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a year ago
I for the first time have registered as part of FA+.
As most of you may know, other sites liek deviantart have now been turned into a 'services economy' where search results are now flodded with content they paid to go viral and often have nothing to do with your search keywords. DA tries to steer all your views and suggestions to pay content and micro subscriptions and so on. the DA community does not exist anymore and is now instead focused not on the natural interests of the viewing audience random chance, but is now focused on maximum individual engagement designed to show you content meant to lead you to making purchases. It gathers personal info, tries to figure out what you are most like to search for, and then directs you to redundant, or AI derivatives of lesser quality that it hopes you will pay to download or view. particularly paying a subscription to an AI channel that produces ai erotica. This is the horrible new situation where EVERYTHING must be incentivzed to make profit because they must insist on endless economic growth as fast as possible forever.
FA is one of a handful of small remaining spaces where 'optimization' has not occured yet and people are still able to form communities online. The alternative to this economy of derivatives, scams, extraction competition is a reality of cooperative charity. Its up to us to be able to give of ourselves to keep our community our own and not in the hands of ai generators and others looking solely for profit. That applies not just online but in the real world.
I advise everyone here who gets community out of FA it get directly involved. not just in donations but in keeping touch on how it operates and making sure that it remains and egalitarian and democratic space where the love of furry fandom is the most important thing. Not money, not profit, ont one persons succees.
As most of you may know, other sites liek deviantart have now been turned into a 'services economy' where search results are now flodded with content they paid to go viral and often have nothing to do with your search keywords. DA tries to steer all your views and suggestions to pay content and micro subscriptions and so on. the DA community does not exist anymore and is now instead focused not on the natural interests of the viewing audience random chance, but is now focused on maximum individual engagement designed to show you content meant to lead you to making purchases. It gathers personal info, tries to figure out what you are most like to search for, and then directs you to redundant, or AI derivatives of lesser quality that it hopes you will pay to download or view. particularly paying a subscription to an AI channel that produces ai erotica. This is the horrible new situation where EVERYTHING must be incentivzed to make profit because they must insist on endless economic growth as fast as possible forever.
FA is one of a handful of small remaining spaces where 'optimization' has not occured yet and people are still able to form communities online. The alternative to this economy of derivatives, scams, extraction competition is a reality of cooperative charity. Its up to us to be able to give of ourselves to keep our community our own and not in the hands of ai generators and others looking solely for profit. That applies not just online but in the real world.
I advise everyone here who gets community out of FA it get directly involved. not just in donations but in keeping touch on how it operates and making sure that it remains and egalitarian and democratic space where the love of furry fandom is the most important thing. Not money, not profit, ont one persons succees.
I only check Deviant Art maybe one or two times a year, if someone calls my attention to something they have there. The site is literally worse each time I look. More than half their content is cookie-cutter AI crap that is incredibly monotonous to look at. This isn't saying that AI is never good, but, you'd need to look through many tens of thousands of AI pictures to find even one where an artist actually took the time to give it a creative touch. Creativity and AI rarely appear together, especially when it comes to art of non-mainstream topics.
I love FA because of the community, and the collective creativity that so many people here share. I can easily find the most uncommon topics, without the site being trying to steer me to some mainstream junk that they think is better.
To me, FA is worth paying for, even when they allow us not to, so, I gladly have FA+. According to my usage logs, I spend an average of 26.5 hours a week here on FA. FA+ is a rather small price to pay for the time, art, friends and happiness I find here.