Hello! As some may be aware, it was announced last night in the thread that https://discord.com/channels/991855522913460224/1109504053290999839 will be closed at midnight EST tonight. It is being replaced with this channel, which will have a 6 hour slowmode. This move is happening because the nature of the conversation in the original post has been highly circular and unconstructive at times, making it hard for users (and on a lesser level, staff) to be heard amongst all of the other random chatter, and making it hard to surface legitimate feedback. Here is some additional information: - The new channel is intended to be used in a way that is constructive. We are looking for paragraph-style feedback. We understand this policy update is an emotional one, but please try to be as objective as possible - it adds to your arguments. A good example of constructive feedback is something along the lines of the following (you can copy/paste this if you want): I do/do not like this change. It makes me feel ___. It affects me for x, y, and z reasons. The parts that I agree with are x, but the parts that I disagree with are y and z. The things that are unclear to me or I would like more clarification on are x, y, and z. Here are the other issues and concerns I have with the policy update: ___. Here are the ways that I think these issues could be resolved: ___." Please note that feedback is generally easier to read if listed. Again, this feedback will be heard and will be taken into consideration, but we cannot provide any promises that specific feedback will make its way into policy. We will also be updating the FAQ. - The new channel has a 6 hour slowmode. If you accidentally post, you must edit your message. We recommend drafting outside of the channel and pasting it in. - We will go back through edited feedback and reevaluate it. If you edit, it's recommended you put "ETA" (edit to add) before the content you are adding. This allows us to search for "ETA" and more easily find edited feedback. - Staff may provide general feedback pertaining to the policy, but may not provide answers to queries such as, "Is this rendition of my character acceptable?" You must do that through Trouble Ticket on our website (https://www.furaffinity.net/controls/troubletickets/), as we are huddling and reviewing these tickets together to ensure that we are answering accurately and cohesively. - Unconstructive feedback will be removed. Attacks or disparaging remarks against anyone, including staff in general, specific staff members, specific members of the community, or specific groups of the community will be met with action according to our #991858153081806939. - If you have questions or concerns that you absolutely want addressed directly by staff, the only way to guarantee that is through a Trouble Ticket on our website (https://www.furaffinity.net/controls/troubletickets/). - Discussion of this topic is not permitted outside of this thread. This is a SFW server. The policy is inherently NSFW. Discord's policies state that the content must be only found in an age-restricted channel. This means that only those who are 18+ may provide feedback on the topic, unless provided through Trouble Ticket on the website instead. - The original post will eventually be removed. This is due to the SFW reasoning above. We had to make the entirety of #1042946007530479676 age-restricted to allow for the discussion, and will not be restricting it permanently. Please take this time to go through it and screenshot or otherwise archive things you want to be archived. Will edit with a date. Thank you for understanding, and let us know if you have any questions!

Also, emojis are on so that you can react to each other's input. Please do not abuse them or we will remove the ability to use them.

First https://pastebin.com/sbkjWfSY

(Edit: Only fixed typos and sentence structures, highlighted in italic) The new policy sure caused a ruckus but there is a lot to say, from the positives to the improvements. First of all, the policy itself is necessary. Focusing on the appearance and context of the character instead of out-of-context canonical age helps fight off a lot of problematic artworks of minors being depicted in nsfw situations. The typical “100-year-old lol1” issue. However, I think the execution is extremely flawed. Focusing only on very few factors, such as proportions and the amount of adult coded features on the character results in pre-emptive judgment that is more lazy than fair. It will hurt a lot of artists drawing in a cute or chibi style as well as short people who are “not designed to be fricked”. It is the right direction though. All it needs is complexity. Whether an adult appears as one is more nuanced than just the proportions. A lot of adults also show child-like attributes, like their voice, proportions, skin complexity, or behavior, so we need to consider more factors. The style of an artist is also important because if the style remains consistent, then the character in the piece in question is meant to be seen as an adult. However, I do agree that certain species do appear more child-like, especially because a lot of them you mentioned were designed to appear as children. The lore behind Pokemon and Digimon doesn't matter because it results in the same lol1 argument. Only appearance matters, not out-of-context information. That being said, I am suggesting the following factors as a reference for judgment. Reference is the keyword here because they aren't an ultimatum, it's a guide to help the final judgment: - Size (Above or below the average of their species) - Canon age (excluding the 200-year-old lol1 trope) - Body Proportions - Adult features (mature anatomy, mature style in hair and attire, professions, etc.) - Avoiding child-coded features (Innocent eyes, small expressions, scrawny body, childish behavior/attire) - The species being perceived as childlike (for example Baby pokemon evolutions) - (body-) language - consistent style (are other adults drawn the same?) - adult coded features in other artworks of the character ("It looks young in this piece by coincidence") Those factors cancel each other out if an adult seems to be a bit childlike. For example, a Pichu with baby proportions may be a baby Pokemon, but give it a beard, deep voice, and biker attire and the Adult features outweigh the fact it’s a baby Pokemon (you could say it has been aged up appropriately). On the contrary, a Charizard, which is usually precieved to be old, has been drawn with all sorts of baby features and no adult-coded traits. Not only that, but it deviates from the artist's usual style of adults and it has been drawn like that all the time. Even tho the species is perceived as an adult, all the other factors indicate the possibility of a child's character. Having multiple factors would enable you to set a conclusion with more confidence while providing enough compensation for the style of a lot of artists. Artists who draw minors will always raise red flags with those references, while other artists with just a cutesy art style or short and petite character will be treated fairly. If you simply broaden your reference factors brighter to allow a more complex judgement system, then I think this policy can help the community in a very positive way, ensuring more safety for people, both adult and minors, from problematic users.

Look, I will be transparent and say I draw eldritch creatures and winged 20 year old men, hardly anything NSFW. This isn't going to affect me as directly as Pokemon artists or anyone with cute characters who are more chibi-style. But I don't think that this policy change is a good one and I'm willing to let my voice be heard in that, regardless. I think there's better ways to moderate and ban what cub porn gets posted to the site via loopholes. Staff is a part of the fanbase, and I think they should be more in-tune with the various communities and fans of properties they are actively harming here with this policy change, and how to fine-tune things so that they do not harm innocent artists while trying to get rid of bad actors. The policies as written add even more egregious loopholes, and it feels like it's just going to harm artists who are not drawing underage more than it actually takes care of any bad actors. ETA: more specifics

Honestly I think that as it is written now this rule is a like trying to paint a highly detailed miniature with a brush made to paint walls. The description of "Child Like" proportions can be placed on fully grown adults with Dwarfism, and some species in the fandom do not "Age" like humans do. Pokemon age separate from their evolution (See Puka from the anime https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Puka an elderly pikachu) and Digimon do not age at all and are inherently ageless, and the "Child like" proportions of some like Agumon has no bearing on the age, Agumon's next form, greymon, is pretty much just scaled up with the same proportions. And since I saw it stated that Yoshis and Koopas were potentially banned from adult art because of this, All Koopas shown are of adult age in the lore unless a character is stated as otherwise (Bowser Junior for one) and Yoshies have a definitive young form, small and baby like in design. I would suggest that a provision be added to the rule that lore and context is taken into consideration, and that such a submission, if flagged for breaking this policy, the artist should have a chance to delete or dispute the ruling before any punishment is given. And style should be kept in mind as not everyone can or knows how to properly "Age up" a character --- Might come back to this and edit it if I can think of more stuff Thanks for setting this up for us to give our two cents in a place it wont get too lost

I already said all of what I wanted in the other channel. TL;DR for my like 700 messages (But you better still read them, I made a shiton of great points ) This rule as defined is like using a shotgun to kill a fly. Too many innocent artists are hurt by it. It's way too subjective as is and also needs to take context into account. It seemingly labels artists who draw certain characters as cub artists against their will. Multiple staff should review every case of a 2.7 report to remove bias, you need to hire more staff if you cannot do this, because shifting the harm onto artists is severely unfair Sorry if this does not exactly fit here but I need to say it: More meta feedback is that your site staff needs to get their shit together, the way this was handled and still is being handled is very unprofessional and a bad look. Especially when the site directors do not even make an attempt to communicate with the community on this and seemingly hide behind mods and staff. You guys also just need to work on better and more clear communication, the whole time you all gave conflicting and dismissive communication I just hope you guys consider revising this update to make more sense, because as the rules are currently worded a lot of characters I find comfort in the art in: vulpix, fennekin, eevee, etc are being blanket labeled as cub regardless of context and that's both not okay and not what I think is intended. That's all I have to say for now, maybe in 6 hours or so when my brain is less fried I will say something more

I removed automod from this channel to not inconvenience. Please do not abuse it. I will reinstate it.

The ban on content is well intentioned though flawed. My approach may be different from many other people here, as I wish to take the intention seriously and fight it at the root. If the ban on content is indeed motivated by a desire to protect kids from groomers on the site, then I wish to be heard on this proposal. A summary of my wishlist: Kids should not be on Furaffinity. (18+ or even higher requirement) And failing that: Penalties for mistagging NSFW as SFW should be increased significantly (doing this knowingly exposes kids to pornography, and should be taken more seriously). Tickets for mistagging NSFW vs. SFW should be prioritized higher than everything else. NSFW should be updated to encompass all the things you can't show kids, such as big bulge work intended to arouse. An explanation: A common practice in various NSFW communities is to block all minors irregardless of whether porn is gated or not by role restriction. It is baffling that Furaffinity still allows minors on the site considering that the furry community has grown to become a porn dominated fandom. Kids should not be on a site that hosts NSFW content. That this should even be something to be argued is baffling. Whatever ideals of a Furry fandom that is not about porn on the surface level have been dead for a decade, and have no sign of ever coming back to life. However, the groomer problem is far more serious and needs to be addressed at its roots. Furaffinity, by being a site that allows kids, also becomes a site that is like a beacon for groomers. Potentially sexually curious kids all in one place? Talk about a groomer's wet dream! This site has had a really bad history with groomers. To put it very bluntly, it doesn't matter what boundaries you put in content availability; kids being on the site encourages grooming. There is a reason kids are hard banned from most sites that host porn. While this absolutely does not 100% solve the problem, it does prevent most of it and keeps kids out of harms way (simply by not lying to them about the safety of the site). If Furaffinity still decides to double down on kids being allowed on the site, I offer another solution. It will not solve the problem, it will only bandaid a much larger problem, but it's still something that at the minimum should be done to protect kids. Many people I talk to complain about how NSFW content gets published, mistagged as SFW, and that tickets regarding the content don't get resolved in a timely fashion at all. Moreover, there is a bit of a discrepency on how Furaffinity defines "NSFW" and what is actually not appropriate for kids. My solution is threefold, and I will repeat what I said above in detail. -Mistagging NSFW content as SFW should have a significantly higher penalty. It is inexcusable to post NSFW content unfiltered when you know full well kids are on the site, knowingly exposing them to pornography. -Tickets that call out mistagged SFW posts should be significantly higher priority if not top priority. If a a pornographic image is tagged SFW, there needs to be next to no red tape in the way of tagging it NSFW and punishing the uploader for not being careful. -NSFW should be redefined to include questionable content. Content such as bulges, vore, and so on should not be in front of the kids eyes on this site. Therefore, it is NSFW content. Period. Of course, the true solution to prevent grooming would be to ban kids altogether. With how often the site allows known pedos and groomers to roam around, kids are literally not safe on the site at all and many users including myself take massive issue with this.

Letter: https://pastebin.com/Z0Fh1XE3

My feedback (I am exhausted after writing this in 5 hours): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Abm95TJ6wHEGUMQNCkJCHdBYT5sQIpUlf1-WiYftzsQ/edit?usp=sharing

Kobolds!

I posted this as feedback in the other area but I suppose this us the actual area for it now: One of the biggest issues a lot of people have seen as of late with the recent policy idea was that things would be determined off a "visual" basis. While I do understand where this is coming from, it's far too inconsistent with who might be looking at it. And I have a way to fix that. When a submission is "General", make an extra checkbox that MUST be checked by the poster, signifying that if there are any underage subjects within the media, they are not engaging in adult content. When a submission is "Adult" or "Mature", the check box becomes one that signifies no minors are present within the media engaging in adult content. This will help to state the posters intent, and help to clarify if the subject is meant to be an adult, no matter how cute, and can be used later to hold them accountable if they are found to be abusing the system. This should allow people to have characters of any size or look to be presented as long as they are intended to be presented as an adult, and the author of the media is stating as such, without it being a matter of opinion. Also seeing longtime pedo-peddlers like Zaush, Jason and Kabs get booted were probably the only good things to come out of all this at current. We just need to work to solidify a better solution.

I wanted to write something complex and well worded but I'm just so tired. I'm sorry. Hello. My name is Bunson Burner and my apologies on advanced for any mistakes in the following paragraphs as I've not had much sleep for a variety of reasons. To put it simply I absolutely don't agree with update 2.7 (hereby referred to as 2.7) Simply put, 2.7 has a simple goal, to eliminate cub porn skirting the moderation line with the idea that some characters may look young. However it does so by seemingly demonizing countless furries (myself included) by suggesting that we are pedophiles when Infact to most of us the idea that our sonnas could be seen as children hadn't even crossed our minds. The only part of 2.7 I genuinely agree with is that there's a problem of some cub artists skirting the line of moderation through young looking characters. But that is where my agreement stops. I personally think that the best way to handle these people is through case by case moderation. When you find someone that is clearly using the loophole for making cub porn then ban them. Simple as that. When you see a crowd of 500 people and three of them are doing something illegal then arrest the three of them and leave the others to their lives. As for how I've been affected by 2.7, I've been called a pedophile. I don't think I need to elaborate as to why I'm fuming mad at this so I will move on to point two. My sonna and the proposed changes. As a sonna, bunson just some character I can change on a whim. He's me. Sure he may look different in some comes but the versions of him that I draw specifically are me. It's how I wish I was in real life. My own hatred of being human has caused me enough mental strain without people telling me I have to change how I look. It's not that simple. Then there is the issue of deleting art. This part hurts me the most. FA was my first ever art gallery. I put myself out there and the art ranges from the first horrible pen drawings I did on the bus to work, too the art I drew last week. Every single piece has comments, favorites and memories I can't recreate by uploading them somewhere else and by deleting any of them you're forcing me to cut out giant swaths of my life and history. The main issue I have isn't with understanding if my art is aloud under 2.7. whenever I ask about solutions people only ever tell me that I need to submit art tickets to see if any of them need to be deleted. The answer I want is how can I appeal, beg, plead, ANYTHING to be able to keep what little of a life I have in tact. I want a way to actually talk about this in public where or at least an understanding of why noone had rolled back 2.7 or is planning to. There are no solutions to undo the damage that is done. My life is pretty much in shambles right now and the few people who are causing this destruction haven't even so much as logged into the same chat room as me let alone actually talk to me. as far as I can tell nothing I can do matters and in the end I'm going to lose everything. The only thing that could even come close to fixing this isn't an amendment or another update, it's to repeal 2.7 all together. Or at the very least make the issue a matter of intent. If someone is clearly using it to break the rules then go after them but just stop attacking us. We did nothing wrong and just want to live out our lives on FA where we used to feel like we belonged. FA is and was the only place I felt safe. Now I feel afraid and betrayed. I don't know what to do and every time I feel a bit of hope someone crushes it. I just don't know anymore.

The recent policy changes implemented by FurAffinity have caused quite a stir within the fandom. Not only did they ban several popular categories, but they also introduced some confusing and overly restrictive guidelines. This has left many users scratching their heads and wondering where exactly they stand on the site. One major issue with the new policies is the inconsistent enforcement. For example, there have been instances where content deemed "too sexual" was removed, while other equally explicit content remains up on the site. This lack of consistency creates a frustrating environment for creators who are trying to follow the rules, but aren't sure what those rules actually are. Another problem is the poor moderation by Luffy, a moderator of FurAffinity. There have been numerous instances where they have failed to respond to reports or address concerns properly, leading to a sense of distrust among the user base. When a person responsible for enforcing the rules doesn't seem to care about them or practices overzealous moderation, it sets a bad precedent for everyone else. Overall, the combination of unclear policies, inconsistent enforcement, and poor moderation has created a toxic atmosphere on FurAffinity. I've never seen so many FA journals created about the decisions made by FA staff. To follow the format I am very disappointed with the recent policy updates on FurAffinity. The changes make fellow users feel unsupported and disregarded as a member of the community. The new policies will greatly impact furries' ability to express themselves on the platform, as many of their favorite categories have been banned. While I understand the need for restrictions, I believe the new guidelines go too far and stifle creativity. Additionally, the vagueness of certain rules leaves much to interpretation, which can lead to inconsistencies in moderation. For instance, the rule stating that "sexual content involving minors is strictly forbidden" is ambiguous and could potentially result in misunderstandings and wrongful censorship, while also contradicting other statements made by the team. I strongly disagree with the blanket ban on specific Pokemon and other IPs, as these topics can be handled sensitively and responsibly when approached with caution. Meanwhile, the inclusion of sizeism as examples of harmful content is concerning, as it implies that these issues should be censored rather than addressed and discussed openly. In conclusion, the policy updates on FurAffinity raise several red flags for me. I hope that the administrators take the time to review and revise these guidelines to better serve the needs of the community.

I hope my feedback is welcome, although I am not an active artist or writer. But as a watcher I would be affected too, so I would like to voice my concerns too. I agree in large parts with the clarification, but there are a few things that at least should considered to change. 1st: The biggest issue is that it seems only look based. The context doesn’t seem to matter any longer. Please correct me if I am wrong, but if this is true how can we be sure you wont delete all characters that look young? My change would be a checkmark system. 1st Is there a background story given that justifies the appearance, 2nd is the general art style of the artist cute or just one submission? 3rd are there visible features that indicate this is an adult, this are only three things I could think of, but it would be better than to just look at the appearance. This could cause much collateral damage 2nd: Aged up characters: As seen in the discussion the term is very confusing, at least for artists. You say they should age up characters, but don’t give us examples how an aged up character should look. This is a massive point and nearly all artists I follow are desperate because they don’t know what to to. 3rd mentioned species: If you don’t give examples then it is a blanked ban for them. The list isn’t even complete and this causes even more desperation. 4th teen pregnancy and vore: nobody asked for this exemptions, yet they are mentioned. If this carification really has the claimed intend this ruined it and it should be deleted. Otherwise if looks like hypocrisy or some of the staff members actually favored this, but tried to get around the minor ban. (edited to remove spelling errors)

Another thing I think is notable as well, is kind of the precedent of several years of past submissions and FA's previous moderation stance around this material has been. But also I think another notably factor too is that the "1000 year old loli vampire" comparison. I don't know what other people think of as examples but to me it's distinctly a young-looking human character. Character's that can be based off of real people, potentially victims, as means to harass, or even trigger people's past experience with individuals that might have looked the same even if the artist had no intentions of having the material being tangibly harmful and just wanted to enjoy themselves. When it comes to Furry content, particularly canonicalized "Childish" characters such as the ones FA's explicitly listed in the blacklist, these character's aren't real. They're not objectifying any living human or creature. A ton of fursonas are designed to make them be projections of what people want to be-- the intent is far removed from any thought of exploiting minors. To me I see it akin to a lot of other fiction that teases over immoral activities that viewers continue to watch and support for their enjoyment. It's a fantasy setting, there's no real-world victims from all the tragedies that occurred in something like Game of Thrones, and it's not inspiring anyone to go out and behave like anyone in the series. Or maybe I can go hop on GTA V, cause mass murder, but it's totally acceptable. It's in the realm of fiction-- Any connection between fantasy and the real world are severed. In that regards, I personally look to context, the situation, what it is happening in the scene, the character's maturity, how they act. I think going off purely "proportions" or banning specific species is going to cause way too much anxiety and fear for anyone to remotely tries to slide into certain territories. I felt that FA has had a similar stance over all these years, which is why specifically only "lolis" and human-looking characters were banned in the first place. The sudden shift is pretty jarring to and community shattering to see so many people being unnecessarily targeted as being a threat to society or getting ostracized from what were once safe spaces for a community of people that desperately needs to have those spaces. Also +1 to the above mention that FA should just outright ban accounts of minors on FA. There's WAY too much risk of NSFW leaking through the gaps, or minors reaching out to primarily NSFW accounts and getting them exposed to content they shouldn't. Especially since no one has any way of knowing if a given account holder is genuinely a minor. That's the single most tangibly effective thing they can probably do to mitigate the risk of exposing minors to predators.

Overall I'm in support of the intent of this policy update. I take no issue with the spirit behind it but I agree with others that the full scope of what is actionable is still unclear and has put many people in uncomfortable positions. I don't draw anything affected by this policy update though so I don't really have any input on it besides that. My feedback deals specifically with this line in the May 22 clarification post: "Minors involved in SFW or non-sexualized interests, such as vore and transformation, are allowed." I am of the belief that labeling something 'vore' makes it inherently sexual. Children's media contains plenty of instances of characters being eaten, sure, but it's not called vore in these contexts. It's a moment in a larger piece of media and hasn't been created with the express purpose of serving a fetish. Once you apply the term 'vore' to something though, you are explicitly referring to vorarephilia. If you search vore, you will see it defined as a well-known sexual paraphilia, a fetish, or a kink. There's no getting around that. Vore can be SFW in the technical sense but that doesn't change the fact that it's still called vore. Vore art can be completely nonsexual in its depiction and when it involves adult or otherwise non-child characters I take no issue with someone arguing for its SFW-ness on a site like FurAffinity. Conclusion: Art of characters that are stated to or implied to be minors in situations that are described as vore, tagged as vore, or can be described as vore should not be permitted becase this label is inherently sexually charged. I do not think an exception should be made for this content. Transformation is in a gray area that's more context-dependent so I don't think the same inherently-sexual argument can be made for it here. However, I definitely don't like that an exception has been made for it with regards to art of it involving minors. The optics of it listed alongside vore really don't sit well with me. Additionally: Minors should not be on FurAffinity period. The minimum age requirement to register should be 18. I think this would do substantially more to protect ACTUAL minors on the internet long term.

My only addition is if they decide to ban minors from the website, do not BAN their accounts, suspend them until their DOB makes them 18, so they dont just outright lose artwork, followers, followings, etc and can resume activity when of age.

Too many characters for Nitro to handle, but here's my response. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LEFRYJyDzfZ29_vQ5F1Arb7huNzXI00l7VLxKrGicCI/edit?usp=sharing

ETA Proposal to amend text of AUP 2.7 to definitively clear up ALL currently known amibiguities https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fwKm_8DfCjFBJriHbT7KcjMk1KkmNRQyYHRvwFyFEOQ/edit?usp=sharing This wording may be complex, but it's extremely transparent, and extremely lenient! I may have inaccuracies so please correct them, I'm not pretending that I'm some god of knowledge. But it should give you a framework of how you should have AUP 2.7 appear so that people can know EXACTLY what can get their submission dinged or not.

I do not like the execution of this change. It sets a dangerous precedent of overriding artistic intent, and I am concerned about how that will limit the creativity of artists. The change currently allows the reporter and enforcer to decide what a piece of art is based on its looks, regardless of what the artist's actual intent was. It allows them to ignore factors such as artistic style and artwork-by-artwork context. It is not right to forcibly tell someone that their art is of a minor when it is not, and to take action on them based off of that accusation. It is disrespectful and insinuates that reporter/enforcer knows better about an artwork than the person who made it. I am not an artist myself, but many people I know specialize in Pokemon and/or a cutesy art style, and the change may prevent them from doing their work. I agree with the intent to protect minors. However I do not agree with this execution, as it seems like it'll have a lot of false positives. The change states that body proportions will be used to judge the ages of Pokemon and Digimon, however this doesn't really make sense - several if not most Pokemon or Digimon don't change their proportions much as they age, and/or little-to-no official documentation is available to describe that process. While we might have evidence of, say, Lapras growing, we also have a wrinkly Treecko that has the same body shape as a young Treecko, and a 20-plus-year-old surfer Pikachu that physically looks the same as any other age-unknown Pikachu. These creatures don't 100% match the growth patterns of real-life humans and animals. Proportions cannot reliably be used to determine the age of these creatures with any kind of consistency. I truly don't think clarity is the issue at this point. I've seen enough to know that the change's basis of proportionality is deeply flawed. More details is not going to change the fact that this change lets reporter/enforcer accuse and punish artists for doing things they did not do. Another concern I have is a lack of community involvement with changes like this. Currently, all announcement journals have comments locked, the forums no longer exist, and the FA discord server normally doesn't allow discussion of site policy (aside from temporary channels like this one). This largely locks out the community from providing feedback on changes. Trouble tickets don't really solve the issue, as they are private so only the single sender and responding mod can see them. Changes that affect the community at large should be discussed with the community at large. I realize this is a complex issue, but I have some suggestions on how the change's intent to protect minors can be achieved through different means: - Change the allowed user age from 13+ to 18+ - Blocking minors from the site should be the most-direct way to protect them. Most users would tell you that FA is an 18+ site anyway. Existing minors' accounts should be locked until they are of age. - Add a blacklist based on tags, artwork ID, and user ID - Some of the support for the change comes from not wanting to see certain content on FA, as the site does not feature any way to block content currently. With this feature, users won't need to see content they dislike anymore, and there will be less calls to ban X content. Inkbunny and e621 have robust tag systems; there is a browser extension called FilterAffinity that can block content on FA. If the FA team needs technical help to implement this feature, please reach out to the community. - Unlock comments on announcement journals - It is important that we have a permanent, public place to discuss site policy changes going forward. The fastest way to implement that is by unlocking comments on announcement journals. Another option is surveys, with public results posted at a later date.

So this change won't affect my gallery directly, but it is very clear that it is affecting friends of mine in a negative manner, which has added to my dislike of the wording of the proposed updated. But I will try to be as objective as possible while writing this. The goal of closing the loophole is commendable and something I agree with, I do not want to see "1000 year old Loli" being a thing on FA. But the metric chosen has clearly gone beyond that. Where a scalpel was needed to cut the cub out, numerous users with nothing close to cub are being hit by the sledgehammer of determining via body proportions. A metric that has been both too subjective and too wide reaching. Furthermore, the metric has also been fairly flawed, with numerous examples of child characters not fulfilling the quality of "child-like proportions" and numerous adult characters fulfilling the quality depending on who is the judicator. Put simply, I believe the wording of the rule needs to be revised. I wouldn't use the metric of proportions and instead would ask that some other metric be used, so that it can be more unambiguous whether an artist is in violation. And also so that artists not in violation of the Cub ban are not accused of being in violation. Furthermore I would rollback a lot of the panicked deletion and try to foster a better relationship with the community, as the FAQs were not received fondly and updates from mods mostly added to the confusion. And lastly (at least for this submission, I may make more points later) please don't disregard the negative feedback as a small vocal minority. It is clear, at least to me, this rule update has hurt a lot of people it was not intended to hurt and if put through as is will continue to do so.

