Topic: Fur Affinity policy update for content involving minors

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Update Regarding Upload Policy 2.7 - Content Involving Minors

TL;DR: Fur Affinity have amended their policies to now consider the childlike body proportions of characters rather than only the canonical character information. The update will go into effect July 1st, 2023.

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If there's any artists that have content that may fall foul of this change, now's the time to start scraping the content and archiving it here before it gets nuked. Artists will possibly be self-deleting their content to prevent having any action taken against their account, so content might already be getting deleted.

I recommend reverser as a great tool for scraping Fur Affinity galleries

Known artists deleting content

If you know anybody who isn't on this list, please comment below or send a message

see also TheGreatWolfgang's list

Updated by Rainbow Dash

bitWolfy

Former Staff

Good on them.
I'm so tired of people coming in here saying "look, it's up on FA, this means that it's not cub" even when it's obviously cub.

bitwolfy said:
Good on them.
I'm so tired of people coming in here saying "look, it's up on FA, this means that it's not cub" even when it's obviously cub.

You are aware of how badly something that will be up to moderator discretion will go right? We're not even talking stuff drawn obviously cub-like, just pokemon as they are normally.

Victini? Banned. Meloetta? Banned. Mew? Banned. Celebi? Believe it or not, banned. Sneasel? Banned. Pikachu? Oops too popular but would be banned. Dragoneers own eevee character? HMMM

Edit: Oops Pikachus banned as well.
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10553034/

Updated

bitwolfy said:
Good on them.
I'm so tired of people coming in here saying "look, it's up on FA, this means that it's not cub" even when it's obviously cub.

What an awful take from an admin of all people.

purelyforablacklist said:
What an awful take from an admin of all people.

it's a joke about people trying to justify tag wars/bad tagging, chill. I feel like a person named "PurelyForABlacklist" should be able to appreciate that kind of humor.

It is pretty unsustainable to curate art solely on the basis of canonical ages. This is pretty much a necessity for any site that wants to police or ban fictional underaged characters, considering disclaimers like "all characters depicted are 18+", aged-up versions of younger characters, and obscure gacha waifus who are secretly 10,000 years old.

lafcadio said:
It is pretty unsustainable to curate art solely on the basis of canonical ages. This is pretty much a necessity for any site that wants to police or ban fictional underaged characters, considering disclaimers like "all characters depicted are 18+", aged-up versions of younger characters, and obscure gacha waifus who are secretly 10,000 years old.

You are aware they are literally said age-up was fine right. Also moderating content on a booru is much different than a gallery where a moderators whim can lead to a ban of the account. By their standard currently being applied the character in your avatar would be flagged in any nsfw.

rysyn said:
You are aware they are literally said age-up was fine right.

rysyn said:
By their standard currently being applied the character in your avatar would be flagged in any nsfw.

You are mistaken if you think I'm arguing in favor of banning underaged content. My point is that people do absolutely silly stuff in the pursuit of justifying that sort of content to a more general audience.

manyura said:
Never used fa anyway when e6 exists

Fa is like a gateway to e6, its a rite of passage before jioning this site. most folks who are gonns be furries first go to mainstream normie-adjacent furry sites like furaffinity or deviantart so either you became a furry from elsewhere or youre lying. If its from elsewhere Im curious to know where.

wolfmanfur said:
Fa is like a gateway to e6, its a rite of passage before jioning this site. most folks who are gonns be furries first go to mainstream normie-adjacent furry sites like furaffinity or deviantart so either you became a furry from elsewhere or youre lying. If its from elsewhere Im curious to know where.

You'd be surprised. I actually became a furry from a site called luscious

TheHuskyK9

Former Staff

manyura said:
You'd be surprised. I actually became a furry from a site called luscious

Same, I thought I was the only one

faucet said:
TL;DR: Fur Affinity have amended their policies to now consider the childlike body proportions of characters rather than only the canonical character information. The update will go into effect July 1st, 2023.

To be fair, it has been part of their policy involving minors (see forum #359038) already, just reiterated to be more clear.

Though I feel that they are really shooting their foot on this one with the overarching net that captures a lot of Pokemon & Digimon characters.
I have read on the FA Discord that this rule would also apply to ferals (obviously), though I am not sure how they will subjectively determine whether it has "childlike" proportions or not (imagine a very large dog breed on a small dog).

It really makes me wonder what they are going to do with certain popular artists that they have taken a stance with in the past, in regards to having childlike characters in NSFW scenarios. Edit: Looks like they are cracking down.

On another note, here's my own list based on artists I am watching:

Vague list of artists affected

(list will change if there is an update)

Updated

thegreatwolfgang said:
To be fair, it has been part of their policy involving minors (see forum #359038) already, just reiterated to be more clear.
Though I feel that they are really shooting their foot on this one with the overarching net that captures a lot of Pokemon & Digimon characters.
I have read on the FA Discord that this rule would also apply to ferals (obviously), though I am not sure how they will subjectively determine whether it has "childlike" proportions or not (imagine a very large dog breed on a small dog).

