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What can you specifically do about FA?
a year ago
General
EDIT: Putting my money where my mouth is (or, well, not my money, but you know..) - I've set up a KoFi at https://ko-fi.com/foxyoreos to start funding some software development to combat some of the issues raised in comments below. The first goal I have is to open-source a tool for artists to help monitor comments on sites that they don't use or log into very often. This would be based on a private tool I've already built and use locally that sends a notification to my phone whenever I get a comment on Aryion or Furaffinity. As part of open sourcing the tool, I'd expand this to work with Aryion, Inkbunny, Furaffinity, and Itaku (and ideally allow for plugging in additional APIs).
This is designed to give artists tools to help address some of the "bot" feeling that comes from using Postybirb. Artists have trouble regularly checking and responding to comments on multiple websites - the end result is that they post to those websites using Postybirb but don't otherwise interact. This isn't a perfect solution, but would allow artists to sign into those websites when they have an interaction or message to respond to, which might make them feel a lot less empty.
There's no reward or exclusive content I can offer for donating (literally I can't offer anything, offering NSFW art would violate KoFi's policies). The reward is that the tool exists and is publicly released for anypony that wants to use it.
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Original Post
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The first time I wrote about 2.7 was over a year ago in 2023. The tone in the post is combative, angry. Maybe more combative than it ought to have been. But I stand by the majority of it, and (to my disappointment) the main issues didn't change.
Furaffinity still frames bans and messaging about 2.7 as if the artists that run afoul of it are drawing cub porn as an objective fact, not that they have violated a subjective labeling criteria. This still risks reputational and emotional damage for the artists affected, and paints discussions about 2.7 with unnecessary emotional baggage. The comparisons and insinuations are used more than ever to paint furries (especially LGBTQ+ furries) as pedophiles. FA's messaging contributes to that smear campaign and the staff have never made a sufficient effort to combat that narrative.
Nevertheless, here I am. I'm back! <3
The problems are the same, I still worry about my artwork being tagged as cub even though it's not. I worry what happens if FA decides that rabbits are inherently childlike unless their heads are small. I still worry what happens if a moderator dislikes what I do even if my pieces carry prominent adult signifiers. Hell, I've had an uploader label one of my pieces on e621 as "young" when the character in question had sideburns. There is nothing that I can do as an artist to be sure that a moderator will never make that decision about my art. If it happens, everything that I have read and seen about FA moderation suggests that I will have no recourse and that fighting back against the decision will go poorly.
Nevertheless, here I am. <3
I have strict policies about the art I upload to FA; I don't upload Pokemon on here at all. And at some point in the future I might sit down and write more about why that is and why I feel worried about the direction FA is going and why I don't trust "SFW" vore art to be treated as SFW when it involves characters like Eevee. Most recently it's the ABDL community that's reinforced that decision for me, I believe that at some point in the future other fetishes like vore will be targeted as well.
Nevertheless, I'm on FA. Hai there! X3
Why am I on Furaffinity? Because the community uses Furaffinity. Because even after I put in a significant amount of time (nearly a year's worth of participation in other gallery sites) - within weeks of joining FA it was my second-most popular gallery, second only to Aryion, a specialty vore forum that a large portion of my art is specifically tailored to. If you're trying to make a full-time living drawing art, FA is almost a requirement. The boost in attention, supporters, and network that I get from being on FA is massive, even as somepony who is pawbably not using the site to its full potential and who has only been uploading here for a short amount of time.
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So let's talk about that. When furries talk about network effects, we often talk about migrations as a chicken-and-egg problem. Artists won't leave FA because the users are there. Users won't leave because the artists are there. But that's not really the case - FA doesn't suffer from this problem nearly to the degree that many commenters assume. The reality is that a lot of artists maintain multiple galleries, and there are many, many artists who are not FA-exclusive.
So if it's not that the artists are only here, then what is it? I'm going to be a little blunt here because I say this from experience: the majority of users on FA will not use other sites. I'm not even talking about abandoning FA. The majority of users will not use any other gallery site in addition to FA. The artwork that isn't uploaded to FA might as well not exist to a large portion of the community.
As an example of how far this can go, whenever I upload a censored piece to FA I put a link to an uncensored version that does not require an account or log-in to view - you can still comment and fav on FA and the full piece is a single click away. All you have to do is load up another webpage.
..I've gotten more than one request to stop censoring artwork. Which I want to clarify, I'm not mad about - I don't mind getting that feedback. But it does tell me a lot about how critters use FA.