I take no issue with the spirit of this policy update but it feels like a pointless update. I fail to see what loophole it closes & believe it just creates a set of new loopholes & potential for abuse. Such as 'it only targets pokemon/digimon, so clearly my little pony can have child-like proportions in nsfw cause they dont specifically mention mlp'. The policy before the attempted update seemed to be just fine to me & focusing on species/franchise just seems to be pointless hair splitting. There was nothing in the original policy excluding pokemon or digimon from the rule of no cub porn. staff should have just started being stricter with enforcement in terms of what they view as such. People can always appeal removal of works. I dont remember staff ever announcing specifically what they view to violate certain policies. Listing specifics creates more exceptions to be used as loopholes. The update has done nothing but cause confusion, fear for those who believe they're unjustly affected, or targeted, & does nothing to protect kids or other users of the site from inappropriate content. It's also highlighted other questions about FA policy like 'is vore ok for minors to be involved in when vore is inherently a paraphilia & therefore inherently linked to sexual interests regardless of individuals intent of it being sfw and children being eaten in childrens media is not a sole focus on that one specific theme in said media and is never called vore' & 'why is is ok to post art of pregnant 13 year olds & why isnt that considered child sexual exploitation when pregnancy usually requires sex?' +1 to the 'ban minors from FA' wagon. There’s plenty of exclusively SFW sites for them to use already and FA is one of the very few places of popular use for folks to post NSFW works. It's not only safer for the adults posting nsfw knowing they wont be unitentionally exposing minirs to it, but safer for minors as it wont be a place for predators to congregate and target them.

this change in policy makes more people alienated by way of the clarification not being clear. just because they look young, doesn't mean they are young. there's a scene where an old treecko is seen, but apparently by your new rulings that treecko would be banned from nsfw unless impossibly aged up, since the proportions aren't "adult enough". what about the fact that renamon and guilmon share the same stage? if one is banned for being "too young" to be used in nsfw, then the other must be too. don't forget, your userbase is going to be alienated by the fact that they can't post things about what is contextually an adult, all because of how your proportion rule says it's not able to be used sexually unless aged up, but the form already looks old enough. look at what you're making rulings on, check if the context shows maturity too, and then make a ruling. also, age regression is a thing too. if someone is mentally de-aged, then they're still eligible even if they aren't mature. if someone is physically de-aged, then they become banned even though mature. maturity isn't physical in all cases. and especially with pokemon and digimon, who have completely decoupled maturity from proportion. Ash's pikachu refuses to evolve, even when given many chances. does that mean it isn't mature? no. it's just making the conscious decision to stay in the form it is. if you don't change this to factor that maturity does not mean proportions, then you will end up with a mass exodus to other sites like weasyl, sofurry, and many others. think long and hard about if you want to put this through, because i guarantee you, many will cite this as their reason for leaving when making journals saying they left.

This entire policy update has felt like it's trying to pull a "have one's cake and eat it too" by both trying to allow minors to stay on the site yet also crack down on NSFW stuff that didn't need to be cracked down on in the first place. There was already a policy in place that was banning the offending material before hand but now it's spreading it's net wider to topics and subjects that are unrelated and being unfairly accused or implied to be a part of said problem. I honestly can't see any benefit to trying to both allow NSFW stuff yet also allowing minors on the site. Even with the NSFW filter on, there's a lot of weird stuff on FA that kids shouldn't see. That no one should see, especially in a "SFW" environment but my opinion on the term NSFW and SFW with this is another matter entirely and not the focus here. I'm inclined to agree with Kei that minors should be removed from the site because personally I don't think Little Timmy is going to suffer if he can't browse FA when he really shouldn't be in the first place. There's much safer sites he could be browsing if this is the sort of interest he has.

The problem is: The new ruling tries to falsely paint certain characters as minors, just judging by proportions ( something that differs from style to style and stifles artistic creativity ) and by referencing them to their „earth counterparts“. What if a fictional species has no „earth counterpart“ because guess what, they are a fictional species? Define what a young/adult dragon is by looking at its earth counterpart. Their proportions are up to the artist because there just is no real-life examples. It’s fictional. Show me an Agumon real-life counterpart. It’s a dinosaur-esque, non-aging creature, depicted as a fierce fighter and reliable older brother. He’s not a minor, unless you were to specifically alter his proportions to make him one. Context matters, especially if your new ruling now encompasses Pokemon/Digimon, two well-known franchises filled to the brim with lore that can NOT just be ignored, for example how a Pokemon can go through its entire lifecycle without evolving once. Another aspect I wish was considered is the skill of each individual artist. Not everybody is perfect, not everybody went to an art school, some people just draw what they like as a hobby with little to no experience. If you haven’t studied anatomy, you have to resort to simplified, cartoonish proportions sometimes, that does not mean it was someone’s intention to draw a child. Not everybody strives for realism to begin with, it can just be a personal preference to simplify their art. I am all for safety of the kids on FA, but too many people who now genuinely feel insulted by being labeled as something they want nothing to do with are being caught in the crossfire, their livelihoods are being threatened and they now have to live through anxiety, all because of how badly this policy update was handled, no clear communication, no clear guidelines. Roll back this policy update, severely change or delete it alltogether.

1. Change the policy to say that vore and tf involving children is only allowed in non-sexual situations. Same with pregnancy. How NSFW something is depends on the context. You already said this about childbirth and breastfeeding. I'm not sure why vore, tf, and pregnancy were considered to SFW regardless of context, but it needs to be fixed now. 2. You need to have a ban list for practical reasons. "You can draw every character on model EXCEPT for these." is a straightforward policy. When deciding if a drawing violates the new policy, artists would just need to look at how they are changing the original design. "What am I changing, and will those changes make the character look too young/old enough?" is a simple question that any artist can answer in a matter of minutes. By having a list of acceptable characters, you give artists a clear baseline as to what's allowed. Without one, artists will have no idea what's going on. 3. You need to have a ban list for moral reasons. Look, I know it's a pain to go through every single Pokemon and Digimon, but nobody asked you to make this rule. You're not doing it for legal reasons, either. That means there's no deadline, so you're responsible for putting in the work that it takes to make the rule fair BEFORE you start enforcing it. Threatening your artists' livelihoods because you're too lazy to do what you need to do to make your rules fair isn't acceptable. 4. You need to have a ban list that's both reasonable and lenient. This is what it means to follow through with what you promised us: to air on the side of caution. Take Pichu as an example. It appears to be a baby. It's known as a baby Pokémon in-canon. There's hardly any NSFW of Pichu, and most people on FA would feel uncomfortable if they saw NSFW of Pichu. Clear pick for the ban list. ...now take Eevee, one of the most popular 'sonas in the world.. Eevee appears in NSFW regularly, and almost no one blinks twice when they see Eevee in something NSFW. Clear pick for the allow list. But even if you think Eevee is somewhat questionable, it should still be allowed, because if you want to air on the side of caution, you need to only ban NSFW of Pokemon/Digimon that are unambiguously children. If you don't agree with that, no one will ever know what's acceptable to draw and what isn't. And if that's the case, having a ban list matters even more. Small and cute ≠ child. Small and cute ≠ child. Small and cute ≠ child. Eevee is not a Pichu. If you cannot tell the difference, it is because you think that small and cute = child. And small and cute ≠ child. 5. You need to tell us why you're doing this. I'm sorry, but you didn't decide to do this on a whim. Why announce a policy that's this bare bones, this suddenly? You've literally made massive changes to it every single day since it was announced, it was so poorly considered. Especially suspicious, given that you previously decided not to implement this policy before due to how difficult it was to do fairly, and you only ever banned cub art because it was a problem with your payment processor. What's missing from your announcement is a reason as to why you're expanding the policy to Pokemon/Digimon now. It's obvious that there's something you're not telling us. You've got a reason as to why you want this to go through that's not out of the goodness of your hearts. And I think that you owe us an explanation.

Thank you for hosting this channel for user feedback. Although the content I post will not be directly affected by the update to Upload Policy § 2.7, I have been indirectly affected -- as most all of us have -- by the tidal wave of controversy stirred by this change. Most notably, some artists I follow have left FA or deleted submissions in protest of this change. My message is a bit too long to be sent here in full, as I do not pay for Discord Nitro. As such, I have put the full message in a Pastebin, here: https://pastebin.com/WwZNRavS, and I have summarised my thoughts below in bullet-point form. Bullet-point summary of my thoughts: Including the phrase "or fantasy creatures" in UP § 2.7 is fine. It's a minor change. FA's announcements have caused widespread fear over this rule update. The clarifications have done more harm than good. Through these announcements, FA has damaged a lot of users' trust in the system. The priority should be on restoring trust, not listing criteria for judging "childlike appearances". FA could build a procedure for community volunteers to review flagged images and decide if the character(s) appear childlike. Regardless of what changes are made, the rule change should be delayed beyond July 1st -- possibly until January 1st, 2024.

I disagree with this update. The new rules are arbitrary and unfair, banning characters and art styles with no respect for context or reasoning. Many of the characters specified in the update are clearly adults and do not look like children in any way. The idea that you will be looking at "real world examples" to decide if a character looks like a child makes no sense for characters like agumon and impmon who are fictional beings. There is no real-world equivalent to agumon. Further, the entire concept that mods will now be looking through artist's galleries to decide if they are pedophiles purely based on style is going to create a chilling effect that will make everyone feel unsafe. These accusations are severe and not to be taken lightly. Art which would come under these rules has been favourited by the site owner himself, which feels hypocritical and confusing. These rules feel like you are making a hostile environment for artists and have chosen to create a problem where none existed. Please look at the overwhelmingly negative response your communications have resulted in and see that you are harming the community. Furaffinity is an important site for the furry fandom, and by attacking your artists in this way you are causing a lot of emotional harm and fear.

While I understand the good intentions, this is ridiculous and absolutely impossible to police fairly. Artists have enough to worry about, let alone if someone is going to get their hard work banned based seemingly on someone's opinion & biases, or even how they feel that day. To add to that, the amount of content posted to FA on a daily basis again is going to be impossible to police for a small team (again introducing their own biases), and some kind of Ai scanning each upload would inevitably mark a huge chunk wrong. It's too vague of a rule.

The fireworks of a sinking ship are fun, but it's not a fun thing to be on that ship. I see everyone fleeing from this and even taking down their sfw content. We need definitions, especially since with regards to not specifically sex related scenarios or art with gonads, like getting eaten alive is a horror trope, but vore is a fetish for it. We need a list of definitions for each of these tropes that people can and do fetishize so that the fetish part can be separated from the tropes, and you need to brush up on your pokemon knowledge. Cute or not eevee is breedable in game to make more eevees. Same with a plethora of other Japanese characters. Banning shota and loli is a good step, but Banning cute and chibi with it is reaching way to far likely to appease some moral purists with loud voices that want to get rid of our queer spaces. I've seen thousands with similar concerns, but the biggest thing I see is destroying what rapport you had with the community through a randomly sprung rule that is way too broad and abusable. No one can police something so subjective as adult art because one person's horror story about a camp counselor fattening up and eating campers because it's actually a space carnivorous plant is another person's wet dream. If you are the latter you can't police the former because all you'll see Is porn, and vice versa if you are the former you won't see the latter as fetish material The word everyone is missing is nuance Stopping cp (or legally csem? Idk I see that thrown around a bunch) is a good thing It's easy and obvious when someone is doing that and a simple solution is a see something say something reporting feature But even that is hard to do due to cultural differences globally and who was raised thinking what was acceptable Any attempt to enforce a western ethnocentric view with limited categories would be futile because of this. The ultimate solutions I've seen to the issue? Ran out of sp- https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10559965/

I'm gonna be very honest now. I completely disagree with said new policy cause it's very vague and also ridiculous, and it's making tons of artists leave for big reasons. You should have thought twice before announcing said rule considering a lot of furry artists are nervous about getting their accounts in danger. Besides that, if this moves forward, it might be very harmful for FA instead of making things better. I see lots of non NSFW pics being deleted, even with absolutely no child like characters. Please remove said policy and instead announce another policy that everyone might agree with.

I fully disagree with this update since determining what is considered a minor due to their body shape is a ridiculous way to go about removing and preventing further CP. It is way too vague and is causing people to flee a sinking ship that's on fire. I get you guys have the best intentions, but Digimon and Pokemon are designed to be cutesy and it would be much better to have a way to block the content ourselves and have the policy be more precise on what is considered CP instead of saying Agumon, Guilmon, and Riolu need to be "aged up," which canonically cannot happen due to multiple instances where they don't change at all or it is very subtle. I am fully against minors being in NSFW art, but this has sadly caused a bigger problem. I hope that these two things will happen to help keep things safe, but still allows everyone to enjoy making art without the worry of it being labeled CP: 1. A built-in blacklist feature so we can choose what we can and cannot see 2. A better way to communicate with the community before deciding what will and will not be a violation of the policy in the future

The great majority of users who will be found in violation of this new policy aren't showing minors, they're collateral damage in enforcement that overreaches to make sure it catches everything that really does violate the policy. By saying these users are exploiting a loophole to "present characters as children" rather than acknowledging your new policy will catch people up in it unfairly you have essentially accused a broad portion of your heavily LGBT userbase of being pedophiles who categorically aren't, and that's unacceptable. The thought has never even entered my mind that my own content could violate the original policy, but after looking over your new policy some of it could be at least questionable (though I'd note my trouble ticket asking for clarification hasn't been answered.) Not only is the policy too far reaching, but also it's too vague. So far the only image example given is Judy from zootopia, and said that she doesn't count because there are even more childlike characters in the film than her. This seems to suggest that, rather than going only off proportions, exonerating background characters with even more childlike features to compare them to can be take into account. This makes the policy vague and unfollowable. Are you going to watch every episode of digimon in case some background character looks young enough to justify the other characters as adults? If there were no background rabbit kids in that film would Judy suddenly be a child based on proprtions alone? If it came out that disney intended for Judy to look child like would that intention be enough for it to become a policy violation? If someone made obvious minor content but added a second, even more minor character in-world, would it suddenly be fine? (this also fails to work for entirely original characters) The balance was already fine, I very rarely saw violating content appear on the site, and I think you should leave the original policy and enforcement as it was.

I appreciate and support the intention to make FA a safer place for minors, that being said, there are more effective methods that causes less harm, trauma and anxiety to innocent users that doesn't even focus on cp and their source of income are commissions took from FA: -To start with, I do prefer FA being marked as a +18 site and not normalizing it as a +13 site. Considering the amount of fetish content and "accidental" wrongly marked content that can be seen in the frontpage all the time. -Hire/Train more staff of MPS: This announcement made that section become oversaturated with tickets to the point of getting copy/pasted responses without even reading the ticket. That makes your users distrust and drop support towards your site. -You really need visual guides with drawings made by the community to make it clear where do you draw the line with he last guideline update, taking in consideration different species and styles, for that reason you should communicate more with your community. Example: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/354632453823922177/1109281049411858513/le_FA_guide.png (btw, when I submitted a ticket asking to point which would be banned, you just left a copy/paste and closed it) . A lot of people from the community would volunteer for that, me included even if I no longer draw NSFW. -Decrease the offense level for content affected by the new guideline that has been posted before July 1st, 2023. It's very easy for users to forget about really old submissions, and the lack of a proper response from staff is not helping. -Seeing that you are going for the route to make it a site safe for all ages, you are failing and missing a lot of important points to make it safe. As I mentioned in previous tickets that felt it fell into blind eyes I will mention my proposals again: (Tickets: https://www.furaffinity.net/controls/viewticket/219439/ https://www.furaffinity.net/controls/viewticket/227446/ ) -Mentioning that minors can get involved in common fetishes such like vore and pregnancy, in a journal about "Minor Protective Issues", IS A TERRIBLE IDEA, and it baffles me you wrote that and thought it was ok to post it, showing a lack of review and missing the whole point of protecting minors. Making your users distrust you, making them leave and drop the support towards your site, which is valid, even I am not proud to show the badge I got from a discount. -Using the excuse of "A good rule of thumb is children's cartoons. If something can be seen in Loony Tunes, for example, it's probably fine for the General rating." is not valid at all: What children see in a TV, is very different from teenagers using a very sexual site/community where they can interact with anonymous people across the world with high risk of being groomed. Please do not normalize that. -The next things shouldn't be marked as general since those are usually sexualized in FA: Common fetishes such like Vore (with internal shots, do-me-eyes, excess of fluids), diapers (even when not messy), Inflation, Hyper, Farting, Pics with high focus in feet, crotches and butts, hypnosis, bdsm, kidnapping (yes, I see that a lot in sfw mode). Visual guides: https://imgur.com/5j1wlHL https://imgur.com/h8sUC8e -Harder punishment (lv3 or lv4 offence) to those who wrongly rate their mature/adult content in obvious ways: This is way more important and is a way more effective method to make people to take this rule more seriously. Specially on reminders, people tend to wrongly rate their stuff to be shown in the frontpage for everyone and get more views. When the reminder gets deleted, mods states "the content is no longer in our database, so action cannot be taken". So the lack of serious consequences, allows people abuse this loophole. My feedback continues in the next journal since I hit the character limit: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10559943/

I'll summarize my thoughts n feelings as simple as I can. With a nice list. I normally don't do stuff like this. I don't really care, it doesn't affect me. But I've seen a bunch of people, here or on FA or elsewhere, worried about their lives, panicking, or even being attacked as if they were, in fact, cp producers. It's a nuclear bomb dropped by a faceless clown. 1. This basically paints a lot of well-meaning people as, well, you know. Pedophiles. People who wouldn't ever, and never will, who abhor the idea, who did their homework and double checked, and FA basically says "Nah, you're a kid diddler" and that's just cruel. A whole lot of people I know are suffering anxiety, anger and breakdowns because this rule suddenly declares they're not just bad people, but horrible and should leave already. "Oh, your 20 year old fursona is illegal now" is a wake up call that can kill. If not from the heart attack, potentially from the people who agree with this and suddenly start yelling. Old friends becoming bitter enemies. Because FA says you're a pedophile now. 2. I don't draw a lot of NSFW, this policy will probably never affect me, but I know too many artists with funkier styles who are suddenly just not allowed to draw anymore??? They only draw adults, it's just their style to have bigger heads, and now they're banned for it? I thought art was about expression, but if you have the wrong style you're a criminal? Antarctica is less chilling. 3. Pokemon are a huge franchise, especially in the Furry space, putting it off limits is cutting off an arm to fix a heart problem. It only being NSFW stuff or specific Pokemon isn't the main problem, it's the fact *you're willing to move the goalposts there at all* that indicates people might not be safe in the future. See point #1! 1-3. Grandfathering/no-ban/warning removal or working with artists is a smart idea. 4. I have issues with minors being on FA at all. I get it, you want to be a general Furry Space, but either you put minors in a YouTube Kids safe space, and punish violations from artists posting NSFW as SFW, or you get rid of the minors. We don't need more *KID* spaces, we need more *ADULT* spaces. Kids can go to DeviantArt, or Instasnap or whatever. The internet is already getting scrubbed too much as it is. 5. The way this has been handled is poor. FA needs to reconsider and develop its Admin/Mod/Announcements to be more specific, responsive and considerate. I strongly recommend including some diverse community voices to perform BS/sniff/sanity checks, on top of generally making the mod team feel as professional. You charge money for membership, your standards have gone up whatever you like it or not. TL;DR - This has harmed people and paints innocents as pedophiles. - This harms the freedom to explore and create art. - This creates a precedent of potential encroachment on other areas - The above 3 all chill art and FA's ability to be a safe space for adults. Too much collateral, too much chilling! - FA should be an Adult Space first, minors should either not be here or be properly protected/isolated. We have enough SFW/minor safe spaces on the Internet as is, and the adult spaces are losing ground and getting scrubbed out of existence. Adults pay your bills, adults need the space. - FA's staff needs to reflect, reconfigure and integrate the community with a focus on not sounding like WotC thinking OGL 2.0 is a gift from God. Trust me, if the community knows you have community members for sanity checks, and are open to discussion, these explosions are FAR less likely to happen or be as large. If anything, you'd get constructive feedback and be seen as super cool, who doesn't want that? - Work with community/artists via grandfather clauses IF YOU MUST to insure a rebuild of trust and safety.

The only thing I want to add is this, and solely because I've seen no mentions of it. (I'm actually ok with the policy, and def can see what y'all were trying to do with it... Though more clarification could help, I'm happy with what we did get.) If the goal is to protect minors, may I suggest a rework on acceptable ads? Turn your FA to SFW mode, and click the homescreen a few times. Everything from plushies lined with clearly adult toys, to obviously and barely cropped nsfw scenes, to ads with the exact words, "Sexy characters," are displayed, even to minors. I think that's a big issue, though I understand this may be disputed among others. All I can do is give that opinion here though. Thank you for opening a feedback channel, and for listening if nothing else. I do understand how tiring this all must be for staff and artists alike at this point. ETA: I have not come across the plushie one again tonight, so that could've been in NSFW mode and i simply mixed myself up. Def seen some that still stand tho. Wanted to clarify that I may have been wrong there tho.

While I personally won’t be affected by the new rule, some of my friend will be due to them using Pokémon in certain stuff, and I think that having the basis of a starter Pokémon being considered cub is wrong unless it’s one that’s actually more of a child, because if you really want to be specific on it, evolution never dictated age in the media, and the ruling of digimon also won’t make sense due to them not aging. At the end of it the best course of action is adding a blacklist, as well as more guidelines for the art rather than against it so less bad stuff gets out

Riolu, Happiny, Pichu etc are the only pokemon with ages, and even that's arguable because nothing forces them to evolve at X age. They are called _baby_ pokemon though. Same with Digimon, there's a specific form that are called "baby". It's the smallest form. The form most people are lewding is called "Rookie"...but is called "Child" in Japan. So, you can't even use that as a basis, whoops! That being said...is Impmon allowed to breed? That's probably the shortest Rookie. And what of Renamon, possibly the tallest Rookie. If one is old enough...sorry, _tall_ enough to not get banned, what prevents the other? Also, 14-17 year olds being allowed to be pregnant is gross.

# What i see is "lack of a clearly written intent, just the measures against a vague threat" ## - If the problem is "Nintendo of America is going to sue Furaffinity..." "... if we don't stop posting pokemon having sex because it is turning out in children searches due to google becoming more and more trash" then.... uh.... yeah i get that and that is actually something i can understand and stand behind. Buuuut while it's quite hard to tell people "you have to stop because parents are getting angry at us" at least it lets people know clearly where the problem is and how to adddress it. People might just start giving "weird names" to their "totally not a pokemon" or stuff like that. ## - If the problem is "We need to fight pedophiles due to recent USA regulations"... ...that is not going to happen via censorship because censorship never works for that. Basically. Let us make it simple: If we want to fight off pedophiles making it impossible for them to be seen just means they are going to go "undercover" even more and that will make sure kids will be exposed even more. Any kind of effort to "eradicate" pedophiles by making sure it is illegal for them to exist will not make them "cease to exist" they will not "magically unalive themselve" because "i guess i have to die.jpg". That is not going to happen, what is going to happen is that they will start bringing up "plausible deniability" as to why their art or what they like is perfectly acceptable: - "Oh, this is not a child having sex, you see? the child is a 1000 years old vampire". - "This is just a pokemon they look like children". - "Nah, this is a shortstack, just less stacked than usual". - "Nah this is just a waif boy but it is totally 18+" - "Romeo and Juliette law" (or... whatever it was called... the Michael Bay one.) - ...etc. I think it is clear that while those are all plausible they can totally be excuses. Basically: actual pedophiles will just use other people's interests that align with their own to enforce scenarios where sex will be had with what clearly looks like a minor. Possibly shifting it to what looks more like their own interests. Because that is how it works with human beings. We don't magically make them cease to exist just because we do not like them. They are just going to have friends in here and want to be part of this community but "hide" in plain sight by clearly telling people "oh, this might look like a child, but it is actually X" or "Y" or "Z"

Personally, I think context should be taken into account with things a bit more, instead of images being judged solely individually, like e621 does. Reduces the capacity for bias, allows taking into account folks that are gaming the system (Actual pedos) and the like. For example, if someone is just short / 'arguably' child-like, as quite frankly most people have differing views depending on the art style and does kinky stuff, they're not a child and should not be treated as a Pedo for such things. It's down to how content is framed and put across/conveyed. However, if someone is short/looking child-like and has spent the entirety of, say, a comic or sequence acting identical to a child, potentially involving regression, followed by NSFW content in said regressed form, that is clearly cub content. Context is highly relevant, generally. The e621-style of system is quite unpopular as a whole, from what I've seen, as it takes out a lot of the context being situations. Judging content individually and on it's own/separately is just inviting a mess, as in the case of Agon Vile, one small part of a comic was decided to be 'too child-like' while the rest was allowed. Point is - Make context a big factor in enforcing the policy, if a user just does NSFW Regression content into someone that looks, thinks, and acts like a child it's pretty clearly cub content. If someone does shortstack content in which the art style is perhaps a bit questionable, maybe make it a community issue or otherwise, like, have a committee that looks at the borderline cases and decide, or something. Or give them the benefit of the doubt, as a lot of these new policies take time and the FA Staff are clearly overburdened as it is, expanding a policy further when the previous policy is already overwhelming is probably a bad idea. One of those 'overextension' things - Maybe expand the staff team and improve communication links before implementing new, wide-reaching policies.

Sorry for bad English. (I'm using the classic version of the site. If it matters) Basically the new rule doesn't concern me, but I don't want to wake up with a ban for drawing a kobold many years ago with suddenly "wrong" cartoon proportions. (I physically can't have Nitro. So here are my thoughts) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EBM417k8lN49tkwOEQhFvOVyoP8xssv_33WZqfExs-A/edit?usp=sharing

Should my opinion matter, I find this new rule change to be a complete joke. Why alienate more and more people? Just leave shit as it is. Come on, Dragoneer, you buying back FA was suppose to be a good thing. Not everything needs to be a safe space. No minors should be allowed on FA in the first place, that is just asking for trouble. Did you even stop to think, ya know, maybe I should do a poll to gauge interest in fucking everything up...

