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Internal Policy Update part 2
2 years ago
a!
So I am not particularly happy with the way this policy is being implemented.
First of all. Here's another list of links with alternative places to find me
Cohost: https://cohost.org/JoeyBuckaroo
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoeyBuckaroo
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/joeybuckaroo
Discord Server: https://discord.gg/Yum7xrsyjC
And now I have also joined two more art websites
Itaku: https://itaku.ee/profile/joeybuckaroo
Weasyl: https://www.weasyl.com/~joeybuckaroo
How bad is it?
With that out of the way. I want to talk about why this policy frustrates me, why I think the idea of banning cub porn itself is good, and the policy is no doubt well intentioned, but why implementation matters more than the thought behind it, how this has been hurting innocent people, and how the staff response has exacerbated a complete disintegration of trust that anyone, including myself, have in this website.
I am very tired of this, I have given as much feedback as possible already on the discord channel that FA opened for it, and surmise that nothing I say hasn't been said before. I do not want to repeat myself, as I've had to repeat myself ad nauseam to an uncaring staff, but on account of explaining in summary, I will do my best.
The policy is being used as a sledgehammer. No amount of clarification has changed that the tests that staff uses to determine whether somebody is breaking the policy produce an unacceptable amount of false positives. Almost everybody in the fandom has a horror story, either about themselves, or somebody they know, whose OCs or sonas break the policy. it is untenable to hold the position that this policy is doing good to the fandom when it absolutely does not.
In the past week, I have seen several of my friends be accused of absolutely heinous shit for having shortstack OCs, including normal-looking kobolds, stout corgi characters, certain pokémon species OCs, liking kinks such as ABDL, drawing NSFW of on-model yoshis, on-model koopas, etcetera. There has been a litany of people telling staff how irresponsible the overreach of their policy is. To absolutely no avail.
There have been promises made, there have been promises broken. The feedback channel that was put up on the FA discord has been closed, despite earlier promises it would remain open until a definitive answer, a definitive policy, was put in place and all feedback was addressed. Since then, we've had no such addressing. side-issues were addressed regarding depictions of pregnancy, but the core issue was ignored. The channel is closed, and with that, the main avenue people have had to voice their concerns, is silent. Any new policy revision staff pushes through, cannot be criticised by anyone, unless through trouble tickets, out of sight, out of mind.
I have several OCs that I am worried break this policy, so do many of my friends, many of my friends have already had it confirmed that their OCs break the policy, for arbitrary reasons. My friend Radasus's corgibold fursona was hit by this policy. There's no doubt how much of an overreach this is.
I do not want to be on a website where I should live in fear that one day somebody can look at art of MY own adult OCs and interpret them in the worst possible fate, accuse me of being something I absolutely am not, and downright abhor as a CSA survivor, and demolish my livelihood, my community, my social support structures, my history and ties to the fandom, et al. I do not want to be on a website that is openly hostile to people I care about deeply.
FA has fucked up. It has fucked up before, and in my over a decade on this site, I've been mad at it, disagreed with horrible decisions, but always had trust in it as one of the only damn places on the internet where I felt safe to be queer. I love this website, I care about it, and that's why I was so passionate in giving feedback, and it pains me greatly to see what is happening to it and how the staff is ignoring the vast majority of its community to pass a policy whose implementation is almost universally condemned. This is not normal. This is an attack on queer people at a time when we're already struggling for our lives. They can revert the policy now, but my trust has been shattered, and I am hurt deeply.
I will try to find a haven in other places on the internet. The feelings of safety here are just gone, shredded to pieces, only a time machine can fix it.
First of all. Here's another list of links with alternative places to find me
Cohost: https://cohost.org/JoeyBuckaroo
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoeyBuckaroo
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/joeybuckaroo
Discord Server: https://discord.gg/Yum7xrsyjC
And now I have also joined two more art websites
Itaku: https://itaku.ee/profile/joeybuckaroo
Weasyl: https://www.weasyl.com/~joeybuckaroo
How bad is it?
With that out of the way. I want to talk about why this policy frustrates me, why I think the idea of banning cub porn itself is good, and the policy is no doubt well intentioned, but why implementation matters more than the thought behind it, how this has been hurting innocent people, and how the staff response has exacerbated a complete disintegration of trust that anyone, including myself, have in this website.
I am very tired of this, I have given as much feedback as possible already on the discord channel that FA opened for it, and surmise that nothing I say hasn't been said before. I do not want to repeat myself, as I've had to repeat myself ad nauseam to an uncaring staff, but on account of explaining in summary, I will do my best.
The policy is being used as a sledgehammer. No amount of clarification has changed that the tests that staff uses to determine whether somebody is breaking the policy produce an unacceptable amount of false positives. Almost everybody in the fandom has a horror story, either about themselves, or somebody they know, whose OCs or sonas break the policy. it is untenable to hold the position that this policy is doing good to the fandom when it absolutely does not.