It really makes me wonder what they are going to do with certain popular artists that they have taken a stance with in the past, in regards to having childlike characters in NSFW scenarios.

Here's my own list based on artists I am watching:

TBA

Oh I can assure you it does apply to quadrupeds (I dislike the feral tag being used for sentient (ie anthropomorphic) characters).
https://twitter.com/woot_master/status/1659714723397652480?s=20

TBF, I thought this was already banned. But then I read that they're going full-Australia. Andromorphs are likely banned as well.

faucet said:
I recommend reverser as a great tool for scraping Fur Affinity galleries

specteon said:
You can also use a tool like gallery-dl to download automatically a whole gallery

Hmm, do they do descriptions and metadata like Raccoony? Been using that one because it behaves like a normal browser because duh, actual browser. Only thing it doesn't do is stuff like folder indexing and comments/journals. Does FA offer a convenient tool for artists to backup their data before deleting? I mean, like that tool Yahoo(no !) had before they entirely removed Groups?

wolfmanfur said:
Might as well promote tools I like, check out my about page.

Will look in a minute. Thanks!

rysyn said:
You are aware they are literally said age-up was fine right. Also moderating content on a booru is much different than a gallery where a moderators whim can lead to a ban of the account. By their standard currently being applied the character in your avatar would be flagged in any nsfw.

Until next year. >:)

Quoted here so they can't delete the evidence later.

"[Fur Affinity Admin] [FA+ Member] Fender [I paid $8 for this]
Watcher | Registered: Dec 4, 2005 04:49" said:
May 19, 2023 - Internal Policy Update
May 19, 2023 08:30 AM
Update Regarding Upload Policy 2.7 - Content Involving Minors

Since Fur Affinity has taken the stance against fictional content featuring minors in sexual situations, we have continued to evolve our rules to prevent minors from being exploited and to ensure that our rules are equally applied.

Our most well-known change removed the classic “1000 year old loli vampire” loophole trope by expanding our definition of minors to include humanoids with childlike body proportions, including canonically adult characters who look like children. Such characters need to be aged-up accordingly (proportions changed to that of an adult) to be allowed in submissions containing sexual situations. These changes were well-received, and based upon additional feedback from our community, any reports we receive of Pokémon or Digimon who have childlike body proportions or appear as adolescent animals will be treated as any other when in the presence of sexual activity, sexual objects, nudity, or fetishized in a sexual way. This update will go into effect on July 1st, 2023.

We would like to reiterate this applies to those characters only with childlike proportions or are otherwise presented as children in sexual content as described above.

Accounts found in violation may receive a 1 week suspension and a final warning. Repeat violations may result in a permanent ban. If you believe that this change may impact your gallery, then you should delete any and all content that may violate our rules before July 1st, 2023.

If you have questions as to whether this may apply to your content, please feel free to open a ticket under “NSFW Underage Content” with links to the content in question, and we can verify if the content is in violation or not.

As always, thank you for being members of our wonderful and creative furry community. We hope that this update will continue to provide everyone with a safe and inclusive place to share your artistic endeavors and meet new and interesting people from all parts of our furry world.

Appended: Additional Clarification

Due to feedback we have received regarding this update, we are providing the following clarification on the changes that went live today.

- NO, there is no blanket ban across species.
- NO, there is no list of species that we will always take action on.
- YES, characters in your NSFW art must be aged up.
- NO, simply making something bigger or smaller does not indicate age.
- We look at anatomy proportionally alongside other context in submissions.

There is also some confusion as to the extent of the changes that went live today. Section 2.7 of the Upload Policy has been in effect for many months with its current wording. The only thing that changed as of this update is our internal policy on Pokemon and Digimon. Pokemon and Digimon are now actionable, if presented as children, when they were not in the past.

Again, small or otherwise cute adults, Pokemon/Digimon or not, will not be removed unless they proportionally/anatomically represent a child.

Please submit a Trouble Ticket as described above should you need additional clarification. Thank you!
Help keep FA independent and fund site updates! Support coding development by subscribing to FA+ (and get some pretty spiffy perks in the process!).https://www.furaffinity.net/plus/

" 0 Comments
Comment posting has been disabled by the journal owner. " LOL, I bet.

rysyn said:
Oh I can assure you it does apply to quadrupeds (I dislike the feral tag being used for sentient (ie anthropomorphic) characters).

"quadrupeds" rather than "ferals" ignores birds, fish, snakes, marine mammals, primates, some dinosaurs, and lots of other real and fictional species. also taurs are generally quadrupedal.

Note: This is entirely speculation.

Site owners sure do strange things when they get a polite request from their ISP, or a certified letter from Visa or Mastercard's corporate counsel. (Shinies = Paypal = you have to play by the Visa/MC rules. See also: T-mblr and P-rnh-b.)

