interesting please keep us updated on this.

How interesting! I would love to see something like this take off and be successful.

I'm interested in what this new website is. Keep us posted on this if you can please.

I will post news until I get banned for doing so 🤣

Okai. XD

I fully expect Dragoneer to go full Silicon Valley on you the second he realizes you're working on a competitor that will draw traffic away from his morbidly obese ass.

Why can't I bang a Like button on your comment, sir? I'd bang it like two dozen times.

Rofl thanks.

''i'll make my own FA with blackjack and hookers''

Lol goodluck. Many have tried before.
But im all for competition

No offense to the options currently out there for furries, but not enough is done when these new platforms come out that really gives them their own identity separate from the status quo. I personally do not see the appeal and I'm someone very tried of FA. Lack of innovation and market stagnation.

What I'm proposing is doing enough to not feel like an FA competitor at all, but it's own beast.

When do you think you'll get a solid ToS up? To many loopholes for pedos to crawl through outside of FA, the main issue I've been seeing with furry and social media platforms.

The Terms of Service will come after our hosting is set in stone. Location will influence what we can and cannot allow on the platform.

Any real sex offenders or criminal behaviour is obviously going to be a breach of ToS but the keyword is real. If someone is merely uploading digital artwork that contains fetishes someone doesn't like, that's why we will support a comprehensive tagging and filtering system. Trying to dox people and ruin their lives can be kept to Twitter.

This is a golden ray of sunshine in these dark, bleak times.

A true Oasis of freedom for furries. Got a name for it?

We don't want to draw attention to any particular domain handle yet. The name will be settled later in development!

Fair enough ^_^ Though if it's geared towards furrys, would be nice to see a "Welcome to the Jungle!" in the welcome screen :D So eager for this site!

Sweet, keep us updated. Can we add suggestions of ideas for the site or is that only up to the team?

It's great to see you taking this initiative. FA's shitty socialist political stance has transformed this place into a burning trash pile.

A-fucking-men.
Edit: and a-woman, obviously (kill me)

lol

Can't do much to help make it, but once it goes live, count me in as a first signee! :P

Failed to mention the Architecture, Language and scale

Greco-Roman, English and big enough to make a Macro fetishist blush. ;P

not great at computering but i could throw some muns at it if financial support is needed later on.

Considering what just happened in my case ( https://furaffinity.net/journal/9751541 ) I seriously can't wait to see a furry art platform where users can finally feel safe from censorship. I am however less eager if it's going to be another centralizer service, still ran by one person or team of people, another alternative in the bucket: Centralized services will always be subject to corruption in some form, they are the past model. What we need is a decentralized system, ran by users themselves and uncensorable at a technological level!

What's interesting about your journal after reading the comments section is I got the impression that the one dude who started off with you pretty much shouldn't be talking politics on a fringe fetish site but he proceeds to have a full on argument with you defending his stance on COVID as opposed to sticking to the argument politics and fetish sites don't mix but the problem with his logic is they generally will allow it... as long as it's something they agree with. I'm also not big on people pushing the idea that the only ones that can bring information to the table must be experts. Experts get things wrong and honestly they're humans with human flaws. Plenty of examples throughout history where experts exaggerate or even blatantly lie for some perceived greater good.

One cannot claim they are in favor of free speech and then actively censor because they claim something is hateful or misinformation which are the new ad hominems and in part why we are as divided as we are today. I mean your journal, your space...it really doesn't affect the site any. People can argue with you as they chose to do or they can ignore it. I think there's too many people that are stuck on the legal definition of free speech and completely ignore it's spirit.

Cheers. I fully agree, but many will sadly not listen... and now we have a new "us versus them" mentality, which I don't claim to be innocent of though I still listen to and respect others whatever their opinions. For better or worse Furaffinity has at least not been giving users trouble over COVID discussion... though god forbid anything you say gets identified as "spreading hate" through any correlation. For now I'm looking up to Inkbunny which handled itself best over the years... that's limited in number of users and activity though, most artists from FA and Eka's can't be found there. It would be amazing if we had something like Mastodon / Pleroma for art! Sadly a new platform is unlikely to gain adoption in any case... we're in a similar situation to Facebook / Twitter remaining dominant, since moving after so long is difficult and everyone would need to do it at once.

FA does set the bar a bit low in comparison (while acknowledging they're not THE worst online) to other platforms. But yeah I'll watch and see how it goes with this new project but considering it's a little rare I find an artist that isn't some SJW and what's being censored is actually the stuff they do want censored I think at best it may end up being a niche site. This is based on previous attempts to create a new platform that seeks to be centered around the flaws of the administration here.