And there are exceptions - a lot of them. This is not intended to be a scolding note, you floofs are all pretty awesome. There are many critters that follow me on multiple gallery sites and I notice when it happens and it gives me warm fuzzy feelings. Again, this is not intended to be scolding anypony; just pointing out that the majority of users on FA won't leave the site. And that leaves artists in a strange place. Tools like Postybirb make it possible (although not effortless) to post to multiple galleries. Many artists use these tools. There are a surprising number of artists that maintain presence even on sites that have almost no userbase (Weasyl, for example). There's not a lot more that they can do. And so right now, the biggest thing blocking a movement away from Furaffinity is not artists; it's users. If you as an artist drop off of FA, most users won't follow you elsewhere. If you upload half of your art to FA, the art that you don't upload won't be seen; users won't go looking for it.
Finding yourself in that position can be extremely discouraging. But that's actually a solvable problem, and it's easy to solve! And it doesn't require a mass-migration. <3
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So Let's Look at Some Artists
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I am going to use Itaku below as an example of another gallery site, but I'm not saying that is the site that everypony should start using. I like Itaku - I think it's a better-designed gallery site than Furaffinity. But it's not for everypony. It lacks formatting tools within posts and we're still waiting on writing support. But it's a good example to use, given that it is a website that many furry artists started looking at last year.
I'm going to name a few specific artists here, and if you're on this list and you'd like to be removed, please let me know. But I want to make a point about the scale of the problem we're talking about and just how few people and critters would need to support artists elsewhere to make a difference:
Sparkythechu
★ SparkyTheChu is an extremely prolific and extremely talented Pokemon vore artist. He's friendly, well regarded in the community, and uploads regularly on multiple sites, including Itaku. Over on Itaku, Sparky's highest-rated pic has 80 stars. That's not the norm; at a quick glance I would guess that the average piece that Sparky uploads to Itaku gets around 10-20 stars?
If even 10 or 15 of the people and critters following Sparky exclusively on FA started also following him on Itaku and regularly interacting with his posts and starring them or commenting, he would absolutely notice.
Insomniacovrlrd
★ InsomniacOvrlrd (Bluesky) is the creator of Passiontail, which he made after drawing Pokemon so fkn hot that Nintendo had to tell him to stop. He is an incredible artist that does amazing work. He jumped onto Itaku early on during last-year's 2.7 controversy (which has still not been resolved for him) and has been a major proponent of the site. He's friendly, regularly takes time out of his week to boost and reshare other artists, posts Itaku-exclusive timelapses and pieces, and makes an effort to use the site as well as he pawsibly can. So naturally with all that work, his most popular piece on Itaku has.. 304 stars. And his second-most popular piece has 150. I would guess that on average, the art he uploads gets between 50-100 stars.
If 20 people or critters following him on FA also started following him elsewhere and were regularly faving and commenting on his stuff, he would notice the bump.
Pocketpaws
★ PocketPaws is fkn brilliant animator that does amazing wholesome, fun lewd animations in only 90 minutes. I do 90 minute timed static drawings and let me say, this shit is difficult and I have no idea how she pulls off the consistent high quality work that she does. She also uploads consistently to Itaku. Here she is talking about it! <3
Ever since the round of FA pokemon bans it's felt super discouraging to upload anywhere NGL!!!! [...]
Itakuu was so lovely but it seems to have dropped completely interaction wise, and though people still post, it feels lonely.
But I'm not unique in this feeling and I know many other people have felt the drop in well.. everything everywhere ;v;
..Oh.
On Itaku, Pocketpaw's most popular piece has 195 stars. She does pretty well there by the standards of the site, it's not uncommon for her to upload pieces that get nearly 100 stars! They are good animations! <3 If 20 people or critters following her on FA were also following her elsewhere and regularly faving and commenting on her stuff, she would notice the bump.
I could go on for a while. I will note that each of the artists I mention above were affected by 2.7 rule changes and have put real work into building up their web presence off of FA. They're not half-assing their social media, and there are good reasons for critters to follow them elsewhere. But they're far from the only ones.
Milachu92
★ Milachu: 150 stars on her most popular image (she has a really cute adult Pichu OC, you are missing out if you only follow her on FA!)
Peternorman
★ PerfectlyNormal: 170 stars
Vimes
★ LawyerDog: 67
What ends up happening with artists who are affected by FA rules is that they put a ton of effort into building multiple ways to follow their art and interact with them, and barely anypony takes them up on it. Sometimes they get discouraged and abandon the sites. Sometimes they stick around, trying their best to maintain multiple galleries and to do the thing that everypony has told them is what responsible artists do, even though most of the time, the artists do know deep down that they have one or two galleries that actually get serious engagement and that they can rely on as a source of income and advertising. It's demoralizing.
It's not a chicken-and-egg problem: they start the journey, they do the thing they're supposed to do - and then they end that journey because the next steps that they don't control.. don't happen.
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I'm not telling you to abandon Furaffinity. Supporting an artist on any site is a good thing to do. And you should never feel obligated to follow or interact with any artist in any context, that is not in any way how this works.