Pic related, from way back in January 2014: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/12520996/

There goes some good babyfur stuff...
At least I hope it convinces more artists to use inkbunny.

there are already furaffinity archivers online, though they are either on .onion domains, or are swamped so often that they have a queue system making you wait a while before you can download them, the onion one has been up since 2004, so as long as the art has existed for a while, its probably on there

Guess we need to implicate mew as cub, if the head mod running this whole thing's opinion is to be held as the standard lol. I can't tell if the guys spent any time in the furry fandom outside of maybe suiters, given his stance of applying purely human based aging characteristic to non-human characters

This is basically official policy for FA.
https://twitter.com/echoenbatbat/status/1659771622839189504?s=20

I feel like FA is running it a bit stricter than e621 is. I'm glad they're making the move, but I do hope artists who need to can find suitable alternatives

cutefox123 said:
there are already furaffinity archivers online, though they are either on .onion domains, or are swamped so often that they have a queue system making you wait a while before you can download them, the onion one has been up since 2004, so as long as the art has existed for a while, its probably on there

Are they even still up? The last I checked from the past few months is that only the front page loads, everything else is unreachable.

Watsit

Privileged

furrin_gok said:
I feel like FA is running it a bit stricter than e621 is.

Definitely. According to FA, this would be considered cub there, but it isn't here. I wager a lot of feral pony art will be getting the chop too, along with a lot of chibi art.

I can only imagine the reaction of artists that have had their art taken down here from being unhappy with it getting tagged cub, only to find FA considering the same and more to be cub and get punished for it.

Oh for fuck's sake.
Tumblr has already nuked everything lewd, Imgur followed suit, Reddit's probably going down the same path soon, Patreon cranked up the puritanism, Twitter's been shadowbanning NSFW artists, and now this...
It's not gonna get better, only worse.

Updated

Oh, and...

we have continued to evolve our rules to prevent minors from being exploited

Admirable, but how exactly is this supposed to help protect anyone?

This is so terrible, so many sites are banning not only cubs but characters that look even remotely young. Time to start drawing grandmas I guess, it seems that's what society wants.

But hey, lets look at this from the bright side, there will be a lot of artists who will migrate to other platforms, including this one, that means we will have access to "new" artwork with an objectively better tagging/browsing system (Even twitter is better than FA at searching up stuff, since they show you related artists or you can find similar content through the retweet system.)

darryus said:
"quadrupeds" rather than "ferals" ignores birds, fish, snakes, marine mammals, primates, some dinosaurs, and lots of other real and fictional species. also taurs are generally quadrupedal.

I'm beginning to use 'natural' to describe physically non-anthro characters: natural, but stands upright and has thumbs (and a tax code).

azero said:
But hey, lets look at this from the bright side, there will be a lot of artists who will migrate to other platforms, including this one, that means we will have access to "new" artwork with an objectively better tagging/browsing system (Even twitter is better than FA at searching up stuff, since they show you related artists or you can find similar content through the retweet system.)

Twitter is a nightmare imo, there is a limit to how far you can scroll someone's media timeline, searching a time range is clunky, then there are artists that clog their media with unrelated stuff like memes or personal takes...
Not to mention the incoming API limitation, meaning archiving these is gonna be tough, assuming the artist isn't banned from search results(why is that even a thing?).

wolfmanfur said:
Fa is like a gateway to e6, its a rite of passage before jioning this site. most folks who are gonns be furries first go to mainstream normie-adjacent furry sites like furaffinity or deviantart so either you became a furry from elsewhere or youre lying. If its from elsewhere Im curious to know where.

Veebooru, which is basically cub only e6...

In a sense, I've never used a non booru site till ig inkbunny for furry stuff. Guess you could say I'm almost 'anti normie'

rysyn said:
Guess we need to implicate mew as cub, if the head mod running this whole thing's opinion is to be held as the standard lol. I can't tell if the guys spent any time in the furry fandom outside of maybe suiters, given his stance of applying purely human based aging characteristic to non-human characters

This is basically official policy for FA.
https://twitter.com/echoenbatbat/status/1659771622839189504?s=20

"Mew is an embryo."

FA Admin post said:
Due to feedback we have received regarding this update, we are providing the following clarification on the changes that went live today.

- NO, there is no blanket ban across species.
- NO, there is no list of species that we will always take action on.
- YES, characters in your NSFW art must be aged up.
- NO, simply making something bigger or smaller does not indicate age.
- We look at anatomy proportionally alongside other context in submissions.

There is also some confusion as to the extent of the changes that went live today. Section 2.7 of the Upload Policy has been in effect for many months with its current wording. The only thing that changed as of this update is our internal policy on Pokemon and Digimon. Pokemon and Digimon are now actionable, if presented as children, when they were not in the past.

Again, small or otherwise cute adults, Pokemon/Digimon or not, will not be removed unless they proportionally/anatomically represent a child.

Well that was a fucking lie. How long do you think before the people who calmed down when FA half-heartedly backpedaled realize they actually didn't backpedal at all?

m3g4p0n1 said:
Twitter is a nightmare imo, there is a limit to how far you can scroll someone's media timeline, searching a time range is clunky, then there are artists that clog their media with unrelated stuff like memes or personal takes...
Not to mention the incoming API limitation, meaning archiving these is gonna be tough, assuming the artist isn't banned from search results(why is that even a thing?).

