a brand of underage content while not labeling it as such. right, because that is a liability nightmare waiting to happen.

Also, he has been proven to be lying by specifically not tagging underage here, while he did mark them as such on InkBunny. Lying by omission is still lying.

Wait, are you saying that they banned him using the rule, while officially stating that they will not act on it until July 1? That just doesn't make sense.

Also, not stating the rule you were banned for doesn't sound right. I won't claim it's not the case on FA, since i haven't been banned yet, but it is pretty stupid to do it that way, and i don't know a site that does.

Anyway, he could be lying, yes. After all he is known for deliberate trolling of FA staff among other things. But i dunno. I'd say i'm inclined to believe his screenshot until someone on FA staff claims that it is fake.

Who knows, could be for any other number of reasons related or not. The rule has existed for 7+ years with a recent update back in January. The announcement was about there internal policy for what is considered actionable offenses regarding the rule. Furaffinity is not an adult website, it is general website that allows adult content with guidelines/rules about the type of adult content allowed. The updated internal policy was basically changed because your average general person might know the implicit context for what would otherwise appear to be underaged characters. And if it was allowed to remain, it could be a huge legal liability for the website Adult specific websites are required to have automatic age verification for basic navigation which FA does not have. And those sites can generally allow a wider array of content because it is assumed the visitors are aware of the implicit contexts that your everyday person is not going to be aware of nor should they be expected to.

Like I said the front page of "Access Denied" reads like a standard denial message, he is free to contact them via the email to get the exact reasoning.

I don't doubt the screenshot, there is no reason to believe that is fake. But as far as the "for no reason" is doubtful. There is likely a reason and FA does not have an obligation to tell us what that is because that is between them and Zaush and them and Kabier. He is free to ask, and then he is free to share the specifics, but the website doesn't have to nor should they.

You did notice it saying "your account has been banned for the following reason", right? Just something to say about your "standard denial message". A logical way (that all of the websites do) is to list the rule that was broken after that phrase.
I didn't say they didn't have a reason to ban him, i said they didn't use any specific rule to ban him, because by TOS they have that power, to ban anyone they deem harmful to FA. And it is the whole of the point i was making.

Sorry to say, but you start to look like you're grasping at straws here, instead of accepting the most simple and most probable explanation.

It says "you are not a good fit for this community" which is a pretty standardized message. The specific rule doesn't have to be stated, it could be multiple rules for all we know. And like I said they either would have sent him an email with the specific reason or he can email them to ask if he believes there is an error in their assessment.

Like, is it common practice to give a specific reason, yeah, probably. Is it required or something that should be, not necessarily.

Occam's razor says the only information we have is that he is "not a good fit for the community" and the simplest answer is that FA staff had a reason or reasons, and used a default message.

Alright, let's leave it at that.

I have a feeling we are talking about different things and fail to communicate what each one of us is trying to prove, but oh well.

I checked Kabier's screenshot and it looks to be identical. So...take of that what you will. Like I get there is possibility for the staff to ban for some non-specific reason. But it is unlikely, especially with two identical messages about "not being a good fit for the community" which to me reads as a default message for this type of action. *shrugs*

I have 8k watchers and I do not do this. XD

Any AUP which leaves users unclear on whether a given piece is permitted or not at the time of trying to post is a policy that is quite simply unfit for purpose. It literally fails to achieve the function such a policy exists to serve.

And if the administrators are unable to plainly and clearly communicate what is and is not acceptable in a way that the end users can apply to test their own works against to decide whether or not to post in order to remain compliant with the rules?

That suggests there is not actually a real standard being utilized and it's all just at the whims of the admins, with suspension as the punishment for failing to read the minds of the mods twice. That's exactly the sort of approach to moderation that killed Yerf back in the day.

The only time vagueness in a rule is actually a feature and not a bug is if someone intends on abusing their authority.

Again, I don't disagree with this sentiment, but I am also realistic in terms of what I expect the end user to actually read fully.

Like, have you read any or all of the Terms of Use that come when installing basically any program these days.

Like, I feel like I know what the intent is, but holy damn to they need to hire a public communicator when doing some of these updates.

My position is that someone who doesn't read the AUP is operating without a net.
But the people who do go to the trouble to try to make sure they are proactively in compliance with the rules are being left with a situation like that IRS meme about making you guess how much you owe.

And in addition to a communicator they need to actually have some form of what their internal standards for judging things under the new policy prepared for when people inevitably ask questions, so mods aren't all just making it up on the spot in wildly different and frequently contradictory fashion in public statements.

Again, I agree with both these points.

This feels ill planned and lacking...examples or guidelines or something more than just "We have an internal 100 page document for how to apply the AUP when making decisions." Like, okay, cool, how can we trust that it will be applied fairly?

Like, this is a huge mess, I will happily admit that.

I'm extremely doubtful about this "internal 100 page document" at least on the level of them actually reading and using it, for reasons of wild inconsistencies in practice that I've already mentioned and don't want to bore you with repetition of :)

Yeah, like I said, I wish they had at least made the update more detailed about what they meant, I feel like this would have gone a long way to helping it, or at least giving a more clear reason why they had to do it, and I am betting it is because there were users where very intentionally abusing the loopholes left out of the previous update in January.

It’s exactly the IRS analogy.

I had content removed in 2019 because (quoting my appeal email) “The issue was the unbirthing which is not permitted. Natural childbirth is acceptable.”

I know for a fact unbirth fetish is wildly popular on this website.
“unbirth: found in 22804 documents“


…Seems ridiculous I was told alternative vore isn’t allowed here when even Dragoneer has a cock vore fetish(same thing as unbirth but different genitals). I have since posted new art of that theme with no issue- they do not enforce the rules and I don’t even know if it’s still against the rules or if it ever was???

This post.

Also I wish I could blame this on what people think is woke culture. Truth is this isn't woke culture :"). We live in a world where a guy who literally publicly admitted to walking in on preteen girls naked/dressing, was also a world leader. People's faith in "the systemstm" are at an all time low. I don't like these policies because of the vague bias they will no doubt manipulate, but I dislike spreading misinformation like found in the journal.

The reason FA, DA, twitter, tumblr, imgur and any other online site changes policy is because of the "providers". We live in a world where COMCAST literally THROTTLED REAL LIFE GOV BODIES SUCCESSFULLY and won. The government. Literally lost against internet PROVIDERS. Over legislation... like if that isn't the biggest red flag ever I dunno what is.

