Topic: [Rule Change] Explicit young human and human-like content is no longer allowed to be posted.

Posted under General

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I absolutely loathe this cycle; this is another reminder to everyone that anything put online is easily lost.

Get an external hard drive if you don't have one already, and save your favorite art religiously in case of events like this one.

For what purposes does e621 have "business partners" and why must their demands be satisfied over the principles the site was founded on?

carbisari said:
I absolutely loathe this cycle; this is another reminder to everyone that anything put online is easily lost.

Get an external hard drive if you don't have one already, and save your favorite art religiously in case of events like this one.

THIS is the thing everyone should do. Bough myself 1TB kingstone for 60$ just for that, more than enough for me.

bizymouse said:
For what purposes does e621 have "business partners" and why must their demands be satisfied over the principles the site was founded on?

To host servers? Do you understand how much your porn weight?

butthole said:
If you wanna ban loli/shota content I get it, but at least do it with your chest. What is this ambiguous "you can only see a loli get railed if she got fur" bullshit? If it were actually a legal matter surely it'd be taken more seriously, and not just be some random purge of content containing vaguely human-"like" characters

For real, I just want to know whether I should just download all my favorites and jump ship or whether that won't be necessary. I just checked the page for some artists I've followed pretty closely and seen hundreds of posts removed. My preferences aren't quite as impacted as some other people, but I wish they would be transparent on whether they don't want us here anymore. Honestly, I think if these business partners give the word, they'll pull the trigger on all of it and send us right out the door.

So putting aside how confusing, frustrating and annoying this all is, i got two questions

1)A lot of posts were tagged young because there was an ambiguous size difference but were really not meant to be. Something like a short faceless anonymous male, in art meant to emphasize big characters. Do we have any assurances that this will not be interpreted arbitrarily to count as young while you review it? What about characters that toe the line of young, like "legally" underage, teens, etc. This is a very broad that that's been used very indiscriminately for the sake of placating people with big blacklists.

2)What's the prefered method to contest a deletion? Do we just try to get a hold of the first mod or admin we come across and hit them over DMs, or email, or anything like that? Or are you planning to have a whole thread for people to bring up artists and posts they want restored?

musicw0lf said:
Why everybody got me wrong? Did I really messed up that sentence that much? I mean, in most FPS you have a mission, you defend yourself, or your enemies are really bad people. All this gives you context.
I was talking about pure act of killing, no intention, no context, just straight up death. I have a problem with THIS being glorified. Can you see it in a media/games? Very, very rarely. Sometimes people are even displeasured by this, because killing by itself isn't fun or entertaining in any way.

The only example of what I mean I can get is irl gore videos, which are fucked up and should be purged. This is glorification of killing, when you kill without purpose and make fun of it.

Others gave example of war films, but I don't get where there's a glorification of violence. War films that I saw are all sad or depressing, showing death as killing as something that should never repeat again.

Is this opinion naive? Probably yes. Stupid? Probably? Do I believe in this? Yes.
That's why I'm sitting on a porn site saying this, and not actually making a difference.

Oh, sorry. I guess I just didn't understand what you meant by glorifying, and rather than ask for clarification, I went overboard in my response.

carbisari said:
I absolutely loathe this cycle; this is another reminder to everyone that anything put online is easily lost.

Every time someone says "Once it's on the internet, it's there forever." I want to slap them and ask if they've ever used the internet in their life.

musicw0lf said:
THIS is the thing everyone should do. Bough myself 1TB kingstone for 60$ just for that, more than enough for me.

Yeah I didn't do it before, but there are definitely some posts I liked quite a bit that are gone now, so I guess I'll just do some downloading before the decision is made for me.

red031000 said:
I am curious though, since this was demanded by business partners, whether this will be enough, or there could be more demands like this to remove content to be expected in the future, I know you need the business, however, should we expect more banning of other types of controversial content in the future? and if so, is there a line to what is acceptable and not acceptable to ban, and if so, where is it?