I'm not saying it is perfect, but it is better than what FA has, which is saying a lot. The one thing that irks me is the image file format, yes I know that .jfif is just an extension based on .jpg, but it is the same as .webp in the sense that I don't like it. And saving a video/gif is such a pain, why the hell would I want to copy the gif address when I right click? It is not supposed to work that way.

Now I do wonder, given the body proportions of judy_hopps, which is the character (non-mlp) with the most posts here, therefore a good chance that on FA as well, does that mean FA will delete all art of her, right? It's only logical. If they don't, that would be rather hypocritical of them.

Applying human anatomy proportions to non-human drawings of fictional beings is such a great idea! There is no absolutely no way this could backfire, no sir!
The only reasonable next step is to ban ALL feral artwork, in order to protect the animals and all that, because surely that will help. Finally, they must ban all depictions of animal genitalia, especially canine genitalia such as knots, can't have people jacking it to this kind of stuff, otherwise animals will suffer.

rysyn said:
This is basically official policy for FA.
https://twitter.com/echoenbatbat/status/1659771622839189504?s=20

lmao at that spirited away example. like, Yubaba is litterally 2 heads tall, is she an infant too?
also if they're going just by proportions would a character like Sweet P from Adventure Time be fine? I mean, he's obviously a child in both design and characterization, but he's like 7 heads tall so I guess that'd be allowed.

darryus said:
lmao at that spirited away example. like, Yubaba is litterally 2 heads tall, is she an infant too?
also if they're going just by proportions would a character like Sweet P from Adventure Time be fine? I mean, he's obviously a child in both design and characterization, but he's like 7 heads tall so I guess that'd be allowed.

(Some sarcasm)
Goku in Dragonball... Super.
I mean, he behaves like a kid. ;)

kora_viridian said:
Note: This is entirely speculation.

Site owners sure do strange things when they get a polite request from their ISP, or a certified letter from Visa or Mastercard's corporate counsel. (Shinies = Paypal = you have to play by the Visa/MC rules. See also: T-mblr and P-rnh-b.)

Pic related, from way back in January 2014: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/12520996/

It is Paypal? OH NO
I kind of didn't even focus on Shinies until recently. I mean, used other payment methods based on Stripe or similar non-PP services, for example. I somehow wasn't even thinking of that on FA.

Reposted a link to that on my shouts. Had a bit of a laugh!

cutefox123 said:
there are already furaffinity archivers online, though they are either on .onion domains, or are swamped so often that they have a queue system making you wait a while before you can download them, the onion one has been up since 2004, so as long as the art has existed for a while, its probably on there

The entire point of the current e621 effort is that torrents don't depend on such shenanigans and if server goes down, welp, people can just go seed a part of it instead of the entire thing like those slooooow onion sites(hidden services).

The 'protection' thing is a riot. I can protect carrots by banning drawings of shovels?

Updated

Watsit

Privileged

Another artist to add to the pile:
whitefeathersrain (journal) - Will be forced to delete a bunch of content in 2 weeks. Much of it will be relocated to Telegram, but who knows how much will be acceptable there.

You know, this is already how most art sites operate. FA was already the odd one out for taking fictional species lore into account regarding character age.

I hate to say it, but, like… just draw your characters to actually look like adults if you don’t want to be affected by this.
Or just move to e621. 😉

scaliespe said:
You know, this is already how most art sites operate. FA was already the odd one out for taking fictional species lore into account regarding character age.

I hate to say it, but, like… just draw your characters to actually look like adults if you don’t want to be affected by this.
Or just move to e621. 😉

Are you personally going to tag every small pokemon as cub then? And what do you even mean most art sites, there's literally FA and maybe IB (no, boorus don't count).

A Janitor of all people should know that people will judge things differently and it only will take the most strict opinion for an account ban, hence why all of the Pokemon artists are talking about jumping ship even though they don't draw cub. What an incredibly disrespectful comment to artists as well, almost as bad as Luffy's comment calling mew a fetus literally insulting everyone with a mew 'sona.

m3g4p0n1 said:
They are already tagged as such in the current moment afaik.

kinda, but not really; tagging isn't as strict as the "you must be this many heads tall to ride" rules that FA is seemingly trying to enforce.

even though generally we lean on the side of tagging young where there is some ambiguity, tagging standards are always going to be a little bit fuzzy. tagging can be based on context of the image itself, the artsyle, and maybe even the "vibes" of a character. on-model non-baby pokémon, smaller ferals, and characters in a chibi artstyle are relatively rare to see tagged young.

scaliespe said:
You know, this is already how most art sites operate. FA was already the odd one out for taking fictional species lore into account regarding character age.