I'm not sure how much free expression in the end will be allowed because let's face it...even with those that have more of it than here on FA people haven't moved and stopped using FA as a main. They just end up having a backup gallery elsewhere that ultimately gets neglected. But nothing changes unless someone tries. Cancel culture has definitely become a problem and the ones causing it are the ones who think anyone who isn't like them is a Nazi or some bullshit like that.

I've been in this fandom for a very long time and yeah we had our drama and spats and what not but even with the burned furs in the mix it was never this bad. I've noticed that the ones who say they've seen LESS drama tend to be the ones that align most with the status quo here so... yeah they won't see it cuz they're part of that problem in the first place. Either way, it's gettin' old really quick and things need to return to some sense of sanity.

I mention many times how idiot me +5 years ago used to dream of some modern advanced world today, free of pointless conflict and silly controversies and widespread fear. Never imagined it would be 10 times worse than a decade before, and we'd fall to WW2 levels of strict and being in line.

I mean I'm not even that idealistic and even I wasn't prepared for how quickly it flared up in spite of the fact I'm also not surprised it has happened. But, I'm gonna go against whoever is pushing the more authoritarian agenda no matter how well intended they think it might be. I pay attention to history and our biggest fuckups have happened for that reason. I see those people say the same thing but are completely oblivious to the fact their methods are that of those they profess to be against and it always seems to start with censorship.

It's a risk to hold opinions on anything that challenges politics status quos, unfortunately even disease has become overtly political. You can't have opinions on elections, quarantine, identity, economics, speech or any subset of any mature, adult topic in these spaces.

I would consider my Twitter as pretty tame/vanilla in terms of centrist opinions and that was enough to ban it. It's thin ice for anyone who speaks out on FA, they stopped allowing comments on announcements a long time ago because every single one since has had a political agenda.

I miss the days when the moment Fender posted a journal we'd be racing on who's first to reply "dildos". Bless whoever started that trend... most fitting for FA.

Heh they finally banned you too eh? They got me for answering a Muslim dude who was wondering why Jews in Europe weren't getting the hate Muslims there are. I simply replied with "valid criticisms of any religion is fair game but the reality here is Jewish people are not going around murdering people for being offended at a drawing."

About 3 weeks later I was permabanned for it under the claim that was hateful conduct. The appeal of course was denied via a cookie cutter response, which took them 2 and a half months to respond to. Too busy banning people for nonsense apparently.

I've yet to receive a response and I doubt I will. Covid is the excuse but lets be real, Twitter wanted me gone for years and the shadowban wasn't enough to silence that following.

It's not the first time political services have done a impulsive ban, Discord has done the same before. They don't provide a reason, you just need to make a new account.

I'm not making a new Twitter as I already despised using it. I would rather spend that wasted time working on this.

Yeah even just going on it to see the porn some artists I like only posted to Twitter made it cringe. The virtue signaling mixed in their feeds just got worse and worse.

Political debate is now pointless on the platform cuz its obvious now that you can be banned for stating facts alone and they will stretch it as a tos violation. Soon enough it will be like Tumblr... a far left echo chamber. What irks me the most is appeals are pretty much pointless yet the act as tho they are bastions of free speech. Even Gab when they made the claim then blatantly said porn is not free speech when we in fact it is.

Anyway...I definitely support this endeavor.

Good call. Might as well make actual progress instead of spinning your wheels in the mud going nowhere.

I'm very sorry to hear you got permabanned from Eka's Portal and your journal about it is a good enough reason why I rarely post journals on that site (that way, I'll avoid talking about serious stuff like COVID-19 or some political junk).

There's just no reason for sites to discourage free speech in general. And I agree that we do need a decentralized system, a la Mastodon (a site that I favor over Twitter nowadays) so we can be free from censorship.

Reinventing a wheel that has already been reinvented?

Have you looked at the other furry art hosting website options?

I suspect it's more a matter of controlling IP and avoiding censorship. The cub stuff I could understand, but the growing push to ban hypnosis etc because "it's rape" is just fucking retarded. These are all fictional characters and you can't hypnotize people into having sex with you. What we need is a platform free from people who feel the need to virtue signal.

It has been my experience, regardless of platform or place, whenever you have 2 or more people, there will be disagreements.

So if that is what is sought, give up on it; you will fail.

I have no intention of making an FA 2.0, the lack of innovation is what causes competition to fail.

