RestrainedRaptor

Since this misinformation seems to be spreading fast, I'll make a journal about it. A lot of you might have seen this screenshot going around, along with claims that DA is cracking down on mature content:

Here is my understanding of the situation. The above screenshot is taken from DA's policy page on sexual themes. This section isn't that new; it was created as part of their changes to allow slightly more spicy content for Core users who want to upload paid/subscription-based content and make revenue from them.

In short, if you're not paying for a Core membership in order to sell adult art, then this section doesn't even apply to you. The other parts of their upload policy remain pretty much the same as ever. You can put up mature content, but not explicit (pornographic) content. I've put a box around the part of the policy table that really matters.

Yes, this policy page is a bit confusing at first, but I believe the general intent of it has remained the same for as long as I've been a member.

At the time of writing, I haven't seen any evidence that DA staff are cracking down extra hard on any specific type of art. If you see something on the policy page that I've missed, or have evidence of things being deleted en masse, then please show me. Otherwise, I think this is just another case of people fear-mongering without fully understanding it.

Please also refer to this journal from Okirose that covers this issue in more depth, and this journal from Llyunad too.

If you've read previous journals, you'll know I'm not afraid to criticize DA/Wix and other sites when they do silly things, but I don't think this is one of them. We also definitely don't want people running away from DA and going to FurAffinity, which is perhaps the biggest problem in the furry fandom, for numerous reasons. If you're thinking of leaving DA anyway, go and check out alternatives like Weasyl, InkBlot, Pixiv and Itaku.

Earlier this year, I noticed several occasions where people had faved my art, and their accounts had been deactivated or banned by the time I saw the notification. Very weird, huh?

Well, it's also happened to a few people who have left comments on my art, like this one from today.

This user has faved and commented on my art before, and had been around for over a month, though I can't see exactly how long since their profile is inaccessible.

I'm sure this has happened about a dozen times now, but I'll have to keep a closer eye on my notifications to track what happens to each user.

Has anyone else seen this happening to their followers? Anyone had this happen to them, and they've had to make a new account? I wonder if some algorithm is going haywire here.

Edit: more examples will be added below.

DA recently announced another paid feature to have private favourite folders that only you can see. Obviously, this goes against the spirit of sharing and discovering new art and artists. I'm totally open about what I like, so I have no need for such a thing.

While I'm here, I thought I'd share this video about the rise and fall of DA that I found today while browsing the comments in said announcement.

I feel like the internet the I knew and loved in the last decade is slowly falling apart. Twitter is being destroyed from the inside out, Wix is not listening to the DeviantArt community, and FurAffinity is being run by people, in typical furry fashion, silence and ban people they disagree with. Even the internet itself is under constant thread of censorship. I'm not sure what's left that I should be looking forward to.

While populating my Weasyl profile, I ended up going back and improving many of my older drawings. Some will be new uploads and others will be updates to existing deviations.

If you've been watching me for more than 5 years, you may recognize some of them, so apologies in advance for the Deja Vu!

And of course, if you're on Weasyl, please feel free to follow me there as well.

Last updated: 19 January 2024 to include all appeal emails and IMs over 2023.

I wish to make it clear that I don't enjoy writing negative stuff like this, but when I believe my free speech has been curtailed, I have to shout about it.

Intro

This journal is a continuation of the story detailed here: FA's Hidden Policy on Fetish Fursuit Photography. To summarise, in 2022, FurAffinity started deleting fursuit bondage pictures while citing a rule that was badly written and unclear. I tried to explain these issues to FA staff and this is what happened next.

Initial Quest for Answers

After finding out about the issues Smoki and others had faced, I felt like I needed to create a forum thread, in which I try and get a proper explanation about the issues with the AUP. In summary, Dragoneer said that there was no wrongdoing and that "rope was being used to create shibari bondage situations and the suits in the images were in rather explicit poses, even if nothing is showing. FA does not allow real life individuals to be involved in sexual situations." Despite my continued attempts to convince the admins that the AUP wasn't clear and desperately needed updating, this thread was later 'deleted' by effectively moving it to a forum section inaccessible to regular users. I anticipated this, which is why I got the Web Archive to save a copy.

Censorship Begins

Since I didn't have any fursuit bondage pictures in my gallery, I didn't expect to end up getting dragged into this, but the act of defending Smoki, while trying to raise awareness of the issue, resulted in two of my journals being deleted and another generic warning being given. The contents of the journals are in the removal notice below.

Apparently I had misrepresented FA's policies and staff actions, when in actuality I had presented the bare facts of what had happened, along with a personal opinion that they didn't like. My subsequent appeals and requests for clarification were met with the same kind of care and attention as everyone else's. I got the impression that they didn't want to help explain the parts of these journals they disagreed with, since they didn't want me to write a new journal with those objectionable parts removed. They'd get to keep plausible deniability when deleting any future journals or comments of mine. I gave them at least four opportunities to help me, and all mods/staff who reviewed these tickets failed to do so every single time.

This left me in a wonderful situation where I could be suspended for a day if staff dislike anything I say in the future.

Additional Attempts

(All forum links have now been edited to point to the Web Archive versions.)

