Hard agree with things here, especially the bit about Twitter.

x10 agreed too
because twitter on every count is worse haha
At least FA was made by furries, for furries. I sincerely love this place even if this thing has been needlessly stressful for us all.

I think my main problem with it all is how vague things KEEP getting. Like yeah I get it if you want to really crack down on that style of character, that's totally fine. Where I draw the line is when you outline how you're going to selectively enforce the rules. Vore/TF is the only fetish content that cubs can be in?? A pregnant character has to be at least 13 years old???? What the hell even ARE these rules? If anything it's more of a self-report that whomever is writing these is just carving out their creepy, little niche to make THEIR shit okay.

on the one hand, I don't think that reading is necessarily wrong, but it's important to remember that there's nuance to everything. say for example, TF with minors is just blanket banned. that means no otherwise perfectly innocent fanart of:
ben 10
jake long
sailor moon
etc

and while explicitly saying "it's fine" is definitely the wrong move in their case, stuff like that can be super borderline, and most places just flat out refuse to make judgment calls on it for that reason

also, I think it's important to note, those aren't the only fetishes allowed. it says "Minors involved in SFW or non-sexualized interests, such as vore and transformation, are allowed." that's pretty clearly not an exhaustive list and only mentions a couple examples

Fun fact: That's also the minimum age to register for this site.

This is by far the most reasonable assessment of the situation I've seen. (Including my own, by the way.)

But be honest, even though they added a caveat that non-explicit stuff like mine is totally okay (even if the characters involved are canonically children, I guess??), I don't like the kind of community such rules might slowly cultivate. And I honestly don't trust that fetish art won't be seen as another "loophole" they're going to want to eventually address. My stuff is obviously way cutesy and definitely wouldn't suit their guidelines, if expanded to fetish art. (Including Dragoneer's own commission I did for him, lol)

I've always had a fairly liberal opinion on what art is and isn't acceptable, and I know a lot of people around me see it as a bad trait when it's brought up in conversation, but I've never really cared to defend it because my opinion isn't consequential or important, since I personally have no interest at all in the art that tends to make people uncomfortable and uneasy. (Except for the pet scenario stuff I tend to express my enjoyment of a lot, and yknow fair I guess lol (and for some people, feral as a whole I suppose)) I've drawn some things here and there with dubious characters, cause I didn't think anyone cared and now that I know a lot of people are genuinely bothered by it, I have no problem avoiding characters like that.

But if they're coming after my eevees, I'm entering KILL MODE (a.k.a. peacefully leaving the site)

Though, I really don't know what to think because like I said, even as my personal art is currently safe, I still don't like this. It makes me dislike and distrust the site. I've always called FA my personal home even despite having literally more than twice the followers on Twitter than I have here.
Lots of people are still on Twitter and I'm already there, but I absolutely hate Twitter (more than you can even imagine)

My personal hope (cope) is that Jack Dorsey will do a great job with Bluesky soon and finally break the accessibility/marketability barrier with open protocol federated social media, which Mastodon isn't able to do due to limits in the protocols it uses. But that's a far away hope, I can only wish.

"But *to* be honest"
Oops that typo

I guess I just don't think that it's a loophole they could close without going full nuclear mode. like, even though the stuff I have marked mature is anything I would definitely consider fetish art, I don't think there are any you couldn't reasonably drop in a totally innocent scenario and justify it. regardless of the actual subject of the pictures in question, I think that would inherently force the question "when is a fat character sexualized?" which is something that even the most anti-fetish activists don't want to touch because of how subjective it is. anything that's a "you know it when you see it" doesn't really work when making a policy for a gigantic amount of users like FA has. and, relatively speaking at least, the site exists as it does today specifically because it allows for categorized, usually judgement-free display of that kind of art. and unless neer suddenly decided to go full Catholic mode, I seriously doubt that's changing any time soon. what I see is more them bending to the pressure that's being placed on all websites right now if they aren't locally hosted and free from monetization. it's a miracle adult art between a consenting adult male character and adult female character is still allowed, tbh

Yeah if this is really about just monetization pressure stuff then maybe. I think FA's policy team is just fucking insane though lol (this is what I meant when I said I was less reasonable than you)

Also this is absolutely not neer's decision at all. As far as I can tell, he's never been the be-all-end-all decision maker for what rules are set in place or not. He's probably freaking malding in private.
Does make me suspect external pressure like a payment processor, but you never know what stupid stuff is going on behind the scenes with FA's team. Some of the bizarreness in how the rules have been laid out makes me suspect it's stupid stuff.

Fucking sick of people acting like this is the end but then turn around and get their bi-hourly.(minimum) injection of alt-rght from the birdsite lmao.

I'm afraid this will only get worse for all websites as the chokehold begins to tighten as the battle for control over the masses continues. We'll have to grit our teeth and take the hard decision of abandoning many if not all of these sites one day and I fear that it will become inevitable, eventually when the terms become unbreable to agree to.

Speaking of Twitter! I think Elon Musk is being replaced as CEO! I could be wrong tho!

yeah, though I hardly trust anyone he hand picked. I can't help but think he's just going to use her to make bad decisions for the platform on his behalf

Welp, this aged well! Now Twitter has a new name along with some garbage AI system powering the algorithm!

right, and he basically hasn't even tried to hide that he's still the one at the wheel, lol.