In the past week, I have seen several of my friends be accused of absolutely heinous shit for having shortstack OCs, including normal-looking kobolds, stout corgi characters, certain pokémon species OCs, liking kinks such as ABDL, drawing NSFW of on-model yoshis, on-model koopas, etcetera. There has been a litany of people telling staff how irresponsible the overreach of their policy is. To absolutely no avail.
There have been promises made, there have been promises broken. The feedback channel that was put up on the FA discord has been closed, despite earlier promises it would remain open until a definitive answer, a definitive policy, was put in place and all feedback was addressed. Since then, we've had no such addressing. side-issues were addressed regarding depictions of pregnancy, but the core issue was ignored. The channel is closed, and with that, the main avenue people have had to voice their concerns, is silent. Any new policy revision staff pushes through, cannot be criticised by anyone, unless through trouble tickets, out of sight, out of mind.
I have several OCs that I am worried break this policy, so do many of my friends, many of my friends have already had it confirmed that their OCs break the policy, for arbitrary reasons. My friend Radasus's corgibold fursona was hit by this policy. There's no doubt how much of an overreach this is.
I do not want to be on a website where I should live in fear that one day somebody can look at art of MY own adult OCs and interpret them in the worst possible fate, accuse me of being something I absolutely am not, and downright abhor as a CSA survivor, and demolish my livelihood, my community, my social support structures, my history and ties to the fandom, et al. I do not want to be on a website that is openly hostile to people I care about deeply.
FA has fucked up. It has fucked up before, and in my over a decade on this site, I've been mad at it, disagreed with horrible decisions, but always had trust in it as one of the only damn places on the internet where I felt safe to be queer. I love this website, I care about it, and that's why I was so passionate in giving feedback, and it pains me greatly to see what is happening to it and how the staff is ignoring the vast majority of its community to pass a policy whose implementation is almost universally condemned. This is not normal. This is an attack on queer people at a time when we're already struggling for our lives. They can revert the policy now, but my trust has been shattered, and I am hurt deeply.
I will try to find a haven in other places on the internet. The feelings of safety here are just gone, shredded to pieces, only a time machine can fix it.
Want to support me? It's not required but very much appreciated. If you'd like you can drop me a ko-fi.
https://ko-fi.com/joeybuckaroo
https://ko-fi.com/joeybuckaroo 
You're th efirst I see referring to this like that
This website has been a haven for queer people to be safe expressing themselves, many of us explore our identity and express our queerness through our sonas, and participating in kinks. Kink is historically, and presently, tied with queer expression and activism since the days of Stonewall. A policy that affects several people's ability to express themselves, which has enabled us to feel safe and comfortable expressing our queerness, is in my opinion, something that attacks queer people. And I will thus call it that way, based on what I know happens historically when queer spaces get forcibly sanitised.
People would do that regardless of the rule being there
THAT is the true issue: the rule being so vague people can abuse it
especially when THIS SAME RULE has been around since 2015... does anyone know why this blew up now? Actually asking seriously because I'm confused as to how this all started
I am not the only one who thinks this way, people like
And the rule having been around the same since 2015 is correct, but the point is not in the writing, it is the overzealous increase in enforcement against people on very vague "lol kinda feeling slightly sussy vibes from ya" reasons. People have been operating with their OCs just fine for years without a peep until now. In fact, most staff, including dragoneer had posted and faved content that they now deem "breaking the policy" so naturally everyone is in a state of distrust because nobody knows HOW overzealously the policy is going to be enforced. People have tried to open trouble tickets asking for feedback on their characters, and many people found out that, yes, it IS really bad, and pretty much any shortstack OC is in danger of being marked as "too childlike"
you don't know who on the mod team take sit too far...
do they not relazie the implications?
they alreayd marked pokmeon (pichu) as "Too childlike"
base don that w ecan extrapolate eevee and mew... and from there several digimon...
and spyro and cynder, kirby, yoshi, koopalings, several sonic characters... even midna and link if we follow that logic
they are going to run out of things to even ban at this rate
I'm still planning to do nothing. Mostly because I feel like try as I might, someone is probably going to twist something I leave up in my gallery as being CP even when it isn't. I've seen someone's short character be deemed okay due to muscle definition and they were like: I could've had an off day and drawn the muscles differently and it would've been deemed to be in violation.
I thought we all learned with YouTube how stupid it is for a policy to retroactively affect uploads.
At this point I don't care what happens to my FA. If people want to unfairly label me something I'm not just because something in my gallery retroactively violates the policy, then, as the TV Tropes trope says: Then let me be evil.
My gallery will be largely unaffected. But I have a couple pieces of me playing with a more toony and cutesy art style, and that’s one of the things that really sucks. This really limits what people will feel allowed to draw. Entire styles will feel too risky
I was extremely active in the feedback channel and now that it’s gone, I have 0 hope. I think they’ll just sweep it under the rug.
I hope I’m wrong and they apologize and roll back. But man… i really don’t think anyone should count on it.
And I don't even really have anything that might violate this "policy".
People have also pointed out this is a slippery slope and it's only a matter of time before ALL abdl, and then feral content get banned.