I love taking the piss at things that are wrong, but in this case the woke few that everyone worries about didn't do this in earnest. This has been a problem since places started hosting art. I mean even the world famous "david" statue is constantly embroiled in similar controversy. Which you can google even right now.

this is a link mentioning the gov. throttle. (it's REALLY hard to find the original articles, obv. comcast is a huge internet provider and they get to pay for intentional adverts online that muddy the water. It was back during the internet neutrality shenanigans.

ALso most of this is for folks scrolling by, not toward you my man.

No worries, and yeah, like I had no pretense to believe they were bending the knee to "woke culture" people. (God I hate that phrase, I wish there was something better, because it tossed back and forth like a hot potato all the time now)

But yeah, either it is government, people abusing the loopholes in the rules, or as you said, other service providers that help the site run.

But if Comcast was throttling gov't officials to maintain net neutrality, then good on them, if it was not the case, well....that is whole other can of worms. The article is pretty short and not descript enough to know what their motives were.

No no, they were throttling to combat against Net neutrality and won :"D.

That was the best I could find tho, because it's like 2015-2017 or something and now when you use keywords "throttle" and "comcast" it's flooded with site help only.

Wow.....that's insane. Damn.

Not surprising though.

I wish I could find the original articles so badly, I KNOW IT WASn'T A FEVER DREAM. *cries in bad at googling*

*pat pats* I feel that pain.

And it's not just admins that can abuse this. Users can weaponize it as well.

By the way, look up Kallmann syndrome.

I knew this existed, just didn't know the name, because I knew there were disorders which caused early puberty and others that caused delayed or abnormal puberty. There are tons of hormonal disorders out there.

But like, I don't think this can be used as a valid excuse every single time a character appearance comes into question. Cause otherwise it would just be another loophole for people to exploit. Which I think is kind of the point of the rule change.

Oh for sure.

But the point is that the rule change (which...isn't even in the upload policy...) is asinine because it doesn't take *any* context into account (except when it does, and when asked for clarification have just told "don't draw that way").

Think "kobold + lizardfolk," kobolds are adults by the age 8 or 12 and about 3 feet tall, while lizardfolk are six feet tall. Put a kobold next to an underage lizardfolk and challenge anyone unfamiliar with D&D to spot the difference, regardless of art style. The only way to tell them apart is knowing what the defining features of a kobold are vs. a lizardfolk (i.e. being contextually aware).

Now, do a search on this site for "Feirune" you don't even need to limit it to mature/adult, like 90% of the results are porn. She's canonically 15 years old. How would anyone know that without having seen the show? Feirune is never tagged cub, not even on Ink Bunny. Oh and if you think you can get around that by depicting her in her larger form that she takes on at the end of the first season? She's still 15, bucko.

But I can go on, how about Spyro? Canonically a hatchling in basically every game. No one has issues with porn of him. How about Cynder? Canonically the same age as Spyro, even when she's an adult because magic (she was forceably aged up in body only and after Spyro rescues her de-ages back to her real age).

There. Is. No. Way. To handle this from a fixed objective viewpoint.

FA decided to ban any character that is short, except some because OBVIOUSLY mice are small. Yeah, you put a maned wolf up next to a fennec and someone's going to cry "cub." Hell, in Telegram someone shared... ok it wasn't this pic, but same idea, similar text. Someone actually thought it was cub. No, Garret is just fucking tall (he's 7 foot 2, the dragon is 7 foot 5) making B (or in this case, Fynath) look tiny by comparison. There's also this pic. Juui (the fem) is 4 foot 6, and I'm willing to bet that the harpy eagle is on par with Garret (over 7 foot).

I have to deal with this problem on the Furry Diffusion server regularly; we don't have fixed rules, it's mostly up to "does it look like cub?" and if someone's on the fence, they'll ask for second opinions (one mod is gay as hell, so he's not sure about female pics, another doesn't deal with feral, so asks for clarification on pokemon). Our rules on pokemon are essentially "anything goes, except the baby pokemon" (eg. pichu) unless it deviates from the official art style in a way that makes it look young (which requires context clues). We've only had a handful of repeat offenders and for the most part it was "ehh, too young looking, try and not post that." Most bans have been for political bullshit!

I am sure you have seen the new journal with the updated FAQ and based on my skimming it is about what I presumed.

They updated their internal definitions. Not the AUP rule itself, but changed what it included based on what sounds like a lot of community feedback when it concerned certain species of Pokemon and Digimon that were coded to be child-like or looked exceptionally child-like when depicted in their on model form.

But phew, glad they realized that a very explicitly detailed explanation came out, too bad they couldn't have just done it in the first place.

too bad they couldn't have just done it in the first place
Aye I saw it and aye, I agree.

Heh, for not being the journal poster, you sure do love chit-chatting way more than them! I mean, they likely went to bed, but you're still up happily replying to anybody who wants to engage in conversation with you. Very fun to see.

I think conversation is good, it helps bridge gaps in understanding, and creates room for understanding, so long as everyone is civil...

But yeah, scientist brain, and not saying others aren't like that, but with a topic like this, I think there needs to be healthy amounts of discussion around it.

Someone should tell the moderators that, since it seems like their little echo chamber is the only thing they decided to consult and listen to before enacting this stupid policy change. It really is frustrating that those in a position of power always seem to abuse said power or enforce things that are always detrimental to what is necessary for continued growth and happiness of what they're in charge of. It never fails. Anyone in politics, Disney, any business corporation, online websites, TV shows, you name it; whenever someone gets into a position of authority and start to force changes, things always go downhill. You would think people would learn by now; humans are supposed to be the smartest animals on the planet. And yet all it seems like is we're going backwards.

I don't think the policy update is necessarily stupid if it is being done for the reasons I suspect it is being done, and my two main theories are; changes to state laws regarding child porn, which is highly speculative on my part, but being they said in the journal that this is an extension of the 1000 year old vampire that is clearly a child loophole, I am thinking people were intentionally abusing the loophole in regards to Pokemon and Digimon, which wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

I do feel that on matters like this, there needs to be better internal communication as well as better prepared answers when finally informing their user base.

As far as being the smartest animal on the planet, I will paraphrase something said in science, fish would be the dumbest animals if we graded intelligence based on their ability to climb a tree. We are very smart, but not the smartest, nor is there any single species which could be classified as the smartest, most animals are as smart as the need to be to survive and reproduce.