I can say with confidence that this will happen again. Not necessarily soon, mind you, but it's an inevitability. Especially if you're already in a position where such demands need to be met at light speed, as appears to be the case here. Having some lead time allows for creative workarounds (like Paheal replacing "Pokemon" and "Overwatch" with "Porkyman" and "Overlook" respectively to dodge lolsuits, or Sankaku Complex renaming a litany of tags to avoid the ire of advertisers), but if staff are forced to solve the "problem" immediately, you get clumsy and controversial decisions like this one.

musicw0lf said:
What the other site?

Not too long ago, FurAffinity decided to ban any and all porn of characters that APPEARED to look young or short, even if said character was an adult. Because the proper cub ban like a decade ago wasn't enough, apparently. Needless to say, there were a lot of casualties and many people got fed up by this ban.

felicity_longis said:
Really doing your best to live up to that "Tread on me" bit, huh? I get it though; everyone needs something to be outraged over to justify not having to actually do anything about real problems in the world today.

Also you have feral horse porn in your uploads here, and this is in your FA gallery so idk what you're on about.

Cognitive dissonance or something. I know I have a problem. I suppose that makes me a hypocrite, but that doesn't mean my opinion is invalid. I just personally think cub/loli/feral is bad, and I wish there was a furry art site that didn't allow that kind of stuff.

notasexualdodo said:
Very few on-model Ralts and Kirlia remain, basically most of the ones tagged loli and shota are gone.

I mean that's probably why though. Probably shouldn't have been the case to begin with. Idk how much that can be factored in now that we're trying to restore content, but hopefully a change of tagging policy in that regard might be sufficient to fix things.

dimoretpinel said:
A lot are gone too though. The deletions have been inconsistent.

Yeah it's weird. I have a few color edits that were (incorrectly, but we'll fix that when we can) removed, yet the original linart has been left. All despite the only difference in tags being those having to do with the color edit (skin/fur color, edit tags, etc.) It's just really confusing.

existing_user said:
So putting aside how confusing, frustrating and annoying this all is, i got two questions

1)A lot of posts were tagged young because there was an ambiguous size difference but were really not meant to be. Something like a short faceless anonymous male, in art meant to emphasize big characters. Do we have any assurances that this will not be interpreted arbitrarily to count as young while you review it? What about characters that toe the line of young, like "legally" underage, teens, etc. This is a very broad that that's been used very indiscriminately for the sake of placating people with big blacklists.

2)What's the prefered method to contest a deletion? Do we just try to get a hold of the first mod or admin we come across and hit them over DMs, or email, or anything like that? Or are you planning to have a whole thread for people to bring up artists and posts they want restored?

Oh jeez, you just made me realize what a can of worms this all opens up. Before, it wasn't such a big deal since the only thing impacted were some tags and blacklists which can all be worked around, but now that posts are actively being deleted over it, the qualifications of what is and isn't applicable matters immensely more. I think the writing is on the wall that it's all going to be under fire before long, but I guess time will tell.

notasexualdodo said:
Not too long ago, FurAffinity decided to ban any and all porn of characters that APPEARED to look young or short, even if said character was an adult. Because the proper cub ban like a decade ago wasn't enough, apparently. Needless to say, there were a lot of casualties and many people got fed up by this ban.

Was FurAffinity that popular before that? Never used it because of bad (for me) design, strange search and SFW/NSFW filter problems. InkBunny is much better imho.

autlizard said:
Cognitive dissonance or something. I know I have a problem. I suppose that makes me a hypocrite, but that doesn't mean my opinion is invalid. I just personally think cub/loli/feral is bad, and I wish there was a furry art site that didn't allow that kind of stuff.

This stuff will continue to exist elsewhere, whether you like it or not. It's why a blacklist function exists, SPECIFICALLY so you don't have to see it. You aren't gonna go to every site reporting shit you don't like, are you?