I don't intend to steer a sinking ship back to the harbor. The draconian ways of FA can continue to appeal to those who dislike change.

I'm not referring to FA when I speak of what is already out there.

But I am behind you 1000% in finding an alternative to FA. But what do you think of the other furry art sites out there that are not FA and also not your project?

If the other options for the furry community were palatable to me, I would be using them. They don't do enough differentiate themselves as a new experience.

I don't want to belittle the attempts others have made as I'm sure many very talented and ambitious creators were behind them, but as a third party what they offer is too much of a safe bet. I don't want minor variations of the same platform. One offers a banned tag, one leans slightly more into writing and one is just a reskin of ArtStation.

There is no reason to user a different platform if it's offering you 95% the same experience with a different brand attached. To really spark the excitement of furries, something new needs to market to the silent majority of the fandom.

That's going to be a tough one considering for free expression to be a thing he's gonna need to make sure the entire infrastructure from hosting to payment processing, domain registrar, etc are all on the same page against censorship. With seemingly more companies joining the virtue signalling bandwagon I'm not sure how well the more taboo works of fiction will endure on the public internet. Moreso with the recent bill targeting online porn sites. Good cause but disastrous effects in the process.

We are well aware of the trend in this industry to de-platform absolutely everything mildly challenging to modern sensibilities and the powers that be. We have colleagues in the NSFW scene that are treading this ground to make their own platform for payment processing and storage a year or so before us that are giving us valuable insight as to the hurdles and expenses such an endeavour takes.

It's not going to be easy, but nothing worth having ever is. We're prepared to take on the financial and social risks of hosting such content.

Simply put I am on the side of free expression no matter who's side it is. So, sure I have my skepticism because of the moves big tech has taken to silence people they don't want around but I certainly do hope this comes together becuase the sheer obsession with deplatforming people who are not rolemodels in their eyes is really not a good track to be on.

My thoughts exactly. The ideal option now would be a decentralized service, where users host their own galleries and those of favorite artists, while each pod communicates with every other in a torrent like fashion. That's something I've been wanting to do, using IPFS via ActivityPub... I don't have the knowledge needed nor the energy for such a big project though.

This is definitely interesting. Honestly sick of the Left bias on FA as well as Dragoneer and his shit staff doing absolutely nothing. Hope this goes well and hope there's a way to send your stuff from FA to the new sight like Furry Network allows you to do.

hope there's a way to send your stuff from FA to the new sight like Furry Network allows you to do.

^ This.

Hmm, will keep an eye on this

I've never financially backed someone else's project before, but this I would definitely feel some obligation to. Looking forward to more developments.

The best way to support this investment at the current time is to check out our Furry Games, Comics or Merch. It allows us to take additional risks by investing more upfront, plus you get some fun content!

Noted! Maybe I'll eventually end up buying an (Old) Coby pillowcase or those graphic novels!

Would definitely love to see this site get some competition. The fact that they haven't included a replacement for flash since it's removal is pretty telling. A proper competitor might force them to finally innovate and improve.

i totally dig how prolific and visionary you are.

You've always been one to push the envelope, Jason. If anyone can pull this off, it's you.

That has been consistent over my career. The push back from the status quo only emboldens the resolve to explore new solutions.

I owe most of my success to the passionate community members who want the same things we do. Content first focus, Fresh take on delivering that experience.

Oh I can’t wait to see how this goes!!

weasyl and the many others tried this. I seriously doubt anything will dethrone FA unless it implodes on itself.

TBH, Weasyl and Inkbunny both tried to do this but the reason they didn't get very far is mostly because they alienated their userbase with the type of content they allow. Generally speaking, when you allow cub art, you tend to throw yourself under the bus. :P

It's not necessarily just the art they allow, it's that they formed an identity around it as it was the only really major difference in terms of content and presentation between the platforms.

A new website needs to do much more than just allow certain content, we fully intend to innovate across the board.

Sounds raaaad

Wow.
Unfortunately if you read my title you'll see that I'm a Game Developer. I have zero experience in platforms or sites. (Exemption: Google Sites)

I like the sound of this...

This sounds like a really cool idea! I hope it goes well~

I'm curious to see where this goes FA has been getting more and more aggressive with politics lately, and it's always interesting to see a new site form.

Nice maybe finnaly a platform where you can change usernames without creating new Accounts?

We are planning to allow you to attach an alternate name/avatar/theme to your main account for roleplay, brand or partner purposes. It should mostly eliminate the needs for multiple account handles.