I hate to say it, but, like… just draw your characters to actually look like adults if you don’t want to be affected by this.
Or just move to e621. 😉

rysyn said:
https://twitter.com/echoenbatbat/status/1659771622839189504?s=20

Btw if the chart Luffy (the FA admin in rysyn's link) posted is an actual standard they're using, and they're applying it in Andrew Loomis' original context,Wikipedia also cites him as the progenitor of this 7 heads tall is a ten year old. (in Figure Drawing For All It's Worth page 29 heAndrew Loomis outlines the exact same scaling, and claims "These proportions have been worked out with a great deal of effort and, as far as I know, have never before been put down for the artist." this also comes a page after he explains his 8-head human male height is an "ideal" and not realism)
Taking a glance at your own art, I'm placing your most elongated renditions of crusch_lulu a little over 6 headspeeking over 5 years old on Loomis' scale. Do you find that "most art sites" accuse you of drawing underage art?
Many furry artists don't use human proportionsrealistic or artistically idealised, and it's a potential problem that when asked to be upfront about what degree people need to scale their characters, that's the scale posted by the admin at the wheel.

scaliespe said:
Or just move to e621. 😉

but then they can't roleplay in the comments under their images!

EDIT: actually, if I'm not mistaken a lot of grooming around the furry community starts with a predator initiating roleplay with a minor. so honestly, if they really wanted to protect minors, cracking down on RP and getting rid of that would likely do more than banning shortstacks.

Updated

darryus said:
EDIT: actually, if I'm not mistaken a lot of grooming around the furry community starts with a predator initiating roleplay with a minor. so honestly, if they really wanted to protect minors, cracking down on RP and getting rid of that would likely do more than banning shortstacks.

Reminder FurAffinity's account settings still let you change your D.O.B???

rysyn said:
Are you personally going to tag every small pokemon as cub then? And what do you even mean most art sites, there's literally FA and maybe IB (no, boorus don't count).

A Janitor of all people should know that people will judge things differently and it only will take the most strict opinion for an account ban, hence why all of the Pokemon artists are talking about jumping ship even though they don't draw cub. What an incredibly disrespectful comment to artists as well, almost as bad as Luffy's comment calling mew a fetus literally insulting everyone with a mew 'sona.

Mew Fetus is a reference to... nvm, too tired now to go find a link.

magnuseffect said:
Reminder FurAffinity's account settings still let you change your D.O.B???

Can I set it to 1870's or something crazy? :P

Remember that the minimum age to register for Furaffinity is 13.

Some things change but others stay the same. It's 2023 and FA still finds a way to fuck their stuff up on a massive scale, and we're still hoping artists will leave that site for somewhere better so that FA will shrivel up and die.

FA doesn't really "do" content moderation, right? Not like how we do. They don't police content for violations. They instead rely on reports (and have poor ticket response, I've heard). We approve all our posts and our staff understands how to execute our content policies overall. I can only see FA fucking this up because the people reviewing content for deletion will be relatively inexperienced for the scale of the work, yet they intend to perform a sweeping change. No grandfathered content clause either, and their site has poor searchability. They will be "finding cub" for years. I wonder if FA even has the staff to review 10s of thousands of posts because that is the size of the job. It takes a very specific kind of person to want and be able to process that much content in a reasonably timely fashion, and I don't think FA's staff attracts that kind of person, nor does anything about FA, really.

I'm actually in favor of "petite body"/"smol" = young, but that still needs some restraint. I could see this as what people call "validation" (I don't), but at what cost? as the meme goes. I don't see FA exercising much restraint. They will use a hammer, not a scalpel.

darryus said:
on-model non-baby pokémon, smaller ferals, and characters in a chibi artstyle are relatively rare to see tagged young.

We have a decentralized army of pokemon, digimon, etc enjoyers (i.e., people who know lore) who get very salty when something like gatomon gets tagged cub and will purge all such attempts on sight. Then better taggers with some degree of conscientiousness survey that situation, assume "this is how we do things," and follow suit. And I've watched admin tag decisions seem to bend that way as well over the years. This pattern is an example for why I place low importance on "how a tag has been used" when considering its correct use.

People are oh so loath to have any association with cub and will throw temper tantrums and employ mental gymnastics when a tag says otherwise (e.g., topic #37528 => takedown #18141). I've seen people grandstanding against young content in our comments only for someone else to call them out for their favorites having some young content, and then the grandstander has a little crisis and usually removes those favorites. People will fap to young porn if they can convince themselves that it's something else until a label bursts their bubble. Then they find their conscience. It seems the young tag has the offensive power of a slur for quite a few people, actually.

manyura said:
Never used fa anyway when e6 exists

Only in the last couple of years have artists been so openly uploading to e621 and seeing us as a place they want to maintain their presence. This is a major achievement that we should take pride in. However, many, many, many of our artist collections are severely lacking. You might see an artist here with 100 or 200 posts and think "we're on it, we have the good stuff." This is often far from the truth because a lot of our uploaders leave large "content gaps" for artists, only uploading a few of a given artist's works here when that's not even a dent in their portfolio. Now that I've realized this, I think in terms of how much I've/we've been missing out, because we don't look offsite. Yeah, we have "more than enough," but isn't it a shame when you find an artist here that you like but actually we have like 20% of their art?