The overall implementation of this rule update was poorly thought out, even if it was well intended. The public reaction to this has been incredibly decisive and severe across social media, and unfortunately actual criticism/discussion on Furaffinity itself isn't possible because the administrators have consistently locked the posts involving this rule change. The sweeping bans impacting multiple Pokémon species are clearly the result of personal dislike and bias on the part of the moderation team. Actual game and universe information surrounding this topic fully contradicts the arguments made by staff. You've simply chosen to Ignore this because it doesn't align with your personal wants. Furthermore any claims that this update is to enable a safer environment for younger individuals are outright false, as you've clearly demonstrated that you consider nsfw content as being allowed in sfw mode. Specifically you hand waved away the fact that you seemingly wish to allow pregnancy imagery and vore imagery involving underage characters. You have been told repeatedly why this rule change is wrong and you have consistently made no effort to correct this. Even going so far as to remove images pointing out your own argumentative flaws. Your moderation team, specifically Luffy, have shown they have no ability to properly distinguish anatomical differences in age when evaluating artwork involving non-humanistic phenotypical characters. They've been a constant defender of the changes and it's clear they're not fit to enforce the rules without heavily implementing their own personal biases into their decision making processes. Puritanism of this kind is amusingly hypocritical considering that nsfw furries, by their nature, are always going to be viewed as disgusting heathens by everyone outside of the fandom, and were a core part of the fandom from it's inception.

I don't think there's much to say here except rocking the boat on this was probably a bad idea lmao

I don't like these changes, I feel like they come up for no reason. It personally affects me in regards to my artistic freedom. I may not be someone that draws a lot of Poke'mon or Digimon I should have the right to draw them if I feel like it. Given that a character I make is BASED on these IPs I am the one that decides their age and maturity level and not their canon depiction. That is the whole idea behind aging up... I can take Misty and draw her as a legal adult despite her not being one in canon. Poke'mon and Digimon don't have age progression as they get older so how does one show they are older visually? Well if drawn on model you don't. The context of me saying they are an adult and having them act like it should be all you need to know. This isn't the same as the 1000 yr old Loli thing. Evolved Poke'mon and Digimon are not a reflection of their age only their power level. They are not Human and therefore OUR ideals of the physical age proportions DO NOT reflect theirs. I don't agree with any of this... It's unclear how and why you came to the choices you did...If this is some "defend the children"... Get the kids off the site and mark it 18+. I shouldn't have to worry about drawing Midna, a Kobold, or an Adult Riolu being against some TOS rule made just to shield eyes from kids that shouldn't be here. I have lots of concerns with this change... but I am trying to not be too rude here. I'll leave it at it's insulting toward us all. It attacks people that have been here for years just for liking cute poke'mon and having adult urges. There is an obvious difference in context between this art and cub stuff that is being ignored in favor of judging a book by it's cover... as in discrimination based on appearance. You can resolve the issue by repealing the changes completely... but the damage you have done to the community and your own reputation is not going to be fixed so easy or at all.

I do not like this change. It makes me feel like the site is being prepared to be sold. It affects me for transparency and new loophole abuse reasons. The parts that I agree with are a continuation of disallowing minor NSFW content on the site, but the parts that I disagree with are forbidding characters based on subjective reasons that are wholly within mod discretion. The things that are unclear to me or I would like more clarification on are which Pokémon and Digimon are banned when drawn on-model, as there is clearly some sort of incomplete list. Here are the other issues and concerns I have with the policy update: A returning attack on anatomically short species (koalas, corgis, kobolds), as well as the reintroduction of craniography being applied to artwork. The addition of language to explicitly allow uploading of artwork of 13-17 year old minors who are pregnant being perma-vored while marked under the "General" maturity rating. Here are the ways that I think these issues could be resolved: Reverse the recent changes to prior existing rules, or provide a complete list of which species of Pokémon and Digimon are bannable if depicted in NSFW art. Comprehensive lists of the entirety of the current canon species of both franchises exist, make an objectively clear list of which creatures would be offensive or not under the new changes. Do not push the burden of research and making such lists on the users who do not have access to the mods' sensibilities when judging artwork. Also please understand that the use of "vore" as opposed to "eaten" makes an artwork explicitly sexual or arousal-inducing in purpose. Also pregnancy inserts the knowledge that the minors in the newly-allowed art (under the 2.7 rule changes) had sexual intercourse, or were oviposited.

I'm not an artist. I have been a follower/lurker for the better part of a decade. So i will concede that Im ultimately less impacted by whatever decision is made, but I think that its important to have the opinion of both the artists affected and the users who SUPPORT the artists and the SITE itself. I agree with the SPIRIT of the update (or any update) that intends to protect minors. I AGREE that REAL, and IRL CP should be taken out with swift action and punishment. Frankly speaking, perhaps its time to just make the sight 18+ or 21+ and stop trying to pretend that the Furry community (regardless of if artists draw NSFW stuff) is not an ADULT oriented community. However FAKE Animals, or Anthropomorphized characters, Rule 34 of fictional cartoon stuff, just should not be held to the same standard as IRL CP. Period. This new Rule specifically is itself hypocritical. As its been stated, you cannot just in the same sentence, ban on a broad stroke, every "child-like proportion" character with no evaluated context, while also saying that "Vore and Pregnant 13 year olds" are ok. Respectfully, that's just creepy. User @Shrike above mentioned the issue with Groomers, and I agree wholeheartedly with those points As for specific characters mentioned, its been said by nearly everyone, it leaves no room for proper context or evaluation and is too easily abused. Is the character childlike in proportion regardless of age, are they more animal like, is the character itself (from established lore) an adult or ageless, or with characters like Gatomon or Pichu etc. etc. are they adults in one context vs children in another. Context MATTERS. Not to hash up old stuff, but I was never in agreement with the '100yearoldlol1' change but I at least understood that in its CONTEXT and the loopholes. For this change the context makes little sense and leaves too much room for abuse or hasty judgment. And calling anyone who likes Eevee a Pedophile is not a great start.

Got nothing much to say apart from the fact that a lot of artists I know have outright nuked there accounts because of this. We need some kinda of clarification and damage control as people are just panicking a delegating there accounts.

I only have one thing to add: Please deliver the feedback to the people who wants to enforce this change. It would be a huge disaster if this would be ignored. This comment is not meant as ill intend. It is just a request.

https://pastebin.com/raw/YK2bRDXi Please read in full.

Holy essays batman

I have been a user of your site for probably 8 or 9 years now, and these rule changes make me incredibly uncomfortable. Vore is sexual in nature and should not be depicted as something done by children Why are we allowing children ages 13-17 to appear pregnant in art? That is outright proof that that child was r||ape||d You very much can provide a list of every banned Pokemon and digimon. It's a finite list of things and if you're going to ban them it's on you to state specifically which ones are and are not banned because it would be unfair if an artist spent x number of hours on a piece just to have it taken down because the rule wasn't clearly stated. Age and evolution are not the same thing, no Pokemon gains levels or evolves based off time and unless your character is elderly how would you age them up to show they're an adult? Digimon however do evolve based off of age so I think first form Digimon should probably be considered minors

I've been on this site since 2008, I've seen rules change, sometimes for the better but sometimes for the worse, and I've been thinking since the very first 2.7 update journal on the 19th that your staff knew they were getting into a can of worms better not opened because disabling comments removes the ability to receive feedback on the matter. I'm not good with words and I'm not an artist, I'm a commissioner and a lover of pokemon and digimon alike but will this really stop there? The entire nimbat community is in shambles right now too, small cute creatures that, when not made exceptionally anthro, could fall afoul of this just as much as something like Impmon or Celebi. I've even deleted some commissioned images already at the request of the artists because they didn't want to have it marked as cub content even in another gallery, which makes it even more sad that peoples reputations are so at risk that they feel the need to ask their clients to remove things years later, and it's just not right or fair to anyone involved, especially after someone's already started getting harassed over this new label on art that was never intended to be seen as such at any point. If this were really about protecting minors, then I'd like to add my name to the list of 'Ban minors from the site entirely', there is too much porn in this fandom for anywhere hosting it to be 'safe' for them, and there are no checks to stop them from making accounts and lying about their age. Minors being groomed on FA isn't just a fear or a 'might' happen, it DOES happen and I've seen it happen first-hand before with no one on the site doing anything to protect them from real danger. The best way you can protect them is to make it harder/impossible for them to access the website in the first place, because it's not only the content of the images that's harmful to them, it's the small number of ill-intentioned users participating in illegal actions and no amount of censorship will change that.

This update bad because the rules vague & hypocritical

No reasonable person wants CP on here. A proportionately large head does not a child make. Both of these statements are true. I'm against this update as written because using human proportions to universally determine what is and is not a child on a site that caters to non-human characters with a variety of body types makes no sense. You said species would be taken into account but then decided a corgi violates this rule for having corgi-like proportions. This change concerns me greatly as I draw a lot of species-based size difference in my art but my characters are all adults. I used to favor the 1/8 head scale across the board but I found that made smaller characters look EXTREMELY childlike as it resulted in them having tiny, delicate features. By playing with proportions, I ended up with small characters that had heads, hands and feet that were comparable to my 'full sized' characters. To me, that communicated the same level of maturity and development between them much more effectively than the previous style did. This focus on proportions using the 1/8 scale is ironically asking me to revert to an art style I abandoned because I thought it produced 'childlike characters' and is why I'm not happy with this update. You are basically trying to enforce hard rules on something that is ultimately left to individual interpretation. Also, the support ticket system is SLOW. I submitted mine Friday afternoon and I've heard NOTHING. Ticket volume is no excuse. That is a result of poor decision making and lack of communication from the admins. If there are too many tickets then you need to bring on more folks to handle it. If that is not an option, then you need to enable some form of communication you CAN manage. As an artist who makes living off of commissions, I need a stable environment in which I can conduct business. If FA can't provide that for me then I'm going to find someplace that can.

Can we please make Vore classed as mature content instead of General. Since you are eating another living being. (You don't call eating a pizza vore. You call it eating.) Isn't this what the Mature tag was built for. Anything that isn't Adult or General. But as an inbetween.

Minors are already in a vulnerable position, they don't need FA creating a perfect situation for people to confuse and predate. It's pretty clear that the mods are cherry picking the kinks they want to see minors in. Gross.

i am going to edit this for a full comment later, but a very troubling thing is that many people i am watching are leaving completely or partially for inkbunny, we mostly all know about that site and why this is bad, its code is pretty good by a lot of standards, even if its rules are bad, but sense its function as a pice of code, people are going there as an alternative, i know this puts it out of FA's hands, but its going to expose people to real cub "..." alongside what fa is now blanket banning because they cannot tell it apart easily, this unfortunately will make the problem worse, and will make following artists, especially pokemon ones for people that became furries from pmd like games a risk, because now the people lying about their age will be exposed to the real thing

I would like to start by saying I understand the intent behind the rule. I think it’s a noble attempt. I have seen posts on FA of underage characters being drawn with a “they are 18+” label under it, despite there being no aging up. I applaud the attempt to close that loophole. However I am shocked by this weird attempt to quantify proportions into numbers? Art doesn’t work like that, and I’d be shocked if anyone who understands cartoony or chibi art styles worked on this rule. The art of the community is diverse and this is going to section off so many people who make a living on FA. I’ve seen so many artists say that their ADULT SONAS that are just small, short stacks, or just are in their unique style, were being flagged as CP. that’s ridiculous. I’ve seen people who I know that are CSA survivors being told their adult proportioned Riolu character makes them a pedophile. Essentially calling a child r*pe victim a pedo. I think that’s awful. I understand the intent, i really do, but the rollout is incomprehensible. You are limiting artistic expression by banning entire STYLES. Furaffinity is supposed to be a haven where those of us who have unique interests are safe to express ourselves. But many ADULTS with their ADULT SONAS are being pushed out. You’re attempting to quantify and measure art, make rules that tell you for sure if something is cub, but that’s just not possible. It’s not just been one or two bad tickets. It’s been dozens that I’ve seen, of adult characters being told that they’re children. I love FA. It’s where I first started posting my art. I don’t wanna see it die. Please, roll this back and think again about what you’re doing.

I think the new rule needs clear guidelines and less guesswork in it's moderation. I believe there is a lot of concern that one moderator might declare a work in violation of the rules, when another might say it is fine. I believe there has already been precedent for this. Although there is an appeal process, the consequences may be too great if it can result in suspensions quickly. It creates an unsafe and uncertain atmosphere. Works which are declared in violation of the rules due to physicality I think there needs to be clear visual guidelines to help artists and moderators understand what is and isn't allowed. Not just text based descriptions. Fortunately, it is a community of artists! Perhaps the team could work with artists to help illustrate examples, sfw.

Consider lessening/removing the stacking penalty for all content uploaded before June 1st 2023 so people have less to be terrified over. (Additionally, this should help mitigate issues for people blindsided after a lengthy absence... should people go dredging to make trouble.) Simply delete the submissions with no further punishment. Then, its easier for users to swallow the idea of simply doing some backup on their account to make sure they have copies of things with less terror about being completely destroyed by a rule they cannot readily discern the limitations of. Understandably the policy is vague enough to prevent loophole abuse, but right now the big box of "Powdered proportions, just add context" as a method of measuring fault is simply not accurate enough. You may need to provide a some general ballpark of what sorts of themes, aesthetics, content, proportion (when found together) are likely to result in an infraction. Since you are speaking of making this an escalating problem for repeat offenders, to severe effect, users absolutely must be able to discern where the line is in some repeatable fashion - otherwise there needs to be stated flexibility for good faith/non-combative instances where a user is caught off guard... The pokemon/digimon topic was left alone because it was troublesome to tackle, since the argument of animal/human vs morality vs etcetc (every other pivot topic to deflect the subject) is front and center when talking about these two very popular subjects. While revoking the exception is an obvious step on the timeline to be tackled after you had time to consider how to handle it gracefully and there are a good number of people that seem to feel that they have at least a vague concept of what you're intending, we shouldn't ignore the fact that there are also a significant number of users that the policy's ideas of context/proportion/theme/aesthetic is self-stated as being non-obvious to. If you're not going to elaborate further on the policy itself, it is my opinion that you should be seeking to soften up the punishment side of things to make sure that accidents are not handled as severely, especially in cases where staff members should be readily able to discern that the user would appear to be intending to abide the rules.

Hello, I feel like these new guidelines will be extremely harmful in the long-run. When rules are left up to discretion on whether or not a post breaks them, it creates an environment of fear, not something that would encourage artists to keep posting. Also on the topic of some species such as first-stage Pokemon, many people have fursonas that are these species because they identify closely with them. I've seen many people on social media say that they have their first-stage sonas because they are very short in real life, and like having these species to be able to identify with in their base forms. Heck, I have a Rattata fursona myself. I'm not short irl, but I do identify closely with her. Please, do not go through with this change. All it will do is alienate tons of normal users, and abusers will always find a way to circumvent rules. Please keep FA as it is! Also as a side note: I do believe that minors should be banned outright from making accounts due to how much fetish content lives in the General tag, but that is likely a topic for a different discussion.

I am strongly against this policy change and see it as a threat to creative expression. If the goal is to ban cub, cub was already banned. Most websites, when they ban cub/loli/shota, do so with a simple "don't post nsfw of minors" and leave it at that. It's simple and leaves room for interpretation, but it also understands that rules and laws are blunt instruments and ensures that peoples characters and personal relationships with characters and art at large are not specifically targeted. Any more specificity leaves openings for things to be banned that aren't cub, and ensures that there will be situations where contradictory bans/allowances will occur. "Why did you ban me but allow this" etc etc. "Child-coded" is a term I'm seeing thrown around a lot that neglects how incredibly useless it is as terminology with regards to banning things. Whether or not something looks like a child, especially for non human creatures, is oftentimes subjective and can hit things that are not intended to be viewed as children. Using the update as an example, it mentions Eevee as childlike. Eevee is a fictional monster based on foxes. It has little bearing on reality and it's design reflects that. The rules specify that such designs must be aged up, but how can one even say what am aged up eevee looks like if it sticks to the design of the show. And, if the goal is to ban the specific design of the show, you hurt a large number of creatives and indirectly refer to their art as cub regardless of intent, and in doing so insult the artists themselves and limit how they can create. There are many many artsyles that play with proportions, that play with "cute" designs in such a way where they could be considered childlike even without being intended to be. These artists should not be punished for choosing to draw in an art style they find appealing and prefer. This entire policy update was unnecessary and should have never happened

Digimon don't evolve purely by age, that's not true. They evolve by absorbing data, either from the environment or by battling other digimon. "If left to its own devices a Digimon will naturally age, and over time may digivolve using data from the environment" I just wanted to leave this here. Digivolution mostly depends on much data the Digimon has occurred. If the digimon is goes around killing everything in sight it will evolve far sooner than most. ETA: Partner pokemon are different. However, when a Digimon forms a bond with a human, they may digivolve more quickly. Using a Digivice, humans can allow a Digimon to almost-instantaneously digivolve to a higher level by sharing their energy. This action takes a large amount of energy and cannot happen if the Digimon is weak, injured or hungry. Digimon who digivolve using a digivice will degenerate. You can just check the wiki for these things. Age won't work with digimon.

Hi! I'm just leaving my feedback on how this policy may succeed or fail in it's stated goal. Regarding the intent, it makes sense to try and crack down on content that is unacceptable on the platform and you have my full support in that endeavor. However the way you have chosen to do this is utterly backwards and ineffective proportion of characters (both in real life and in fiction) is an extremely varied subject that cannot be used as an indicator of of age or intent in art. If you are truly trying to close the loophole it may be better to focus on the overall presentation of characters rather than solely their proportions. Children may have a body type, but that body type does not make a character a child. Furthermore, focusing only on a body type and not on the actual factors that make pedophilia an issue in the first place (such as the mental faculty of and ability to consent of the person involved) feels like a very odd specification to make. If you are truly worried about the exploitation or grooming of children on your site I strongly recommend you approach that topic in the following ways: 1). providing proper tools on your site to sort and tag content (especially blacklisting tags) 2). Ban accounts of minors or restrict their access to the site through notes and comments so that they cannot participate in what is a mostly adult community until they are actually adults. 3). Judge content based on the full context of its posting, rather than arbitrary and subjective rules such as the proportion rule. Ideally take presentation and intent into account, and especially take into account whether or not a character is emotionally an adult or child regardless of their body type. The policy as it stands leaves more loopholes for actual harm than it closes and only alienates and angers your own community. Many of us are fearful that even if our art isn't ticketed, we will have no community left to produce art for as everyone will have jumped to sites that don't make them feel uncomfortable or have to fear that they will be falsely accused of quite possibly the worst possible thing you can be accused of. That's all! Thank you for your time.

At this point there isnt much I can say that hasnt been said ad nauseam. Despite the small userbase that uses this server when compared to the main site, the feedback given here is overwhelmingly negative to how this rule change is worded and enacted. Not to mention the swathes of artists that released journals warning their watchers to save whatever artwork they can since they will completely clear out coming june 1st. To just stubbornly push through with the changes in their current form would cause lasting damage to fa's userbase and community. More than it already has, I mean.

Just wanted to chime in with my own input as an artist whose been using FA for over a decade and considers it my favorite website. I worry about the changes and find it odd that proportions are being used as the main judgement for enforcement of the rule. Ive been cartooning my whole life, and one of my favorite things about cartoon and comics is fun that comes from playing with proportions rather than sticking directly to realistic proportions.

I am strongly opposed to the enforcement change. It is already clear to me from the examples given that art of adults will be swept up in this. I’ve paid for FA+ since last year and will be cancelling if the change goes into effect.

As it stands the terms are still ambiguous and vulnerable to loopholes for both takedowns of unoffending artwork and still allowing harmful content to remain on the site, whether this was intentional or not is still up to interpretation. Please be more specific, because what I am getting from the terms currently is a half-hearted attempt at policing content. Should the guidelines be updated please take a more granular approach and allow for community involvement in decision making.

TLDR: Thing's a huge mess (business killer) that should've never left the oven in was claimed to have been baked in - no matter how urgent this change was. Even then it should've been stated otherwise: "Emergency Action!" for example. Rules with sweeping blanket-statements and catch-alls that contradict themselves are useless, can't be understood by anyone (including people enforcing them) and are by definition unenforceable. It makes the rules arbitrary, not arbitrators. What would fix this? Publicly sourced and referenced guides that describe What is meant by the rule, Why the rule is how it is and Where those definitions are coming from. If you are going to use language like "adult proportions" or "child-like features", you're expected to be ready and able to define and specify what those are on a fictional, age-less creatures - with actual sources and not just "because I (want to [wtf]) see a child in that". No matter what situation, no matter the context, you should be able to read and understand where the lines are and why. If you are going to decide if something is an adult or a child (even if they are not), you are expected to be public, open and easy to understand while doing it. Open, public, transparent and explained environment can and will alleviate some Bad even from Really Bad Rules. And do I even need to remind you that you've quite literally accepted highly-sexualized content of Minors in very much sexual situations as long as the Child-character stays SFW? Excuse my language: "What the Fuck You Sick Fucks"! If you are allowing using sexual kinks/fetishes on child characters, why does Furaffinity even have a Cub Ban to begin with? Language. Matters. And the way you allow the language to be used.. Why the hell does Furaffinity insist on disabling and covering up any and all of the discussion on the topic? No comments, no places to discuss.. Telling. Also WhyTF do I need to buy Nitro to be able to "essay" my concerns in meaningful way..? Thanks!

Pokemon and Digimon artists are leaving in droves thanks to the new rules being implemented and in the worst time ever. Also the fact the new TOS now alows minors in sexual situations despite any instance of cub art banned for obvious reasons.....tells you wanted to attract more bad actors in the site than ever. This is gonna burn the site down far worse than what happened in 2012.

I support FA not allowing cub art but the way the new policy goes about doing this doesn’t make any sense. Banning sexual art involving baby Pokémon makes sense but some of the Pokémon you’ve listed being banned are not baby Pokémon. Cubchoo, Cubone, Torchic, Ralts, Gothita and Eevee are not baby Pokémon they’re first stage evolutions. Any of these Pokémon could be adults and breed. Evolution does not equal age. If you’re confused on what Pokémon classify as baby Pokémon you can look at a list of them on Bulbapedia. You also can’t tell a Digimon’s age solely by it’s evolution. A rookie level Digimon does not equal a child. Renamon is a rookie level Digimon and you would crazy if you tried to say that all Renamon are children. A lot of Digimon will stay in their rookie leve to conserve less energy. Agumon, Impmon, Gatomon, and Veemon aren’t children they’re just short. I also have a problem with child characters being allowed in “non sexual fetishes”. First of all there’s no such thing as a non sexual fetish, implying there is can put minors in danger of predators trying to lure them in by interacting with them about “non sexual fetishes”. People that make vore art do it because it turns them on. Child characters shouldn’t be involved in any type of fetish or pregnancy art. I feel like it’s a bad idea to try to make FA more child friendly when this website is known for it’s porn it should and the way you’re trying to go about isn’t good. FA should just be an 18+ website.

As a person directly affected by this policy, a part of one of the highlighted fandoms, and a general member of the furry fandom for well over a decade and some, my opinion is straight up, disagreeing. For a variety of reasons: 1) I do not think this is helping minors. Your entire intention is, supposedly, protection of them. Minors stumbling across NSFW content and being corrupted by it do not need to find content of NSFW-involving-minors to be affected by it. This rule, at its best, knocks out a very small slice of NSFW furry art. There will continue to be plenty of material available for a wayward minor to find themselves in front of, and this isn't doing anything to keep them out of NSFW places in general. 2) The policy allowing for fetishes to be accessible by minors is enormously out of touch with the community. The community as a whole wants to keep minors out of NSFW spaces. Obviously this includes straight up sexual situations, but non-sexual fetishes LIKE VORE are not considered "SFW" by most definitions, and most of the vore community does not feel comfortable with their material being in front of minors. Carving out that exception just makes people feel like this policy was not created by members of the furry fandom, or at best, members with their own opinions rather than opinions catering to that of the fandom at large. 3) This is redundant. Minors are already supposedly blockaded from sexual submissions, as a whole. Who is a policy that blockades sexual material, already barricaded from minors eyes, helping? The adults that were the only audience allowed to see it? That doesn't sound like a policy that's aimed at minors. This is adding to the disingenuous feeling behind the policy, as well as feeling like the actually affected people are being secretly targeted for reasons not disclosed. 4) Adding to the out-of-touch-ness, this policy feels like it was someone who doesn't understand the material. There is no such thing, canonically, as a "minor" Pokemon. If you look over the material, Pokemon do not physically adjust very much from adult to death, and there is very little, if any depictions of newborn or adolescent Pokemon. There ARE, however, depictions of clearly adult and elderly Pokemon 1st stages. Given that 1st stages are routinely breeding-capable, it's entirely reasonable to assume that canonical, standard depictions of all Pokemon are adults. Ergo, the default Eevee, Vulpix, or whatever else, are by default, adults at any given time. The only way you can depict an underaged Pokemon is to age them down. Banning standard proportions feels like personal opinion, not true-to-the-material or sub-fandom-interests policy. None or barely any of us in the Pokemon-fur fandom agree with these policies and we know our issues with minors. This policy will not help us. It will only harm our existence. Especially with the view that this feels like it's missing its stated purpose of helping minors and more like it's targeting adults. 5) Furry websites with censorship fail. The furry fandom has a consistent history of people who hate the environment of less censored galleries and trying to make "the art gallery that people actually want!" with a swath of policies that ban this, that and the other thing. They all fail, or are barren. Look at FLO, at Buzzly, FurryNetwork. FA isn't the universal one-stop hub of furry that it used to be, and I don't feel like this policy is going to help that. FA needs content to survive, and policies that further restrict content are antithetical to that purpose. On the flip side, look at Twitter and E6, and how vibrant the furry presence is there. What do those two places have in common? Less restrictions than anywhere else. This policy won't grow FA. It will only drive users away. At which point, how effective is a robust policy of a barren website? I think these policies were made with no foundation as to how minors find content they shouldn't. This helps nothing.