But if you're frustrated about the state of Furaffinity, if you get annoyed logging in and seeing scat on the front page and having no way to filter it, if you get annoyed when your favorite artists can't upload the art that they draw, if you've ever seen them complain and thought, "that sucks, somepony should build an alternative to this site."..
They have! :3 Alternatives exist and they're nearly all better-engineered than FA. And artists are using them today. Not every artist has other galleries outside of FA, but not every artist has a gallery on FA. The community is diversifying. And now there's one major step left in this process, and it's for users to use multiple sites too. I've used Itaku above as an example because it's a gallery site that doesn't have any of the criticisms that could be levied at other commonly mentioned furry galleries like Inkbunny. But there are a lot of sites: Itaku, Aryion, Inkbunny, Weasyl, SoFurry, Pillowfort, etc..
Mastodon and Bluesky aren't gallery sites, but they've seen an influx of attention as Twitter has gone down the drain, and they both have great furry artist communities. I'm on gulp.cafe over on Mastodon and I really enjoy it, but I'd also particularly recommend Bluesky right now since a lot of furry artists seem to treating it as a full Twitter replacement. It could be one! If non-artists go there too.
You don't need to leave FA. After all, I'm still here, and I'm staying for the forseable future until somepony decides they have a problem with my art. But if you use multiple websites, talk to artists on multiple websites, and build and engage with communities in multiple places - artists won't need to have as much anxiety about what might happen if one site decides to ban their art. And it doesn't require mass-community consensus or movement for that to happen.
Small steps would be enough.
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You can find all of my social links at https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10937736/ and I've attempted to link to the sites of everpony above that I've mentioned, but if I've forgotten anything, please let me know <3 If you're an artist that I've mentioned here and you'd like me not to mention you, just let me know and I'll change the note. And if you're a FA user and you support anypony in any way either on FA or on other sites, thank you. It's meaningful no matter what. <3
This is designed to give artists tools to help address some of the "bot" feeling that comes from using Postybirb. Artists have trouble regularly checking and responding to comments on multiple websites - the end result is that they post to those websites using Postybirb but don't otherwise interact. This isn't a perfect solution, but would allow artists to sign into those websites when they have an interaction or message to respond to, which might make them feel a lot less empty.
There's no reward or exclusive content I can offer for donating (literally I can't offer anything, offering NSFW art would violate KoFi's policies). The reward is that the tool exists and is publicly released for anypony that wants to use it.
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Original Post
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The first time I wrote about 2.7 was over a year ago in 2023. The tone in the post is combative, angry. Maybe more combative than it ought to have been. But I stand by the majority of it, and (to my disappointment) the main issues didn't change.
Furaffinity still frames bans and messaging about 2.7 as if the artists that run afoul of it are drawing cub porn as an objective fact, not that they have violated a subjective labeling criteria. This still risks reputational and emotional damage for the artists affected, and paints discussions about 2.7 with unnecessary emotional baggage. The comparisons and insinuations are used more than ever to paint furries (especially LGBTQ+ furries) as pedophiles. FA's messaging contributes to that smear campaign and the staff have never made a sufficient effort to combat that narrative.
Nevertheless, here I am. I'm back! <3
The problems are the same, I still worry about my artwork being tagged as cub even though it's not. I worry what happens if FA decides that rabbits are inherently childlike unless their heads are small. I still worry what happens if a moderator dislikes what I do even if my pieces carry prominent adult signifiers. Hell, I've had an uploader label one of my pieces on e621 as "young" when the character in question had sideburns. There is nothing that I can do as an artist to be sure that a moderator will never make that decision about my art. If it happens, everything that I have read and seen about FA moderation suggests that I will have no recourse and that fighting back against the decision will go poorly.
Nevertheless, here I am. <3
I have strict policies about the art I upload to FA; I don't upload Pokemon on here at all. And at some point in the future I might sit down and write more about why that is and why I feel worried about the direction FA is going and why I don't trust "SFW" vore art to be treated as SFW when it involves characters like Eevee. Most recently it's the ABDL community that's reinforced that decision for me, I believe that at some point in the future other fetishes like vore will be targeted as well.
Nevertheless, I'm on FA. Hai there! X3
Why am I on Furaffinity? Because the community uses Furaffinity. Because even after I put in a significant amount of time (nearly a year's worth of participation in other gallery sites) - within weeks of joining FA it was my second-most popular gallery, second only to Aryion, a specialty vore forum that a large portion of my art is specifically tailored to. If you're trying to make a full-time living drawing art, FA is almost a requirement. The boost in attention, supporters, and network that I get from being on FA is massive, even as somepony who is pawbably not using the site to its full potential and who has only been uploading here for a short amount of time.