I’m pretty sure some paranoid motherfucker (maybe a few paranoid motherfuckers) probably have several hard drives worth of that shit, so it might not be as over as it seems, hell maybe these paranoid motherfuckers could set up a new site to host this stuff, I recommend naming it the E number for skatole (assuming skatole has an E number) because reasons

aspy_dragon said:
I’m pretty sure some paranoid motherfucker (maybe a few paranoid motherfuckers) probably have several hard drives worth of that shit, so it might not be as over as it seems, hell maybe these paranoid motherfuckers could set up a new site to host this stuff, I recommend naming it the E number for skatole (assuming skatole has an E number) because reasons

Doesn't look so paranoid now, does it?

aspy_dragon said:
hell maybe these paranoid motherfuckers could set up a new site to host this stuff, I recommend naming it the E number for skatole (assuming skatole has an E number) because reasons

This, or something related to spiciness.

musicw0lf said:
Was FurAffinity that popular before that? Never used it because of bad (for me) design, strange search and SFW/NSFW filter problems. InkBunny is much better imho.

It was certainly considered THE furry art site, with much of the people who were nuked off the platform during the cub ban of old going on to form Inkbunny. Basically this shit outraged people who liked on-model Digimon and Pokémon, feral enthusiasts, and shortstack enjoyers all at the same time. Basically, think of the "tag what you see" policy e621 has, but rather than having a post mistagged and annoying a few people, your post just gets nuked because the mods think your short king looks like a child. Yeah.

notasexualdodo said:
It was certainly considered THE furry art site, with much of the people who were nuked off the platform during the cub ban of old going on to form Inkbunny. Basically this shit outraged people who liked on-model Digimon and Pokémon, feral enthusiasts, and shortstack enjoyers all at the same time. Basically, think of the "tag what you see" policy e621 has, but rather than having a post mistagged and annoying a few people, your post just gets nuked because the mods think your short king looks like a child. Yeah.

Thanks for responding to all of this. Have a nice day.

Also i Remember when this exact kind of context was automatically blacklisted so people who had issues with it had no way of seeing it without purposely turning their filters off. What happened to that? Why wasn't it enough?

I'm not one to post about politicing on fucking porn sites of all things... BUT;

This is some incredibly hasty and violent action with literally zero warning. Even sadpanda (when it was at risk of complete destruction) & similar sites atleast had some kind of post, warning, or writing on the walls as a grace period. And in any previous concern with legal issues regarding this site's hosts, there's been atleast some discussion/warning. For anyone not from the US (like me), this has to look like an absolute joke to commit to this level of book-burning out of "concern".

If I may be so bold as to make a suggestion for the future, perhaps you could consider a separate site that caters more to non furry/non human imagery. I may be a bit out of my depth here and I'm not sure if it's that simple, but on the off chance that it could be, it could solve a lot of issues and conflicts (aside from the aforementioned current issues). Characters that some might consider to be too human (including some mods, or a former mod that I know of) as well as characters that otherwise are considered irrelevant to this site (those that are viewed as nonhuman in skin color alone) would do well on such a site.

Sadly now the two sites that allow this sort of content is Paheal and SanChan and Paheal has been on the wire too, we are left with SanChan and god help us all if people have to use there

Luckily it's not my sort of content but I still got hit by strays lol but yeah first PIXIV and now here, the US has way too much power for this stuff

Another thing I dislike is absolutely no warning for people to archive the contents before the deletion, that's over a decade of art you nuked without a second thought or warning

I hope Midna stays safe, she's definitely not young but she is quite short

carnivore4lyf said:
If I may be so bold as to make a suggestion for the future, perhaps you could consider a separate site that caters more to non furry/non human imagery. I may be a bit out of my depth here and I'm not sure if it's that simple, but on the off chance that it could be, it could solve a lot of issues and conflicts (aside from the aforementioned current issues). Characters that some might consider to be too human (including some mods, or a former mod that I know of) as well as characters that otherwise are considered irrelevant to this site (those that are viewed as nonhuman in skin color alone) would do well on such a site.

I mean that’s kinda what rule 34 is, Ik it’s not managed by the same company, but rule 34 fills that niche along with various other hentai sites

Anyways, was this because the servers are hosted in Arizona? I've heard that Arizona was also discussing about implementing those "online child safety" laws like they did in North Carolina and straight-up banning sites but I don't know what the outcome of that was. Sounds like a "We gotta protect our own asses now so that the government doesn't come after us in the future" type of move, hence the rush.

Is moving the servers not an option?