Though I know I'm falling on deaf ears, I personally believe your best bet is to repeal these recent actions, and hold everyone on staff to higher standards. Regardless of what flimsy justifications you may have for your mistakes, the fact is you still made them, and then handled them poorly. More and more backlash has become the norm, and it's clear that said backlash isn't for no reason. People are not happy with the policy changes, and people are most definitely not happy with staff. ETA: I also realize this may come across as a blanket statement, so for clarification I should add that not all staff handled things as poorly as others. There are clearly members of the staff team that have made obvious efforts to bring about positive change. This is not to undermine them, or to misconstrue them, either. The problem is that they are undermined by their fellow staff members who do NOT make the effort to bring positive change, or outright instigate negative change or responses from the community.

The intent behind the rule is fine, and the idea itself makes sense, but the implementation of said rule is really weak. The clarity provided is a mix between a hard line and a new long list of loopholes that someone could draw something, other questions such as If someone draws a 12 year old or a 13 year old what is the actual difference at that point? with an adult and child theres differences, but its not like a 12 and 13 year old are that different, so youve basically just left in the "im 5 million" loophole it feels like (which is supposedly the point of the new rules) On the other hand you have the outright ban of some pokemon/digimon which is more the hard line approach. I get the logic and to an extent get why youve mentioned some of the ones you did, but theres alot of examples that are missing that you have to play "does this have enough similarities to x to be also on this list". the digimon/pokemon wont affect me, but if i did have one in this category its really unclear Im still not 100% certain im not at risk by being a kobold because while a mod has said "im good" i feel like i have to avoid alot of artists simply because their art style will not be "up to standard" on my usual pieces im fine, and for the most part i dont do the more cutesy/cartoony look on NSFW anyways, but the issue remains with me being smaller as a kobold, if one admin says "yes", id need reasurance that another wouldnt go "no" to really feel like i could use the site as i had if this goes live. Imo this should be walked back or the already terrible damage to both reputation and userbase (i dont think that alot of the users youve lowkey said "your character is a child youve drawn child porn" to will be coming back) and it should either be heavily edited so its not full of loopholes, proposed back to the community rather than shoved on a note like this time and QA'ed almost around it. Also id advise removing the whole "13 year old pregnant vore ok" regardless of removal.

I feel like the new rules you that were ecently implemented are really making creators upset and making them not want to make the content they love to make not to mention that you could start losing users. And them the site will fall and it's not gonna be good for users that loved the page also the new rules contradict themselves, also didn't the cub ban exist already?. Also FA is an 18+ site then why are you making it child friendly it is Completely Irrational

i have a lot to say so it's in a pastebin. I am upset but i want to assure you that i've thought out my words carefully and that they are said with a level head, albeit a sharp tongue. https://pastebin.com/w23h2VJg. ETA: pastebin detected nsfw content and forced me to list it as private. you have to log in to see it. T.T ETA 2: try a google link. bleh. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Wzw8n1hmi7ZhvBlCQ-7sSMrMNWNjtkxuiqIKjYImksY/edit?usp=sharing

Feel free to edit this post to include your feedback.

From ze pin: We will go back through edited feedback and reevaluate it. If you edit, it's recommended you put "ETA" (edit to add) before the content you are adding. This allows us to search for "ETA" and more easily find edited feedback.

Since I saw it, btw, please send in a Trouble Ticket for any NSFW ad you see while you have SFW toggled. Those should not be shown and may be a clerical or ad service error.

This feedback, btw, is great and substantial - keep it coming, please!

Howdy howdy! Just wanted to post a quick lil' thingy here. I'm a greymuzzle at this point... I think. So around the time I started, Pokemon and Digimon were really popular and was drawing a lot of folks to FA. I mean, even the owner of the site has (or had?) an Eevee character as well as a Digimon fursona. The current implementation of this change seems to negatively affect a lot of folks who also have characters and fursonas from these IPs. It wasn't long ago, but you didn't see very much queer representation in media ten years ago. Most of the media you took in back then was about how to be heterosexual. So characters that had no explicit sexuality, that were cute, or depicted as strong, comforting and heroic -- these became really popular comfort characters for furries of my generation. These were characters you could project your wants, desires, hopes onto. Plenty of folks picked up Eevee as a fursona because they connect with that core "tabula rasa" idea, that you can be anyone. It seems super hard to maintain a site like FA. I'm endlessly appreciative for all the space that the community has given me to muck around and find myself. I'd hate to see that journey end for folks who have small fursonas like that, because I know how much it means to people to be allowed to be their authentic selves. From my perspective there are a few other design problems with the proposed changes, but I imagine that with the constant influx of feedback regarding the changes, I don't need to pile on. I wish you guys the best. You've got this! Let's have a better FA together. I'm sure you guys can rethink this policy a little to make sure that everyone feels safe to express themselves, and that the new generation can inherit our community and learn its stories in peace and comfort. ❤️

I do not like this change. It makes me feel angry, depressed, and fearful of what will come next. It affects me, because I’ve seen how this plays out before. It’s the slow and steady swing towards puritanism. I’ve always kind of championed FA. It was my home for most of my life, I’ve pushed people back to it over the years, knowing it’s a stable place. But this kind of undermines all of that. The old ruleset was fine, the no 1000 year old cub vampire thing made perfect sense. I’ve seen people use that to get around the rules, and it was always so easy to spot. When someone is drawing cub, it’s easy to tell just at a single glance. Pokémon however, do not fall into that. If they’re anthropomorphized, sure, it’s easy to tell. But on model? That’s ridiculous. A 100 year old eevee and a day old eevee look the same. It needs to be done based on context, not species. It also messes with people who have cute art styles. Suddenly, a bunch of people are being accused of being rapists, pedophiles, and worse. This rule change sets an awful precedent that can be used to hurt other groups in the future. It’s only a matter of time before the puritans that pushed this go after the people into puppy play and feral next. Pushing us into being cookie cutter “good queers” that their conservative daddy would only call slurs behind their back. For a website that’s base is largely LGBT+, this is a dangerous thing to do. I want FA to be a safe space for all queer people, but this goes against that. I understand wanting to get cub porn off the site, I do. But this is not the way to do it. I strongly suggest you just roll things back to the way they were. Though, I don’t know if the damage that’s been done will ever be undone. You’ve scared and hurt a lot of people by doing this. Destroyed peoples’ lives and livelihoods. It’s been painful to watch.

I'd like to echo. To me, and a lot of others, FA has always been predominately an adult art website first and in a world where time and time again websites keep bending their knees and crippling themselves for children it's very unfortunate to see FA do what seems to be the same. Children don't need more sites nowadays, there's already so many for them. What we need is more rocksteady sites for adults to, ya know, be adults. I wholeheartedly agree with the make FA 18+ train

My whole issue is just drawing the line pokemon and art styles that can seem iffy like chibi styles but then be absolutely okay with minors still being in fetish and kink art like vore, keep underaged characters out of that shit

In my opinion policing "thought crimes" of any sort in cartoon artwork is illogical: I love me some Jay Naylor, Wolfy-Nail, etc art and the themes they oft depict in a fictional context but that doesn't mean I'm gonna go fuck some dude's wife and rub it in his face. I also like feral stuff, but I'm not going out and fucking real life horses. I play Grand Theft Auto but I have yet to go steal someone's car and mow down unsuspecting pedestrians for the 20$ in their pocket. Fiction is -meant- to be a place for us to explore the otherwise unthinkable in a safe setting where no one comes to harm. Folks' hearts are in the right place when they support bans for this content - no one (of any respectable and healthy position) wants a real-life child to come to harm, but many of those same people wouldn't oppose other forms of violent or immoral content in their fiction. It's a position driven by fear alone ("why not just ban the content, we don't know that cartoons -don't- harm minors!"), and this represents an (appeal to emotion) logical flaw. The truth is, artwork of Pichu getting drawn as being gang-raped and eaten by a Tyrannosaur isn't going to harm anyone. Artwork of true-to-her-age Misty getting dicked isn't going to harm anyone. Cartoons are incapable of consent regardless what age their characters are depicted, since they are merely ink on paper or pixels on a screen. The notion that "this repulses me" is what tagging systems are for; if a user doesn't like scat they can blacklist the tag. Some sites have a more opt-in approach where a new account would have to remove things like that from a default blacklist. Lots of immoral situations come up in art (good art is supposed to make you FEEL things!), but preventing it from being posted on FA isn't protecting anyone, and serves only to drive the people who feel similarly away to sites that allow the content they want to post while the remaining community gains a solidary place to let their illogical hate for the banned content fester even further. Artistic expression should be a strongly upheld freedom for any respectable website that hosts and lets people upload their artwork. When a website places restrictions on which pixels are more OK to display than others they are doing a disservice to the entire community by allowing the very same hate that the furry fandom itself has dealt with for years prevail and dig its claws into the next "group of weirdos" that the "normal" people can judge without repercussions, forcing people who mean no harm to any real-life soul to lose their commissions, friends, and reputations. The furry fandom should be better than that. ETA: A possible solution for this I know it's been mentioned before but "blacklists and tagging." More specifically I have thoughts on a good way to implement it: Once the interface/api is built to support it, give every post in the database that already exists a "godfathered post" tag. Then create a list of default blacklisted tags, possibly including "godfathered" posts as well as "cub" "vore" "scat" "gore" "diapers" or whatever else the moderation feels is a good "starting point". Put a policy in place that punishes folks who post content with these tags, who do not tag them appropriately. To remove the "godfathered" tag, the creator need only go to their post and tag it with the appropriate tags. Could also enlist the aid of other users or moderation that wish to go through 15+ years of old posts and tag them appropriately. With a tagging system like this in effect, FA could be brought to the modern-day among sites like e621, Inkbunny, and the rest that already support similar systems. Rather than trying to appease the "vocal majority" of the community that is repulsed by X or Y thing by removing it, empower them to remove themselves from being subjected to it and let a combination of moderation and reports focus purely on propper tagging and removing only content which violates the law ALSO FA should be 18+

First post in this server and woo boy I have a bit to say on the matter: > - You cannot have any subjectivity in your rules, especially when the potential result is being labelled as having drawn CP and potentially having your livelihood ruined if FurAffinity is where you do most of your commission work. Subjective opinion should not be involved in a ruling. > - The general idea of this rule is good, loli/shota/cub (they're all CP) should straight up burn. However, as said above, the old ruleset worked fine. The 1000 year old vampire that looks like a child should most certainly not be lewded. However, what about drawing species on-model that barely change their appearance (like Eevee, one of the most popular Pokesonas of all time)? Guess we'll just die too. > - These updates really should have been looked over thoroughly and made absolutely MONOLITHIC before being announced to the public. All the lack of proper clarification and insertion of subjectivity has done is create stress and anxiety for your community, as well as create discourse between two camps to the point it's cannibalizing itself. > - Did you seriously think making a policy update that would throw your site's users into a panic was a good idea when you don't have enough mod staff to even have a hope of keeping up with the tickets, the site is a buggy mess and tends to go down pretty frequently compared to other sites of its kind, and when people have been asking for things for years, y'know, LIKE A BLACKLIST? > - Genuinely, what the actual fuck were you guys thinking? "Mental maturity doesn't matter" (nice job creating a loophole where an adult character that's mentally a child that literally cannot consent can be drawn), "Minors involved in non-sexualized interests like vore are allowed" (vore is primarily a FETISH, massive yikes), and "Minors younger than 13 cannot be depicted as pregnant" (oh, so just draw a pregnant 14 year old, gotcha). I think most people with more than two braincells to rub together can see the fucking issue here. I'm sorry if my frustration is showing in here. I know some of the mod staff have no control over policy updates, I'm just really tired of all this already. Y'all are just stressing out your community, and at this point, it's spiraled out of control into a hurricane of bullshit with you guys at the center. I just want all of this to be over and done with. I'm not sure where I'll be going, since a lot of people seem to be splitting from FurAffinity to different sites. All of these issues have just been building, and I think this whole situation was the straw that finally broke shattered the camel's back. All of this isn't even a circus anymore... It's an ENTIRE STATE CARNIVAL.

Too many contradictions in the "clarifications", this started because the long existing rule didn't include pokemon/digimon and now it does right? Several artists I follow who refuse to draw underage characters are being told their work with no pokemon or digimon present, that it no longer fits. Its body discrimination despite reassurance it isn't. Adults with cute characters representing themselves are being told they "appear too young". What is being said publicly and what is being said privately are two completely different things. Vore and Transformation are sexual fetishes. Saying they appear on TV could be applied to any fetish on the site short of gore (already against the rules) or WS/Pregnancy. (Which is now allowed for 13-17?) Cartoons have characters tied up, hypnotized, and in all sorts of weird situations that can be seen as fetish material. Changing the policy from a flat "no fetishization of minors" to having these weird cutouts is really creepy. Differences in drawing style and cartoonish characters makes it incredibly messy to assign ages to things that have no real-world counterparts. And yet real world counter-parts are absolutely allowed, a small but mature breed of dog can be drawn lewd but an Eevee is going too far? I do not support pedophilia or zoophilia, in both cases they are incapable of consenting, and yet art of one is okay and the other is not. What is the moral difference between a "1000 year old" loli and an "intelligent" feral? Ultimately we are dealing with pixels, I'm not sure who is being harmed by pokemon/digimon fanarts. But I'm sure the community can provide an extensive list of artist names whose livelihoods and mental wellbeing are being negatively impacted by the way this is being handled. Every other journal entry from my followed artists in recent days is about how to find them in case they get kicked off the site, or them leaving. We need tag blacklists, should have dealt with problematic artists privately.

I have given this feedback to the moderators in the official Telegram channel, but it bears repeating here where feedback is being officially collected. This policy change needs to be walked back entirely. Frankly, the rollout has been so disastrous that the policy change itself is no longer the main issue, though it does come with substantial problems. It has been handled in an extremely unprofessional way, and every "clarification" seems to be making it worse. FurAffinity cannot salvage this policy update. The only thing to do is say "We have made a mistake, and we are cancelling the implementation of this update until further notice (not simply to a delayed date - cancelled altogether) while we take time to evaluate the community's feedback and consider the best direction to take." As for the policy itself, here is my feedback. First, I have no issue in principle with a ban on sexual art of underage characters, nor with closing the "1000-year-old loli vampire" loopholes in that ban. In fact, I would feel extremely uncomfortable using FA if such material were not banned. That being said, the wording of this update feels, paradoxically, both too heavy-handed and too vague. My main issue with the update is that it leaves far too much open to the interpretation of a moderator. While it's true that there is an appeals process and "checks and balances" on paper, the simple fact is that many of FA's users (as we can clearly see from the reactions) simply do not trust FA's mod staff to enforce these rules fairly, and instead see it as an opportunity for the moderators to "clean house" by removing content that they personally dislike (many of my friends in the babyfur niche, despite having never drawn anything that would fall afoul of these rules, have expressed considerable concern, especially after the last update which led to some of them - despite only posting art that was seemingly in line with the rules - get hit with high-level warnings and bans without any preamble) while protecting their own kink interests. This perception is further compounded by the oddly-specific exceptions carved out in the FAQ (13-17 y.o. pregnancy, vore/tf). I'm hesitant to bring up those exceptions, because I'm a little worried that the staff will see that, along with what everyone else is saying, and say "oh, okay, so if we remove those exceptions, everything will be fine" - unequivocally, it will not. To be clear, I'm not trying to speak for anyone other than myself; I'm just pointing out the perceptions that have been shared by people in my circles. None of this is intended to be disparaging towards the moderation staff; the simple fact is that this is the current perception, regardless of whether this perception is fair or not. Regardless of how we got to this point, we are at this point. The solution to this problem is threefold, and it echoes what many others are saying: 1) Walk back this update altogether and issue a serious, profound mea culpa. That is the absolute bare minimum required to salvage this disaster. If you don't do this, everything else you do is going to be pointless. 2) Every site development resource needs to be prioritized towards implementing a proper tagging system and blacklist - ahead of username changes, ahead of policy updates, ahead of EVERYTHING. I appreciate the technical challenge of implementing a new tagging system/blacklist over 15+ years of uploads, but regardless of the difficulty, it is unequivocally clear that it is absolutely necessary. 3) Consider making Furaffinity a strictly 18+ site. There is a little more "wiggle room" on this one, but it really should be given serious consideration. We do not live in the internet of 10 years ago; FA has survived "mass exoduses" before, but people have other options now. It's not the nexus it once was. I want FA to be successful - but if they continue to cling to this, they will not be.

You can’t say that arguments are straight-up not allowed because you don’t like them. LGBT people can speak for ourselves.

That's fair, though, like I said, this has been reported to me by some users within the LGBT community. I'll delete my comment and let people consider feedback the way it is. (For reference, I said that this policy change could not be compared to the struggles the LGBT community has faced, and that some were upset that association was being made.)

Sure the art itself doesnt. But the eagerness to label members of a queer community as pedophiles for doing nothing is incredibly reminiscent. You are not just “banning art” you are claiming. That art is child porn.

I just don’t get why FA didn’t just ban the people who were obviously pushing and trying to sneak in cub in the first place. We have a cub ban. The rule update is unnecessary. If someone is using like Ralts or something humanoid in appearance as a very, VERY obvious child stand-in, take it down. Otherwise, leave the Pokémon and digimon alone. This got turned into a shitshow for no good reason and your site and users will suffer for it. Also why in the world did y’all have to be like “pregnant minors vore is ok tho” ON YOUR POST ABOUT TAKING DOWN SUPPOSED CUB ART. 💀 that was the worst possible place to state it and the policy itself is very weird. Vore may be in cartoons but once you specifically label it vore, it’s a kink. Minors don’t belong in your kink, right??? That’s why y’all were trying to crack down right????? ETA: if you want any kind of lead on coding a blacklist feature, AO3 is open source! Their code is FREE! I know it won’t be a 1:1 match for FA, but at the very least it might give y’all a start on how to make it happen. Even a limited set of tags just for the major stuff would be cool. Ie: a tag for noncon, a tag for incest, a tag for small characters for those who find it too “close” to cub, a vore tag, a gore tag, A FREAKING SCAT AND FART TAG!!!! Please I’m begging lmao 😭 Users could suggest tags and the artist can contest them if inaccurate much like E621 (but maybe FA could do it… better? 😉 ) And of course, there’s so much art on FA, how do we retroactively tag it all? Well, we put a mark on all images that simply indicates that it’s untagged until changed otherwise. And give the artists no time limit to tag their works, it will eventually work itself out :3

I am... So confused if I am reading this wrong or something lol. I might be dense or tired. I think what that message is saying is "cub = pedo". However, you all are "upvoting" it, and I've only ever seen people argue against that association. I know we can't discuss here, so please #991905026064797818 to explain that if I am wrong.

Apparently I am very wrong LOL yeah someone please come explain that to me because I feel insane.

Luffy, you and the other mods have through these rules and your comments established a connection between people drawing in "cutesy" styles or drawing certain characters, and pedophilia. As Cheshiresgambles says, this attitude is reminiscent of the right-wing push to label all queer and noncomforming behaviour as pedophilic and unacceptable. It is a legitimate comparison. I have drawn veemon art (that Dragoneer has favourited) and I do NOT appreciate being told I'm a cub artist or a pedophile. We all get enough of that on twitter just for being non-heteronormative. To be honest Luffy, some of your communications make me feel like you have not been taking criticism in good faith. Edit just to be as clear as I possibly can: I do not consider chibi art styles, koopas, pokemon or digimon or any of the other styles you yourself have said are unacceptable to be "cub art". Whether something is "cub art" is not based on some head height or proportions. I am not a cub artist, and neither is argon vile or that corgi artist.

First time I've ever felt the need to make a substantive feedback post, but FurAffinity has been a key part of my life for the past ten years so it deserves it. The first thing that needs to be said is that "art of minors in sexual situations" being banned is a good policy and was never really the issue behind the backlash. Those people who draw or write such things moved on from FA a long time ago after the enforcement of the previous rules. It caught some harmless stuff in the crossfire, but broadly speaking the policies principles were never in question, just the nitty gritty of it's implementation and especially the attitude of certain mods towards completely non-sexual art in Babyfur/Diaperfur spaces that came across as targeted rather than actually in the rules as written or even its spirit (as someone in that community, this was the most notable issue, but it applies else ware as well). The update though was poorly worded and resulted a lot of confusion, since the previous policy seemed entirely satisfactory and was doing what it was designed to do: Remove art of minors that was sexually explicit from FA. A lot of people who had previously been posting work well within the rules suddenly felt as though they might fall foul of it because of unclear guidance about height, proportions and other vague statements that would be entirely up to moderators to enforce with no clear consistency. The Poke'mon/Digimon thing was more specific to that niche, but that's always been a huge part of FA's audience as well and making that side of things confused just muddled things massively and created Chinese Whispers issues online. Which is where the issues created by the clarifications come in. That, frankly, was just a very poorly thought out post that seemed to reinforce the concerns and justify the reasons behind the backlash. The things that were previously speculation suddenly were proven to be correct (the clear protections for vore and teen pregnancy in the rules were like throwing an entire tank of gasoline on a bonfire) and at that point, I think a lot of people who were previously angry at being put in the same camp as cub artists just had enough. It was a huge error, one that FA at this point will probably not live down. What I would like to see come out of this is the following: - A complete rollback on the previous two updates. Just state, with no equivocation, that the rules that are designed to come in on the 1st will not be implemented - A published code of moderator ethics that users can refer to whenever a decision is made. This includes moderators declaring what interests they have and, therefore, what degree of bias may be involved in any decision that can be assessed by users of the site without speculation, as well as a complete list of moderators who have clearly signed the document and said interests. The site is now far too big not to have this degree of transparency. - A clear set of policies about what is allowed on the site when it comes to areas that could be borderline. Ironically this was attempted in the previous update, but it only included two things that within the context of the post just seemed out of place. This can be updated with feedback, it does not need to be fixed. Saying "The sites categories" is fine at first, but as cases emerge, update a document to show this clearly (ideally with Yes/No examples). Saying "We don't allow 1000 year old dragon maids that are clearly kids" is great, but actually providing an example of that is genuinely helpful (censor areas of concern if needed, this does not need to involve actually publishing awful material in the doc) - A blacklist system for tagging and set tags for content that are site wide for ease of use. Custom tags should remain of course but these two things in tandem will help enormously with both site accessibility and a lot of issues people have with seeing content they'd rather not on the front page.

OOOOH. Gotcha, thank you. To that last bit, though, I would go through my message history. I did not intend to misinterpret the comparison, but reacted to some reports I got from concerned users. My apologies. I understand where the insinuation is drawn from, but to be clear, we do not equate liking cute/chibi/even cub porn to pedophilia. They are different. I'mma leave this to feedback since I've created confusion yet again.

T'was explained in a ticket, now I know wtf is going on. Thank you!

i just think a rule that could potentially paint people with a riolu OC in the same brush as pedophiles needs some serious revision

If the site stance is effectively "This kind of cute/chibi/cub" art style is unwelcome in FA due to the loli vampire rule" You effectively get members of the community like the user just above that DO make that comparison, regardless of what FA staff feels about it. The FA's purpose and intent of wanting the art out of the site all of a sudden after a over a decade of operations, causes people to look for solid reasons why, especially if the policy is so divisive in the community. EDIT: I think usually when sites do this, they do it out of legal/liability reasons, but FA's original stance is that it was what the community wanted.

I'm still on board with the new policy update, just the wording was problematic. It should have been kept simple. The point is that 2.7 now applies to Pokémon and Digimon. That's all the community needed to know and it would have avoided a lot of confusion. Add some specific examples of what is and isn't allowed under the new rules (unaltered Riolu bad, evolved Pokémon like Lucario ok) and everything would have been clear. I suggest roll it back, apologize for the confusion and bring it back later with a proper and clear wording.

i feel like most have already said my main criticisms with the site policy, so i'll use my message here to attempt to explain this: there is a lot of discourse regarding whether or not fictional content like cub/loli/shota counts as "real pedophilia" or "real child porn." people who are against cub porn generally don't make a distinction between the two; people who are for cub porn generally advocate for making the distinction; but that isn't always a hard and fast rule, as you've demonstrated, and to be honest, i appreciate that you guys are willing to make the distinction despite being against it morally, because that's sorta where i stand on the topic as well. i think equating the two is kinda understandable (especially when the content is more realistic and less cartoony, whether in storytelling themes or in art style or both) and makes sense on a technical level - "attraction to a minor [whether fictional or not] is pedophilia" is definitely pretty sound logic on paper - but in my opinion i do find it important to make it very clear if someone is an actual danger to children or not. especially when there are active communities of ""MAPs"" advocating for themselves - i don't think it's productive to muddy the waters on those who truly support that shit in reality vs. those who just want to make weird fucked up art. i think there's a massive gap in language in that sense, and i understand why there's so much discussion about it because there's really no easy answer. 🤷 tl;dr implying people are cub artists is, to a lot of people, especially people in FA's userbase, genuinely the same thing to them as implying they are pedophiles, and at this point in time there's really no getting around that, no matter how much you insist that you don't see it that way. for what it's worth i understand both sides of this and i'm not trying to be hostile to anyone involved here, just trying to explain. (i JUST noticed you said someone explained it in a ticket right as i finished typing this lol so lmk if you want me to delete this since it's somewhat off topic! i figured it could be helpful context for others though)

No, that provided additional context. Thank you.

I know all of my thoughts have likely already been addressed above, but I think it’s still important that I add my support against the nature of these recent changes. While I understand the intent behind this update (my opinion on art in general is another matter), I think it ultimately hurts more people than it helps. Someones body shape or art style shouldn’t be a factor in determining if an artists work should be allowed or not, nor should anyone else have the authority to dictate what someones character should be labeled as. Whether or not it was intentional, it also stigmatizes artists who fall under those conditions in the policy. I’d also add my support towards adding a proper blacklisting system, or just making the site 18+ only (preferably both). If anything, I think these issues should be on a cases by cases basis instead of assuming bad faith because a mod personally doesn’t like a specific drawing. (Apologies in advance, not in a place to go too in depth atm, but I wanted to get my basic concerns out there for now.)

I have come to feel like this current policy decision, while on paper is just a change to make it so that pokémon and digimon are no longer considered an exception to the rule, has opened up a very big can of worms. Yes, wording-wise it's supposedly not a big change, but if the policy has always been like this from the start then many people have been operating in the furry fandom with shortstack characters they have been 100% convinced were fine, only to wake up to this policy, ask mods just for certainty, and being told in no unclear terms that their fursonas which they have been using for years without issue, are also hit by this policy. And that's the problem, I see people whose avali characters and yoshi characters and koopa characters are hit by this policy, I know a friend of mine with a corgi/kobold fursona who was told his fursona, after years of having existing just fine in the fandom was breaking site policy. Frankly, it's scary to upload anything on the website right now for me personally too as someone with fursonas leaning on the short side. It no longer becomes a point of "am I uploading this in 100% good faith that my characters are adults" but "could my art, in the worst possible light, be construed as being too childlike by a random unknowable person". The rulings are wildly inconsistent. The wording of the policy, and the way we're finding out how the policy is being put into action, are two vastly different things. If the rulings cannot be consistent (and they cannot be). If it comes down to "vibes" from whoever is ruling on our sonas and OCs being acceptable or not, then it's not a good policy to enforce.

