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Dragoneer's Death And The Keys To FA
a year ago
Hopefully this isn't too soon.
Dragoneer died. RIP. I didn't know the guy and have no real opinions of him, positive or negative. But the question becomes who will run the site, and will it change, for better or worse?
The advice I've seen on Discord is to start backing up everything. This is good advice generally and Dragoneer's death shouldn't change that. eg. Users who get banned or delete their galleries. But if you've never backed up your favourites, do so. If for whatever reason you don't keep local copies of your own work, do that too. If you don't have one, you can get external hard drives from Amazon for about £40, which should be more than enough for still images. That way, if a hard drive died you don't lose everything.
As for changes to FA. It's out of our hands so not worth worrying about. However, if the site goes to hell, there's always Weasyl, InkBunny, Pixiv, and NewGrounds.
In the unlikely even someone who is now running the ship is reading this, one of the reasons FA lasted as long as it has is because the FA hasn't been constantly updated and changed to chase every new design trend. Plastering the site with data collection bullshit, ads, subscriptions, politics, or AI would be a bad move imo, and of course, the constant UI churn and enshitification of big tech should also be avoided if at all possible.
The other concern is that, like YouTube, allegedly FA has never been profitable. I'd have to know the details to say how I'd turn it around. But the same advice applies. No use us worrying about it, and if someone reads this, avoid chasing current trends. What I will add to be careful with direct support since payment processors like PayPal and MasterCard threaten cut services to sites that have "porn" as a means to get them to do what they want. You don't want them forcing FA to commit Tumblr.
Dragoneer died. RIP. I didn't know the guy and have no real opinions of him, positive or negative. But the question becomes who will run the site, and will it change, for better or worse?
The advice I've seen on Discord is to start backing up everything. This is good advice generally and Dragoneer's death shouldn't change that. eg. Users who get banned or delete their galleries. But if you've never backed up your favourites, do so. If for whatever reason you don't keep local copies of your own work, do that too. If you don't have one, you can get external hard drives from Amazon for about £40, which should be more than enough for still images. That way, if a hard drive died you don't lose everything.
As for changes to FA. It's out of our hands so not worth worrying about. However, if the site goes to hell, there's always Weasyl, InkBunny, Pixiv, and NewGrounds.
In the unlikely even someone who is now running the ship is reading this, one of the reasons FA lasted as long as it has is because the FA hasn't been constantly updated and changed to chase every new design trend. Plastering the site with data collection bullshit, ads, subscriptions, politics, or AI would be a bad move imo, and of course, the constant UI churn and enshitification of big tech should also be avoided if at all possible.
The other concern is that, like YouTube, allegedly FA has never been profitable. I'd have to know the details to say how I'd turn it around. But the same advice applies. No use us worrying about it, and if someone reads this, avoid chasing current trends. What I will add to be careful with direct support since payment processors like PayPal and MasterCard threaten cut services to sites that have "porn" as a means to get them to do what they want. You don't want them forcing FA to commit Tumblr.