❤❤❤
So let's talk about that. When furries talk about network effects, we often talk about migrations as a chicken-and-egg problem. Artists won't leave FA because the users are there. Users won't leave because the artists are there. But that's not really the case - FA doesn't suffer from this problem nearly to the degree that many commenters assume. The reality is that a lot of artists maintain multiple galleries, and there are many, many artists who are not FA-exclusive.
So if it's not that the artists are only here, then what is it? I'm going to be a little blunt here because I say this from experience: the majority of users on FA will not use other sites. I'm not even talking about abandoning FA. The majority of users will not use any other gallery site in addition to FA. The artwork that isn't uploaded to FA might as well not exist to a large portion of the community.
As an example of how far this can go, whenever I upload a censored piece to FA I put a link to an uncensored version that does not require an account or log-in to view - you can still comment and fav on FA and the full piece is a single click away. All you have to do is load up another webpage.
..I've gotten more than one request to stop censoring artwork. Which I want to clarify, I'm not mad about - I don't mind getting that feedback. But it does tell me a lot about how critters use FA.
And there are exceptions - a lot of them. This is not intended to be a scolding note, you floofs are all pretty awesome. There are many critters that follow me on multiple gallery sites and I notice when it happens and it gives me warm fuzzy feelings. Again, this is not intended to be scolding anypony; just pointing out that the majority of users on FA won't leave the site. And that leaves artists in a strange place. Tools like Postybirb make it possible (although not effortless) to post to multiple galleries. Many artists use these tools. There are a surprising number of artists that maintain presence even on sites that have almost no userbase (Weasyl, for example). There's not a lot more that they can do. And so right now, the biggest thing blocking a movement away from Furaffinity is not artists; it's users. If you as an artist drop off of FA, most users won't follow you elsewhere. If you upload half of your art to FA, the art that you don't upload won't be seen; users won't go looking for it.
Finding yourself in that position can be extremely discouraging. But that's actually a solvable problem, and it's easy to solve! And it doesn't require a mass-migration. <3
❤❤❤
So Let's Look at Some Artists
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I am going to use Itaku below as an example of another gallery site, but I'm not saying that is the site that everypony should start using. I like Itaku - I think it's a better-designed gallery site than Furaffinity. But it's not for everypony. It lacks formatting tools within posts and we're still waiting on writing support. But it's a good example to use, given that it is a website that many furry artists started looking at last year.
I'm going to name a few specific artists here, and if you're on this list and you'd like to be removed, please let me know. But I want to make a point about the scale of the problem we're talking about and just how few people and critters would need to support artists elsewhere to make a difference:
Sparkythechu★ SparkyTheChu is an extremely prolific and extremely talented Pokemon vore artist. He's friendly, well regarded in the community, and uploads regularly on multiple sites, including Itaku. Over on Itaku, Sparky's highest-rated pic has 80 stars. That's not the norm; at a quick glance I would guess that the average piece that Sparky uploads to Itaku gets around 10-20 stars?
If even 10 or 15 of the people and critters following Sparky exclusively on FA started also following him on Itaku and regularly interacting with his posts and starring them or commenting, he would absolutely notice.
Insomniacovrlrd★ InsomniacOvrlrd (Bluesky) is the creator of Passiontail, which he made after drawing Pokemon so fkn hot that Nintendo had to tell him to stop. He is an incredible artist that does amazing work. He jumped onto Itaku early on during last-year's 2.7 controversy (which has still not been resolved for him) and has been a major proponent of the site. He's friendly, regularly takes time out of his week to boost and reshare other artists, posts Itaku-exclusive timelapses and pieces, and makes an effort to use the site as well as he pawsibly can. So naturally with all that work, his most popular piece on Itaku has.. 304 stars. And his second-most popular piece has 150. I would guess that on average, the art he uploads gets between 50-100 stars.
If 20 people or critters following him on FA also started following him elsewhere and were regularly faving and commenting on his stuff, he would notice the bump.
Pocketpaws★ PocketPaws is fkn brilliant animator that does amazing wholesome, fun lewd animations in only 90 minutes. I do 90 minute timed static drawings and let me say, this shit is difficult and I have no idea how she pulls off the consistent high quality work that she does. She also uploads consistently to Itaku. Here she is talking about it! <3
Ever since the round of FA pokemon bans it's felt super discouraging to upload anywhere NGL!!!! [...]
Itakuu was so lovely but it seems to have dropped completely interaction wise, and though people still post, it feels lonely.
But I'm not unique in this feeling and I know many other people have felt the drop in well.. everything everywhere ;v;
..Oh.
On Itaku, Pocketpaw's most popular piece has 195 stars. She does pretty well there by the standards of the site, it's not uncommon for her to upload pieces that get nearly 100 stars! They are good animations! <3 If 20 people or critters following her on FA were also following her elsewhere and regularly faving and commenting on her stuff, she would notice the bump.