Edit for grammar

I've been following this conversation and though I'm not sure if I agree 100% you make a lot of great points and I have a lot of respect for your ability to articulate yourself clearly and calmly in the face of people being snarky. Big respect.

I really appreciate that. I think there is a lot of knee jerk reactions going on, and I think people really need to step back and look at it critically and with benefit of the doubt to some degree.

All good points, but the implementation and subsequent handling of this combined with the vagueness of the "Rules" make this a completely bungled rollout at the very least. It really doesn't bode well.

Bungled rollout indeed. This whole fallout has created more problems then it has solved and has left people pointing fingers at groups of people who may have not had something to do with it. We have so little information, but we do have inductive and deductive reasoning to try and figure out where this change came from. And it doubt it is the puritanical people and more likely other sources

Still hard to say at this point. A little bit of transparency on the administation's part could really go a long way.

They're in an echo chamber, alright. I have a friend who got banned for asking for clarification on why certain uploads were taken down (and taken down without notice).

https://twitter.com/RestrainedRaptr.....05782041812993

Oh and his ban appeal was denied.

Sadly, that does not surprise me. I've seen this before. Basically, those in power make stupid, shocking, or horrible changes, and anyone who even REMOTELY complains or inquires about it is sent packing. They basically only want 'yes men' and those who obey and listen to them and that's it; anyone who might have a dissenting opinion or feeling is disregarded. It's tyrannical. Almost reminds me of what Nintendo does, what with constantly ordering cease and desist orders to anybody doing Super Smash Brothers tournaments and other stuff online. It's like they hate their OWN fans. Well, FurAffinity is kinda now looking like that; it's like they're hating their own users.

This was the tweet that actually got me looking for a new place to call home, gathering data since Jan to find something adequate.

If you find someplace, let me know.

Agree with pretty much all of this. Especially the worry that "feral" art will be next, as some of the same people celebrating this vague policy as a "victory" are already demanding they do the same thing to feral artwork next.

I always gave FA credit for being the place where, generally, any artwork was allowed as long as it wasn't blatantly cub (which I understand entirely), but if that general protection is going to get eroded at moderator discretion then the biggest pro for FA to me is getting scratched off and there is a pretty big list of cons still..

I don't even care for a vast majority of the species/Pokemon/Digimon people are referencing, but the language being used and the complete vagueness and open interpretation of submissions by individual moderators just makes me uneasy with the idea entirely.

Yes!
Honestly the more i think about all this the more apparent that worry becomes.
If the admins here are spineless enough that they'll let a small vocal minority guide their hand when writing ridiculous and discriminatory policy like this, then there really is nothing stopping them from banning all feral porn. I think it's only a matter of time now

I think the precedent for snap decisions like site-wide removals based on the mood of the moment has been broached already.

There was a very brief period where the gender tag 'herm' was removed in favor of 'intersex'. I think this lasted no longer than a few days, maybe longer, before it was reverted and the herm flag restored.

My fursona has identified as a herm for twenty-three years, long, long before it was trendy to call the term a pejorative and "harmful word". I was personally offended to have my terminology 'updated' by spineless nymphs who want to enact some grand social change and erasure on behalf of their personal opinions. Now I don't know the particulars of why that decision and its reversal were made, but it spoke to me of a snap judgment that was swiftly overturned once it was seen how much of a problem it would cause unnecessarily. That was several years ago by now.. but the germ's been there for a long time to just, listen to the loudest voice in the room's bad idea based on a social movement and run with it before thinking.

Like now.

Speaking of Herm being a word. I kind of hated that too, because I am like, the fuck are people on about it being a harmful word. It is literally a scientific term used to describe something extremely specific that is seen in nature. The fact it is getting used as a pejorative or "harmful word" really needs to be held in context, because other regular use English words can also be used in a harmful way, but is also a completely normal term depending on context. One specific example that comes to mind is "Jay" or "'Coon"

So when I see people who are offering YCH's which state "no herms..." I am like; "are you effing dense or just being a social justice enforcer?"

Side topic though.

Indeed, and a side topic that is, sadly, something I and companions of mine are forced to consider whenever seeing a commissioner we'd like to throw our money at or personality we'd like to engage with.

Only in the past few years have we had to make the additional approach check of "wait...do they have a problem serving 'our kind', or are we okay to them?"

It's a can of worms I won't divert much longer kicking because the current issue is more pressing. But...heh, yeah, feeling the background pressure to conform to others' gender terminology and cease using one's chosen pronouns contributes to making a certain facet of the fandom feel that bit more hostile, when all you did wrong is "be a term someone else finds offensive". Like you say, that falls under many terms if we're keeping score (and we shouldn't).

Which is wildly ironic considering current-era's press for tolerance and inclusiveness for groups that've been with us all along and yearn to feel supported.

Yeah, I feel that "inclusiveness is a must, but only if we agree with what that means." double standard.

Side side note: Herm dragons are superior and my mind cannot be changed.

Word!

Would a herm Utahraptor be a close second. Lol. #notbiasedatall. xD

I mean I would lift my tail for one... or abdomen at least

Haha, fair.

The whole herm/intersex thing is deeply dependent on context.

I am just bothered by those who put blanket bans on YCH for "no herms, shemales, futa, etc" or will only draw intersex characters if the user IRL is intersex.

 Argon_vile already shared a journal with allegedly the decree of a moderator that ruled on an image of theirs (NSFW) wherein the mod claimed "From an anatomical standpoint, this would be removed.". That's yoshis, drawn pretty much to style parity with Nintendo. So if this is true then it's pretty much a decree that escapes the Pokemon/digimon shelf and is a blanket ruling for pretty much any character that could have childlike proportions.

That opens the door to so many artists' styles being vulnerable, where all that stands between them and a removal is the temperament of whatever Mod happens to notice the work.

I've seen a growing number of artists and art collectors/commissioners afraid for their sizeplay art, or whether their small, cute, occasionally lewd fursona they relate to is now a bannable offense. It cannot be understated how badly managed this situation has been from communication's standpoint. And if it's that way on purpose in order to leave the flexibility up to the mods, well that only feeds into the belief many held about the people in charge's capriciousness and unreliability as fair and just arbiters... :/

Yes, a "child like appearance"... based on what a child looks like in a completely different species, and without chibi or cartoon features, namely human, or other completely different species, or what the observer imagined a child to look like in a fictional species, entirely on one's subjective opinion... with species and characters that literally have zero frame of reference for what a child or adult would look like for said species because there is none, it's entirely imaginary.