I already love the idea! nice

what if you don't got any fancy skills at all. What do those kind of people do to support this project?

Stay tuned! Users are valuable too! You could always support the project in terms of picking up some merch or pledging to our main projects.

Here's one question I didn't see answered. FA claims to have great security against DDOS attacks but they're pretty regular, still. What ideas do you have to prevent frequent DDOS's?

That particular draft was written by a user who is no longer attached to the project. I too noticed a lot of issues with it and have scrapped it in favor for a more cohesive vision. It was worse before where they wanted to censor anyone for patriotism etc.

I/We fully intend to allow as much freedom of expression in terms of what you can upload as possible. The only limitations is committing an actual crime like the implications of a physical threat, doxxing private information etc. Anything that would get the website taken down for violating the laws in which the servers are hosted.

If we can host it, we'll host it.

I'm more of a hardware guy rather than programming, but if theres any hosting related topics coming up (depending how you plan to do it) ill throw in some help if needed. I could offer a bit of webspace over here in europe.

Feel free to divulge more about your particular storage setup and offer via the application form and I'll check it out!

good luck on this one I'm game for promulgating my content on a new platform (ftr I put my stuff up anywhere that'll have me) I'd prefer to PM you the rest of my comment so I don't get in trouble for posting publicly.

What are your plans for funding outside of advertising revenue? Will you offer any sort of voluntary subscription (e.g. premium accounts/supporter bonuses) for those who wish to support the project and strengthen it's fiscal independence? It would be nice to have a site that is not reliant on the arbitrary whims of advertisers and other stakeholders outside of the userbase itself.

Great insight! We do actually have subscription options planned with a large variety of potential perks (Mostly cosmetic). Ads is the lowest priority in terms of mitigating costs of development, as you mentioned is a fickle market.

We may be able to earn additional income if we can host our own payment processor but there are huge hurdles to achieve that. Atm the subscription model looks more likely unless we get very lucky!

Can’t wait to see what comes from this

Curious...what's your personal opinion on Pillowfort?

Tumblr fans wanting the same experience but with the rules and guidelines that caused Tumblr to fail in the first place. IE a waste of time.

Will it have a way to easily sell your art on it as well?

We plan to have a comprehensive suite of features for commissioners/sellers but it depends on how things go with setting up the payment processing.

You will get a lot of ways to curate and review artists and the ability to find commissions easily.

Good luck on this new art platform! I can't wait to see what it's like. 👍

I remember when another Big fur went out to make a brand spanking new furry gallery, I think it was Varka, owner of Bad Dragon, went ahead and made Furry Network.

While it looked updated and modern, I've never seen deader view counts on the arts, still all these years later very dry.

I'm not sure what went wrong, what would be your guess?

It always puzzled me that Varka could make e621 the go to public furry gallery, but when it came to a dedicated furry site it missed the mark.

Carbon copy of ArtStation that tried to promote itself as trendy by making convention montage trailers. Something only a tiny portion of the community can afford to attend.

It tried to hijack FA's userbase by importing the users gallery but failed to realize that you can't promote a new service by relying on the content from another. They set nothing up to build up it's own community and interest quickly dried up.

Any idea that boils down to experiences you already have isn't going to make it, they played it too safe and familiar. e621 is better suited as a bouru board archive than a community platform, it lacks the tools to encourage and facilitate original content.

I knew that this would benefit FA (referring to the proposed updates). Competition is good. I think the both of you will find success.

Anyone else notice how FA *finally* caved in and announced plans to implement some of the features people have been whining about for the last decade - five days after this journal was written?

I really doubt the two are correlated, it would have taken much more than a week to make that amount of progress. Healthy competition is certainly a thing and perhaps the presence of more platforms will inspire FA to continue to release overdue features.

I'm really interested in the idea of the website... I've been getting increasingly more scared about all the Cancel Culture (For context hecking Pan of all things lol) going on. I'm not particularly skilled with managing websites but am really interested in this concept.

I'm hoping that this goes somewhere and I can join up on it, 3D artist and all... But hoping this trend doesn't follow you there. Best of luck! ♥

I really wish you the best. FA seems so outdated, even with the new implementations and the owners of the website seem to have petty grudges against users. I knew one artist who came back after 10 years after having issue with dragoneer with a ban and he decided to ban her again, even though whatever issue the artist had was resolved.

Don't know if it's an insignificant example or not. It's really hopeful to have a bigger and better platform than FA

We have a target on our backs for good reason, actually trying to make a positive change in this community.