I could go on for a while. I will note that each of the artists I mention above were affected by 2.7 rule changes and have put real work into building up their web presence off of FA. They're not half-assing their social media, and there are good reasons for critters to follow them elsewhere. But they're far from the only ones.
Milachu92★ Milachu: 150 stars on her most popular image (she has a really cute adult Pichu OC, you are missing out if you only follow her on FA!)
Peternorman★ PerfectlyNormal: 170 stars
Vimes★ LawyerDog: 67
What ends up happening with artists who are affected by FA rules is that they put a ton of effort into building multiple ways to follow their art and interact with them, and barely anypony takes them up on it. Sometimes they get discouraged and abandon the sites. Sometimes they stick around, trying their best to maintain multiple galleries and to do the thing that everypony has told them is what responsible artists do, even though most of the time, the artists do know deep down that they have one or two galleries that actually get serious engagement and that they can rely on as a source of income and advertising. It's demoralizing.
It's not a chicken-and-egg problem: they start the journey, they do the thing they're supposed to do - and then they end that journey because the next steps that they don't control.. don't happen.
❤❤❤
I'm not telling you to abandon Furaffinity. Supporting an artist on any site is a good thing to do. And you should never feel obligated to follow or interact with any artist in any context, that is not in any way how this works.
But if you're frustrated about the state of Furaffinity, if you get annoyed logging in and seeing scat on the front page and having no way to filter it, if you get annoyed when your favorite artists can't upload the art that they draw, if you've ever seen them complain and thought, "that sucks, somepony should build an alternative to this site."..
They have! :3 Alternatives exist and they're nearly all better-engineered than FA. And artists are using them today. Not every artist has other galleries outside of FA, but not every artist has a gallery on FA. The community is diversifying. And now there's one major step left in this process, and it's for users to use multiple sites too. I've used Itaku above as an example because it's a gallery site that doesn't have any of the criticisms that could be levied at other commonly mentioned furry galleries like Inkbunny. But there are a lot of sites: Itaku, Aryion, Inkbunny, Weasyl, SoFurry, Pillowfort, etc..
Mastodon and Bluesky aren't gallery sites, but they've seen an influx of attention as Twitter has gone down the drain, and they both have great furry artist communities. I'm on gulp.cafe over on Mastodon and I really enjoy it, but I'd also particularly recommend Bluesky right now since a lot of furry artists seem to treating it as a full Twitter replacement. It could be one! If non-artists go there too.
You don't need to leave FA. After all, I'm still here, and I'm staying for the forseable future until somepony decides they have a problem with my art. But if you use multiple websites, talk to artists on multiple websites, and build and engage with communities in multiple places - artists won't need to have as much anxiety about what might happen if one site decides to ban their art. And it doesn't require mass-community consensus or movement for that to happen.
Small steps would be enough.
❤❤❤
You can find all of my social links at https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10937736/ and I've attempted to link to the sites of everpony above that I've mentioned, but if I've forgotten anything, please let me know <3 If you're an artist that I've mentioned here and you'd like me not to mention you, just let me know and I'll change the note. And if you're a FA user and you support anypony in any way either on FA or on other sites, thank you. It's meaningful no matter what. <3
I'm also guilty of having gone into a black hole named Cohost where I was very cozy and had enough interaction to feel fine. Then y'know, Cohost was over. This last month has been mostly just idly doodling and sometimes using Postybirb. Tools like postybirb are such a huge thing, managing all of your gallery spaces is a huge bitch and I have *thousands* of artworks that could be uploaded. Instead, my current plan is to make Inkbunny host my favorite pics from each year and mirror that collection elsewhere, plus having a full copy available on Itch.io.
That said, say into one hand and do into the other. I have a lot of stuff that blocks me from interfacing including general delirium and confusion about what I'm even doing. Having spun off from basically every major SEO-bait IP I ever liked, I basically have no discoverability. FA, my bastion of activity for many years, has fallen off a cliff too. Everyone's on Twit- erm, no wait they started moving to BlueSky maybe? For real this time?
The Twitter exodus from late 2022 saw me ejecting to Cohost, and since then the scene is just as chaotic if not more so. IDK what to tell people anymore. Many folks have given up and are now Telegram or Discord only, making sourcing and gallery browsing impossible. I really just can't figure things out and it seems no one else can.
This is advice I've given to artists that don't want to use FA: join it anyway and then post subsets of your work or even just notifications - because the discoverability pawblem is extremely real. One cost of the furry community standardizing on a single network is that everypony else not on that network stops existing. We lose the ability to find new artists.
I didn't bring this up because I was more focused on combating the idea that mass-migration is a requirement (when in reality even a small group of users on FA getting proactive about this would make a difference). But being on FA has gotten me followers on other sites - floofs that found me through FA that just didn't know about my artwork elsewhere because they had no way to discover it.