All I know are these artists that have been pushing this sound like the same ones that tried to get all feral art banned because "beastiality", and are the same ones that complain loudly about digimon and pokemon because they get so much art dumped every time there's a new game or series and they are annoyed by how much there is.

I've had that worry for a looong time here. And now, in the most bizzare way that worry is turning into hope, just so all artists and watchers can just move somewhere safe already and be done with all this.

I keep saying this, and I will keep saying it: Anyone who values their artistic freedom needs to go on the offensive against puriteens.

I've been in the Discord trying to have open discussion with the admins and directors at every opportunity to seek what clarity I can. Ongoing responses from staff are here.
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10555700/

This is an extremely valuable journal. Thanks.

This new policy is beyond idiotic. It's going to wipe out a lot of perfectly good artwork, especially Pokémon and Digimon artwork, while doing absolutely nothing to stop child exploitation. It's so vague that no one really knows what constitutes a problematic piece. You're likely right that a ban on feral porn will be next.

Couldn't have said it any better. I'm already migrating to IB and leaving this place for stuff that features humans. It's as you said though, feral will be next at this rate, which I fully believe. No point in sitting around waiting for it to happen.

It's 100% that he admins are creeps from Twitter acting like the den if minor aged trolls they've cultivated in the Discord.
They made it a thing to ban anyone who talks about the rule change and are encouraging the minors to harass anyone who does so.
When too many people came in they started directing people into a channel, then one of the mods started trying to ban people based on the fact the rule is "inherently 18+ and the Discord is supposed to be all ages".
Then proceeded to make a half ass clarification, so they can lock the channel, barring discussion, and continue silencing and harassing anyone who came to the Discord to have a voice.
The phrase "These changes were well-received" is a blatant lie, just based on the sheer numbers of people who came into the Discord to voice their concern.

Children.
Actual minors.
The mods (the same people handling reports) are taking the opinions of children to gauge how successful their rule changes are.

Meanwhile I've reported actual exploitation of real children on this site several time, and the so called "Head of child abuse reports" has literally done nothing about a 14 year old making NSFW art for adults. I swear, they're literally waiting until this person is 18 to make an update on the report that's just closing it.

And imagine, that's just the people that actually bothered to go to the discord. There's thousands, likely tens of thousands of artists and fans and millions of images going back to 2005 that are affected, and far beyond their easiest-target example of pokemon and digimon, it's going after anything, even corgis, yoshi, koopas, and some kobolds I've seen confirmed.

I've seen also a number of artists banned that didn't have anything violating the rules right at the same time, with no clarification of why they were banned, and sounds like it might be them conveniently banning any artist the staff or their fans and friends aren't fond of.

Indeed :/

I'm just a watcher so many won't give a shit for my opinion, but I've been here since the beginning.
I agree with everything I've read here, and if they kill feral I'll probably be gone.
Starting a new place would be expensive and time consuming, not against the idea, just pointing out facts.

That will definitely be a death-knell for sure
Unfortunately all the new places that have risen up lately (and then quickly been forgotten) seem to have begun with a no feral porn rule from the get-go. It's really frustrating how much ground this small minority has gained swaying public perception in their crusade against kink. Furry is in some ways a microcosm of our society as a whole, i think, and these seeds of change in public perception in the furry community run exactly parallel to the political right wing's crusade against LGBTQ+ in broader america. Which is scary, honestly.

^^^

Truly scary, for the whole country.

Comparing LGBT struggles to cub and zoo is fucked up man. You gotta watch what you say.

https://twitter.com/ExposeTheFV/sta.....uhoNw&s=19
This you?

If a good chunk of the artists I love get banned or leave this site then I'll likely do the same.
I've never cared for cub myself (nor should anyone imo) but this latest development is indeed a fucking disaster and might be going a little too far into the vague side of things that could indeed envelop a much larger section of art that it really shouldn't.

Honestly, I'm not a fan of a TON of stuff posted on here but even I know that if you start limiting shit it'll eventually kill your userbase one way or another. And honestly, with how they've been "updating" this website to remove features rather than add, I hope this is the downfall this site deserves so something much better developed takes its place.

The part that's gonna piss of the most people: you KNOW this rule will not be enforced equally. There are favorites, and they always have been, and they'll get away with whatever.

That being said, I have all the alternatives I post to logged into PostyBirb. I've seen this kind of shit before, and if I have to change sites.. I change sites. I've already abandoned one site, which I loved, because it got found by the puriteens and their extremely loud complaining made the admin change the policies. And it sucks because I've been on that site 22 years this July.

I'm waiting for the ban on feral art to be next. I've even seen "puritans" targeting art of realistic dinosaurs. You know, animals based on our attempts to reconstruct the fossil record?

Also liking macro/micro art somehow makes you a supporter of mass murder according to some of these puritans, like the ones who had commented here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/9930187/

once I'm able to articulate myself I need to write a journal of my own. this was thoughtful too. I had like a wip but its like 13 pages long lol gotta trim. thanks for giving me a better example to strive for.

Yeah. It's going to be rough.

You hit the nail on the head.

Makes you wonder, if the people running this site are taking notice.

It’s been fascinating and emotionally exhausting watching furry fandom tear itself apart and revert to Burned Furs mentality to avoid owning the fact furries have a thriving, diverse, kinky sexual culture with various fetishes co-existing in spite of normie society which seeks to make all forms of sexual expression as boring, sanitized, and cishet as possible.

Yeah, it's making me want to distance myself from the fur fandom more and more as days go by. I love being a fur, but I don't love what the fur fandom has become and where it's heading to. I don't want the fur fandom to become this sanitized, boring, samey shit. It's already bad enough most social media wants to go the " THINK OF THE CHILDREN " route, we don't need FA and similar sites doing the same because CHILDREN SHOULDN'T BE ON HERE ANYWAYS.

Totally agree on that 100%.

As an artist I feel responsible to tag my work properly but after that it’s “viewer discretion is advised”. People wanna join the sexual animal fandom and then complain about the sexual animals in the fandom… like nah- the block list is free and no one is forcing people to look at porn they don’t vibe with. In fact most of us artists are frustrated with people showing minors our porn in “beware”/”call-outs” where we are trying to keep that stuff in private adult galleries.