Anyway, because I know how much we don't have here, I am aware that FA's purge will prevent a lot of art from ever making its way here.

To be Honest ◠‿◠;)

Seems like a small change that I'm all for, really.

Makes it so that the no cub policy there means something.
It cuts out the loophole a peep can make by saying their cub character isn't
really cub because I said so and I'm the artist. No one's really wrong in that
scenario and that's the loophole, Nothing could really be done. 'Till now, Dood

With this rule change it blows that argument out of the water.
and says what they and what peeps who want the rule really mean when
it comes to cub or cub-like content on the site. It doesn't matter if you say
your character isn't cub, the fact of the matter is that your small,
large-headed, thin character who is consistently placed in suspiciously close
scenarios and positions a kid may find themselves in is not welcome on that site, Dood

Just a small change to really make a rule that's seemingly been in place since
2005 work. To be honest I thought this rule change was already a thing there, Dood
=P

Updated

votp said:
Remember that the minimum age to register for Furaffinity is 13.

Raising the age limit to 18, implementing an age verification scheme and restricting ERP would do a hell of a lot more than what essentially boils down to virtue signaling.

Or, you know, just preventing your users from arbitrarily changing their date of birth?

Updated

kadachi-kun said:
Raising the age limit to 18, implementing an age verification scheme and restricting ERP would do a hell of a lot more than what essentially boils down to virtue signaling.

But then they won't get that sweet, sweet ad money. :c

votp said:
Remember that the minimum age to register for Furaffinity is 13.

eyo, what the fuck? I can't think of a single way that could be justifiable.
seriously, 13 is like the age you set for kids to be able to go on your MMO because they can probably handle censored or obfuscated swears in public chat. it's not the age you let them on the same website that people are jacking it to Sonic the Hedgehog characters.

darryus said:
eyo, what the fuck? I can't think of a single way that could be justifiable.
seriously, 13 is like the age you set for kids to be able to go on your MMO because they can probably handle censored or obfuscated swears in public chat. it's not the age you let them on the same website that people are jacking it to Sonic the Hedgehog characters.

And now you know why FA has such a huge problem with adults interacting with children in an improper manner.

Seriously that someone cares about the age input in a signup form?
Almost everyone lies about that. And probably whoever is reading this message also lied about it when was younger.

It's just for appearances.

darryus said:
eyo, what the fuck? I can't think of a single way that could be justifiable.
seriously, 13 is like the age you set for kids to be able to go on your MMO because they can probably handle censored or obfuscated swears in public chat. it's not the age you let them on the same website that people are jacking it to Sonic the Hedgehog characters.

Tbf, deviantart has this same age restriction, but deviantart never explicitly allowed pornographic or taboo content, although it is so poorly moderated (besides keeping in trolls and harassment) that it has plenty of unsavory content that minors should not have access to (and I'm not talking of 'fetish' content, this is the sort of stuff you see in cartoons, I'm talking full on porn with sex etc which I remember was explicitly banned, but this is not enforced).

I wonder if fa is in the same boat. I would not be surprised either way, Dragoneer doesn't have a track record for hiring good moderators or moderate anything properly by himself and it would not be beyond him to make this site, explicitly as an adult site, but allow children on it anyway.

specteon said:
Seriously that someone cares about the age input in a signup form?
Almost everyone lies about that. And probably whoever is reading this message also lied about it when was younger.

It's just for appearances.

that's such a dogshit take, my dude.
even if everyone lied about everything, having a website like FA explicitly tell 13 year-olds that it's safe for them to be on their site is bad.
I've personally seen a minor getting groomed (it eventually got stopped, but only after the groomer literally proposed to the minor publicly) in a community a lot smaller and more easily controlled than FurAffinity, if you think minors are safe to be publicly on a site like FA you're crazy.

Updated

kadachi-kun said:
Oh, and...
Admirable, but how exactly is this supposed to help protect anyone?

It doesn't. Grooming and exploitation happens with anything and everything. Cub/chibi/"small things" aren't an all powerful grooming geass, nor even the most "commonly used method" of grooming (as someone above mentioned, simply talking to them is enough/pervasively common). I'm sure they know this, but it makes both for good PR and a shield against criticism. They get look morally righteous while putting on the facade of "helping" the issue they refer to, and they're shielded from most public backlash because of the moral loading. "Why would you be against us banning this? Are you saying you WANT kids to be exploited!?" And if people leave as a result, "Lololol, good riddance PEDO!" Pretty much the ultimate, anything proof shield.

If they truly cared about that issue, they would lock account creation behind requiring proof of legal age. But of course they won't, very few would, so they put smaller things (that they and their moderation peers conveniently just so happen to already not like) up on a cross as a sacrifice and call it "good enough" mission accomplished.

darryus said:
that's such a dogshit take, my dude.
even if everyone lied about everything, having a website like FA explicitly tell 13 year-olds that it's safe for them to be on their site is bad.
I've personally seen a minor getting groomed (it eventually got stopped, but only after the groomer literally proposed to the minor publicly) in a community a lot smaller and more easily controlled than FurAffinity, if you think minors are safe to be publicly on a site like FA you're crazy.