And so the chaos really is an issue, because as artists and users start to hole up more, it becomes harder for them to even break out of that shell - they just don't see other parts of the world, even if they would be willing to interact with them.
People don't often follow because, unless they're very new, they have a lot of digital ground to keep track of and probably don't even realize that someone they follow made a new page. While creators can use PostyBirb to post multiple files to multiple sites from one location (thanks Lemonynade), as far as I know no such counterpart exists that allows users to easily view every submission of every given creators' multiple pages on one interface. The closest thing we have are tagged archives like e621 and agnph. Carrd and linktree have been great for finding alternate platforms and I really appreciate when they're included front and center on any profile, especially if they list a complete, non-Twitter gallery, but in the end we still have to make a new account or check yet another page for potentially platform-exclusive submissions. I try to follow where I can but I'd be lying if I said I was content with the gallery browsing experience in 2024.
The shifting content moderation policies of platforms like FA and Inkbunny make it impossible for me to keep my entire gallery up-to-date on those sites, but I try to do the best I can otherwise - I'm also patching Postybirb locally to try and make it easier to use across multiple sites, and hopefully I'll be able to clean up and document or upstream some of those changes - but the changes I make there are from an artist uploader perspective, and won't help with following artists.
Both Itaku and Mastodon can be bridged to RSS, and I believe (at least) Inkbunny can be bridged as well - but that's pawbably not helpful for less technical followers. If a unified tool existed using RSS or other APIs that was geared towards furries for pulling updates down from multiple sites and de-duplicating them while allowing commenting/faving, do you think that furries would use it? Would it help, or are there deeper problems that need to be addressed?
I don't think that it's possible for artists in many cases to have a single gallery for everything unless they host their own stuff. The closest I have to that is Aryion, but that's really only helpful for vore artists. e621 may help, but the site won't contain updates or in-progress works because of its quality rules. And if a site like that existed it would just be another point-of-failure for artists if something went wrong. But there could very, very feasibly, be a reverse Postybirb for watching artists, at least on desktop. If that's a thing that's necessary, I can start researching it more.
At one point I had an RSS dashboard set up for a few e621 tags that basically acted as a third-party "new submissions" window by displaying all the thumbnails in one place. It worked well enough for that purpose for a few days. I couldn't figure out how to get it to work for sites like IB or FA which require you to log in to view some submissions, though, so I abandoned the whole thing and went back to using The Wolf's Stash on Android.
I'm not really thinking about getting rid of account requirements, especially since being able to interact with artists is also important. If I try to tackle something like this it'll be through the same mechanisms as Postybirb - you'd sign into whatever accounts you had, and the app would show new uploads, comments, and messages in one feed and allow you to comment or favorite on any platform you're signed into.
From my point of view as an artist/programmer, I've already set things up so I get phone notifications for interactions on Furaffinity and Aryion - they're a little hacky, but they work really well - and I already know that I can do the same for Inkbunny; just haven't wired them up yet. And I'm familiar with Itaku's API. Having one site that shows everything for everypony isn't something I can make happen, but allowing users to manage multiple sites without having to remember to check all of them could be something I could help with, maybe.
Not for every site - I'm pawbably not going to prioritize sites that I'm not on. But.. I don't know, yeah, I feel confident for a fair chunk of sites I could get you one feed that checked multiple accounts and that allowed you to comment/favorite pieces on any of them.
Like, they do upload, but when people comment they don't reply back (and on other places they do) and they generally don't interact with other people on that site, I've seen some accounts on Sopfurry that have been regularly updated for YEARS, but the person there has no comments, faves, or watches other people.
I just quickly opened Sofurry, which has a trending tab, and clicked on a VERY popular paw artist. He has 605 people watching him, received 230 comments, and he watches back 2 people and made 3 comments ever since he joined in 2017.
TLDR, many artists who maintain other galleries just interface through it with Postybirb and actively ignore the community that they cultivated.
This can feel very discouraging and make people who don't actively upload content wary of using other sites. After all, why should they if half of the people posting there are brick walls that don't actually care about the community they made?
I've even seen some people vent that they saw a commission opening that said to DM the artist, they did it, but never got a reply, so they asked on another site just to be bluntly told "Oh I don't check that place in years, talk to me in other places"
Mind you, I get that interfacing with a lot of online places can feel very draining and that posting on other sites is a net good in case something happens to the main places (like the current Bluesky migration with a lot of people now putting Twitter in the backburner, or outright stopping using it, some even purging years of pics), but it makes the few people that have truly migrated the mainstream sites feel like they are unimportant and a second-grade audience that exists to make the line go up
On my site, I make a strong effort to reply to almost every single comment that I receive on every site that I'm on. I'm not sure it makes a difference to how likely users are to follow me on multiple sites.