Some puritan furries have made it their mission to remove sexuality from the fandom because they don’t like being associated with the weirder aspects of it. Tryna reassure others they aren’t against freedom of expression or sexuality, saying they only wanna ban XYZ content. Well that list keeps growing to include major parts of the fandom, and isn’t showing signs of stopping. The closing window of what these people find acceptable is so small that it’s suffocating.

They should be more tolerant of other people instead of demanding artists draw according to their preferences.

Yup. It's... slowly wearing me down, I rarely get in the mood to draw these days and it's half just because I dread the possibility of having to interact with them. I don't even consider them furs, just fakers. 10 - 15 years ago, furs didn't care what you drew/wrote, but now, it's either human with vague animalistic features or get cancelled. It definitely is suffocating. It doesn't help that AI is also on the rise and is putting even more pressure/stress on artists because now we gotta deal with people dropping us for poorly generated "art" that was generated through copying/stealing other people's art.

I am glad I quit smoking ciggies but the stress of it makes me want one still.


I stopped caring and draw what I want nowadays, regardless of the drama; and post it all to InkBunny instead of worrying about the rules elsewhere. FA is a place to post ads to my other galleries now, since I don’t wanna fight people over my adult characters who “look like children” or my feral characters being labelled “zoophilia” because posers who don’t belong in the fandom due to being sex-negative or underaged can’t tell the difference between porn of a cartoon fursona and a real being being abused. 😅💀

True. I mainly use Inkbunny but want more than one site to use, FA's the only one that has any traction at all so... I use FA. However, with this policy update, I have a feeling FA will die pretty quickly, maybe people will start using Inkbunny and learn to use the blacklist instead of avoiding it because it has cub. Inkbunny has been and always will be vastly superior to FA for many reasons. I keep telling people that if they want a better functioning site, they should go for Inkbunny and if they don't like cub, Inkbunny has a blacklist, just like e621.

"If you don't like it, keep your mouth shut and move on" is such a simple rule...

I don't like everything I see, but it's not up to me to dictate my personal taste over someone else. This is all just pixels after all.

It’s not good enough for some people that they can moderate their own content, they gotta moderate other people too. 😒

Sad but true.

Agreed.

It is absolutely baffling to see these types of people in the furry community. It's like - you realize the rest of society looks on you with the same disgust you apparently have for the things you get offended by that obviously aren't hurting anyone?

Oh yeah. I've been on FA since... 2010-2011?, it used to be a site I just liked using, now, it seems I may be forced to leave over the vague and unfair policy. I don't like that everything is going puritan because it leaves so little for us to work with. Hell, those puriteen furs want us all to stop drawing anything even remotely animalistic (digitigrade, paws/hooves.. etc.) it's so damn bad. I'm not even old, I don't agree with what my younger peers are doing to the fur fandom.

Half-assed vague rules they make up on the fly

>When sonic shitting from his nipples is okay, but petite a-cup tits are "against tos"

if they banned feral it would be funny considering the things dragoneer favs.

there is something very ironic about how all of the people who oppose feral porn have a gallery full of animal dicks and realistic animal headed characters sucking penis. its almost as if animal erotic art is one of the core focuses of this community, but they pick and choose what forms are okay.

I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the people who vehemently oppose feral art are people who find it appealing themselves and are either deeply uncomfortable with their own attraction due to outside influences convincing them it's wrong, or simply under the impression due to peer pressure that they need to condemn it publicly in order to avoid any of the "friends" they associate with pointing at them and saying "You're actually into this, aren't you? That's sick!"

Absolutely true

💯

I've flat out run into people from this site that have stuff like "DNI if you like x, y, z" and I met said people and later found out those things are exactly what they like. They evidently started putting them there just to blend in with the mass of bigots that seem to be common in the fandom now.

Let’s call it “internalized zoophobia”

Neer actually liked at least some cub art, at least at one point.

Doesn't everyone at some point?

I'm talking sexualized stuff, not cutesy stuff.

What people consider to be prurient varies since it’s largely subjective. Someone might consider that image to be sexual.

I wouldn't, but people are weird.

Precisely.

Plus it's not fair to put so many restrictions on pornographic art. People say "it's no big deal because I don't draw porn", but obscenity rules end up limiting ALL creative freedom and that's why they're unethical.

Agreed. Banning art is futile. People are just going to make it anyway.

Artists shouldn't have to self censor.

I see things all the time that I don't like. It's really easy to just moveon rather than bitch about it.

And what is offensive or obscene is completely subjective.

Nobody wins with policies like this.

Agreed completely.

#saveferal

They ban feral, I swear to god....

Here's a concept. If people (or FA solely) is complaining that Digimon, feral, or Pokemon proportions are lookin too kiddie, and it bothers certain individuals_ maybe they should add a "filtering system," so people can just... never see them. That way, people who like it can keep posting their kink, those who want to see it can, and those who dislike it, don't have to. Then everyone can be all warm and snuggly in their own little corner.

I love to call FA home, it has been for a while_ but the devs here struggle at keeping this site's code and user interface past anything 2008 had to offer. So I DOUBT they'll ever do that. And it seems they are more interested in oiling the squeaky wheel, that is the over "spoopage" of social media. If that snowflake attitude starts seeping in to FA, this site is doomed before it can even justify itself.

>Petitioning FA for a blacklist for over a decade

>FA does this instead

As I said above, yes, "child like"... based on what a child looks like in a completely different species, mostly without chibi or cartoony features, namely human, or other completely different species, or what the observer imagined a child to look like in a fictional species, entirely on one's subjective opinion... with species and characters that literally have zero frame of reference for what a child or adult would look like for said species because there is none, it's entirely imaginary.

Like, pokemon and digimon look exactly as they are from the moment the game code says they turn from an egg into a pokemon or digimon, they do not "age". Yet they declare most first stage things children now.

Mainstream social media is one of the worst non-wartime inventions in modern human history.

I HATE how many furry artists are moving ALL their art to Twitter, then complaining when the normies and puritanical anti-porn brigade bully them off the internet or cause them to "human wash" their art style.

I came into furry in the late 1990s when it was a lot more "toony" anthro-animals, and now it seems to be becoming more and more "Humans with ears and tails slapped on" because "something something think of the real-life human children" or some bullshit like that.

Looking like Inkbunny is about to get a massive user base increase.

At least Inkbunny has a working blacklist and community tagging feature too.

And they already figured the best bet was to just ban HUMAN stuff in general and save the headache of dealing with the people that cannot separate FANTASY from reality.

