There is an actual rule in place that forbids any sort of obvious advertising, but the rule as it is seems to not be enforced well and/or is simply really easy to dodge.

There has been this trend where artists purposefully upload pictures for the sole purpose of advertising, like a while ago on post #1040974 where I whined like a child about that and the picture actually got deleted for advertising, which got me by surprise (Picture is HERE ). However, there are still picture like these being accepted, mostly YCH bases, where the clear intention of the artist is for people to go bid on their gallery.

I'm not talking about pictures with a signature, watermark or having the URL of the picture being written somewhere, but pictures where the clear intent is presented as an act of advertising alone. There is an obvious difference when advertising is actually done right, like post #1029762 and I'm not talking about cases like these, not even censored pictures, even though I really hate those, but on "art" where the clear intent is to divert the traffic for another purpose.

Good examples would be things like post #748006 post #818606 post #1057295 post #899034 and more recently post #1075736 : The clear purpose for these pictures are for people to be redirected somewhere else as an act of self advertisement.

Now, people could argue that some of them have some art merit, which shows the one big problem about the advertising rule : You can basically snuck in anything you want as long there's something remotely artistic thrown it. Want to advertise your car to be sold on e621 ? Just take a picture of it and draw some quick lineart of a fox telling us to go on his Ebay. Want to advertise your newly made Patreon ? Just throw the P logo in the middle and draw some sketchy headshot of a furry character just below, being sure to write on the description your Patreon URL 5 times because apparently people in the fandom are blind

If you need some examples of what I'm talking about, just go on the FA front page, home of beauties like :

YCH bases [+Reminders]
Characters adopts [+Reminders]
Character selling [+Reminders]
"Stream is now open"
"Open for commissions"

These are the main sort of pictures I'm talking about that e621 should do something on. I just really don't wish for e621 to become FA version 2, where the front page has more in common with Ebay than an actual furry art site

Haven't seen any of these before myself, but I agree we should take steps to stop it happening in future. e621 is purely an imageboard after all, not like other sites such as furaffinity.

I've wanted a ban on stuff like this for a while now.

404dotexe said:
Haven't seen any of these before myself, but I agree we should take steps to stop it happening in future. e621 is purely an imageboard after all, not like other sites such as furaffinity.

+1 to this ^

and wouldn't this count as commercial content as well as an ad since it's asking people for money? if so, could these advertisements be flagged as such? granted that would probably lead to these YCH things being treated the same as doujinshi/manga and patreon (among other sources) paid content thus requiring the 2 year waiting period for the finished work but paid content is paid content and your paying money for those YCH things to be made.

Neitsuke said:
post #1075736

Just throw the P logo in the middle and draw some sketchy headshot of a furry character just below, being sure to write on the description your Patreon URL 5 times because apparently people in the fandom are blind]

o_O geez at all the links! seeing that description leaves me wondering if that person is just desperate for attention or something. 1/4 of those links would probably have been enough. or better yet, ONE link pointing to your artist tag page with all the links set to the tag.

A unique image which makes an internal mention of an uncensored copy at their patreon is fine. An image saying "Streaming now!" hits the line, sometimes it's a very unique image that is a wonderful quality, but most artists just reuse the same simple image.

post #1011929 for example this was a streaming image but it's actually an enjoyable one to look at, but normally artists use something like this repeatedly. If there's a base which isn't an ad, that would be fine for an upload, but often times the image was first made only for advertising the streams and just keeps getting reused.

Pictures of completed adoptables and YCH, and pictures that have been used to advertise streams or commissions are fine by themselves, as long the clear intend of being uploaded here isn't to promote their stream or selling, either done in the description of the picture and/or walls of text written on the picture itself

+1. I like senz, but post #1075736 was too much.

+1, it is as bad as someone coming on the forums to advertise Viagra in my eye.

leomole said:
+1. I like senz, but post #1075736 was too much.

There's no source for that image, what was it?

The picture was this https://inkbunny.net/submissionview.php?id=1250053

+1. Everyone wants artists to be supported, however e621 is an imageboard to search for relevant and quality images that people want to see. If you like the artist, then follow them to their page.

This is also why I really hate unsourced images being posted, especially if the source is reverse searchable. Its the easiest way to give the author traffic without getting in the way of why we are here at e621 in the first place: Proper image searching for quality stuff we want to see.