Since then, I created two other threads in the forum. The first one asked for a proper explanation about why my journals were deleted and appeals rejected. This one also got locked by Dragoneer.

The other thread discussed whether moderators get any training when dealing with reports and appeals. In summary, they do, but it really doesn't matter when escalations ultimately end up going to the person who's biased against you. Along with Dragoneer, FA appears to have three other directors (Sciggles, Xanaecor/Chase and AsiaNeko) but ultimately these people have no power or say at all if the issue is between you and the CEO. It's unfortunate that there have been so many incidents related to this on FurAffinity, that it inspired Weasyl's Staff Code of Conduct.

Just a few days before Xmas, I tried one last time with this thread + poll, which was shut down immediately despite me not citing any third-party mod actions this time.

For further info about each locked thread and my closing remarks, see my forum profile.

Well, by this point, I'd lost trust in everyone and everything. I blocked all the admins on FA which, while effectively useless, was intended to serve as a hint that I didn't want to be bullied any longer.

Banned

Just a couple of days after the forums shut down, and one day after joining the new FA Discord, I woke up to this:

No warning. No suspension. Just pure discrimination. From where I'm standing, this message basically translates to "You've technically not broken any rules, but I hate you so you're banned anyway." I was certainly expecting Dragoneer to give me another slap on the wrist at some point, which was why I'd stopped posting anything there. However, this was way more extreme than I could've imagined, and it came weeks after I'd done anything else, so it came as a total shock. This message about not being a "good match for our community" appears to be a frequently-used canned response that they use for everyone they want to ban without a valid reason, since I have found many other people sharing similar screenshots on Twitter.

Appeals

Paragraph 3 of FA's Code of Conduct states that you can email them to appeal a decision. That's fine in theory. My first appeal email was apparently never received (the same issue as Smoki had with his appeals - they need to get their GSuite configuration sorted out). Note that the following email threads should be read from bottom to top.

Parts of my emails relating to personal family situation have been omitted for privacy reasons.

I also asked a friend to leave a shout on my profile page detailing when I was banned, and providing a link to my journal so others could be informed. After 2 days, it was silently deleted without them receiving a removal notice from FA staff, indicating that an admin was still silently monitoring and censoring things. They also disabled shouts on my profile so nobody else can leave any farewell comments. This is not typically done for banned users.

Subsequent appeals have been met with a blank "I don't want to talk about this" and refusal to escalate. I even reached out to a site admin who isn't a director. I have kept them anonymous because none of this is their fault (although I do hope they're aware of how their boss treats people). While initially helpful, they soon stopped replying to my emails as well, so it's likely that Dragoneer shut them up, just like his other employees.

I really wish one person on staff could have treated me like a human being and explain why they didn't like the way I was going about this, rather than beating me to a pulp and destroying 15 years of my life.

I also attempted to negotiate with Xanaecor/Chase and Sciggles via Telegram. No luck there either, sadly. They claim to be unable to do anything. It really makes me wonder what their actual job is.

Most recently, my depression reached another new high and I sent this email, while also posting it publicly on Twitter, with an @ for FA, Dragoneer, Xanaecor and Sciggles.

As you can see, both Dragoneer and Xanaecor were quick to use the 'remove me from this conversation' feature, which mutes everything and removes the link from their @ in the original tweet. Dragoneer also blocked me, which is not really a surprise at this point, but it's really depressing to get confirmation that he would literally rather see me die than attempt to resolve this simple conflict.

Final Thoughts

What's the takeaway from this? Sadly, FA is still one of the biggest furry art sites on the internet due to critical mass. It's a shame that IMVU didn't get very far with fixing it during the short time they owned it. With them in charge, they would've held the CEO more accountable for his actions. We may never know whether they sold it back to him because of concerns about profitability, or something else. I feel like Twitter and its users are starting to experience the same kind of suffering at the hands of Elon Musk, even if the circumstances leading up to the event were quite different.

I did all of this with the best of intentions, and I would do it again if necessary because I don't like to see people get hurt. Lots of my friends who have already left FA told me not to bother with this because they have lost faith in the system and the people who run it. I went ahead anyway, because I believed that I could present all this information in a useful, constructive and neutral manner, so we could have a rational and honest discussion about it and arrive at a conclusion. I guess I should've anticipated that the institutionalized status-quo would make that impossible. Back in approximately 2013, Dragoneer made a few AUP discussion threads (one example here) that were supposed to be biannual, but I guess things changed a lot since then.

I understand that being a director at FA for over a decade could eventually condition a person to assume that every piece of criticism is a personal attack and must be dealt with using extreme prejudice. I just wish I knew what was going on in his mind and whether he'll ever be able to see things from the perspective of the people he's hurt along the way. I'm deeply concerned that this 'doubling down' on every decision is what gives him the reputation he has today and that it's too late to turn things around.

Anyway, this much should be obvious to anyone who's spent more than a few years on the internet, but never put all your eggs in one basket. All things online are ephemeral. That's why I'm still here on DA and Twitter, despite each one having their own unique set of problems. I'm in the process of rebuilding gallery on Weasyl, Itaku and perhaps more over the course of 2024. Make sure you keep adapting to change too.

If you have a similar story about your struggles with FA staff, with supporting evidence, please do share. It's important to publicly document these things.