I don't produce the kind of content that's being put in the crosshairs. However, I feel I should voice my opinion here. This should concern anybody, as this is a slippery slope that has no clear destination. Who knows what else they'll ban next. Exactly who FA is trying to appease is unclear, though the influence could be beyond the confines of this art community. I too believe, It is possible that mainstream social media platforms such as twitter are penetrating and influencing decisions being made on much more niche sites such as this one.

Let's be clear, we are not discussing CP, as that is illegal. Furthermore, there is a clear distinction between fantasy and reality. What I can say with absolute conviction is that no characters are being "exploited". Who is being exploited exactly? That innocent Vaporeon you drew Lewds of? Strange, as I'm almost certain that Pokémon are not actually real. There can be no victims in this situation.

I joined FA because I felt that my work could be appreciated. This site is like a refuge where I can just unload, share and find common ground rather than feel like a complete social outcast. I haven't been here from day one, but the last 9 years on this site have been a pleasure. I have befriended some truly amazing people!

Agreed.

Bingo.

Dear god it's about time I see this comment here!! I'm in the same position where I don't think I'll necessarily be targeted by this new rule, however I still feel really worried and anxious about what this sort of update spells out for the future of FA. There are a lot of users in these comments trying to defend this TOS under the guise that this is setting some sort of holy precedent that will prevent people from posting real illegal content but... We are all just drawing cartoon animals here. It doesn't matter what species, age, proportions they have... Anyone and everyone's art style is completely up to individual interpretation, which is wonderful! But in a context like this could complete ruin somebody's livelihood if the user reporting the content just wanted to be a spiteful dick.
I think more users who AREN'T artists should be writing out their opinions on this since we, the content creators, will more than likely have a lot to say about this. We're gonna want as many voices as we can reminding these mods that the entire point of moderating a website is to keep the userbase as a WHOLE happy, not just a few whiny people who think our diverse culture of grown adults exploring kink and sexual fantasies together should be purified/sanitized for... um. "The children"... I guess... Whatever that even means.

I don't think FA is bending to a Twitter mob as much as they're bending to their payment processor for FA+, because historically speaking those are the people most likely to both have a thorn up their site about perceived minors (even fictional ones) and enough weight to force compliance.

I've seen a lot of people request their works be removed from e621 specifically because their payment processors or galleries decided to crack down on content involving "minors" (like baby pokemon of undetermined age) or ferals. Even people hosting their own sites aren't fully safe from that.
So to me it seems like FA is now under scrutiny by the same forces, their payment processors.

Which is part of the reason why we're so hesitant on e6 to offer any kind of monetization or ways to support us via money. We can host all content specifically because we don't handle money through any service, even our ads are handled in-house only and via direct payments.

Speculative, but entirely possible. and the pressure coming from financial institutions is caused by such fringe right wing Christian groups as Exodus Cry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry

Yeah they don't care. A group of us who don't agree with the rule change went to the discord and fought for a discussion thread which we got, and then fought for 3 days just for Sciggles to say "it's not going to be peddled back", while ignoring multiple people joining the conversation to insinuate or outright call people that are against the change pedophiles. I even got a 1 hour manual time out (from a different moderator, mind you) for telling one of these accusers to leave!

When you inevitably leave for somewhere else, please try to let us know where, so we can follow you there.

Yeah its going to ruin alot of people but they don't care. Man that next con they host is going to suuuuck XD

when they banned cub porn, i told all those victorious and self-righteous people that theyr fetish could be next
because once a door is opened someone else can go through too

I have seen people migrate their content to inkbunny etc.

Is there a tl;dr version for a poor ADHD person? :D

FA thinks cartoon animals count as children in policy update, removed forums to discuss, bans you from discord for trying to discuss, uses "think of the children" as excuse. Still allows users as young as 13 to register and use the website anyway, welcoming minors into an ecosystem heavily skewed towards pornography.

Part of me gets the feeling it's the same excuse it's been since the start - not capitulation to a vocal minority but business relationship reasons - except for some dumb reason they can't just come out and say that their hands are tied and they have to do this if they're going to keep the site running.

Whatever the case, FA is being held on a tight leash, either by inept management or tight-lipped 'talk to the lawyers' dealings, and the leash is being passed on to us. Never is this a friendly space for the artists, but they'll sure spit in our face and tell us it's cooling mist gel~

Eh, I understand people's concerns but I'm not too worried. I remember sofurry had a similar policy change a while back and aside from a lot of fist-shaking from users for a couple weeks after I never noticed any noteworthy changes, good or bad.

what worries me the most is that the moderators decide if the artist's style looks "adult" enough and hundreds of people with chibi and cartoon style should be prepared to be banned simply because

It's a different subject matter but, the underlying concept is very similar. This is Frank Zappa talking about the decline of the music industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP4wsURn3rw

I'm so tired of ranting and rambling. I guess somethingsomething "I ran AGNPH for 9 years and fuck this shit".

I've already nuked 20% of my FA, and have sent a giant list of what remains that could even possibly violate the new rules as a trouble ticket. Here's hoping they reply to it before the deadline, I guess.

It's incredibly cathartic that literally everyone I know is furious at this change. Everyone.
The only times I've seen people support this rule change are either literally just the staff, or from the FA Discord itself.

...what the hell did I miss and do I even want to know?

Anything that can be looked as under age is banned. Including starting Pokémon, anything that is too small (kobolds)...

But hey, rape, scat, gas, snuff, abuse, torture, inflation, slavery, racist stereotypes and bug chasing are okay!

For now. They still have to ban feral by calling it zoophilia.

Oh no, it's definitely a witch-hunt and a solution in search of a problem.

One artist I know of draws canon appropriate koopas and yoshis, among other things. Just by the style they're in, 95% of his work is going to have to be removed.

I'm moving on to greener pastures with my writings.

"This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper"

Well said honestly. It's frustrating to me too. Like... they had it. They literally had it, things were good. Just leave it alone. And instead they decided to keep going and this is right after twitter started catching on fire, so they could have ACTUALLY SEEN A RETURNING USERBASE. This was FA's chance to step up and become the thriving artistic center of the furry fandom again. instead they're shooting themselves in the foot. I've literally been here since the beginning. Literally. And for the first real serious time in my life, I'm considering actually bailing. Seeing the future of the furry fandom turn into this puritanical fascism on autopilot bullshit is really disheartening.

Amen.