I do to be fair understand the broader problem here; if half of the artists on a site never reply to messages, users get fed up and leave regardless of what the other half are doing. That's a real issue. But it's also a big reason why furry artists abandon sites or relegate them to just being Postybirb targets. I've watched a lot of artists go to Itaku, really try to engaged with a community, and eventually come to the same conclusion that PocketPaws did:
Itakuu was so lovely but it seems to have dropped completely interaction wise, and though people still post, it feels lonely.
This is why I think users pushing interactions on other sites is so important. It's good for artists to remain active and attentive on those sites, but eventually they'll fall off if they're left alone for too long. Three people or critters showing up on a site like Inkbunny and commenting on my art is enough motivation to get me to check it more regularly. It doesn't take a lot of interaction from users to stop a site from feeling like a ghost town.
But I don't want to dismiss the frustration on the other side. What your comment (and Alpheus' comment) is making me realize is that some of the pain points I've been trying to solve on the art side of multi-gallery posting are also pain points for regular users too. I mean, hell, I'm guilty of this on Weasyl to a degree - that's not a site I'm participating on, it's a site I'm supporting solely because Postybirb supports it - but not because I dismissed the site or don't care, because I tried participating by uploading pieces to critiques, trying to organize the gallery better, and quickly realized I was talking to no one. Despite that, I still monitor everything that happens on the site. If I ever started getting regular comments (or even one-off comments) on Weasyl, I'd notice within a day and I'd start responding to them.
But there's not much else I can do other than that. There's a limit to how much a site can just be artists and writers talking only to each other - and my experience is that I can be extremely proactive about comments and interactions, I can tailor uploads per-site, I can write custom code for specific websites to make viewing easier, organize galleries, go out and comment on other stuff - and I *do*, but none of it really makes a difference, most users from FA still will not show up on those sites.
Though, I do have sympathy for the feeling of being on a site and feeling like half of the artists are just bots. I'm sure that has an effect on how users interact with artists in general on those sites and I know (from experience) how discouraging it can feel to be talking into a void.
I too am an artist (well, writer) and I reply to every single comment (even the blatant RP fodder) I get on every single site because I want to show that I'm here, I care, and I'm not a bot, but it can be annoying to go out of your way to try and build a presence in another site where a lot of people are apathetic and scorned by artist seeing them as Postybirb fodde, so I don't think it's just the artists fault for not being active, this one is a chicken and egg problem.
Artists post, they barely get interactions, they give up and keep uploading without checking, and the people get annoyed that half the site is bots and return to FA since at least people there talk.
And unfortunately, there is no way to force people to interact, as you said, even really popular artists have problems with getting people to use other sites (I've seen a LOT of people that, seeing artists start to post exclusive things on other places got EXTREMELY mad, bonus if that site is Inkbunny considering the sheer reputation that site has).
The general feeling I've seen with the 2.7 policy update over the last year is that people would rather no longer see art than make yet another account, happily writing it off as a loss or waiting for the inexorable "hey guys, I'm back to FA" when people that fully migrate see their income plummet, I've even see some people that just stopped drawing some things because they need rent money they can only get from here, or if they still draw it only post it on paysites or aggregators and taking comms for those only on other sites (and also, a lot of people panicking about the update never even getting so much as a staff member looking unpolitely at them despite yelling about how they SURELY will be bonked)
So unsure how this problem can be solved really, other than trying and remaining active and replying to the occasional engagement
It's been such a DISASTER that I've seen multiple artists drawing things like chibis and shortstacks panic and try to migrate since it was written so poorly (at least later revisions made it clear that stylization is ok and I never saw someone getting banned for drawing chibis/shortstacks), but once they got reassurance that what they did was ok, either from the rewrites or having their ticket answered a lot of people were more than happy to keep other sites updated "just in case" but returning to only interacting with FA, and I feel like that did scorn quite a few people that finally saw their favorite artist engage or make a profile, just to disappear once they were told that what they drew wasn't against the rule.
Also I have personally seen with my eyeballs some of those artists that didn't tag NSFW chibis/shortstacks that way on alt sites, they tagged them as CUB, which, y'know, not encouraging to their point, one of them had 1:1 matching shortstack folder on fa, cub on inkbunny
It's a mess! I genuinely have no idea how to get people to try and poke artists on alt sites, AND get artist to check and interact back, and if plenty of people didn't start alt galleries after the FA hack I have no idea what could spur more interactions.
Even funnier that the mandatory AI scraping and useless block is what FINALLY started the furry Twitter migration to Bluesky to the point that they gained half a million new users in 12 hours, and last I checked it's 1.3 million new users, and that was 4 days ago (total 12 million users)
English language ambiguity.. >w< I didn't mean to imply that writers aren't artists, just trying to include both visual artists and writers. <3
It is a little bit weird that we call writers writers but we don't call visual artists drawers >w<
but once they got reassurance that what they did was ok, either from the rewrites or having their ticket answered a lot of people were more than happy to keep other sites updated "just in case" but returning to only interacting with FA, and I feel like that did scorn quite a few people that finally saw their favorite artist engage or make a profile, just to disappear once they were told that what they drew wasn't against the rule.