You never even asked us the users if this is what we wanted. You never told us you needed donations to run the site, you never said how much it would cost for legal challenges and gave us the option to vote with our wallets if we valued e621 as it was. I would have donated. (Personally I'm here for the furries) The people should have the choice. Further you're being real asses for deleting everything immediately without so much as a warning.

I'm very disappointed in the leadership of e621. Do tell what are you banning next FA?

I've been a member of this site since 2015. This is the most abrupt and deranged decision I've ever come across.

notasexualdodo said:
but rather than having a post mistagged and annoying a few people, your post just gets nuked because the mods think your short king looks like a child. Yeah.

I wish I had the ability to omegalul properly right about now. Tag what you see and its consequences...

fuyu_graycen said:
Sadly now the two sites that allow this sort of content is Paheal and SanChan and Paheal has been on the wire too, we are left with SanChan and god help us all if people have to use there

Luckily it's not my sort of content but I still got hit by strays lol but yeah first PIXIV and now here, the US has way too much power for this stuff

Another thing I dislike is absolutely no warning for people to archive the contents before the deletion, that's over a decade of art you nuked without a second thought or warning

Sankaku Complex is a garbage website that steals paysite content just to paywall it with their OWN subscription service, and its userbase is filled with nothing but western-hating weebs like the most toxic basic dwellers you can think of. Also, it has a garbage tagging system, a terrible UI that likes to use up screen estate with uncloseable AI garbage, and it's a barely moderated hellhole that makes it hard to search for shit without running into dozens of duplicates.

theglueman said:
I'm not one to post about politicing on fucking porn sites of all things... BUT;

This is some incredibly hasty and violent action with literally zero warning. Even sadpanda (when it was at risk of complete destruction) & similar sites atleast had some kind of post, warning, or writing on the walls as a grace period. And in any previous concern with legal issues regarding this site's hosts, there's been atleast some discussion/warning. For anyone not from the US (like me), this has to look like an absolute joke to commit to this level of book-burning out of "concern".

You put into words what I didn’t know how to express. Thank you.

aspy_dragon said:
I mean that’s kinda what rule 34 is, Ik it’s not managed by the same company, but rule 34 fills that niche along with various other hentai sites

Unless I'm mistaken, Paheal doesn't accept art that doesn't involve already established IPs, meaning lolisho content involving OCs is strictly forbidden in there.

Rather have some e621 than no e621.

+1 guys. Thanks for all the good things.

notasexualdodo said:
Sankaku Complex is a garbage website that steals paysite content just to paywall it with their OWN subscription service, and its userbase is filled with nothing but western-hating weebs like the most toxic basic dwellers you can think of. Also, it has a garbage tagging system, a terrible UI that likes to use up screen estate with uncloseable AI garbage, and it's a barely moderated hellhole that makes it hard to search for shit without running into dozens of duplicates.

And that's what we're left with with all the major sites going schitzo mode and pressing the nuke

We are left with that for a place to archive

notasexualdodo said:
Unless I'm mistaken, Paheal doesn't accept art that doesn't involve already established IPs, meaning lolisho content involving OCs is strictly forbidden in there.

Nope, it doesn't and when it does it has to be OCxIP and your OCs can't be tagged

I'm not a fan of loli but you really should at least give people a warning so they can download their bookmarks in advance, just nuking it without a second notice is a bit rude

Did your business partner make this demand of their own will, or are they only acting after their state passed a law that would've concerned your relationship?

This is probably your biggest L yet.
Don't pretend, we all know Cub is not far behind.

shrike said:
This is probably your biggest L yet.
Don't pretend, we all know Cub is not far behind.

And feral shortly after that.

I hope these false positives get sorted out. Quite a lot of Palico, Pokemon with adult human partners, and other things were caught up in it. Youjomodoki lost alot and all of it is just regular pokemon.

warioanon said:
I'm not a fan of loli but you really should at least give people a warning so they can download their bookmarks in advance, just nuking it without a second notice is a bit rude

Agreed

friedy said:
So you're just straight up deleting works of artists, who're not from America's shitty political climate, who does this stuff without even warning them at least?

I feel bad for those who didn’t have backups of their work. This is shitty to do without any warning.