Absolutely love how the staff are catering ONLY to the tiniest fucking group of “puriteen” furries who think porn is fucking crime and should be vanquished. These are the same fucking minority who kick and scream at artists that draw porn of quadrupedal characters, calling them zoophiles and basically saying that if you draw porn of four-legged characters, that you’re basically doing the equivalent of real life zoophilia.
Sick and tired of Dragoneer bending the knee to appease the 0.00000001% of people who BARELY REGISTER on the grand scope of things within the furry fandom. Granted, I agree with at least ONE aspect of the rules…but they’re so fucking vague that it leaves it all up to interpretation on the part of the moderation team. “Blargh, this 4ft tall midget character looks like a child next to this 9ft tall character, even though they’re covered in scars and wear a skull on their head. Nevermind that it’s not a Pokémon and that they ARE a proportionate adult, I’m gonna call them ‘child-like’ and remove it from FA.”
This policy change is so fucking stupid, because it affects artists who have specific styles. Take Shikaro for example. THAT’S HIS STYLE. And this policy change basically targets him because, according to the new rules, the characters are “drawn in a way that makes them look child-like.” It’s…absolutely asinine. Now Shikka feels like he’s at risk of being banned, feels targeted, feels like he’s not welcome anymore JUST BECAUSE OF HIS ART STYLE. I swear that site staff are just braindead disconnected from the very community that they are meant to protect.

You'd think that kids would turn off the NSFW option that's here on FA for just that reason.

Kids don’t know better these days, unfortunately.

I'm also worried about the feral stuff. Even MLP and mythical creatures, like for example, my new hippogriff OC may be seen as problematic, despite them being intelligent talking creatures. We really are going to pander to the folks with gut reations.

And just as a general reminder in case some people get confused is not explicitly about Pokemon and Digimon characters (though they are groups who can be especially affected), they were just mentioned as examples. The new normative applies to ANY species that on the eyes of the moderators is too "childish" or non adult looking, so it can affect many shortstacks, small, cartoony or general cute looking characters that do not follow regular human proportions or anatomy. They say context will be taken into account, but they also clearly stated that the character being an actual adult for their canon species doesn't matter. If the admins deem the character to not be enough adult looking it can be striked (or ask you to retire the picture). It can affect a lot of art depending also on the style each artist renders those characters...

^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Too many I see that think they are fine because they don't draw pokemon or digimon. I saw confirmation from staff corgi, some kobolds, even yoshi and koopas.

Exactly my thoughts... It's so disheartening that old reliable isn't so reliable anymore. I hope someday a nice alternative will present itself. Something like mastodon but perhaps uh... better for art display.

This is less catering to the neo-neo-neo burned furs out of culture war and more banks and advertisers becoming more puritan and unwilling to deal with sex in general. See tumblr's having to remove all porn and even now that they've walked it back it's still not MUCH you can really upload compared to the old days. Banks and advertisers demand greater and greater things on sites that host pornography, laws are putting the onus on the website host to make it inaccessible to children to the point where the internet just won't be ABLE to host porn on it anymore.

You start by removing the cub art--sure, okay, already a bit of a gray area. Now you remove anything that looks like it could be cub art--okay, just following up on that. But you set rules that aren't very clear or actionable, and then we'll lose feral art for being bestiality and it won't matter in the end banks and advertisers will just go "uhm that's bestiality" to clean furry art. It's already risky using paypal for clean furry commissions sometimes.

As a 'normal user' of this site across two profiles of nearly a decade and a half it seems, I used to upload all of the commissions I'd get over the years without expecting much backlash because I credited artists and linked to them, as one should be doing. However, it took an investigation to find out that my current account was flagged and struck against for staff issues with either I, the art I loaded, the character(s) I owned, or some other nonsense.

The owners and staff of FA never did care much about approaching situations on this site without bias, without taking sides, or doing it because it gave the community a place to lean on and be a part of. It's devolved slowly into "just another art site" and is quickly turning inward upon itself. Sure, the rules are strict enough, and it's not Inkbunny-level where CP/UAA is actively promoted and trafficked throughout. That's the one grain of benefit I'd give this place.

However, the last decade or so I've watched this site and its staff turn into the typical apologists, defenders, and promoters of a variety of 'closed door' topics and subjects that have gradually made their way into the public circulation and grapevine. I've since stopped uploading here and took down my gallery entirely because all I can feasibly see myself ever using this site for until it implodes is following artists, commissioning artists, and supporting artists. Otherwise, utilizing this site in its fullest lost its luster long ago.

Sites like Weasyl would quickly overtake FA if it got more traffic, more support, more staffing, more coders, and a more uniform system and overhaul of some key features. Toyhouse is also in the same boat, and requires much of the same despite it being in beta / invite only still. Furry Network quickly died off because it only actively promotes and engages "popular artists" and buries anyone trying to get started out on it. FurryLifeOnline also quickly fell to the wayside despite its UI and layout because of after-opening rule changes. Inkbunny, as previous mentioned, is better avoided lest you wish to be associated with the mess that involves. DA has already killed itself off twice (once with the no porn, and recently with the AI nonsense). Twitter has and was always a social media site and yet a lot of artists have fallen for the trap that it's a gallery, which it's not, and once Musky boy updates it to be full NFT and AI involved (as all techbros think and care about is profit) all of that art is going to be buried.

Like you said, ECMajor, FA is absolutely the "old reliable," but that reliability can only extend so far when the staffing and ownership of said reliability lacks commitment to their roles.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I've said it for years that there are alternatives out there, but no one wants to pack up and jump ship because they're worried about continuing their livelihoods elsewhere and hoping that even 50% of their followers join them on "yet another platform." It's risky business and no one wants to push for it because they'd rather endure through the hell this place has created out of its own making than to start fresh someplace better.

Time change. Sometime for the better & sometime not. Oo.

you can use discord, I have all my high resolution art hosted on my discord server n-n

That first sentence is exactly how I felt about this place but now, I am very uncomfortable with uploading stuff here because of the new policy rolling out.

I'm wondering why this is still going on. From what I recall, the original issue with 'cub' stuff was when peach (i think her name was) got involved as she didn't like it so they made rules against it. Then they had to further restrict things because one of the companies they took payments and donations through wouldn't work with them if they had certain content. Then more restrictions when they sold the site to that one company before buying it back later on. But if I read the vague explanation of the current rules, any one who draws their females smaller than their males and doesn't give them wide hips and big tits will be in trouble, right? This is going to be very limiting for some artists, particularly a well known artist who's name starts with "Z" who draws all his females with a "youthful" appearance, lacking breasts and being half the size of the males.
I also foresee the upcoming 'witch hunt' as busybodies search through the old content of posters they don't care for and report every thing that even remotely violates the updated rules. Personally, I think if some one reports you, you have a right to know their name (United States v. Bench, 82 M.J. 388).