I didn't say that minors are safe on a site like FA.
I only said that age input in a signup form works only for appearances.

Change the signup to allow only for 18+, and the underages will lie.
Remove a feature set for underages (e.g., private message), and the underages will lie as soon as they figure it out.
So, I think that it's pointless to complain about it. The site owner can change it to tell that the place isn't safe for underages, or add a RTA label on the footer as Inkbunny does. And as a result, I guess that it'll only make the site more attractive for underages, and they will just lie, or maybe, nothing will change.
As a teenager, something saying "it's only for adults" is more fascinating than something saying "it's for kids too".

btw I'm more surprised that someone noticed that FA allows 13 years-old than the fact FA allows it.

specteon said:
I didn't say that minors are safe on a site like FA.
I only said that age input in a signup form works only for appearances.

Change the signup to allow only for 18+, and the underages will lie.
Remove a feature set for underages (e.g., private message), and the underages will lie as soon as they figure it out.
So, I think that it's pointless to complain about it. The site owner can change it to tell that the place isn't safe for underages, or add a RTA label on the footer as Inkbunny does. And as a result, I guess that it'll only make the site more attractive for underages, and they will just lie, or maybe, nothing will change.
As a teenager, something saying "it's only for adults" is more fascinating than something saying "it's for kids too".

btw I'm more surprised that someone noticed that FA allows 13 years-old than the fact FA allows it.

It's not rocket science, all social media have a 13 years age requirement.

specteon said:
I didn't say that minors are safe on a site like FA.
I only said that age input in a signup form works only for appearances.

Change the signup to allow only for 18+, and the underages will lie.
Remove a feature set for underages (e.g., private message), and the underages will lie as soon as they figure it out.
So, I think that it's pointless to complain about it. The site owner can change it to tell that the place isn't safe for underages, or add a RTA label on the footer as Inkbunny does. And as a result, I guess that it'll only make the site more attractive for underages, and they will just lie, or maybe, nothing will change.
As a teenager, something saying "it's only for adults" is more fascinating than something saying "it's for kids too".

btw I'm more surprised that someone noticed that FA allows 13 years-old than the fact FA allows it.

the difference is you get fucking perma banned if you say you're under 18 and all the alts you try to make get banned too. if you're allowed to be 13 on a website that means you're allowed to be publicly 13 on a website. on e6 if you ever even imply that you might be underage you get instantly banned and carded.

ANALOGY: there's a big difference between someone bringing a fake id to a liquor store to get some beers and a bar saying they're open for anyone over 13 as long as they promise to only drink milk, while all the adults are on their 5th shot.

Updated

cutefox123 said:
there are already furaffinity archivers online, though they are either on .onion domains, or are swamped so often that they have a queue system making you wait a while before you can download them, the onion one has been up since 2004, so as long as the art has existed for a while, its probably on there

I really really wish whoever ran the onion one would maintain a torrent or something. Presently it's a 1 bus situation

alphamule said:

kora viridian said:
Note: This is entirely speculation. [...]
(Shinies = Paypal = you have to play by the Visa/MC rules. See also: T-mblr and P-rnh-b.)

It is Paypal? OH NO

It has been since FA introduced the Shinies system, as far as I know.

If you find an artist with Shinies enabled, the box on their profile page says:

All Shinies are paid to artistname (minus any fees leveraged by Paypal)

If you click the "Send artistname Shinies!" button, and you're not logged in to Paypal, you get redirected to a Paypal login page.

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/12520996/

Reposted a link to that on my shouts. Had a bit of a laugh!

I only found that graph later; I don't remember what the drama was in early 2014. I'm pretty sure that was before the sale to IMVU, though.

abadbird said:
Some things change but others stay the same. It's 2023 and FA still finds a way to fuck their stuff up on a massive scale, and we're still hoping artists will leave that site for somewhere better so that FA will shrivel up and die.

Naw, they'd have to ban NSFW entirely. I doubt it'll be total doomsday like some think, but yeah, it's going to destroy a lot of galleries, just from the theat.

"Not like we do."
The content moderation is post-upload versus pre-upload, yes. This is how most places work, if your own channel/gallery/etc. LOL, imagine searching millions of images after the fact. This is part of the reason you don't have retroactive laws IRL.

Sometimes artists do a lot of OCs and don't categorically say if they allow (or require allowing of) uploading to e621 and other archives. Sometimes those are the ones with <20% yet allowed to be posted.

There was an image someone posted a few years back and recently linked from either FA/IB (can't remember which) that I was wanting to link to in regard 'slur'. I'll find it later, I guess. Found it: https://inkbunny.net/s/1812215-p6-#pictop

kora_viridian said:
It has been since FA introduced the Shinies system, as far as I know.