I have two issues with 2.7's implementation. For a start, the ramifications are huge. When searching for "pokemon" tagged artwork (Art, All Time, "pokemon"), the result was 1190807 entries. After limiting this to just general Maturity rating, the result was 682178. This means that 43% of Pokemon artwork on Fur Affinity may be susceptible to this update. Then there is "digimon" tagged artwork, with 129351 submissions, and only 64554 being General puts it at over 50% of Digimon artwork. A side note regarding blacklists: I don't usually draw NSFW artwork, mostly drawing transformation, ABDL, and hypnosis. These things are not inherently sexual and would 100% be safe on TV (I mean, Looney Tunes has that stuff!), but they are also not something everyone should see, and there's no blacklist setting. As a result, I over-rate my art, rating ABDL art as Mature even when General may be OK rules-wise, and I'm considering doing this for TF and hypnosis art! Honestly, am I directly affected by 2.7? The mods have officially said this stuff isn't affected by UP 2.7, so maybe not? But I'll chime in regardless. ## First, there is heavy bias towards proportions, and proportions aren't a good indicator of age for cartoon characters! Based on past feedback (such as argonvile's ticket - https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10553034/), it seems that, while context is considered, there is a bias towards proportions. I've posted a drawing featuring a toon goose standing next to a graph that a FA mod posted. There is no doubt my goose is anthro; it wears clothes and walks with a cane. You can refer to this drawing here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/52247666/ One would think this animal is a scruffy, middle-aged bird. But the proportions for its arms, body, legs, and head are comparable to a 4-year-old! The graph works OK for realistic depictions of humans, but it doesn't hold up for cartoon characters such as Pokemon and Digimon. Not to mention, size/form may not coincide with age! I think the problematic submissions linked in argonvile's journal have enough context that the question of anyone's age doesn't come to mind (yes, even that Riolu's). They clearly aren't "1000 year old loli vampire" characters, either. However, based on my understanding of argonvile's feedback, my goose is unsuitable for NSFW artwork "from an anatomical standpoint" without significant modification to my art style, which feels exclusionary to me. And unlike Pokemon, it's already banned! This begs the question: do proportions even matter? You COULD compare Eevee to a real-life animal, but it's not a real-life animal! Even comparing cartoon humans' proportions doesn't work! Just look at Dr. Doofenshmirtz from Phineas & Ferb - approx. 4 heads tall or... a toddler? I get he doesn't look 47, but gosh! So, if it doesn't work with humans, how can it work with anthros? ## Next, the penalties for past artwork being removed are too severe! Let's say you don't walk this back. Because we are unsure mods may consistently enforce 2.7 (official clarifications are still quite vague), any NSFW artwork where the character's proportions are cartoony or exaggerated in any way may carry some risk. One violation puts you within an inch of being perma-banned even with 0 past violations, and two violations (two submissions?) is a permanent ban! There is a grace period for past artworks where each violation will be a "normal" violation, but this just changes a ban from 2 violations to 5 violations. Hardly better. You can't say "they had time to fix their galleries" because people can and do take extended breaks, or they might not be fully aware of policy changes, or they no longer use FA. Therefore, if this is retroactive, removal of old artwork shouldn't count against the user, not even as even a 1st level offense. - Anyway, I hope Upload Policy 2.7 is at least reconsidered. I give my best regards to the FA mods/staff who I'm sure will do the right thing.

My personal opinion on 2-7: Yes, sure, no one with a healthy mind wants to looke at obvious pedophilic artwork and doesn't want it on their platform since it's problematic. Though there is still a line between very irl-like stuff and such which can not exist/fantasy. But excluding both things is ok. The problem with is: You can not simply say that a cute character without classic adult proportions in a NSFW situation is a minor. You basically then claim that the artist has produced CP or the person who commissioned it is a pedo or everyone who gave it a fav. Context is important and must be respected. Of course it must be checked if it's believeable, but a users behaviour/profile/gallery usually should give that away. Don't demand artists to adjust their artstyles. Especially when it comes to monster series like Pokémon where for example a young Eevee almost looks exactly like an adult one and just character and body size would make a difference, except when it really would have a high age, then it also have wrinkles etc. When it comes to Digimon, just the ones which just hatched (without being reborn) can be considered being minors, since they got the character of a minor. Age and looks rule doesn't even apply at all in this universe. For example: In Digimon Adventures 2020 (spoiler) ||Gatomon, Patamon and Lopmon are many years old, they had fought a whole war before already.||, so you seriously can't say they would be minors. Not even the official japanese level names do fully apply here. Also, minors shouldn't be in artwork like vore (except they eat a a fish the way animals would etc.) , be drawn pregnant or be part of other common fetishes. And yeah, agree with pretty much everything Blitzdrachin wrote https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10559943/ General protection of minors must be done like blocking certain features alltogether and fetishes (vore, feet, smelly stuff, bdsm etc.) should always be marked as mature material.

A lot of really great points here have been made. I've been trying to read over each bit of critique so I don't really repeat anything said here so far. If I retread some ground, I apologize, but I still feel very strongly about making my and others' voices heard on this matter. I do not agree with this ruling. The 1000 y old Loli thing, yes, but this? no. I am willing to comply if it does go through no matter what, even if unhappily, because this is currently my most successful platform, so I would need to in order to secure my livelihood. However, A point I would like to make that I don't think I have seen anyone say so far. I am an artist with 16 years of experience. I have drawn Pokemon during that entire 16 years. The first thing I ever free handed was a Pikachu. I have drawn Pokemon small, I have anthro'd them, I have drawn them big, etc. As an artist with 16 years, could I have applied myself to the rules in the direction they were going? Maybe, yes. With further clarification or guidance? Maybe I could have. However. I have friends, clients, and followers, who are only just learning. Who do not have my experience. Who I have personally been trying my best to train and work with who do not know how to better anthro smaller creatures, who work with only 3D models, or are just learning. This. Is who this rule would punish the most. These folks who have been trying their best will now feel discouraged. They now do not feel they have a safe space they can upload their work when they try and try again to improve their artwork, and even feel proud of it, now being told the ways they've been expressing themselves may be ban worthy on this website. This does end up falling back on me, who uses these clients' references material for commission work. I do my best to follow their references so that I can give them artwork they are satisfied with. Go through all of my gallery, most of it is commissions from clients. I do not appreciate having my business be slanted with characters I vet personally to be sure they are mature or of age, all because I was sticking to what my clients wished and wanted. This rule was never possible to begin with when it comes to such non-human creatures because applying a human standard to non-human creatures is impossible. They do not exist. Applying a subjective standard onto every artist will favor those like myself who have 16 years of experience who can make the change but punish those who can't just with a snap change up their styles or suddenly learn the difference between "childlike proportions" and not because they are learning. It is not fair. If the ruling truly cannot be pushed back, if it truly will not fully be undone, I want to throw my hat in the ring with the other compromises some folks have made. The website should be 18+. It has its reputation for porn and fetishes and I am of the firm belief these should be out of the hands of children. I don't even believe 13 year olds should be on twitter but since nothing can be done about that, then at least we can say enough is enough on our end. Ban Pokemon based on lore, not on appearance. Pichu, Smoochum, Toxel, Togepi, Maushold, Kangaskhan's baby, these make sense. Their canon appearances are unapologetically equated with babies and childlike activity. Single stage Pokemon such as Cubchoo, Cubone, and Eevee listed prior are not. Again, that's if we have to ban any Pokemon at all entirely. I would still rather this not be the case but respectfully will comply if nothing else is done. Other points about having to delete works with comments I appreciate, having to pain stakingly go through my gallery to take off offending works from sketch pages over the years, take down work that has over 3000+ views, is something I definitely do not appreciate in any way either but, those points have been made and repeated. May make a follow up post after the time's up in case other things come to me.

I really do not like this policy change to include pokemon and digimon, and feel it discriminates against people with smaller characters, characters like vulpixes, eevees, fennekins... These are species, not age groups. Why does an eevee have to be a child? My character(s) are adult eevees, not children. They have been through their childhoods and have their shares of experiences and scars alike from it. I have written them and imagined them to be fully fleshed out, functioning adults. Except they are still small, they are still eevees and look as such. And they have, and will, engage in NSFW acts as adults. Why are my characters being persecuted for being depicted in such acts because of the species I chose them to be? Would it be fine if I said they were just small foxes? Or is the problem here the 'small' part and FA is just discriminating against people who have smaller ocs, or oc's that look cartoony, cute and possibly 'innocent'? What is the line between a cartoony 'innocent' looking OC and one that enters 'child-like' territory? Again, pokemon have species, and species aren't age groups. There's nothing in pokemon that prevents the idea of a adult eevee/pichu/fennekin/vulpix/etc from existing or being a thing, and therefore, you can't blindly label all of 'X' species as being a child, and ignore all arguments by the people who have ocs of their species that their oc's are in fact, not children. This sounds like your trying to go with a stylistic approach where the answer is 'just don't draw them like a child', but that's muddy waters. What is 'drawn like a child'? Is it about size, height, proportions? Or is it about the innocence and themes of the art, how its coloured, how realistic vs cartoony it is? If I drew something dark and serious with a realistic tone with my small eevee OC, clearly being engaged and involved in things or themes designed for adults (war, themes of famine/poverty, etc.), does FA consider my eevee an adult or a child? Does my intention matter, or does only the viewer's opinion matter? Also I highly disagree with the idea of minors being involved in fetishes such as vore. Vore is sexualized, it does arouse people, and it is a form of pornographic content. I would know, being a voraphile myself, that vore is not acceptable for minors to be involved with. This concerns me greatly that the next thing that will be coming is FA banning depictions of feral, because the logic to ban feral artwork (all quadped creatures are non-consenting animals and thus zoophilla) is not that far off the logic currently being used for this policy expansion (all small beings are children and thus pedophillia).

The latest attempt at moderation on FA is ridiculous. Banning cub was understandable, but at this point you're just legislating kink because you're squicked. In the process you're just banning shortstacks and whoever else your mods can squint at and call sussy. Do you know how much collateral damage is at risk here? All your favorite digimon are technically minors. Half of the Pokemon too. Mods have a blank check to knock down anyone they take issue with under these rules, and I guarantee you they will not be uniformly applied. Why are you doing this all of a sudden after ages of there being no issues, and where does it stop? Y'all gonna wake up one day and decide knots are sus? Too much like real dogs? Please. These rules make y'all look like clowns, and every attempt to refine them makes it worse. I can't post a Riolu getting railed while doing his taxes, but I can post a werewolf swallowing a pregnant child?? What??? You cannot legislate kink. You absolutely cannot, because that slope has no bottom, and the people who have complaints will never ever be satisfied. FA will be sitting in the same box as VCL and Yerf (remember them? No?) before long. If these rules go into play, I skip town. I don't care if this place is the Walmart of furries (for however long that remains true,) I won't hang around a place where the administration staff is constantly honing the edge of what is acceptable. "Acceptable" stops at the edge of "legal," that's the only way art survives. Make a functional blacklist for users who don't want to see things and be done with it. That's the only sensible way forward here. Going back and tagging my archive would be preferable to this.

I'll keep it brief. I hate everything about the update from its poor annoucement to the absurd addendums and kink exceptions and targeted species. The whole thing has caused so much grief and hassle for the vast majority of friends and folks in my circles. I and lots of others feel their livelihoods and presence in the community are threatened. Roll the whole update back and focus on blacklists and other features folks could actually benefit from. Also giving feedback is an absurd process that, if I didn't know any better, seems purposefully designed to be obfuscating. Handling a NSFW policy update discussion on a SFW-centric server with the only place to discuss and share NSFW details being on 1-on-1 Trouble Tickets is incredibly impractical and counterproductive. Also a 6-hr slowmode combined with longer posts being limited to paying Discord users is a bad look.

Juuuuust to throw my two cents in here since I left my feedback yesterday so I can post again, I think a big part of this too is, like I mentioned in my doc, that the official rules, in writing, state that, and I quote, "Minors are defined as real or fictional humanoids with a childlike body or younger than 18 years old, and any adolescent animals." This definition means, according to FA, that anyone drawing NSFW of anything that site deems as too "childlike", which means lots of different things to lots of different people, are drawing porn of minors. Thats not just insinuation, that's a direct statement of fact. That's why I advocate for that wording to be changed even in the event where you guys don't reverse course. It would not take much effort to define NSFW, which you've done in 2.7, and then say that all NSFW art of minors and characters with childlike bodies are banned, and then define childlike bodies. This would at least alleviate the website rules itself from calling people who get dinged from the rules cub artists or pedophiles somewhat.

I've been Nitro so long that I didn't remember post length was something it changed. Please use pastebin or Google Docs for longer-than-allowed feedback, as others have - we will look through those as well.

just make sure people can access ur google doc :v

I don't really have much to say beyond while I agree with the intention, the definition seems flawed given that with non-humans in general there isn't a particularly universally accepted set of age indicators in physical stature. Even as-is, what constitutes "adult enough" for everyone concerned universally enough? Hell, it's not uncommon for non-humans to have an ambiguous gender (to me at least) unless you have clear view of their bits. Tl;dr I just feel there might be a lot of trouble on coming to a consensus on what "adult proportions" means which is going to result in a lot of problems for everyone, particularly in cases where there is no canonical adultish-maybe-kinda-sorta-hopefully-enough-looking-variant.

Thank you for taking feedback! I was a bit long winded it seems. Please see my feedback in the pastebin: https://pastebin.com/6j9X7f1B I know it's a pain to read so feel free to copy/paste to another program.

Hey, my feedback is that I feel scared to post on FA now, as it's hard to know if I'm drawing a character in a way that is canon enough or "aged-up" enough. I also can't be sure if I can still make original characters with proportions similar to other allowed characters like Nick Wilde, Rocket Raccoon or Sam and Max ☹️ (EDIT: I'm just assuming that rocket, sam and max are allowed, we currently only have confirmation for Nick Wilde)

Long time user of the site (10 years now), first time on this discord. I apologize if this is messy/unclear at all. Simply put, I feel that this policy update hurts so much more than it could possibly help. I've seen dozens of people: friends, artists I follow, even writers, whether it be on discord, FA, & Twitter, who are afraid they're going to be affected by this change. Some of these friends have characters explicitly targeted under the policy specifics (mainly the Digimon related characters, like Impmon). Some draw babyfur related art. Others still simply have art of shortstack characters (myself included). I also personally cannot feel in good conscience that it would be fairly enforced, just from what I've seen of friends who draw diaperfur related art getting permanently suspended for drawing characters that were small but of age. This change seems detrimental to the user experience of the site as a whole, and comes at an especially unfortunate time where it feels people, inside the community and out, are ramping up the association between queerness and illicit activity. It does not make me feel welcome on the site, which has felt like a safe, queer-friendly home for so long now. It makes me worry about the potential for abuse of this rule, and it makes me worry about further judgment being cast on certain subcultures of the furry fandom. Not to create strawmen, but I've seen it happen in unexpected areas before, like Patreon banning hypnosis related media because it was deemed "non-consensual". The line should not be erased and re-drawn multiple times over. Especially at a time where we need a stable community, when everything else feels so fractured. I genuinely hope that this rule is walked back, and that in the future, the FA team can make it easier to gauge how the community feels for changes of this caliber. I feel like as the site's userbase, its lifeblood even, we deserve a platform to be heard as much as we are seen. Thank you.

I am not great at organizing my thoughts but I thought I’d throw a few things in I don’t see an issue with just adding Pokemon and Digimon into the rule in general in order to stop people who use that loophole as an excuse to upload CP on the site. I know it’s been an issue in certain places I do think more refinement to consider different art styles is important. While I don’t personally like seeing cutesy or chibi style NSFW content, there is nothing actually wrong if the characters are consenting adults. Normally it’s pretty easy to tell the difference based off how the artist speaks about or portrays the characters in the art and in their personality even if it’s very cartoony I don’t think I agree with making the site 18+. People younger than that should really be allowed a space to express their furry-ness and be a part of the community, and other options are way less moderated and can be more dangerous. And it’s possible just outright stopping them from being allowed may just cause more to join dishonestly. I do think there needs to be something that better stops people from putting porn under SFW though. It happens way too often and as someone who always keeps their filter on I really dislike how much of it I end up seeing anyway Overall I really appreciate your willingness to hear your community out and make changes as needed. So thank you!

I don't have much to add to everyone else's already solid points but I will say three things. This definitely should have been cooked more instead of just randomly dumping it out on a weekday, saying that this was widely accepted when clearly that is not the case makes the staff look like liars (really bad look), and still leaving up the tweet with no addition that theres a feedback channel on the discord is definitely adding to that bad look as thats what most people are gonna be seeing should probably edit or fix that.

Shout out to everyone who has a pokemon oc on their first evolution state who they just decided not to evolve but is of age (Also voring minors is allowed like what the fuck even????? Vore is literally fetish content how is that allowed)

So my feedback is 10k characters too long and im not paying for nitro so, heres a less readable pastebin link version https://pastebin.com/khUzxnqP

Its been long enough that I can post again and I was wondering when and how we would be getting responses for our posts. I posted mine way at the beginning but don't know if the feedback will be presented here or someplace else. Edit: (How encouraging -_-. Thanks)

Something to mention in regards to Tag Blacklists and the like as a stopgap solution: As it is, there is no way on earth tag implementation will work in FA's current form as most artwork, stories and otherwise are untagged, with many tags being reworded versions of the exact same scenario. In some cases this is good (Prevents the e621 issue of distinctly difference styles all being joined into one, all-encompassing tag), but in many cases it's just untagged generally. I propose a stopgap solution: Implement the FilterAffinity solution of allowing users to blacklist an artist, author, etc from showing up in their feed, sorta being 'below' a blacklist, can still interact with each other etc, but stops you seeing art you don't want to see - And make it easy to apply, so you don't have to go on their art or profile to blacklist them, similar to FIlterAffinity.

I'm keeping it simple and direct. No one wants this, FA's moderation team is known for being wishy-washy and inconsistent at the best of times. To have a policy like this, there needs to be trust between administration and userbase, and it's clear to see that no such trust exists when it comes to y'all. Your only way of saving face at this point is a total reversal of this policy. Work on ACTUAL features instead of shoving all the burden of "will my art get me banned" onto the users. Have a nice life, and don't try this again, for your sakes as well as ours.

Imo all the rule change has done is cause a panic. If the goal is to protect real minors we should consider making FA an 18+ only website. There is no such thing as a SFW fetish, and fetish content is incredibly sneaky and difficult to moderate

an issue personally i see is that the update to the policy they have posted on twitter looks like it is designed to excuse certain types of artwork the team making the policy enjoys

3 tier filtration. Fuzzy, sfw, nsfw Sfw by default, have to specify if it's fuzzy safe, or not. And if it has no fetish it has to be labeled fuzzy. Fuzzy is locked on for under 18, the rest is locked

I have to wonder how this policy even came to be. I and probably a lot of other people would love to know a play-by-play of how this absolute disaster of a change even came to be in the first place. I can't really add much to the other points people have made, but I will say I'm just so immensely done with the wave of online Puritanism that spawned this thing in the first place. Nobody gives each other the benefit of the doubt anymore. Nobody's mature enough to think that maybe someone's kinks don't equate with their moral compass. And that truly saddens me, because people with some of the most twisted fetishes out there have also been among the kindest I've ever met. And yet, they've become the latest Acceptable Target in the endless stream of purity crusades I've seen all over the internet and culture at large. I guarantee you, most people on this crusade are just doing it to be in lockstep with the party line, and wouldn't actually give a shit if they didn't have the pressure on them to find sacrifices for the Purity Altar, lest they be next.

https://pastebin.com/v3XQDk6m Here's my feedback. I'm a little frustrated that it's too big for Discord's character limit, but that's Discord's fault.

Id like to try and offer my perspective without mirroring a large portion of whats already been said, even though I think its valuable we repeat ourselves as it shows at the very least something close to a general consensus on these changes. First, id like to point out something that is tangentially related, but important nontheless, which is Communication. The fact that individuals have had to flock to this discord, with no indication on-site that it existed as a forum to discuss the changes is indicative that we need better channels that are more open and available to users for the discussion of topics related to the site in a productive manner. Putting out a wide-sweeping policy update, that was stated to be widely popular and accepted, with comments disabled and no viable on site forum or ability to critique the change seems like such an odd way to run the largest furry art hosting site. At the very least, if this discord was intended to be that area, it should at least be stated on FA's main page that any critique should be directed here as trouble tickets are an exceptionally archaic way to have site feedback. Now, the issue at hand is many-fold, but ill try and compress as much as I can in as short of a format as I can. Having a blanket ban on the NSFW presentations of canon Pokemon forms is an untenable, and unenforcable position. Pokemon and digimon are not a normally aging biological creature, and eevee stays an eevee forever until it passes away. I think almost every single user here agrees with the enforcement of the 1000 year old loli clause, and 2.7 in general, but the fact that we have been provided with no exact guideline on exactly what would be okay, should be indicative that such a policy cannot be enforced in an objective manner. Instead of a wide, canon-presented species ban, we need to approach them on a case by case basis. If somebody is using the existing rule and very clearly stretching the limits of it, then take action on those specific instances. The staff must understand that currently, artists are being labeled as something they are not, based on their own OC's that have been okay for years now. I try to avoid anecdotes but almost every single journal I have seen thus far is somebody confused, afraid, angry, or betrayed. It should come as no surprise that people do not like the insinuation that they are all of a sudden a cub artist because they are drawing a canon adult riolu/eevee/yoshi/etc. Off the topic of pokemon, I have even over the days seen peoples Kobold OC's, shorter drawn characters, and even OC's that are just plain anthro's that are just drawn in too cute of a way get pinged as inappropriate. I ask who this is serving because you seem ready to destroy somebodies fursona, who for a large portion of people are their heart and soul poured into a single character. This entire policy change seems like a shotgun blast where it should be a delicately applied tweezer. When even site staff have offending material, I feel like this should have been a wakeup call that this might have been a bit of an overreach. I should also add that this is from somebody who is not personally affected by this policy change but rather an individual who wants to see a place where we can all flourish. We are certainly not flourishing right now we are hemorrhaging. My proposition is incredibly simple, scrap this entire change. Use the user feedback in here to better refine the goal you are trying to achieve. If that means making the site explicitly 18+ then I think that is fine. I also agree that we should have already had a system in place for users to blacklist content that they don't want to see. Open better channels of communication between the staff and the users. Fascilitate an area to discuss this change with the people who would most be negatively affected by it as their feedback is even more important overall. Thank you for your time.

hi -- i'll keep this short, mostly because i think i'm going to be reiterating what most people have been saying. doesn't mean you or i shouldn't say it, because quantity matters too. i just don't think divvying up content by what is eyeballed isn't okay. i know we've been promised to judge by context, but body shape isn't.. nearly as indicative as it seems on paper. if someone turns out to a different site because their style or character is incompatible with policy, what does that suddenly imply about them to someone without the context? pedophilia is a tight and scary accusation. you can call cub by what it is, and you should. but for the people who are caught up in this who are only related by the vagueness of it, that's damning and it sucks. i'm not here to discuss "puritanism" or defanging adult content. i just think some attention should be paid to the artists who will either be forced to step out of one of the only accessible adult furry gallery sites or change their works to meet something that may not even be specific enough to adhere to. one that may suddenly change to an even more broad and nebulous scope. thanks for reading

I only want a thing to add: Please let users know that this exists, for example by stating it on Furaffinity Twitter. Otherwise users don't know that they can indeed submit their feedback.

here is my super controversial opinion on this ... ahem... it sucks!! thanks FA we all hate it!! :D ((p.s: your creeps for allowing minors to be in fetish art like vore ect))

john madden!

On behalf of a friend, Gyro: > I've written rather long reply, which can be found here: > https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10560171/ > > The main bullet points, however, are below: > ➤ As the largest furry site, you have an obligation to do good by your community. > > ➤ This does far more harm than good. You are painting too many things with broad strokes in an effort to eliminate edge cases, when just those edge cases should be dealt with. > • Many artists who should not be affected are being so. > • This will have a chilling affect on art posted to FA > • Applying human proportions to furries does not make sense. > • The fetish exemption is odd and needs to be reevaluated. > • The policy accuses artists who obviously are not of being cub artists. > > ➤ Moderation needs to be imporoved at FA. > • There needs to be more professionalism and communication. > • Strikes need a fall off period, especially considering how old FA is. > • Pay your staffers. It might even be illegal not to. > • Staffers: Demand pay. Not paying you is likely illegal under the FLSA. > > ➤ There needs to be a place where the community can be involved in policy discussions > > ➤ Groomer rhetoric and cub accusations are highly damaging to people's mental health and not helpful. > • Ban the minors instead. This is not a safe space for them. Lets stop pretending it is. Also its worth noting that I've heard reports that people are having trouble joining the server. I wonder if Raid Protection is kicking in.

They are actively reading it. Unfortunately due to the very nature of everything being under a fine microscope due to anger. They unfortunately have to be extremely careful with their dialogue. That's the problem. That's probably the reason they aren't replying as often as they'd like. Since they probably try to get their wording across but they miss a word or something. It turns into something completely different. The path to hell is paved with good intentions and all that. To be honest no communication is probably better in some cases as it might give rise to more confusion. I don't envy any of the mods (Since whoever talks eventually paints themselves as a target.) I'd rather the information just be released a document later with a more clear and concise meaning behind everything later than an immediate response. (If possible to alleviate confusion.) (Since i don't want people having a reason to target anyone.)

https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10560363/ (Full Read. It was too long for Discord. Below is a cut-down version. Please read the journal instead.) The FA moderation team has incorrectly listed several Digimon as child-like without listing reasons why, despite claiming there will be no species-wide bans previously. None of those Digimon are even child proportioned. They are simply two small small lizards, an imp, and a cat in a cartoony style. If someone genuinely believes Agumon is a "child" I would like to point them to Commandramon, a clearly adult soldier Digimon that looks IDENTICAL to Agumon proportionally. While the "compromise" is to change the proportions of the mons, whoever suggested it doesn't realize that it just doesn't work. You cannot simply change the proportions of these Digimon. If you stretch out Impmon, it stops being an IMP. Also, if Impmon is banned, does this mean all imps and similarly proportioned creatures like goblins are banned? Impmon's proportions are similar to Midna, albeit she has more curves. Does that mean she is banned as well, despite her popularity? Agumon, Veemon, Gatomon, and Impmon all share proportions with Animal Crossing characters. Does this mean that ALL Animal Crossing characters such as Isabelle are suddenly childlike in stature and need to be banned? Or Yoshi? Aggretsuko? Cult of the Lamb? This rule fundamentally doesn't understand how Pokemon and Digimon work and, whether intentional or not, UP 2.7 has called anyone who draws/commissions NSFW with the mons listed in it as fetishizing minors. It has also lead to harassment from people using UP 2.7 as an excuse to call those who are upset about it "pedophiles." There is a reason why NO other NSFW furry artsite bans the posting of specific Pokemon or Digimon. Only FurryLife.Online banned certain Pokemon/Digimon/Ferals. They no longer exist because everyone left. This is the situation FA is in now.

