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My 2 cents.
15 years ago
General
Okay, so new TOS. Cubby prons have been banned due, interestingly, to financial pressure and not (despite what many folks have been saying) because of any morality issues. Beyond proving once again that money talks louder than ethics, I can't help but feel that this decision is ultimately detrimental to FA.
Not, firstly, because of how I might or might not personally feel about the specific subject matter. Generally speaking, I've always subscribed to the "if you don't like it, don't go looking at it" philosophy, and at the end of the day, it's all just fantasy anyway.
Not, secondly, because I feel that this is an infringement on freedom of speech. Let's face facts: FA is not a democracy. It's a privately run website that provides free services to a large number of furries. The admins can pretty much do anything they want, like it or lump it. They could make a new TOS that says the color purple is now permanently banned, and those who continue to use the site would have to abide by it.
The reason I find the new TOS distasteful has more to do with what I see as a diminishment of its inclusiveness. FA has been the go-to place for furries largely because up 'til now there's been a place here for pretty much everybody who wants to participate. Anyone could stake out an identity here and share with others the things that make them furry. Artistically, it's been a bit of a furry Wild West show... porn art, clean art, toony art, realistic art, crazy art, random art, rule 34 art, photography, animations, stories and journals, it's all here in whatever flavor you like.
The moment you single any one group out, no matter how small that group is, and no matter how distasteful you might personally find their artistic bent (whatever it might be), and say "you're not welcome here anymore", you're slicing away a bit of what makes FA special: it's diversity. You're taking away a bit of color from the palette, and making the overall portrait that much grayer and more homogenic.
To those who have been crowing about the ban as some sort of moral victory, I would respectfully remind you that you have not, in fact, won a thing. The ban was driven by financial reasons, not because somebody finally decided to enforce your personal tastes. So the ban happened to coincide with your desire to see a certain subject matter removed from FA... would you feel the same way if the ban had been aimed at something you are interested in? Ask yourself what kind of precedent has been set, where an outside influence is allowed to dictate the terms of what should and shouldn't be allowed here. Will you maintain that holier than thou attitude when it hits you where you live?
None of this is meant to suggest that this new TOS is some kind of disaster for all of furry-dom. Again, it's just one website, doing what websites do: setting up whatever rules they deem necessary and enforcing them. C'est la vie. I'm not angry about this decision so much as I'm disheartened by what it represents for FA, specifically: a step away from inclusiveness that, regardless of the subject matter in question, leads us that much closer to a standardized vision of what a "furry" should and should not be. Like I said, FA can do whatever it wants to do, whittle away whatever burrs it wants to and smooth everything down to a nice, safe, generic furry suburbia... but at the end of the day I still prefer the Wild West.
Not, firstly, because of how I might or might not personally feel about the specific subject matter. Generally speaking, I've always subscribed to the "if you don't like it, don't go looking at it" philosophy, and at the end of the day, it's all just fantasy anyway.
Not, secondly, because I feel that this is an infringement on freedom of speech. Let's face facts: FA is not a democracy. It's a privately run website that provides free services to a large number of furries. The admins can pretty much do anything they want, like it or lump it. They could make a new TOS that says the color purple is now permanently banned, and those who continue to use the site would have to abide by it.
The reason I find the new TOS distasteful has more to do with what I see as a diminishment of its inclusiveness. FA has been the go-to place for furries largely because up 'til now there's been a place here for pretty much everybody who wants to participate. Anyone could stake out an identity here and share with others the things that make them furry. Artistically, it's been a bit of a furry Wild West show... porn art, clean art, toony art, realistic art, crazy art, random art, rule 34 art, photography, animations, stories and journals, it's all here in whatever flavor you like.
The moment you single any one group out, no matter how small that group is, and no matter how distasteful you might personally find their artistic bent (whatever it might be), and say "you're not welcome here anymore", you're slicing away a bit of what makes FA special: it's diversity. You're taking away a bit of color from the palette, and making the overall portrait that much grayer and more homogenic.
To those who have been crowing about the ban as some sort of moral victory, I would respectfully remind you that you have not, in fact, won a thing. The ban was driven by financial reasons, not because somebody finally decided to enforce your personal tastes. So the ban happened to coincide with your desire to see a certain subject matter removed from FA... would you feel the same way if the ban had been aimed at something you are interested in? Ask yourself what kind of precedent has been set, where an outside influence is allowed to dictate the terms of what should and shouldn't be allowed here. Will you maintain that holier than thou attitude when it hits you where you live?
None of this is meant to suggest that this new TOS is some kind of disaster for all of furry-dom. Again, it's just one website, doing what websites do: setting up whatever rules they deem necessary and enforcing them. C'est la vie. I'm not angry about this decision so much as I'm disheartened by what it represents for FA, specifically: a step away from inclusiveness that, regardless of the subject matter in question, leads us that much closer to a standardized vision of what a "furry" should and should not be. Like I said, FA can do whatever it wants to do, whittle away whatever burrs it wants to and smooth everything down to a nice, safe, generic furry suburbia... but at the end of the day I still prefer the Wild West.
In any case, I quite agree that it's more than a little distasteful to hear all this ugly "let me kick you on your way out the door" attitude from folks who otherwise claim to be tolerant.
Whether it was a financial or moral decision doesn't make much a difference, FA will do what it sees fit for A: the current members, and B: those who may wish to add themselves to the almost 500 000 running about the sites pages. Running a website is about more than just maintaining it's current members, it needs to look at what potential visitors would want to see.
The ban will no doubt piss off a percentage (and a large one, from what I've seen) of the members already here, but I feel that it's a worthy sacrifice to bring more people to the website.
The point here is; if someone is looking for somewhere to celebrate their differences, and they find cub porn on the front page...Odds are; they're not going to come back. I'm in support of the ban because I believe in expanding the fandom as far as it can go, and I just don't believe that the world is ready for topics like Cub/child porn
Who gets to decide what the ethical and moral standards ought to be? The simple majority? Remember that, back in the day, FA held a "vote" of sorts to determine the allowance of cub art, and a majority voted in favor of allowing it. Do we then make rules banning or restricting content based on a hypothetical group of "potential furries" who might someday find their way here and then might or might not like what they see? Why should we assume that these folks, should they one day decide to check us out, would automatically be bothered by some of the more extreme content and not sign on? And if they made that choice, is that really a bad thing? It should be their decision... if we're going to try and purify FA's image to appeal to the broadest possible base of "potential furries who might one day see this site" then oughtn't we eliminate all "offensive" material?
I'm a wild west type, too. I moved to central Nevada to get away from taxes (as much as possible), regulations, land use planning, zoning, building permits, and building codes. Guess what? In the past 150 years, not one person around here has ever been hurt by a building falling on them. Hmmmmm......
I don't have a problem with regulations as long as they 1) make sense, and 2) don't infringe on one's personal liberty. Of course, that's a gray area, which is why nobody can ever seem to decide on anything and we just end up with a long string of oddball compromises that satisfy no one.