People hate change.

Sorry I'm late to the party; I'm mostly no longer on FA (or furry, in general) anyway.

Animal Crackers. You should name the new site, "Animal Crackers". It would be totally hilarious and would spit at both pearlclutching race-baiters and copyright authoritarians. At least until NABISCO issues a cease and desist notice. Mostly kidding, but I'm just pointing out that if you have the balls to co-host a show proudly named "CuckShack" for years, then you've got the testicular fortitude to try to pull off something like this.

A more serious proposal: I think one big niche you could fill in a new website would be a way for furries to structure their social lives like real relationships. I believe a great source of furry drama is that furries lack control over their public media spheres and private media spheres -- professional relationships versus personal relationships -- what content they would show their close friends and regular friends for free, versus what they would show fans for free, complete strangers for free, and fans/strangers... for a price.

For a furry website, implementing this would mean two separate tier systems of user content -- both paywalled tiers for paying fans, like Patreon, and unpaywalled tiers, like Weasyl, for strangers, fans, mutually liked fans, friends, and close friends.

Allowing furries the privacy to restrict their content along the lines of both non-paywalled friendship pyramid and a paywalled content pyramid would enable furries to keep their private and public media spheres separate, and give furries a lot more privacy and control over their lives, and thus far less drama as they empowered to keep their intimate lives out of the sights of strangers and bad actors.

Structuring a private media sphere for furries will allow people to organize on a more personal level with trusted friends to improve their social skills, social capital, belonging, and esteem within a supportive setting -- giving furries a more psychologically healthy life.

Truth is, I'm so sick of EVERYTHING today being about whose banned, whose offensive, whats "extreme", whose adjacent or platforming "hate". I don't care. So what if theres some kind of jerk you or a lot of people don't like on a platform? Just ignore them, I want absolutely EVERYONE to be platformed and have all input converge, compete and duke it out without this constant and incessant petulant appeal to authority to get rid of it. Thats all everything is now, ban this person, censor this thing, I did not grow up on that internet and I certainly can't stand how that takes over all news and discussion. Every day is just "this person is banned, this thing was censored", its excessively tedious.

Tattling to the corporate bosses and advertisers feels so gross, immature and cowardly, but that's all it is now. "I don't like this, take it down, corporate brand" is basically the mantra of today.

I would like it to do well. FA policy updates sound like typical corporate speak to intimidate the peons, despite finally buying itself back from a corp (who should have never owned FA in the first place). My feeling is the future isn't here.

lol okay

No such thing as cancel culture. Mob mentality will rise up anywhere, even on your new platform.

The missing piece however is the authority on top that appeals to the idea and will enact their cancelling. The corporate world has taken upon itself the power and authority to go outside their simple "sell product" and instead "use power to force social activism by asserting power over the user"

So on his new platform, a mob could demand they remove myself, but if they don't remove me, then the cancelling is without its most necessary part.

Except that's all wrong. Jasonafex wasn't cancelled by FA, he was harassed by individuals posting on his content wherever it was. Do you understand the context for all of this? Or are you talking about Disney?

I don't know anything about whats happened to him, I'm merely talking about cancel culture as a means to remove people from places, platforms and jobs. Like if Twitter gets mad, and they demand someone get banned, they aren't cancelled if the platforms they're threatening don't comply. At that point its just an angry group of people being angry.

As someone who was involved in the first iteration of this a couple years back, I wish you the best of luck. Sad to hear it's taken a couple years to get to a point where you're making public posts about it...

The desire for a new website has existed for quite some time but no actual development transpired until the last 3-4 months. Involvement any time prior can be chalked up to suggestions.

Cool, it's good to know how much you value the time and effort of prior contributors. Looks like you're on a path to become the kind of egomaniacal asshole owner/admin that ruined FA.

Any -new platform- activity prior to the last 3 months can be chalked up to ideas and discord chatter. No actual development got underway.

Will this art platform exclude certain fetishes like your discord?

Excluding fetishes is a biproduct of the rules of Discord itself, not so much our server. If we allow certain things we risk losing the server entirely.

Owning an art platform in a state that is mostly a free market resolves that problem.

I cant seem to find certain fetishes like watersports or prolapses and other extreme fetishes that are against their policies or guidelines. The only thing I could find that was not allowed is child/cub porn, anything against consent or anything that promotes violent extremism. I was told no to watersports and I'm just curious where you found the lists of fetishes not allowed. Cause I would love to see them.