Zaush hasn't posted her in 5 years plus.

Correction: he hasn't posted here in ALMOST five years.

"We'll see" are the keywords here, but it sure doesn't look good.

As far as what you wrote, I think it's one of the best posts on the subject that I've seen, and I'm in 100% agreement.

Well, FA has survived worse decisions.

I'm here because the artists I like are here, and their fans might look at my stuff, which means more eyeballs and possibly more commissions. I'm also okay with the 2008 interface as I'm sick of slicker things that require more clicks to get one thing done.

Recent decisions, like the file-size limitations and fixing the 'upload a larger resolution' bug that no one asked to be fixed, and this current one, are vexxing, but no one has left. I've got zero loyalty, even my Discord icon (same as the one here), I think violates a rule. As soon as a better alternative appears and the furry mass moves, I'll move with it.

I keep holding out hope that Twitter implements some kind of gallery system, so I can have a locus of my work and not feel like I'm tossing it in a stream that goes over a waterfall. Not expecting much, and mastadon is just too clunky.

A LOT of folks are at least planning or prepared to leave, or will be booted, depending on how this actually shakes down.

Twitter always has, and probably always will suck, at least partly because it's terrible for artists beyond basic advertising and staying in touch with other artists, mostly due to having no gallery functions, as you mention.

Agreed.

At this point I'm ready to jump to the next big thing, as soon as everyone concurs on what that will be. I like the simplicity of the gallery management here, dA's is difficult to navigate. If Twitter had something it would probably be good enough, with significantly more eyes.

I have no idea how it will go. With their update, it's 'All Kobolds', then 'no, we don't mean all Kobolds'. Someone will decide. Well, Simplfy6's Piko is a kobold in a lot of adult situations, and I've always assumed she's an adult, but she has a chidlike innocence in a lot of things. Same with Valsalia's Yingets, small and culturally immature. Even ECM's 'Thot that counts'... depends on the mod and the day. If that all gets pulled the reasons to stick around greatly reduce.

I suppose I'll see if I can get my dA, Weasly, or Pixiv more populated. Always meant to figure out Postybird.

I'm doubting kobolds will get banned.

But this is all still a work in progress at this point. Time will tell.

:(
Sadly this metal illness has Moved from Twitter To FA
as I'm sure your aware the ABDL community is going to be unfairly targeted. i have actually seen on Journal posts from ABDL artists people saying by being against this new change that means these artist support pedophilia because there ABDL art they make.
ive been here since 2007 and while I Don't Want Fa to become what that horrible place Inkbunny became where people post tags like pedophilla and support M.A.P's and the likes started to show up causing me to nuke my account over there. i was sexually abused as a kid that was the staw that made me say F-Inkbunny. People need to realize this kinda content is NOT Posted to FA and will never be supported.

this is a very Far Reaching exploitative new rule and its so vague they mind as well Quit working for FA and go work as the new policy makers for YouTube /Google

Fa refuses to update the website with borderline life improvements like a muli-upload for one post so we don't have to re upload 10 different alts of the same image one at a time
they refuse to add a black list feature for Tags they Refuse to really do much of anything!
and then they ADD FA+

this stink of CORPRATE funding that's threatening to pull money from FA unless they change this this and this. and if so Fa needs to Grow a back bone and tell them to take there money and leave.
how will this affect Femboys or the LGBTQ who have more young looking features and smaller body frames. this Targets so so so many

the furry fandom has always been a self funding system because of how hard media craps on us every chance they get and any time they try to fund the fandom they want to eradicate what they don't like. this smells of twitter drama and big corpo funding threatening to pull Ads.

FA is not inkbunny Fa is non of these things they claim it to be.
and if they did find stuff here its left overs from the Loli art ban they did many many moons ago. right now if you type in foalcon or other gross tags some still pops up that was left over from those changes they never removed off FA.

the mods on FA have always been bias Against the ABDL's on FA I've had post removed for no reason in the past and given warnings for rules i never broke because I'm a DL and when asked what I did I never got a response past if it happens again you will be banned. I hade my account locked at one point and it took 1 1/2 years before any mod after email after email before I got a mod to look in to and and go that's not right and gave me my account back.

is this really the beginning of the end.

If it's any consolation, I don't think most ABDL work will be targeted because it's rarely overtly sexualized.

Ehhh, depends on if the mod in question thinks it's fetish work or not. Even nonsexual, if it's seen as fetishizing it may be targetted. And FA does have a history of mods not agreeing with each other. :/

Yup. Especially with this policy as it's so far been explained in place.

I'm going to go with moving forward. we will see what actions Fa mods and chose to take. I've been here for a while.
and past experience tells me this is going to be a Shit storm of stupid.

Burned furs war Part 2 the retarding:
that's what imma leave it as

Wouldn't be surprised, but we'll see.

I posted a non-sexual solo image of my fursona who is my age(adult) as a “chibi/cub” peeing as part of a ref sheet and it was removed for being “cub porn”.

Meanwhile also on FA:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/52240428/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/51425201/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/52184800/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/51147989/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/51040338/ <- way more sexual than mine!!
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/49229887/ <-also way more sexual but still up
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/50762149/

I was also told “Re: Removal of birthing/breastfeeding art. The issue was the unbirthing which is not permitted. Natural childbirth is acceptable.”

Strange considering how much of that is on this website…. Also besides tags how do you know if it’s Un Birth or Birth? It’s a still image. I’m confused. It’s a form of insertion vore, and staff said vore isn’t a sexual thing(?).

It's the Frozen/Burned furs war all over again.
Before long it'll probably just become telegram channels like the old irc chats and mucks.
The inertia of FA makes it hard to carry anything to a new site because moving the whole crowd is not likely, and most people probably don't think this applies to them because it's easy to spin any kink within the furry fandom to seem problematic to the uninitiated.
They just want to feel good about hurting bad guys, but they can't hurt the real bad guys, so they just change what "bad" is until they have a nice sizeable body count to pat themselves on the back for disrupting.
But eventually something they like will be the new hot button issue and they'll wonder where we are.