My 0.02$ It has become abundantly clear that 2.7 is no longer about "preventing minors from being exploited", as the initial journal implied. The focus on "body shapes" or characters looking "too cute" while still allowing fetish art of minors, including pregnancy, goes to show that this was not thought out or planned and is just being made up as we go along It feels like at this point, the staff are just pushing through some half arsed, inconsistent and contradictary "rules", while still protecting their own kinks and interests, which appears to include pregnant 13 year olds and child prey, child preds, or children in tf art. In my opinion, revert to how we were before 2.7, before all of this There's nothing really more for me to say that hasn't been said before by thousands of other people who are against this change. Do better, FA

Thank the gods that this channel exists! Okay so, I have two things to say. -Dear holy gods, heavy kink NEEDS to count as NSFW in relation to this rule! That means pregnancy, vore, certain types of TF, heck even ABDL is heavy kink and shouldn't be drawn with cubs! -Judging by body shape/proportions alone without taking into account ability to consent is backwards and awful. It SHOULD be the other way around- if a character is noted as not being mature enough to consent, that should warrant a conviction immediately. (That said, evolutionary stage and level shouldn't be indicative of maturity, as they are instead measures of combat experience and strength. A weak pacifist- like my lv1 stufful character Ross- can easily be both old and mature enough to give consent.) -Using real-world proportions for non-irl species like Pokemon and Digimon is just... bad. A lot of artists draw species 'on-model', i.e. with the body shapes and proportions these species have in canon works. And in canon for Pokemon/Digimon, body shape and size have roughly nothing to do with age. (For Pokemon, the go-to example people tend to give is the Elder Treecko shown in the anime, but I'd like to draw attention instead to the concept of the Infant Raichu- you can literally take a Pichu fresh out the egg, raise its Friendship to max through about a day's worth of biking, give it a single Rare Candy and a Thunderstone, and get a Raichu that's literally a single day old and should count as a cub despite being, y'know, a Raichu.) (Meanwhile, for Digimon, all digivolutions are inherently temporary.) -Even if you use real-world proportions, what set of proportions to use can be a complete gamble. Eevee is the best example- do you use fox proportions, fennec proportions, cat proportions, dog proportions?? What about Stufful, should Stufful be judged as a bear cub, a red panda, or a teddy bear, given it pulls design elements from all three? And then there's the elephant in the room, art styles. My own artstyle is a toony one, which near demands simple shapes and cutesy features. Should that be grounds for a ban, given I can't draw any other way? I think not.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RrhxkA1R40DjX3pdsN9ziSJnOFjbTWLxQ3hfSfHNYzM/edit?usp=sharing too long for discord

I wish I had faith in the staff and moderation. I wish I didn’t think that things would be taken down in bad faith. But I don’t. My main concern is that this discussion thread will do nothing. I understand I’m being told the team will sort through all this but I have to see it before I believe it. Because at this point, after spending all day reading hundreds of long form, well worded posts, I think the message is loud and clear. No one likes this. This is detrimental. People are leaving the site, clearing their galleries. Trust in FA has been lost, and every day this isn’t reversed makes it worse. The longer this takes the harder it will be to repair. It doesn’t help there was no announcement about this discussion board. I had to learn from someone else. I had to also locate this channel within the server which wasn’t intuitive. It doesn’t give me confidence they want to really open up discussion like it needs to be. It shocks me there’s as many people posting as there are with how out of the way this is. If this board does nothing. If this whole community unifying against these shittily worded rules doesn’t change anything, FA is dead in my eyes. I hope this website really is community driven. Because this is REALLY putting it to the test.

To the FA staff: you may wanna consider these suggestions. Because this is extremely important: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10559943

On my opinion of the rule change is that I do not like it. I was drawing Pokemon, mostly Cyndaquil. Yes, my artwork sucked, but it is what I see in me. I have health problems that I need stuff, even though I am an adult. I then started to write stories of my fursona, and I had delete all of that, because I will not take the time to browse through my gallery and take out certain material. Now, I was looking for Pokemon and Digimon drawings and stories. I have to go to other sites if I want to see them. Neither Pokemon or Digimon have real ages and really, fursonas do not have ages either. It is how someone feels in their heart and in my case, my health issues. I will miss having Cyndaquil in my gallery, but it is for the best to stay on the site.

I've created a ban list of the original 1-151 Pokemon based on the creatures you've explicitly banned, combined with some of the other things said in the latest post. https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10560340 Taking into consideration everything that's been said, I would be extremely careful moving forward with this. This is Only the original 151. Most of them have been Thanos snapped. Please think of the implications you are putting on to the Pokemon and Digimon communities with this. You guys wield an awful lot of power and sway over this domain and the actions you take can and will have unintended consequences, reaching past Furaffinity. Thanks. To respond to Luffy: I also took their body shape into account as well. I've been drawing this content since 2005, I know the shapes very well. Most pokemon share about 20 shapes. Luffy's reply is merely a deflection: I am certain that InsomniacOvrlrd, ArgonVile, and several other large pokemon artists would 100% agree with this list.

We are aware of this journal.

This is largely inaccurate. We're not basing decisions solely off of heads, and I'm not sure how you can measure something like Voltorb or Koffing with heads when their heads _are_ their body. I appreciate the effort that went into this, but it does not completely align with our policy. I understand that a reasonable response to that is, "Well, it's hard to say when you won't give us something more concrete," but that's not something I can do right now. I will put in feedback that something like this would be useful.

My main gripe overall was why this rule was even necessary. Were Pokémon/Digimon and such not considered in the original rule (the “1000 y/o dragon trope”)

Id say its better to hold off replying to individual feedback posts as a mod and wait until there is a more cohesive and official response to the whole situation... ( ETA ) I understand wanting to clarify the journal but my point still stands, having a mod hop in without a PR/official statement in place is only more harmful than good

I replied to that one because I don't want someone to go into that journal from this channel and think that it is accurate.

Seconded. Of ALL the stuff I've seen on multiple social media sites, YOUR name keeps coming up, and it's NEVER in a good way. I seriously recommend that the staff get together and talk this out before any of you starts just replying to individual posts.

I appreciate the concern, but I am comfortable commenting the way I currently am. There is a reason that I am not replying to the more in-depth feedback posts. Those need to be addressed directly by the company as a whole, rather than by me. I know that Twitter loves me right now, lol. /s

But is the plan to give an example of the art that is "too childich"? I mean every artist draws different and some Chars like Pokemon have an fixed look. If its always in the eye of the admin to decide without strict examples, then it can seem arbitrary

I'm not aware of all of our plans in regards to PR, but I will take back feedback (like your message) and post it internally.

Keep up with the policy as it was imo its great to address more things regarding pokemon n digimon and not give it a magic pass Though I really wish that the whole thing regarding minors pregnancy vore stuff (yknow what i mean) will be addressed cuz i just dont think that wont be abused and loopholes gonna be made Loopholes will be made regardless thats true but this is a very specific thing thats written in the policy update and imo it also should be changed rather than re-worded, it needs to be applied within the policy try to enforce the sfw filter to be really sfw and avoid having anything below 18 within any of the known kinks and fetish we see daily there There needs to be a line and sfw / nsfw is not that, fetishes and kinks that are counted as sfw by the community should also be accounted for when it comes to 18- content It'll never be a black n white line but am sure further down the line you'll do right by those if all this is done

Staff needs to advertise this feedback thread on the main site and on the main twitter account. Would help get feedback from a wider group of people, and it would show how serious the team is about this whole situation. It'd also help your public image when people are aware of an open feedback thread rather than thinking there's nothing to do but rip on the team.

Unrelated to feedback specifically, but if you have a ticket open originally under NSFW Underage Content and desire it moved to Questions/Feedback category you're more than welcome to @ or DM me. The MPS staff is working through tickets and was not privy to me saying I'd be happy to reassign it for you if the NSFW Underage Content tag made you uncomfortable.

If you do edit this please be sure to add "ETA: Link updated." as well just to make sure that we see any updates that come after it is read. ❤️

I've brought this up.

Considering you're on the moderation team and are the one mostly responding to indivudal feedback, you're currently representing Dragoneer and FurAffinity as a whole without disclaiming otherwise or making it clear that you don't represent the company with every responce. Witty responces to genuine concerns are definetly not acceptable as well. Even if you don't believe that's the case, this is what most users are perciving, and I highly suggest fetching feedback from other moderators before responding to sensitive topics. If it were up to me you would be forcibly be put on break for awhile, while other moderators should probably take over, as you've already been irresponsible enough.

The whole policy was originally intended for a good reason I assume, but things went a bit awry. In between conflicting responses and reactions from the staff, on top of lacking visual aid (I am truly sorry but any visual guide that was posted was really not that good and further destroyed our trust) I don't think that this specific policy will work out. Even staff members seem to have had trouble to determine where a line should be drawn. While I feel like I can now see why this rule was made (are Eevees, Pichus etc. just the pokemon version of lolis for some people on staff? "Hey, i know this pichu looks young but pokemon dont age, and she is like 50 years old so it is fine. trust me bro." This merely a speculation from my side, but it seems to make sense now.), I also feel like it greatly misses the point no matter for what reason you tried to implement it. You made it seem like you want to nuke things based on a shaky ruling when stability is most important for stuff that could get you banned instantly. If this rule is supposed to protect minors, then having a "SFW Kink" is NOT the way to go. I have seen it happen often enough that kids would be groomed by adults with certain kinks because "there was nothing explicit about it". Revise that part of the policy, and especially the wording around it. It does not make a good look on your part. Intent matters greatly of course, as, many cartoons from "ye olde days" featured such stuff, but those cartoons back then hardly ever marked them under any of the "Specialty" categories we have in our search function. On top of that announcements and policies should always be all-encompassing and well-written. In this specific case a lot of users have been confused/worried. This should NEVER be the case. Make your rulings, updates and more clear. Because if people are asking "Hey is my kobold okay under this policy?" en masse when you state that you now include Pokemon and Digimon, then something is wrong. You shouldnt have to clarify hundreds of additional statements and bullet points for a policy update.

Has staff addressed the whole controversy with the "Minors younger than 13 may not be depicted as pregnant." rule because it sounds kinda contradictory amongst other things like transformation and vore.

1. You need better communication with one another & the site. Contradictions have been made. Mistakes happen, that's fine. Not apologizing isn't. Eg. Ticket #228537 Mods told users feedback tickets would be recategorized or unlabeled. If they weren't, to appeal. "That was said by mistake, we apologize our policy on this is xyz. We'll be sure all mods know in the future to avoid this." Would be much better than what was given to us. 2. You need a larger team. It's been stated that mods are overwhelmed. This caused violations to rules to be left up for hours. The discord tickets are the same + a 2 ticket limit. No moderation outside of tickets = rules appear inconsistent. It's not feasible to expect mods to see every upload, but more eyes help. 3. UP 2.7 appears to just be eyeballing instead of using a rubric. I support @FatBluDragon's proposed one. Context > Proportions. If mods can look at art of a pregnant/vored child & allow it based on the context then why not across the board? Allowed in kids shows =/= valid excuse to allow fetish under SFW. Scandals involving creators of kids shows pushing their fetishes are not uncommon. A blanket statement saying that stuff in a kids show = allowed w/ art of kids opens up a can of worms. The context of the situation matters, but that's not what was said. 4. Applying real life proportions to fantasy creatures with their own in game rules or biology is not a good way to do things. An Eevee isn't a fox. It can be 50yo or newborn & look the same. Context & artist intent is what matters. We were told no species bans. Not allowed to draw species in its canon model = species ban. Can of worms, again. Eg. On model nsfw Eevee is considered cub. Putting a beanie baby tag on the same Eevee would allow it under plushie fetish then. By this logic since you consider Eevee to be the same as a kid nsfw plush art of children or actual cubs = allowed. I don't think that was intentional but alas.

@pinyon yeah, tracking #1 now. I'm on it.

I assume you're Yappybara on site. I took care of the person you were referencing. I'm sorry for the confusion and are completely good on my word to move any tickets people want moved.

Thirded. Luffy is responsible for all the most inflammatory statements I have seen. If it truly is a team response, I would expect a more even distribution of who’s getting screencapped. I feel like I’m watching the luffy show.

I also find it absurd how the original post stated "These changes were well-received and based on additional feedback from our community", after they took down the forums, switched to a Discord server that requires phone verification, and then tucked all discussion about the topic behind some hidden thread without so much as mentioning it on the website or anywhere else until after incorporating the policy changes. I had to buy a burner number just to be able to look at the server (lots of people keep their furry accounts separate from their 'irl'/family accounts). The first message that led me here was a moderator threatening to ban someone for talking about the policy outside of #2-7-feedback, despite there being no mention of this channel in the policy update, announcements, or anywhere reasonable. And now that people know there's a place to give feedback, despite all the hoops they have to jump through to find this place, essentially every single comment is overwhelmingly against the changes. And now that the policy's in place, despite pretty much the entire community being against these changes (so much for "well-received"), they're sticking to their guns and doubling down, making excuses and "clarifications" that only bring further confusion. Are we really expected to believe this malicious and shady behavior wasn't intentional? It seems pretty clear that they wanted people to read "the community wanted this!" and not bother questioning it. They clearly didn't want any real feedback from the community, or else they would have made an announcement on the site prior to making a decision, and would have given clear instructions on where to go to provided feedback (which they still haven't done). This entire shitshow could've been avoided if they knew how badly this would play out for a large majority of their users. It really makes me wonder why this sudden, arbitrary change was pushed through in such a hurry.

As someone whos been using this site a long time, maybe 10+ and has been a supporter for a while. I don't like the restrictions on Pokemon and Digimon. I don't like the restrictions around people's art styles. I'm worried that we will go down the rabbit hole of (maybe we should restrict this because some people don't like it) I've seen a few sites do this now and they are gone or hardly active. I don't want this to happen to FA. I do most of my business on FA. I've been branching out to other sites but they just don't have the creative community as FA does. If you start ripping out some of the people from the core, it'll fall apart. Then I can't do my sell my art anymore. I don't know what I would do tbh. I support this site because I want FA to keep getting better and keep going with this community. But I feel like the ban on Pokemon and Digimon is a step away from that. Thats my 2 cents, I mostly agree with other people around here.

To add to the SFW minor situation, it's important to understand that FA is a community for everyone. Unless that chances, we have to acknowledge the fact that minors also require a safe space to be there. That was what the general rating was meant for. If you look at the upload policy it clearly states that the general rating is, and I quote, Free of sexual or EXXESSIVE FETISH THEMES with exception of brief displays of affection, such as a kiss or hug. (https://www.furaffinity.net/aup) However, a lot argue, including the site owner, that Fetishes can be SFW. That is not the point though. A lot of themes can remain safe for work yet are unsuitable for children. This is why, for example, guns are not allowed in childrens cartoons. They are not explicid or pornographic, yet we all agree that expoising a child to adult tools of violence is bad. The same counts for fetishes in the general area. Regardless of it being SFW or not, it is a terrible influence to minors that desensitizes them, making it easy to be exploided by adults. I have 3 cases in my head that i can count where minors were manipulated in a fetish environment. So out of the safety of minors, kinks shouldn't be in the general gallery at all! Hold on though! It requires a lot of clarification! First of all, it is not kink shaming. We simply move the fetishes from a space full of minors to an area that only adults gain access to. Additional categorization can also allow users to split kinks in sexual and non sexual stuff, enabling a pleasant experience. Second, yes, minors have the right to explore themselves and their interest. However, that is an intimate and private thing that should never be shared with anybody but people of their same age group. Adults should never interact with minors in a kinky manner. That's why there are "teen only" discord servers so teens can express themselves freely and safely. But with the general gallery being used by both minors and adults, that form of exploration can not happen there. Lastly, there is a difference between wholesome and fetish! That is probably what the staff suggested with the "teen pregnancy" statement. Just like with overweight people, we differenciate between body positivity and fat fur kinks. The same works with everything: Instead of vore: someone can be just nommed by a dragon in a cartoony way (like an asdf movie skid). This is not about stigmatizing everything that has a fetish counterpart but rather understanding the difference. A cute cat going uppies and showing the paw beans is vastly different than a camerashot of an eevie showing their feet in focus while looking at the character seductively. Minors being in this situations is somethign I personally despise but i see the logical implications. The main question that needs to be asked is not "is it sfw?" but rather "would I show this to a 13 year old and their family?" Again, this is a child safety issue! As long minors are part of the community, we can't allow them to be in a grey area like this. If you are unsure, then be safe than sorry and keep your questionable art among adults. Children don't have to see it because why would you? So either keep FA adult only so the problem with child safety is gone, or actually care about the minors in the community and create a safe area for them. It hits me personally because my little brother (12 back then) almost saw a lot of terrible stuff for him because of a damn "sfw fangame" of changed in roblox. He didn't understand the concept of goo and forceful transformation and wanted to look at cute art of puro and where he comes from. I legit had to stop him and clear him up that if he actually searches for it, he will see disturbing images. I do not want this happen to any other minors anymore. I want to give minors a place in this community to call home, especially some LGBTQ+ kids really need that. So please, if you want to make this a place for everyone, make it safe for everyone!

I wasn't going to post anything here on the topic but after seeing 15+ artists I follow announce plans to leave, become inactive, or delete all their content, it wouldn't be constructive to sit on the sidelines. From an outsider's perspective, the way the policy change is worded makes me deeply uncomfortable. Folks now have to worry about if they're breaking the rules due to how varied and inconsistent moderation has been, even if they are drawing adults doing adult things and shouldn't be affected. Some get the thumbs up, some get the boot because the style is different. I think it's pretty clear that if people are getting hit by the change that's only supposed to affect people who are actually breaking policy intentionally or exploiting the rules then that's a huge problem cause it means the change isn't going to work positively. Sure some problematic folks will get weeded out, but if your displacing 1/3 of your artists because their style doesn't fit perfectly into the mold then it's more than a little flawed. The rules are worded too vaguely (even with clarifications) to be enforced equally and fairly across the board in the best of circumstances. It's just bound to be a confusing and destructive mess that could have easily been avoided if people did their jobs. Only made more confusing by what is exempt. The bandaid solution would be to roll 2.7 back and completely rework it to remove any conflicting statements or areas that put others at risk who shouldn't be (ie toony artists who deal with smaller proportions). It wouldn't fix the severe lack of trust that a lot of people now have, but even if the change was reversed that trust wouldn't be regained. Maybe it's time to look at the moderation and find the problems there instead of reworking the rules to make it easier to ban others or remove art. That's all i'm going to say, really disappointed.

I'm going to keep this short because plenty of other people have written essays. This update hurt a lot of good, honest, kind, and generous people. It hurt my friends. It hurt people who I respect. It hurt people who I love. Nothing can change that. It already happened. All that can change is whether it keeps hurting people. Stop it.

I hope more and more individuals cancel their FA+ over this rule change and the way it has been handled by staff, especially Luffy as others have pointed out. Seems we've found the actual issue.

Considered not getting involved, but something I feel hasn't been said specifically is that the reason why so many people are upset is because you have sacrificed adult security over the illusion of child safety. Artists feel unsafe, they feel unwelcome, and they feel targetted. Making confusing rules for adults who aren't harming anyone is not making children safer. Implement a proper blocking system, implement a personalised tag blacklist, let people submit tags on other's artwork so they can be more effectively filtered, give people MORE power to protect THEMSELVES. At the moment blocking someone doesn't even properly hide them from your gallery, you can still be stalked among other things, this is what you should be fixing. I'm an artist who draws a lot of content that may upset a lot of people, but I have always tried to make sure it is always rated appropriately. I don't WANT minors seeing my art, and if there's others who have specific sensitivities that don't want to see certain art from me, I would rather they had the power to stop themselves from seeing it as well. I want to be able to express myself in a safe way that doesn't hurt anyone, and for a lot of people, that's what FA was for them, and it's why they're upset.

- 2.7 has good intentions - but very poor ambiguous wording and a disastrous announcement. I'm personally not effected by the changes to the rules, so I don't have much input on them besides that. I'm in favor of removing more cub art from the site, in order to do that though these rules need to be clearer and more specific. All this has done is create panic and confusion. Rumors and misinformation have completely spread like wildfire like "short people, yoshi, kobolds, all pokemon are banned!!!" ect. - Vore should be considered mature/adult content. Real life minors shouldn't be able to view subject matter like vorarephilia, and characters that are minors shouldn't be depicted in submissions of it. - The events that transpired over the past weekend are proof to me that FA's upper administration needs more transparency The consequences resulted in mods with no involvement in writing policy being targeted and harassed. A public, constantly updated roadmap of updates (i.e. progress on renames/blacklist feature), bug fixes, and policy changes would help with transparency and cut down on mods having to answer questions about site updates, especially the ones that are just here to moderate and don't have all the answers. - As a FA+ user, lately I'm finding it harder and harder to justify retaining my membership. Some of us have been harassed/shamed. I am very active on the server itself and enjoy the discord perms and some of the QoL things on the site are nice but I want to feel like my support is going towards actual improvement and to be more in the loop as a supporter. I'm a full-time artist who relies on the site as a source of income, I want this site to thrive. That is originally why I became a FA+ user. I do care about this site and it's future. Just wanted to be honest about that here. edit: fixed formatting.

The main concern is that people who make bad faith reports will feel emboldened to do so and make erroneous reports that just because a character appears to be considered "underage" (per defined by the 2.7 update) and get members who they dislike banned.

You should reverse a lot of the pokemon digimon stuff... Who ever thought Agumon looks like a child may need glasses. Just saying

I'm just curious how this will affect the abdl and pokefur community. 24 artists I follow have announced their departure so far, with the list growing every few hours. Especially those who overlap into both abdl and pokefur in regards to riolu. I like furaffinity, and I've been using it for over a decade at this point. Just hate to with what is going on, where it feels like an attack on the very people who helped build and make the site what it is today. I do just have to wonder, is feral next?

i saw someone say this policy is like taking a shotgun to an issue that required tweezers, and i think that's the best way to put it. while i feel the intent behind this policy was good, the way it basically morphed into a toony / chibi nsfw art ban and the way this situation was handled has made it very clear that staff are too divided and inconsistent to be trusted with a decision as drastic as this. at this point i think the best course of action is to simply abandon the policy change and focus on implementing a blacklist system. i love FA, but if this policy goes through, as an artist with a toony style i'll feel obligated to limit my future activity on the site.

Digimon are literally data. They can and have been hacked and thus altered. Someone else mentioned Digimon digivolve with age. While that is true, they digivolve much slower than humans age. Even the names (Child and Adult, which became Rookie and Champion to remove age connotations; the only one still named after an age is Fresh/Baby aka "just hatched from a Digiegg") are misleading; all Gatomon types (Gatomon, BlackGatomon, Mikemon, Gatomon X, and BlackGatomon Uver) are Champions, bar Ringless Gatomon which is as weak as a Rookie. See that? As weak as a Rookie. Digivolution stages denote power levels, not age. There was a Patamon, Lopmon, and Salamon older than the people on here. They were Archangels that got reset to return their souls to purity. As well, it's clearly shown in the anime and games that their human partners can cause them to Digivolve outside of age, as an energy levels and, especially, danger. A blacklist feature is a really good idea, even outside of this whole fiasco. Also, Mew is a small cat pokemon that is well older than any of us. Mewtwo is technically around 30 based on when he was made; we dunno the exact date but he's definitely a millennial. A lot of mythical or "cute legendaries" like the lake trio are older than us, especially thanks to Legends Arceus. Ash's Pikachu is probably old enough to drink. Not to mention Detective Pikachu who is a father...trapped in a Pikachu's body, but still. I feel baby pokemon in sexual stuff feels weird, but I mean, that's gonna be true even if you off model them to age them up. They were specifically coded to be unable to breed because of this issue. Look at Miyu. Kid or short? The answer is short. While she enjoys being kidlike, she drops the facade if she gets sexual. I'ma be real I don't think y'all have a 100 yo Loli vampires issue. I mean, how would you even search for that unless you know their name? And if you know that, you can report them. Minors shouldn't be let in the site.

1: The anti-cub rule needs a lighter touch. The responses to tickets painted a picture that this was more about rooting out hidden pedophiles than protecting anyone, and that the admins were willing to throw out anyone who they had just the faintest suspicions of. That's not a good look, it feels like witch hunts almost, and creates an environment where people are terrified of coming under suspicion. That's really where a lot of the pushback came from, this feeling that it would be incredibly easy to fall under suspicion even if you weren't doing anything wrong, that even if everything you currently had was deemed ok, t his was not a safe place to say because something you add down the road might sway just a bit too close, or another mod may make a different ruling on things you were told were ok. I think it's worth considering WHY having cub porn here is banned. A pedophile finding something attractive is not inherently harmful to children, what is harmful is using it to groom minors. It's the danger of normalizing sexual content with children, and I feel that danger is only really present when the character is presented as a child. When I say that, I don't mean "their proportions may be close to a child's" like how the rule was enforced, I mean that it's obvious that the author intended for the character to be a child, or at least represent one. Without that obviousness, it's not really normalizing the behavior IMO. I would look more to things like how the character is represented as compared to other depictions of the species and especially compared to other characters by the artist. Even for a lot of pokemon and digimon with childlike proportions, I don't imagine most people will look at them and think "that's meant to be a child" because they're not represented as such in the media where they come from, not unless the artist goes out of their way to make them even more childlike in either appearance or context. TL;DR I feel action should be taken if the character is obviously meant to represent a child, but only when it is obvious. This would minimize harm done to minors without branding innocent artists as pedophiles. 2: FFS remove that bit about minors being ok in "SFW" kinks like vore and transformation. Yeah, stuff like that may appear in cartoons and games, but they're not the focus of the piece. At the end of the day regardless of whether any sexual acts are performed in them, kink pieces are there for people to jack off to, and minors should not be in them.