Yeah, I just somehow didn't even think of it. Even when looking for ways to donate. :facepalm:

Updated

darryus said:
the difference is you get fucking perma banned if you say you're under 18 and all the alts you try to make get banned too. if you're allowed to be 13 on a website that means you're allowed to be publicly 13 on a website. on e6 if you ever even imply that you might be underage you get instantly banned and carded.

ANALOGY: there's a big difference between someone bringing a fake id to a liquor store to get some beers and a bar saying they're open for anyone over 13 as long as they promise to only drink milk, while all the adults are on their 5th shot.

I understand your point, but IMHO, I don't think that there is a big difference between "incentivizing minors to use fake id" and "minors can join and allow them to use the actual id".

In the first case, the minor will still join on social media, and even if they don't show their actual age, those who look maliciously and patiently will find them.

For instance: it's an anecdotal/personal relate, but when I was younger, it was easy to notice that I was underage by seeing my bad writing skill or by my more recent references.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think e621 doesn't bans those who write badly or use more recent references in the messages (and if it happens, I'm not sure if it's fair because of the false positive rate).

And in this case, since the minors can't tell they are actually minors, the predators will be freer to say "they aren't minors, so I'm free to act this way with him (e.g., asking NSFW commissions)".
At the same time that the good folks won't write advice or disclaimer as they would do if they knew that someone is a minor.

Of course, the second case (which allows using the right age and adds a tiny wall between the age groups) also has issues.
But, in my opinion, it won't solve any issue. It only changes the problems.

Updated

specteon said:
For instance: it's an anecdotal/personal relate, but when I was younger, it was easy to notice that I was underage by seeing my bad writing skill or by my more recent references.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think e621 doesn't bans those who write badly or use more recent references in the messages (and if it happens, I'm not sure if it's fair because of the false positive rate).

there's at least a few cases, the only one that I can find that the ban reason was explicitly suspicion from behavior is user #1250181. but I've seen users with childlike typing styles get banned as well withou them ever stating it publicly.
EDIT: and... there's another case, I guess.

Updated

sirbrownbear said:
If they truly cared about that issue, they would lock account creation behind requiring proof of legal age.

If they really wanted to protect kids, the very least they could do is stop allowing 13-17 year olds to sign up. I have no idea why FurAffinity's administration thinks that their site is an appropriate or safe place for minors, why it should be a place for minors, or why they think that the site's mostly adult userbase wants to interact with, or wants to run the risk of interacting minors in such a space that's so heavily skewed towards NSFW 18+ content and discussion.

Sure, kids will get through, but they cannot openly advertise their age (something that makes them targets), and they would be subject to being banned on sight; if a user is suspected of being underage, their account could be locked out until proof is provided that they aren't underage.

specteon said:
I understand your point, but IMHO, I don't think that there is a big difference between "incentivizing minors to use fake id" and "minors can join and allow them to use the actual id".

In the first case, the minor will still join on social media, and even if they don't show their actual age, those who look maliciously and patiently will find them.

For instance: it's an anecdotal/personal relate, but when I was younger, it was easy to notice that I was underage by seeing my bad writing skill or by my more recent references.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think e621 doesn't bans those who write badly or use more recent references in the messages (and if it happens, I'm not sure if it's fair because of the false positive rate).

And in this case, since the minors can't tell they are actually minors, the predators will be freer to say "they aren't minors, so I'm free to act this way with him (e.g., asking NSFW commissions)".
At the same time that the good folks won't write advice or disclaimer as they would do if they knew that someone is a minor.

Of course, the second case (which allows using the right age and adds a tiny wall between the age groups) also has issues.
But, in my opinion, it won't solve any issue. It only changes the problems.

darryus said:
there's at least a few cases, the only one that I can find that the ban reason was explicitly suspicion from behavior is user #1250181. but I've seen users with childlike typing styles get banned as well withou them ever stating it publicly.
EDIT: and... there's another case, I guess.

The classic "when I used this site when I was underage" never stops being a funny way to get yourself temp booted from your account.

If they don't come back, what happens to their explict uploads?

denix said:
If they don't come back, what happens to their explict uploads?

I mean, it's not their art so it'll stay up. posts will get deleted if the artist is underage or if it depicts the sona of an underaged person, but if the person who posted it on here is underage it doesn't matter for anything.

alphamule said:
TBF, I thought this was already banned. But then I read that they're going full-Australia. Andromorphs are likely banned as well.

Hmm, do they do descriptions and metadata like Raccoony? Been using that one because it behaves like a normal browser because duh, actual browser. Only thing it doesn't do is stuff like folder indexing and comments/journals. Does FA offer a convenient tool for artists to backup their data before deleting? I mean, like that tool Yahoo(no !) had before they entirely removed Groups?

Will look in a minute. Thanks!

Until next year. >:)

Quoted here so they can't delete the evidence later.
" 0 Comments
Comment posting has been disabled by the journal owner. " LOL, I bet.

The fact that they say creative community is funny as well. Creativity doesn't only apply to things one likes.