I don't know whether the advertiser's threats were done out of political coercion or monetary greed, but know this: it won't stop here. They'll come for cub and feral next -- download your favorites while you can, folks.

Updated

Big OOF!!! right there, there goes 2 pages of my favorite, but most of these are my very favorite one :(

Don't you guys enjoy how safer and more sterile internet is becoming? Can't post this, can't say that. I, for one, LOVE sitting in an empty grey room being advertised to. Safely.
Jokes aside, I fucking hate the destruction of art of any form. The tiny silver lining is, nothing was permadeleted and can be restored, at the very least. Still shitty how that happened without a warning.

shrike said:
Oh yea base stage pokemon? Completely fucked. No way they survive.

Those were the primary victims of the last FurAffinity ban, alongside small Digimon. History is gonna repeat itself.

dimoretpinel said:
The fear of losing feral art on a whim makes me uncomfortable.

I’m sure it will happen eventually. I’m surprised FA hasn’t already banned it.

You’re only allowed to jerk off to two-legged 30-year old characters with human junk, and any submission must include a speech bubble of them both saying “I consent!” /s

nihet said:
Don't you guys enjoy how safer and more sterile internet is becoming? Can't post this, can't say that. I, for one, LOVE sitting in an empty grey room being advertised to. Safely.
Jokes aside, I fucking hate the destruction of art of any form. The tiny silver lining is, nothing was permadeleted and can be restored, at the very least. Still shitty how that happened without a warning.

It's a real shame, internet used to be the library of everything and now it feels like cooking tutorials and cat videos are all that's allowed these days

greatwhitetrillium said:
Please do not sully our name by implying we are a haven for this type of stuff, we aren't...

What sullies our name is the fact that by counting drawings and other fiction as CP, our legal system has rejected literally the single most important tenet a legal system can have, namely the distinction between reality and fiction.
That is more important than the right to freedom of speech. More important than the right to a fair trial. More important than presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Because none of those rights mean anything if the government can point to something that never happened, that they know never happened, that you know never happened, and that you would not want to have happened, and say "we choose to pretend this happened and will apply those rights through the filter of pretending it had happened".
"Proven guilty" ceases to have any significance if the "proof" can be a literal fairy tale.

I'm sure your overlords will be satisfied with all the other filthy stuff going on here, lol. This site is circling the drain.

I got a feeling that the next thing in the crosshair will be Sonic The Hedgehog, because NSFW servers on Discord already banned Sonic characters because they are underaged (even when the art depicts them aged up).

PS.: Forgot to tell this story in proper detail: Server used to allow underaged character art, Discord Admins went "No, get that out of here", so they did. Then later Discord Admins went "Oh, underaged furry art has to go too, get that out.", sure, they complied. But then Sonic characters were still posted, and the Discord Admin somehow knew Tails and Amy were underaged despite the art reported depicting them with a clearly matured physique, and so mods went "Know what? Sonic's banned too!"

Updated

tsukiyomaruzero said:
I got a feeling that the next thing in the crosshair will be Sonic The Hedgehog, because NSFW servers on Discord already banned Sonic characters because they are underaged (even when the art depicts them aged up)

I hope not :(

mklxiv said:
Oh, fuck off. e621 was one of the last safe havens for all kinds of fictional content and now that you're banning things too I'm pretty certain I'm done posting any of my art here. This deletion shows me you aren't afraid to cater to puritans and nothing else is off the table for being banned as well.

If you're gonna make lame excuses of "legal changes" then please specify what has changed, as to my knowledge that's been nothing, especially considering that the content that's being banned is legal in the United States where e621 is hosted and operated from (especially considering this is what the United States federal government explicitly told the United Nations Human Rights Counsel in 2019, check page 5). Changes in the "political environment" are 100% irrelevant as peoples' personal opinions don't effect the law.

Agreed, E621 has been degrading slowly in the past few months.
What makes it worse is that the ""political issues"" are not even specified, sounds more like an "oh we wouldn't like to have this because of controversy" excuse.
Now, to be clear, it is not what I'm into but seeing this makes me really worried about the future of E621, honestly if FA had a better tagging system this would be a big indicator that I should start migrating.

Updated