If minors aren't accessing adult content in the first place (( and they damn well shouldn't be)) then how does cub porn help groom them? If adults are sending minors any sort of adult content, that should be what we're out to stop, regardless of its loli/shota/cub status. Real life minors should be kept away from any and all adult content to the best of our ability and that means age verification, known nsfw artists not taking commissions from children, and not posting/sending things where minors can see them. If the argument is that viewing fictional and drawn content can "normalize" bad behaviors in adults, then we should by that logic support banning any fictional content that could be morally apprehensible if enacted in reality. Start banning violent video games that let you murder people. Start banning depictions of anthro-on-feral, rape, snuff, vore. Burn books with the content we don't like because "if someone reads this, that might make them want to commit criminal acts." Do you engage in impact play with a consenting adult? This must mean you want to take random people off the street and start beating them for pleasure. At the end of the day I'd rather someone spend their daily hours drawing cub vore or jerking off to it instead of going out and committing a real life criminal act. It absolutely terrifies me that the folks who are 'for' cub porn see a clear distinction between fiction and reality, while those against it seem unable to tell the difference. I think that -most- people who like fiction, one way or another, enjoy fantasizing about things they'd never do in reality, whether they're beating off to the idea or otherwise. Punishing folks for "thought crimes" is a slippery slope in the kink world, one that will end in missionary sex with the lights off being the only way to enjoy an orgasm. ETA: Not sure why the ?'s. I posted my full opinion earlier today, just felt like using my slowmoded post to reply to the last poster's points. Sorry if that's confusing.

I’ve supported FA for 16 years. As one of the most prolific pokemon nsfw creators, the change impacts me and my 28K watchers gravely. Bad Actors: Those abusing the policy, passing off intentional cub art as not, should be dealt with as usual. The update doesn’t aid that, it just makes more work for mods having to answer questions about everyone’s art. Ambiguity: Having worked under the internal policy - (Pokemon are assumed to be 18+ unless explicitly stated by the author / context in the pic , an example of which given by FA Admins was ‘surrounded by eggshells’), I have 2000+ pokemon pics in my gallery. With the brief list of species now automatically considered minors including tier 1 pokemon like eevee, ANY pokemon drawn to in line with the official style is an ambiguous risk. If it was an understandable ban on Riolu/etc, we could easily comply, but as it is, it’s impossible to be sure. I would like mods to spend an hour or two making a full list of all pokemon now considered to be cub, if drawn on model, so everyone could be sure they were complying 100%. As it is now, the only truly safe option is to delete all my pokemon art. Damage To Reputation: If you do this, we will become “creeps who drew / liked all that cub art', which is shocking. This will hurt thousands of peoples' reputations. You can't label us like that when we've all been under the understanding that we're NOT creating cub art. I've been told time and time again that my art is in the clear by Dragoneer, personally. Ambiguity to Non-Pokemon: I’m working on my project, Passiontail Isle, with my own original creatures. All animals look different. Horses have long hands, hippos have short legs. Mice have big heads! All my designs are of adults of their species, because they’re for porn. I’ve never described what the child versions look like, because it has no place in my work. The idea that my job could be at stake over this because a mod thinks my deer looks ‘too cute’ is horrifying.

The way the recent policy tried to specify that certain species of Pokemon and Digimon are banned leaves too much of a massive grey area and wiggle room for bad actors to abuse. This could have easily been avoided by simply making a statement saying "we will not tolerate fantasy creatures depicted as minors in fetishized or NSFW content", because the way you guys have it right now isn't really effective. You forbid sexualization of Pichu and Mime Jr, but what exactly is stopping someone from making cub porn of Mewtwo or Nidoqueen? It's just a very confusing rule. Also, I share the same sentiment as many others that "vore and TF" being allowed with minors is alarming, along with allowing NSFW with anything from the age of 13 to 17 shouldn't even be up to debate. Teenagers do not belong in NSFW content.

This rule change isn't making anyone safer or preventing harm, and a lot of good people are going to be caught in the crossfire of enforcement. I'm not going to pretend I have the answer to solve FA's woes, but I know this isn't it. Roll it back and try again.

I won't lecture on the specifics of how Pokemon or Digimon age, or how size/proportion doesn't equate to age. That's already been done. But I still feel it is my responsibility to say something. I have been on FA for almost a decade now, and been an active content creator for over half of that. FA was where I gained the confidence to start sharing my work and learned to improve my skills. While a somewhat smaller community, I always felt welcome and was willing to overlook many of its flaws because of it. Which is why the last few days have been so painful to watch. I have no problem banning images of underage characters, or "1000-year-old loli vampires". One of the reasons I use FA is because it was already more against such situations than places like inkbunny. However, the current policy will target all the wrong people. There are dozens of talented creators, within my own circle alone, who are now at risk of being banned or forced to remove important parts of their gallery. Users who have contributed to FA for years, and despite having a more cartoony style, have never attempted to depict minors in NSFW situations. There are other, better ways to combat harmful depictions of minors. There are many good suggestions just in this thread! But a blanket ban on particular art styles and species is not only against artistic expression, but sets a dangerous precedent for the future, and may inflict an amount of collateral damage I'm not sure FA can survive. Even if users aren't targeted specifically, the culture of the site will be impacted. A space in which a lone mod can erase years of work by citing vague guidelines is not one where art and creativity can thrive. I urge you to please listen to your base and walk back this policy. I know there are some people who approve of the change, but they are the minority. For every 1 person who voices approval, I see 50 who are against it. On Twitter, Discord and the website itself, there is a clear preference.

If you do not equate liking cute/chibi/even cub porn to pedophilia, then I have to stress the point I made in my prior post - who are you helping with these restrictions? As I said, ANY art with sexual situations is inherently supposed to stay out of minors view, so when you ban art of specific content in sexual situations that minors aren't supposed to be viewing in the first place, how is this further assisting in keeping minors safe? The only conclusion such a restriction has is that either the content is inherently encouraging of minor abuse, which as has been mentioned, is akin to a lot of conservative rhetoric that everything non-hetero in nature is aiming for children.. or you could even analogize it to "violent video games encourage violence" arguments; a narrative that has been scientifically disproven. I'd ALSO like to add that, as a Pokemon-furry for more years than a lot of anti- types have been alive for, this has only recently been labeled a problem. For two decades, this kind of content was just as weird as any other furry art. Nobody muttered "Eevee is a child" until very, very recently. Why was Eevee an adult by default for the last two decades? What changed? I feel like a lot of this is either the furry fandom's growing pains and various problems appearing to be more common than they might be, and/or just pressure from mainstream normal forces to sanitize sexual things. Furry isn't where it is because we're squeaky clean and normal looking. Which brings me to another point to add on - I don't think we're ever going to be a perfect community. We are not a clean community, and we shouldn't have to be. Some people can if they want to; that's their prerogative, but trying to be a hub of furry culture while having policies that sanitize it are just.. self-defeating. Furry has always thrived best when left on its own.

If cub art is not equal to CP/Csem in the eyes of fa I have to ask what is the ultimate point in banning it under the “1000y/o Loli “ rules to begin with. If that is Not FA’s position the difference in your understanding of cub porn and the fandoms itselfs understanding is a perfect example of why using a mods discretion to flag images is a faulty idea

I've mainly been sitting here watching this unfold and trying to keep my opinions objective. But I did want to make a comment here that I'm seeing artists who have no direct affiliation with this issue (in their own styles or subject matter choices) now provide commentary on how this is a terrible change. I'm not here to try to get people to ogle at who said what or to drop names, so I won't... but I hope a few of them make their way over here, or at least find their own ways to make their opinions better recognized. By the magnitude of the response to this change alone, it's evident that this directly hurts more otherwise rule abiding people than wrongdoers it's intended to catch. The justification for this change is worded in a way that invites prejudice toward people who have, until now, simply existed with characters that they feel safe representing themselves. This policy paints a label on their likeness with no regard for who they are as a premise. (see point 6) The '1000 year old vampire child' concept is a very poor argument for this. This is a common loophole to justify actual child porn i.e. 'being stuck in a child's body'. We're talking about creatures with no discernable life cycle, that can change form based on factors completely independent of age or maturity. That concept works both ways, meaning without regard to a Pokemon or Digimon characters emotional maturity, 'level', state of evolution, or actual age this is becoming a purely aesthetic choice. By these rules, the 'opposite' scenario wherein a completely undeveloped but otherwise 'physically mature' creature would be completely valid. I don't think that FA wants to become a site that polices the quality and aesthetic of their submission to subjective standards of 'goodness'. If that were the case, you should really have people start applying for accounts, showing references and credentials before being allowed to register... Obvious exaggeration aside, it sounds this like a can of worms that you'd only want to open if you were tired of hosting an art sharing website. It will snowball into larger things. It will get blown out of proportion. Bad decisions will be made by all parties. The policy isn't even technically in place and it's already poised to happen on all sides. It doesn't cost you guys anything to put a pin in this and rework it completely, unless it does, but you haven't told us about that if it's the case. That's where I'm going to leave this before getting into a whole separate issue.

I remember back when FA hosted actual cub porn. That is all I wanted to share.

"That concept works both ways, meaning without regard to a Pokemon or Digimon characters emotional maturity, 'level', state of evolution, or actual age this is becoming a purely aesthetic choice. By these rules, the 'opposite' scenario wherein a completely undeveloped but otherwise 'physically mature' creature would be completely valid." I wasn't going to comment on this originally, but I want to drive this point home because it's my one huge point of contention. There are many characters in media that fit this description that are already on FA. American Dragon Jake Long is canonically 13-14, but his dragon form "looks" adult, and has been on this site. Beastars characters are canonically 17 and living in High School dorms, and there is art allowed depicting them in those same dorms, but because they "look" adult, they get posted everywhere.

Err. I have to agree with that. If you're gonna make a rule regarding minor safety those would have to be tackled as well, not just the Pokemon and such. I'm not going to voice too much of an opinion as I don't think I can provide much on the topic, but I would think if the Pokemon characters cannot be allowed, those wouldn't be allowed either ? I do wanna say @Boblers had a fair point regarding about the mods and getting diversity in the team. Not saying there isn't, but it's a good point. (ping for credit, apologies!) https://discord.com/channels/991855522913460224/1110644832289968138/1111074668733018202

I originally wrote a longer piece but it was flagged by pastebin and I can't type much so I will sound curt. I overall agree with the intentions but it was handled horrendously, there's no excuse for this website to get this so badly wrong. https://discord.com/channels/991855522913460224/1110644832289968138/1110868339787571310 see this for most of what I think. Make FurAffinity 18+ only. It's woefully clear at this point that FA cannot curate a safe space for minors and the best thing that can be done is to remove minors from the site (and this server) altogether. Ban minors being involved in _any_ sexual/fetish content. This shouldn't have to be said but given the stance of staff stating certain fetishes to be "sfw", announcing this publicly and thereby giving minors the impression it's okay for them to engage with such content is outrageous behaviour that endangers minors and that's just disgusting. Ban aging up minors for sexual/fetish content. This sets a dangerous precedent of allowing a pass for people to make porn involving minors while pretending they're an "adult" temporarily, another loophole that will only have to be closed eventually if not now (and it really should be now). Do better. In all the time everyone has been panicking over massive IPs like Pokemon and Digimon being put under the spotlight, other popular characters who are very obviously minors still have dozens of porn images on the site, key example being Spyro the Dragon (clearly a child when there are many adult dragons in the setting to compare him to), other examples have been brought up as well. You lot really need to do some homework, especially for an issue this serious. I have no hope anything will happen beyond the update being rolled back and nothing else. I have much more I could say on other issues but I don't have enough character space, this site is just an utter circus. I'd like to be proven wrong but I'm not crossing my fingers.

Put that into a ticket

my only question is: why is the staff here enforcing puritanism and christian conservative to such an extreme degree knowing the damage it is going to cause to the community and already vulnerable queer creators? is it an IMVU situation again? even in the event that you didn't screw up the other day with the uh, unfortunate ruleset. did you notice people responding to those upset with the rule changes with "just don't draw children? :/ it's not that hard to be a pedophile" you're effectively setting the stage for even more people to get falsely labelled as pedophile and pushed into potentially dangerous spaces and mindsets, and that's not healthy. in the event FA survives and rolls this policy back, i really do hope you think about these things in the future. marginalized folks trying to get by are the primary victims here, and willfully othering them is so hurtful to watch

Want to make another two points, but its better to do it separately, so I'm back. Firstly, this is directed towards people responding here. Please stop putting out so much negativity towards Luffy, like come on. The idea that their comments were particularly bad and thats why only Luffys comments were screencapped and shared around is misleading. Firstly because Sciggs had their comments shared too, but secondly because those two were the only mods that made comments, lol. I'm sure if anyone else made statements regarding the update, those would be blasted around just as much. Being mad at the whole staff, I can understand, but let's not bully anyone in particular. Next, I saw the update FA pushed. Depictions of all pregnant minors is banned. Good start. Hopefully we'll have less people complaining about that now so we can focus on the core issues. (Though I'm sure people will still bring up the vore, which is more of a problem of semantics to, but w/e). Anyway, yeah, good start. But there are more problems to fix at hand. Edit: Oh come off with with the bootlicker emote. Im just as angry at the staff as anyone else, I think this update is stupid as all hell and the staff havent done near as much as they could. Im just saying to direct your anger correctly. Your opinion looks worse if you're all ganging up on someone like that. Edit2: On the vore and TF for minors topic, since I didn't address it in my main doc, I wanna say that most people think of vore as sexual, and should be defined in the rules as such. Eating someone in a nonsexual should be just called something else, frankly. SFW TF I think is fine... Mostly for admin reasons. Like, if you ban it, you also ban Age Regression, and like, thats thing a people like, I guess. I'm not gonna fight it. Plus, if they don't reverse course on the pokemon ban, banning sfw TF takes out even more art cuz there's a lot of sfw TF of small cute pokemon that would then banned on top of that. I know I've drawn SFW tfs of people into eevee and zorua, for example. Even with the NSFW poke ban, those could stay up, but not if SFW TF is banned. Just my thoughts on that.

Hello i joined here just to know about the pokemon/digimon part of the policy which im not sure what does mean all that As far i know evolution and age in pokemon is a very different thing which now im just confused there. What exactly we can use if we talk about "small" pokemons? They are just small fictional creatures and not minors unless theres a context that shows is a kid which that part should be bannable Theres things that makes pokemon adults even if they look small

Why was the vore/tf stuff not addressed? How long does it take for such a simple change?

There have been some calls to expand the mod team, so they can better handle the workload of managing a site like this. Adding on to that, I think it is important to have mods that represent (or are themselves part of) a diverse amount of subcommunities on FA - for example artists and commissioners who have an interest in cute characters, Pokemon/Digimon, ABDL, vore, etc. These subcommunities sometimes have nuance that is hard to grasp unless one is already acquainted with these groups. For example: Most 'mon enthusiasts do not think of said 'mons as stand-ins for children, and are highly uncomfortable with such a premise. It is common for 'mons in NSFW to be considered adults unless specified otherwise. ABDL enthusiasts can tell you that the characters involved are usually just adults role-playing. Separate terminology is also used sometimes, such as "Babyfur" to describe content with minors that is strictly SFW, or "Diaperfur" as an umbrella term for content that just has diapers in general. Some even use only part of the ABDL acronym to describe themselves - those interested in diapers but not the adult themes sometimes call themselves DL instead. * Vore enthusiasts usually do not think of their subject matter as SFW, and draw a clear distinction between mainstream "eaten whole"/"in the belly of the beast" depictions and vore-focused artwork. There are also different types of vore with varying degrees of extremeness, such as "soft vore" (eaten character is not harmed), "hard vore" (eaten character experiences graphic injury), or "permanent/fatal vore" (eaten character dies). The FAQ and some responses from mods suggest that there are severe "blind spots" for the communities I've listed above, and likely others. I should clarify that I don't expect everyone to know everything, and I do not blame mods for not knowing about every sub-community (there are a lot, I don't claim to know em all either!). But consulting members of sub-communities (or even bringing some into the mod team, if possible) can help prevent a lot of misconceptions born of unfamiliarity. In other words: if (ETA: hypothetically!) nobody on the mod team is familiar with Pokemon-enthusiast furs, please just ask some of them for clarification - people really don't mind talking about their interests if asked. If a Pokemon fan was asked whether they consider all canon Eevee as children by default, they would probably say "no, of course not", and we likely wouldn't be in the current predicament. (I hope this doesn't come off as judgy. I just think some erroneous judgments are being made due to just lacking information or misunderstanding as an outsider looking in. As furries, we've all probably experienced a misjudgment like that from non-furries - let's not do it to each other, too)

Do note: There are definitely Pokemon-enthusiast furs already on the staff. Even the headmin has long been a big fan, creator and supporter of the exact content they're currently planning on banning. So I don't think that's where the point of confusion is coming from, although I understand your sentiment!

FA ya done goofed with the pokemon thing. Roll it back. I agree with protecting minors, but this is overreaching. Seldom anyone I know uses those "baby" pokemon as babies. Those that do, would fall within your previous policy. Your mods should have the comprehension skills to use context to come to a decision on whether a character is an adult or not. Instead of just outright banning said creature from being on model. Then the double standard with vore and other "sfw" fetishes. I am a vore artist myself, and I disagree with minors being allowed in vore or any "sfw" "situations" cause you know the people viewing that aren't just gonna be looking at it wholesomely like a tom and jerry cartoon. They are looking at it for the fetish material. There is no doubt a sexual undertone to the vore art, no matter if its "sfw". I love FA and for the most part your recent changes have been going in the right direction. It hurts to see something like this, which hurts the site. You not only offend and scare off the community, but more important the creators who are the lifeblood of the site. I love the site and the community I have grown there, and would hate to have it all destroyed because of an ill thought out policy.

Response too big so paste: https://pastebin.com/k3zh3iLb TLDR: I'm not saying much that hasn't already been said, but this needs as many dissenting opinions as can put hands to keyboard. The update and clarifications as given do little to nothing to address the problem they are supposedly meant to help, and rather create harm to people like my friends. The administration's handling has been awful and fueled the speculation of actors outside the site forcing this through. I don't see a good way forward short of rolling the update back and taking a hard look at what it was before, and who is in line to enforce it.

I'm here simply to get my very concise thoughts out Don't blanket ban any pokemon or digimon, don't make some silly proportion guide, please don't put vore/tf with minors even if its just artistic Side note, please don't use mons like Eevee as examples, even Neer himself has an Eevee which only makes this look worse

https://johnalberti.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/McCloudScale1.jpg This graph perfectly demonstrates all of the examples thar have provided to elaborate on the issue. The more cartoony something is, the less it resembles any kind of person, the less it resembles any kind of demographic. When a character is too cartoony, the head to body ratio does not work

I wanted to weigh in on what I read in the update regarding underage characters being allowed in vore and transformation content. I might suggest a small bit of clarification for those points because I think I see where you're coming from, but it's not clear. Both vore and transformation themes are present in a lot of children's media, but it is important to recognize that, often the show or story being told is not at its core ABOUT that theme, or where it is, is typically pretty clearly not meant to titillate Examples being: Pinocchio is a story in which a little puppet boy gets eaten by a whale. This story is not ABOUT that though. Turning Red on the other hand IS largely about a girl who transforms into a red panda (and coming of age themes) but in both cases the themes pointed out are pretty plainly not meant to titillate. They are stories that happen to have those themes, but aren't adult works that focus on them. I could understand if you all simply didn't want to deal with underage characters in vore or transformation content, as that would be easier to moderate, but if you choose to keep things as they are, I might suggest ammending the rules relating to transformation and vore along the examples listed above. I as a vore artist, do not think that children should be included in adult vore art or stories, that is specifically content created to titillate the viewer. Let's face it, most vore art posted to FA is made to be porn, and I feel like it is highly inappropriate for underaged characters to be present in it. Just because children's media features these things, doesn't mean it isn't porn when someone draws or writes erotic art of the subject. I think it's fine though if a story or a comic happens to have one or both of those themes though, so long as it's clearly not meant as porn, as in the examples listed, but I really think you should have that distinction in there.

The most recent update to the policy is a clear example of how poorly it has been thought out, and that it seems to be driven by outside factors that are not being made transparent or discussed with us, the users of FA as major stakeholders in the site and its overall wellbeing. Things that are allowed openly on mainstream media, in broadcast television, are now being banned by FA. While things that are literally the sexualized death of underaged characters (vore) are specifically called out as acceptable. I understand that the community as a whole is having issues with individuals skirting the rules, but these seems to be a sledgehammer used when tweezers are needed. The news posts mention feedback, but we as users were not openly invited to that conversation BEFORE the decisions were unilaterally made for us as a community. I've been an FA supporter and user for over a decade, and have financially supported it for a while now too. This is not the behavior i expect of a community guided organization. This is top down, non transparent decision making that smacks of having been driven by an outside force that we, the users and supporters of FA, are intentionally not being made privy to.

I got a full 24 hour time out for sharing the "it's fine as long as nothing sexual happens" screenshot to respond to its statement, so much for open dialogue

This all just keeps getting worse. Edit: just roll the whole thing back admins... this is just... dumb. Edit 2: these new rules would literally make the movie Juno get you banned. This... is all... so disappointing. Like... pregnancy is not porn.

# Personally, I feel that these changes are too subjective to clearly enforce and wouldn't accomplish anything outside of further dividing these communities. The website already has a lot of diversity in both the fursonas people create and/or the ones they find comfort in. The desire to be both small and moe~ is nothing new or a loophole people are trying to abuse. It's seen A LOT in the ABDL community, but also expands to many characters outside of that like Impmon, Eevee, PomPom (from the newly released Honkai Star Rail), Yordles, and even Tails from Sonic, share those traits. I like my characters small enough for my husband to pluck up from the ground and coddle silly, but by no means would I define them as a minor. I just want to be small and hecking cute and I find comfort in that. I think ultimately it would be best to rollback this policy and just prioritize a blacklist system instead. Anyways, thank you for making this thread for us to speak our mind. 👍 ❤️

I may be a bit behind on details, I apologize if I comment on out of date info. I'll try to be as brief and concise as I can. I'm angry for a variety of reasons, one being because I literally can't post lewds of my fursona anymore. I'm a toony dog with what are apparently "childlike proportions", and because of that, I can't post lewds even though he's the same age as me (25). Putting that aside, there's no planet anywhere where vore isn't inherently sexual. It's literally a fetish. A fetish. Allowing minors to be drawn in such a situation is REALLY WEIRD, GUYS. A scene in a movie is one thing, but I'm pretty sure context REALLY matters. [EDIT: My friend enlightened me that vore isn't always sexual in nature, I'm sorry for misrepresenting it there, but we both still agree that VORE AND KIDS DO NOT MIX] The whale scene from Pinnochio, for example. Perfectly innocent, it's a plot device, hell, even fanart of that scene is probably fine. But when you draw a buff anthro version of Monstro slurping down a living child puppet, it starts to take on a very different connotation, don't you think? If you guys are really, truly concerned about cub content on your site, then just make a rule that says "Characters that are children may not be drawn in any sexual situation, PERIOD" I feel like that covers all the bases, right?? Bad at writing so i'm gonna end here and just hope you guys come to your senses.

This new policy business was a slap in the face from a fandom i have been a part of for a decade. i feel like i am to walk on eggshells around rules and monitor my work because i draw rookie level digimon, all because someone decided they are minors, period stop. no subtlety or considering the context of the artwork or that characters are of age (plenty has already been said on the subject of pokemon and digimon and how age is irrelevant). it puts bad labels on plenty of good people who dont want them and jeaporadizes their livelihood. there was statements that this policy was decided upon by majority or community consesus but that is obviously a farce. to me it comes across more as a few people had an axe to grind and wanted to make an example of people. it may not have been the case but here we are.

My feedback: https://pastebin.com/a6qJGJdu

Minor warning. Posting any screenshots of things staff said previously has rather constantly gotten said things instantly removed and likely lead to manual timeouts throughout the whole course of the other discussion thread regardless of context "regardless of context" 🤔 Kinda like how this update works too Oh yeah, my newest feedback is that handing out timeouts like this is an awful look

> "Minors may not be depicted as pregnant" 👍

I don't have anything to add beyond repeating and reincorporating the dominant mood of the community - I think it's pretty clear that the people who actually use and bring life to FA do not want these changes and it's inappropriate to do so. The discrepancy between the weird carve-outs for vore and TF and the stated reasoning behind the changes speaks for itself. (If there are outside factors compelling this, now would be the time to go into detail.) For what it's worth, I personally am not affected by this change at all - none of my creative work incorporates the affected concepts. However, I have always been very grateful to FA for being something the vast majority of furs could rely on in an internet landscape that would always be inherently hostile to things like queer sexuality, and now in retrospect I am looking very very stupid. Please either roll back these changes, or - if that cannot be done - explain why. Thank you.

I hope that staff understands that only banning minors in pregnancy but not vore or other festishes still makes them look incredibly sus. Like they have to know that right? Should have just banned minors in any fetish instead of taking these little baby steps when people were mad about THE WHOLE THING and not just that one part. Is there just going to be continous singular updates to this ruling you should have just scrapped until all the scary people stop yelling at you or something?

Alright so I thought I'd throw my more organized thoughts about this shitstorm into this cesspool. Consider the following: 1. My initial reaction to the policy change was impulsive, and it's on me for giving a site as terrible as FurAffinity the benefit of the doubt when they say "sexualizing minors is bad actually". Whether their intentions were in the right place, their handling of the situation was absolutely juvenile and their userbase as a whole deserved a more carefully worded and considered explanation of said policy change. 2. Vore is kink, SFW (even then that's debatable) or otherwise. If it's not kink it's not vore, it's just eating. If you are including children in vore, that is sexualizing children. As many other people in the vore community have stated, this community already has a serious pedophile issue, and this is NOT helping. 3. While a teenager Being Pregnant is not in and of itself obscene, as I have stated I am no longer giving the FA staff the benefit of the doubt, and am instead assuming the worst possible reading of this point. 4. Dragoneer is a hypocrite and that is all I feel safe saying in this server without getting banned. 5. Going from a policy that is potentially way too restrictive to a policy that clearly defines grey areas in which pedophiles CAN get away with making pedophilic content reveals that the staff have absolutely no fucking clue what they're doing or what they even stand for anymore. Congratulations, you've somehow managed to piss off all the right people but literally everyone else as well. NOW NOBODY LIKES YOU, LOL, GREAT DAMAGE CONTROL. 6. The people declaring their intention to flock to The Cub Porn Site is not an epic own to FA. I don't think this one needs to be elaborated on.

