wholeheartedly agree

I don’t have a Twitter account, but from what I’ve seen as a guest, it is horrible for viewers. For all its shortcomings, give me FA with its Favorites folders, gallery organization, and search tool.

For my part I've seen zero artists I follow stating they're gonna leave, and only a small number even post saying they're not leaving. I dunno, I just feel like I've seen enough people say "Ugh I can't believe they're changing X rule, FA dead site lulz" over the years, only to see cool new artists arrive, many of the same artists remain, and my own watcher count steadily increase with new users, to feel like... yeah, maybe FA will die someday, but it's gonna be because the owner decides he's fed up with the drama, the cost or because the internet explodes overall, not because the userbase vanishes.

As for twitter, hellsite is hell and I'm glad I deleted my accounts there like over a year ago at this point. Sure there are a couple of artists who only post there, but... well, if they only post there, I just don't know their art exists, so * shrug *

(that's not to say FA doesn't have problems with its interface and the enforcement of rules by its staff, but if I can expect a better user experience from an indie site with a volunteer staff base than I can from a site owned by one of the world's richest asshats, I'm gonna stick with the indie site. God knows if twitter actually enforced their own rules there would be a LOT more furry art banned/deleted from there than is disallowed on FA).

I’ve posted before that my least favorite thing to happen on Twitter is seeing some nice art, seeing that it was posted today, then checking the artist’s profile, finding a FA link there, and discovering that their FA gallery was last updated several months to several years ago.

It happens to me roughly twice a month.

* nods * I've worked very hard to escape that mental 'FOMO' trap of "someone whose work I might enjoy might be sharing it somewhere I might be able to see it if only I subjected myself to the bigotry, abuse and general owned-by-an-asshole-billionaire nature of social media sites!"

I'm sure there are a bunch of such artists out there, but they're still creating art and presumably some people are still enjoying it, so whether I get to or not is something I try not to concern myself with. After all, there are still a tonne of incredible artists who post here and my only trouble is struggling in the current financial climate to keep myself afloat while wanting to financially support even just a few of them.

I should point out that this journal was prompted by how I found an artist on Twitter a couple of months ago, followed their FA account, then today they posted a journal about leaving FA for the only other art site they know: Twitter.

They didn’t even know other furry sites existed. Just FA and Twitter, and they want to leave the former.

Well, either they'll keep posting on twitter or they'll come back to FA when twitter does something to upset them/further deprioritise users seeing anything that isn't paid for. Or FA and twitter will both implode and they'll wish they'd networked more.

Admittedly I only post on FA these days because cross-posting 3-4 stories a week where I had to edit/format them separately for two different sites was too much work, but if FA dies I can easily make SoFurry my primary posting hub again, and if both die... welp, that'll be a bridge to cross if that eventuality ever happens. I don't even known if Weasyl and FurryNetwork are still active. XD

I post to several sites at once, but among the ones I still use, I have to admit Weasyl is by far the least active. I get as much interaction there in a year as I get on FA in a week, or on SoFurry in a month.

I gave up on FurryNetwork a while ago. Almost no interaction, and the UX is just not very good.

Maybe check out Itaku. I recently discovered it and it's pretty nice so far. Not terribly much traffic yet, but a lot of furs are on there. I really hope the site grows.

https://itaku.ee/

I’m already on there, though I still have to post anything.

I’m not really looking for a new place to be. I’m just complaining that too many artists I follow have chosen Twitter as their place to be.

I know and I agree with you. Was just shamelessly spreading the word a bit. xp

Join us on Pixelfed, it’s compatible with Mastodon but keeps your art organised ^^

I’m complaining about other artists choosing to make Twitter their home, though. I want them to stop using Twitter as their home. I want them to stop using Twitter as their safe-home-away-from-FA-drama.

I already have several galleries of my own to manage and I don’t think I can really manage any more.

I just want to stop running into artists who have uploaded 403,543 drawings to Twitter since their last FA/SoFurry/Weasyl/Itaku post.

(Admittedly, the reason why I haven’t made a Pixelfed account yet is because I haven’t found an instance I’m comfortable with yet).

I agree with you, Twitter isn't an art gallery and following artists there is less than convenient. Plus using Twitter to avoid FA drama is rather fun, as Twitter is also an endless pit of drama X)
And with EU regulations threatening to ban Twitter from Europe, it's becoming more and more unsafe to keep using it as a main account.

Twitter is crap for about anything, I don't even bother following anyone there. I don't have enough of a life (in other words, I have better things to do) to look through a ton of messages, retweets, lots of shit I'm not interested in the least, to get to the posts I actually find interesting. I have a look at it usually if a link leads me there, but to read tweets as they come.. nah, forget that. If at least there was a filter to show original tweets by the users only... Or if there is, someone correct me :P

On desktop, Tweetdeck has options to display only original tweets.

Of course, the only reason why Tweetdeck still works at all is probably because the baby-in-chief is unaware it’s still around.