Not that InsomniacOvrlrd was ever doing this, he's been really good about not just abandoning sites, but he's a good example of why that is a bad strategy: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10942321
I really would like artists to understand that this is not a problem they can ignore. I would need to make a separate post about it, but I am fully convinced that SFW vore art is going to eventually be on the chopping block. Part of the issue with 2.7 is that artists can't get handle on what's OK and what's not OK. And if they think they can.. that can change overnight. The ABDL community thought they were in compliance with 2.7.
what FINALLY started the furry Twitter migration to Bluesky
Bluesky is a little bit tricky for me. I'm happy with Mastodon, I don't really want to be on Bluesky other than as an art pawblem, every time I browse the main discovery feed I come away feeling like the community is really toxic. But I'm pawbably going to have an account there soon. The turning point for me is watching to see if streamers and non-artists in the furry community join. There are subsets of the furry community that were only on Twitter, and I'm excited to be able to interact with them. I think I can maybe set up mute keywords for most of the rest of the site.
I don't think that falls into the category of what you're talking about though - "I'm not active on this site and I don't want to treat it like social media, but I will respond to pings/comments/favs and talk with floofs that show up" is a lot different from "if you message me on here, I won't see it."
Honestly, that rule update, as I said, is so immensely botched, it's so complicated I'm even unsure of my opinion on it, I can only just look at how things go, it's like being on the ground looking at a rollercoaster. Still gonna stay here for pretty much forever myself though lol
As someone who jumped on Mastodon pretty early compared to Bluesky (I joined both in November, 2022 mastodon, 2023 bluesky) I felt like going there wasn't necessary, but a lot of people would rather have the quick and easy way with pretty nice tools to moderate your experience then try and learn about instances, apps, and relays, and since I get all my money from commissions it was wise to give it a swirl.
I personally find it pretty cozy and active, I haven't seen too much negativity or doom and gloom
He's one of the sweetest beans I have the luck to get to have gotten to know and even have met in person at Eurofurence multiple times by now. He's a long standing major macro/vore artist in the field of cartoon critters and pokemon, recently having reached 20 years of those arts. Over 10k Watchers on this site. Commissions are a notable income to him, with FA being a site he would, or at this pace probably 'once did', deem home.
Yet, recently a commission comic posted last year was flagged and taken down under 2.7 ruling, the characters weren't underage. He was temp suspended for a week and has his account forever flagged as having a 'strike'. FA has a two strike system, not three strike like most places. One more strike and he'll be permanently banned, no way to undo, no redeeming that first strike, nothing.
Personally I will almost certainly not be (directly) affected by these rule "clarifications" FA is doing (until the puritans try to go after feral perhaps? lol), but I dread to see what happens to those many sweet and great artists that built their living and community on this site, whether they get flagged for drawing eevees or too cute characters otherwise.
I hope Itaku etc grow bigger, but in functionality and community I don't see FA fully replacable. Some features and setups FA has feel more cozy to navigate than Itaku is too.
Some features and setups FA has feel more cozy to navigate than Itaku is too.
Up to you, but would you be willing to go into more detail about this? I occasionally maintain the Itaku Extension Suite (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fi.....ncement-suite/). I can't fix every pawblem, but there are some parts of Itaku's interface that I can change, and I'd love to know what else I could do to it to make it more comfortable.
And sure can do
It can be kind of hard to pinpoint what aspects make FA more comfy, but I can say I like the FA Submission (by watched artists) page a fair bit more in especially one aspect. Being the ability to selectively delete some of these notifications, leaving those one wants to keep. Same applies to general notifications like comments too, having a place where one can not only find them, but selectively keep a few instead of having to have them all.
For an example here on FA I tend to keep 69 Watch notifications, 69 Favorites and currently also 2069 Submissions (used to also stick to 69 favs, lost track there lol)
This way I have a selection of notifications in each area I wanna keep, of people I like a lot, art pieces I easily wanna find again that'd be buried in my favs, etc
Unrelated to those aspects, I'm also hoping for story support from Itaku sometimes
Also holy heck, yes on writing support. I spent a while thinking about how I could maybe support it, but everything on the IES has to be a progressive enhancement that works with critters who aren't using the extension - so I can do things like build a secondary view on top of notifications, but doing things like pulling in embeds doesn't work for ordinary users, so it's not that useful for artists/writers.
Definitely imagine writing support would best be a bigger feature added by the site itself, which hopefully should come eventually. Gotta wait and hope and see