I'll summarize the litany of posts I made in the other thread, and try to skip over most of what's been covered so well already by others here. TL;DR: Back to the drawing board. Try again without targeting people who have nothing to do with 2.7 content. This update (the new enforcement / proportions fallacy in particular) is terrible. Roll it back. CLARIFICATIONS - the exception for 'sfw' tf/vore/etc. for minors, and the former one for "13yo preg", is not new to these changes. It's been site policy for some time - For both of the above to receive so much focus takes away from the actual policy changes, although it does further the contradictory nature of these changes QUESTIONS - The AUP currently claims Minors may not be fetishized. but the FAQ update says Minors involved in SFW or non-sexualized interests, such as vore and transformation, are allowed. Note that the AUP does not distinguish 'sfw'. Only one of these can be accurate. Which is it? - What's the genesis or reason behind the blanket ban / 'childlike proportions' / etc. attempt on creatures? (I know the new enforcement is pokes-digis, but this update is also clarification on 2.7 in general, and other non-pokes-digis are being hit.) Did the directors just decide one day "time to shake things up"? Is there an external financial influence (advertising, payment processor, etc)? Is there other external influence (hosting provider, etc.)? We would like to know why this happening, timing-wise and reason-wise. A thorough explanation, please. - Is art depicting child creatures (pokes-digis) not already actionable? Why does this extra bit need to be added? The claims are "loophole fixes", but: Is there art on FA that got reported, that depicts a character in a high chair bonnet and bib, in Adult Situations, but FA could not remove it "because it's a Pikachu"? No way that art could not already be removed, right? What's getting "fixed" with this "cut down a forest to remove 2 trees" approach? The intent of this policy should already be possible, making this update pointless. - Elaborate on the nebulous 'positive feedback'. What precise feedback was received? What questions were prompted to garner these? If they were generic 'cp is bad. I don't want to see baby Charmander in a toddler context', then that feedback doesn't apply. Until/unless this data is available, that claim needs to be removed, as it's misleading at best, a lie at worst. And I hope this feedback isn't what caused this bad policy update to occur. COMMENTS - The Chilling Effect is in full force here, along with the whole "causing financial/mental harm to a chunk of the FA community." Some of this is irreversable as they've already left, or will be forever looking over their shoulders in case FA tries to pull this again, if (hopefully) these changes are rolled back. - No-one should get Offenses/bans/permas from this. Ever. You're dinging tons of artists with false positives, and you'll clog up traffic court sorting it all out. (Not even counting those who just leave.) - This thread is pushing 200 posts. Even if we generously say 10% are moderators/off-topic/"I actually agree", that still shows how wrong this is. No amount of 'positive feedback' amounts to this. (Not to mention the 25k+ message thread.) - Staff/mods not part of this decision are being thrown under the bus by whoever put this policy together. Abuse is being hurled at these volunteers. I blame the folks abusing them, and staff who put this raw dish out there for them to have to damage control and enforce. Do Better, please. - If a user says 'you disagree? you like cp' that should be report-able. It's a strawman. Stop it. 👀 And lastly, a user who is currently banned on this server posted a feedback journal entry. For their sake, in case this thread dies before they are unbanned, I am posting it here https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10560171/ Lots of good content!

I don't really have a dog in this fight but glad the teenage pregnancy got removed. I still think that Vore and TF material involving minors shouldn't be allowed because they are heavily fetishized and that's just too big of a loophole. You guys allow diaperfurs, that have fairly childlike bodies, onto the site and while nothing explicit is being shown it's still fetishizing children. You also allow explicit content when it comes to pregnancy where it's X-ray and/or birthing content and there is absolutely no way you can justify those as not exploiting children in some sexually gratifying way. FA is primarily a porn site with heavily fetishized content, there is no hiding that fact but this is going to become a Pandora's box of sorts. So maybe look into getting that tag system working so people can finally blacklist content they don't want to see instead of just trying to purify areas you should have tended to over a decade ago. Same goes for blocking accounts, their content should be hidden so I don't need to see it while cross-referencing something.

This is going to be short but will hopefully add at least a little context to things. Pokemon's art direction changed alightly after I believe gen 3 and they started giving a lot of smaller mons large heads and snall eyes. You can compare Vulpix to Nicket, Fennekin and Zorua for example. This makes them appear a lot more cutesy. And this is something that goes for anime cats in general. Unless they're going for realistic proportions anime cats tend to be drawn with a large head and big eyes. Gatomon, 808, Meowth, Happy and Carla, Cait Sith and Morgana just to name a few. So I think it be extremely dumb to ban something like Gatomon who looks to me, like a cartoon cat.

pls don't ban pokemo \:(

Not to put a fine pin on it, but banning non-cub furry artists, a lot who are LGBT people, who are not drawing underage porn for drawing underage porn is absolutely calling them pedophiles. Cub is drawn furry pedophilia. For banning non-pedophiles for cub art or taking down their art, you are saying they drew art breaking the rules for drawn pedophilia. I am appalled that people on staff didn't think about this or seemingly didn't know that cub is pedophilia. I'm glad staff walked back on banning people pointing this out, but the original post banning discussions of this angle of the ruling, for the optics, was really tone-deaf in my opinion.

They apparently listened to the teen pregnancy bit which is great but how is it that of all the things we have said here they have only changed that one thing. My life is still being destroyed along side others and yet still they haven't addressed a single one of the problems. For goodness sakes please just cancel the whole thing! This rule needs to be run on a basis of intent not on the basis of species!

The biggest problem of 2.7 upload rule is the fact that pokemons are caught in the crosshair and allowing minors to be in part of vore and transformation, even though vore is a paraphilia, if the mods removed the pokemon ban, a good amount of people would stay with FA, but because they banned pokemon, a very good amount of artists have to move to either Twitter or IB

Glad to see the change to not allow teen pregnancy on your platform, but your still trying to tell me that my Eevee OCs are minors who can't engage in sexual activities and ignoring my own input in the matter, so I still have a problem there. Also wait, who said anything about banning topics in writing? Does 2.7 extend to stories and writing as well? Is that explicity pornographic ones, or is it just any story with teen pregnancy or other sensitive themes? Banning things in art is one thing, but banning things in written word is another... When will luffy and the rest of FA actually be clear about their own intentions?? Because honestly right now it just feels like their hiding from the feedback and backlash.

A majority of the community right now still feels the staff are only addressing the issues of the policy like a piece meal, you are working far to quick to save face with the current fiasco this has caused. Either really try to listen to the community's needs than thinking what you are going for right now is working just because you have good intentions. The policy feels like it was executed without taking any real feedback first before it even was introduced regardless if the rollout for it is in July. The fact we have to come here to this discord to tell you that allowing minors in fetishized content such as vore, tf, and pregnancy shouldn't be something we have to do, especially within a community that sexualizes these sorts of things. No one can just make a "Hard-Hitting story about Teenage Pregnancy" like Juno on FA and have it go the wrong way, that just won't fly. Having to read staff try to excuse vore and transformation being okay with minors in it because it was in "Children Shows" is a really disastrous way to go about this. We implore that maybe you either do a survey or really ask to see the census on how you should even go about this. Otherwise this policy's wording is damaging to many artist currently on your platform, it does not help things the policy hits at is in the favorites of the staff themselves if they will hold us to the same standards.

Don't assume to know a characters' age based on looks. First-stage evolution =/= Child. That's all I have to say, really. Leave the cute characters alone. Full disclosure, I coached ChatGPT to write the following for me: I've got some urgent concerns about the new policy on mature art of cute characters. Assuming a character's age based on appearance is unfair to artists. It's killing creativity and stifling nuanced portrayals. We need a more context-aware approach that respects artistic freedom while keeping things safe. Can we please reconsider? Just because a character is cute doesn't mean they're a child. Many characters have depth beyond their appearance. This ban is hurting artists and their ability to express themselves. Let's find a solution that strikes a balance between safety and creative freedom without unnecessary restrictions. I'm really urging you to take another look at this policy. We value your commitment to safety, but there are better ways to address concerns. Consider factors like artwork context or explicit age confirmation. Together, we can build a thriving platform that supports artists while maintaining a safe and inclusive environment. Please, let's make a change. Reconsider the policy and let artists express themselves freely. We're all here because we love this community and want to see it flourish. Your support means a lot to us. Thank you.

Like the updated terms but please ffs rollback the defining minors by anything other than them being younger than the in species equivalent of a human adult. There's a difference between cute, comfort, cool, and erotic.

I want to keep my feedback relatively short, but I just wanted to point out that banning specific Pokémon just because you think they look “too young” is inherently flawed logic. Since some of the very Pokémon specified in the policy listed are literally able to be bred in the actual Pokémon game! This implies that even some of the Pokémon included in your list are in fact adults (or at least can be adults). Just because Pokémon as a whole have a more toony style does not imply that these characters are children. I can understand some of the thought process behind the policy change, but the implementation fell far short of whatever you hoped to achieve here.

It kinda astounds me that FA mods THINK that there is anything to debate at this point. Like they need more feedback I am... dumbfounded. It's utterly insane how you can look at massive crowd screaming "We don't like this" and think, "Well, lets get more feedback" or "it's just people being dramatic", This is a level of delusion that needs to be checked by a specialist. There is so very, very few people that like this policy. I'd argue less than 1% of people agree to this, even after two revisions. There are so many flaws pointed out by this policy by me and many others, there is nothing to gain here. You only served to piss off... Everyone at this point. If someone doesn't like Pikachu penis, how about a blacklist feature? Dear lord is it really that hard to understand you are wasting all efforts you are given? You could have improved the website with all this wasted time spent.

“Minors” should just be limited to humanoids. I often see like Kirlia used as a loli stand in and I’d get not wanting that if the intention is obvious… but I really do not think people are looking at Eevee and Riolu as stand-ins for minors. It’s overbearing and inserting highly controversial meaning where it is not intended. People just like cute Pokémon and it’s not that deep. If you want to ban “adolescent creatures” it should just be left as it was before. Obviously someone shouldn’t be uploading like underage Warrior cats smut bc that’s literally just a baby cat, but the move to police fictional creatures that will never exist is plain silly and will only make users leave.

I'd also like to see more protection (Or suspension) of account holders of <18 years of age. The front page is notorious for having poorly tagged, sexually explicit or heavily sexualized content. I don't think it's acceptable of "Just report the offending art" is not good enough. "Recent Submissions" section of the front page are art pieces that have been posted up in the last few seconds. Even an honest mistake of an artist hitting post and realizing they had the wrong tags and fix it within 1 minute probably have had their art already on the screens of minor's accounts. FA need better measures to protect this audience if they're wanting to provide them with a "safe space" and not suspend all minor accounts until 18. EDIT: Just added some line space, no change in content.

What bothers me the most about the rule entirely is the implication that someone can deem a character to be a child and despite that being what it's not, why does FurAffinity get to deem the characters I've had for years as children. In a sense, you're putting me in a box, that you've checked, just for have someone else to come along and say it's not. It's a rather slippery slope that in my opinion, can't be properly enforced, especially since people have different opinions on what they think they're looking at. Pokemon aside, Digimon aside. I read the new rules. Minors cannot be deemed as pregnant, but you're still perfectly fine with minors in a vored situation. That baffles me, you rolled back on something, but ignored the other issue the community had. If you go around seeing journals and the reaction. It's not normal. People are pissed off, myself included. RIghtfully so, please do the right thing and reverse this mess before this place gets burned to the ground... Also, we really shouldn't have to submit trouble tickets, just for them to end up being ignored and lost in this sea of confusion that you yourselves put yourself in. You knew you opened up the floodgates when you did what you did, don' t try and blame your community for it.

As an artist who has been working for the furry ABDL community for years I am strongly against policy change 2.7. Already it has caused damage to our community through many of our artists splitting up and moving all around the internet, instead of us having a single website to use together. Building a community is a slow but meaningful process, and sudden large changes like this will take years to recover from fully. Many members of the furry ABDL community experience joy and relief through being treated as if they were younger than they actually are, whilst still being an adult in reality, and the art I and other furry ABDL artists draw and paint of these scenarios happening with their characters can help them feel calmed and joyful, functioning as a quick escape from a potentially tiresome adult life. I enjoy having the ability to make this art for them as I can't help but to become happy with them, sharing their joy. I do not believe banning artists for drawing images of adult Pokemon or Digimon enacting in fetishes with each other, or any other adult characters for that matter, actually protects any real life children. What would benefit real life users though, would be adding a blacklist feature for blocking tags users do not want to see, or by allowing the action of blocking users to actually prevent their art from showing up in search results for the person who blocked them.

Posting this journal for someone else. I do not know this person, nor do I agree with their point on whether humans should be allowed, but they deserve to have their say, too. https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10558782/

I don't really draw myself, due to factors like shyness and anxiety and self-loathing, so my experience with this is mostly relegated to how my characters seem to others, but I really don't think a character should be simply looked at and deemed a child or not without context. I should be able to decide for myself if my characters are underage or not, and none of them are, even Mew. Pokemon and Digimon can look small and still be adults - context is important when determining their character age. I do also think that, regarding the 'minors in vore/TF' ruling, detailing there is important too - this journal here https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10558263/ does give more information regarding whether a vore/TF scene would be deemed 'acceptable'. If we're adding recommendations, in addition to those of a blacklisting program, I would personally like the ability to prevent people I've blocked from seeing my stuff. Blocking prevents others from leaving messages or notes, but if someone who's clearly a minor wants to see your art you have no way to stop that aside from disabling your account, which prevents anyone from seeing your stuff. (I know that I don't actually have any stuff on my FA profile, but this is all hypothetical anyways.) (Apologies if I completely missed the mark here. A lot has been happening recently in life so I'm kind of out of it.)

So I commented earlier but there are some things I've thought of since then that I would like to add, having kept an eye on this thread throughout the day. 1) Furaffinity's staff needs to take this feedback seriously. One of the main things I said earlier is that there is a widespread perception of mistrust in FA's moderators. In the official Telegram channels, complaints about the policy update are being dismissed wholesale as "drama-mongering" and "spreading misinformation." That has to stop, and it has to stop NOW. Whether there's any truth or not to the claim that "criticism is due to misinformation and bad faith" (and I don't believe there is), it is not helpful to keep pointing it out at this point. 2) FA needs to make it very clear, publicly, that this forum - and this thread, right here exists for sharing feedback. So far, the only place I've seen FA make any mention of it (and maybe this is on me, but I don't think it is) is the FA Telegram chat. It also needs to be posted - by Furaffinity, officially - on Twitter and on the site itself. A Discord thread is 100% not the best place for feedback, but if that's what you're going to be using, everyone needs to know about it, and they need to know about it from FA, not just from others spreading the word. (Edit: I just noticed that there is, in fact, a link to this thread buried deeeeeeep down in the latest Fender journal, so that's admittedly one that I missed, but I frankly think it was deliberately made easy to miss. Still no direct Tweet about it on Twitter.) All of that may seem off-topic, but I promise you, it isn't. Because the lack of transparency in the process is 100% one of the main issues that has led to this disastrous policy update rollout. You had better not be timing out/banning people for taking screenshots and posting them to Twitter and other chats - this server isn't the ideal forum for feedback, but it's the one we've been given, the message being sent in this thread is loud and clear, and you had better believe that absolutely no one is going to just let you sweep it under the rug. If you want to take the first step in rebuilding the trust you've broken by messing up this update so badly, that step is shouting about this forum from the rooftop, not trying to pretend it doesn't exist and hoping more people don't notice it. Yeah, that's gonna mean more criticism. Yeah, that's gonna mean people coming in and possibly acting in bad faith. But people are going to talk about (and are talking about) what's being said in here in other channels. Trying to stop that from happening is only going to damage trust further, and it's also not going to stop it from happening. That ship has sailed. That may sound a little aggressive, but part of that is because I'm trying to stay within the bounds of Nitro's message length, so I can't really afford to mince words. This isn't a list of demands or threats; it's a statement of facts. This is what's happening. FA will choose to ignore it at their peril. ETA: Just to reiterate: if FA believes they will be able to just keep their heads down, quietly hope this blows over, and weather another "mass exodus," expecting everyone to just come back, they are sorely, grievously mistaken.

I am going to be super blunt here. If I get muted for this, so be it, but it needs to be said above all else. The severe lack of communication, not to mention the contradicting statements between admins and mods, has cause such irreparable damage to the FA brand that I cannot see how the staff can push this through in any capacity. The admins have already become a laughing stock across the furry community and on top of the repeated revisions, none of our concerns, save the minor preg thing, has been acknowledged or even brought up since the feedback thread started. I cannot see any way forward with these rules other than rescinding them and starting from the ground up. The fact that this has been going on day 3 (4?) now when all the staff has done has double down in each instance is stunning to witness. It's had not to be rude in such a scenario, but this has become such a mess that until 'neer or any of the higher staff insert their points, anything the mods or admins do will be meaningless. The lack of response and the constant dancing around and "lol guess I'm popular now," is unacceptable. I also want to bring up one huge concern. MPS's involvement. What role did they have looking at this rule? Cause given how serious MPS and federal orgs can be, I have a hard time believing they okayed ANY of this. You're telling me they saw the rule of minors being fine in vore, as well as teen pregnancy, and said "yep, that looks fine." When the running joke is now "you wanna vore kids? OWO," instead of actually caring about protecting minors legitimately, it's time to reconsider. This is not a good look in any capacity. I'm sorry, but the recent change is not enough. Only removing the rule and fixing both the staff and the site will make things better. To conclude, and I mean this sincerely, "put up, or shut up." DO! BETTER!

How about you fix the following before you try to divide the community in two, because right now with the way things are, I don’t think FA has a leg to stand on. 1.) 10MB limit for submissions is TINY 2.) Fix the spam on the front page 3.) Give us video support 4.) Give us a modern comment system 5.) Give us modern search and blacklist features. 6.) Give us working thumbnails. 7.) Give us real transparency. This is just a small list of things we should’ve had by now. It’s 2023, every competitor has a website that functions better than FA A blacklist for instance, could’ve allowed us to live in harmony with eachother instead of imposing these absolutely ludicrous and subjective species bans. Good Riddance~

Forcing a comparison between hyper-deformed stylized cartoon creature characters and the bodies of real children is reductive and regressive. It's intensely disappointing to see this coming from a website focused around a community characterized by sexual freedom. The characters having childlike proportions does not make them children, in the same way that furries having animal characteristics doesn't make them animals. Plus, nearly all of the named banned characters don't even have childlike proportions; they have cartoon proportions. There is no human child or baby that is 2 heads tall. Pointing at a drawing of a Cubone and saying it looks like a child is not relevant. It looks like a cartoon dinosaur. This rule will do nothing to protect minors. 18+ drawings of Agumon do not groom minors, predators do. And predators can use any kind of p0rnography (or 'sfw k1nk' art) to do that. If you ACTUALLY want to make furaffinity safe for minors, ban all adult content. In the name of protecting minors, why allow any nsfw art of any characters from children's media? Why only ban "childlike proportions" and not "depictions of childlike behavior"? Or "childlike clothing"? Or "childlike interests"? The f3tishization of 'childlike qualities' is inseparable from Furry as a whole, given its origin and ongoing inspiration from children's cartoon media. I'm saying you can use this same justification to ban nearly every piece of erotic furry art in existence, whether the character being depicted is big-headed or not. Non-furries looking into the fandom see cartoon animal porn and think "that's childish". The distinction is meaningless. If this is due to a payment processor issue again, you would have a ton more understanding from the community if it was made public knowledge. Part of the negative backlash is that all these people affected are being told that their cartoon p0rn is a danger to minors... in a group whose main cultural export is cartoon p0rn. Please reconsider.

I don't know if anyone else is thinking about this, and maybe I'm the outlier, but I'm confused about why this is where the moderators draw the line, that cubphilia is atrocious so much so that it has to be banned and removed by all accounts, but furaffinity has been a community/haven of nearly free expression. So why is this where the moderators draw the line, that they are getting rid of this in order to protect those less than eighteen years old/adult, when the following fetishes are still on the website for everyone to see: -Gore/Torture/Snuff/Rape/Beastiality/Blackmail/Forced/Abuse/Speaking Feral on Human or Furry sex/Incest/Drug-use These are all real fetishes, and most of them are illegal fetishes in the face of law, so if cubaphillia is being removed from the site why aren't these being removed as well in order to make room for the cubs? They can see these too, anyone and everyone can lie about there age when creating an account on a website. There will always be the chance of risk of having kids on the website, but this is primarily an adult website. Therefore it should be treated as such. The real question should be, "Why are kids on an adult website in the first place?" Secondly, I hope people realize or understand that this entire chat can be used by trolls, and those deep fishing in the furry community in order to cancel people as they now have an entire roster of people to hunt down and track for defending or trying to counter a ruling against Cubaphillia/Pedophilia. I'm sure they already see this huge backlash and plan to exploit it in some way to turn more of the external population on the furry community because of this lack of transparency, and the mismangement of the situation. This topic isn't being handled properly and it's going to be abused to hurt people far beyond the scope that the moderators realize. The only reason I'm mentioning this is because I want people to know that this is a possible ramification of this thread.

Like everyone is saying, just because the character has childlike proportions does not make them children. These new rules about the Pokemon stuff are especially bad because Pokemon don't age due to evolution. Evolution and age are completely separate from each other so banning "young looking" Pokemon from engaging in NSFW stuff is backwards.

I was debating whether or not to give my 2 cents here, as I'm not an artist and am definitely not prolific in any way, but here goes: My sona is not an Eevee and 99% of what I've posted is either SFW or falls under one of the two "allowed" fetishes (and I'm not even getting into that, others have done so better than I could), except most artists I've commissioned have a "cutesy" art style and my character is often blushing in images, which, according to at least a few note responses, would make it not ok. I've always seen my sona as my current age. I'm in my late 20s. There is no image online that I've posted with an underage character. Even then, going by the responses the moderation team has given other users, it's very possible I'd be on the chopping block, as would be many of my friends, some of whom have been on furaffinity for almost as long as it's been around. If I'm totally honest, not even a full reversal of this new policy would change the way I view the state of FA. I do not feel safe on a website with highly puritan rules, where drawing a character you know is of age is not ok if done a certain way, or if they exhibit any sort of embarrassment or reaction to what's happening to them. You have already demonstrated inconsistencies in your responses to artists and other users seeking to know if images they uploaded years ago are still fine to host. This sort of thing makes it very difficult to justify remaining in your site. For your own sakes, I hope you do better in the future.

To those who don't support the 2.7 policy, two notes to consider: First, the 2.7 changes go back a long ways, which is why InkBunny doesn't just have cub art, but is also stuffed with Sonic art. 'Rolling back' the current enforcement change isn't simple, because the policy is logically an extension of existing policy. However, the core cub change back in the day was made for monetary/tech reasons to keep the website running. It can't be undone without some kind of major change in how the website is hosted and operated, not to mention likely staff changes. Thus, the solution is tricky -- how should enforcement of cub ban be handled on a somewhat major website, but without extending to artwork which appears cutesy and cub-adjacent? It's tricky to create a fair framework, especially with people that make art on the edges. (This legal/business perspective may also explain why zoophilia and sexual assault don't get the same treatment. It's not just about consistency and morality, or else a lot more stuff might get banned! Remember when the head of Patreon banned hypno and TF for a brief bit? Everyone's tastes and moral boundaries are different.) Second, these changes were made by a team. It's important to remember that if a critical teammate -- perhaps someone that supports the website infrastructure, or one of the most active mods who largely does great work -- is adamant about these changes, it might not be feasible to reverse them. Dragoneer might need additional volunteers or assistance, but is obviously not in a great position to make these asks. I don't think he's the primary source pushing them because I don't think he'd unilaterally make changes that force him to take down his own art. But if it's someone he deeply relies on, perhaps friends/leads holding the site afloat, that could make a lot of sense.

If I may ask, what is the goal of these new rulings anyway? To prevent children and minors from becoming the target of predators or are we reaching to disconnect the community and cause a wider gap? Where does the logic that removing a pokemon from porn will create a safer environment for those underage on the internet? Is this ruling in the best interest of safety or in the interest of removing what a certain group finds displeasing? Maybe we should turn to think where do these things start and how do they. A child predator is not going to look for pokemon porn to satisfy their itch. Tell me please in what way does this help anyone besides those who seek to push us from drawing feral or pokemon in nsfw situations. Pokemon porn causes no harm or pain to anyone in existing on it's own. It is seen as a safe space for many and finding a way to connect myself to those types of people and provide art and entertainment is what I do this for. Do you believe that the work I currently do for a living aids in pedophilic endevors of those who seek to harm children? It is appalling to me to even be seen as something like this and the fandom I come from as well to be stricken by a website and art host like yourselves. We get enough shit for just trying to be ourselves. I am not a pedophile or an ablest for such and find it disgusting that my work is being seen in this light.

Oh good my 6 hour slow mode is up I can talk again. The newest update on the rules is absolutely ludicrous. First off, they didn't actually address ANYTHING that the community has actually been concerned about. Not even a "we're working on a solution for the community's larger concerns." I find it hilarious that they walked back the child pregnancy thing, but nothing about the vore or tf. And before a mod thinks "well that wasn't our intention with that wording!" Maybe you can think about all the pokesonas or shortstack OC artists that are being told they're PEDOPHILES. Because it certainly wasn't THEIR intention that they'd be labeled as Child P*rn artists! In fact, NO ONE was thinking about their art like that. I have no idea what's taking the mods so long to get back to us with real communication. How many more hundreds of people need to write in this feedback server before someone reassures us we aren't talking into the void? The sentiment is very clear, roll this rule back. It's the only way you can optically save your website. Roll back and apologize. I think the intention was noble, but holy shit this was the worst way to implement this. The continued silence only makes it more insulting when a new update drops that addresses none of the concerns, does nothing to advertise this place where you all "supposedly" are trying to listen to all feedback. Every day that this goes on, the more people you will lose forever. I get you need to regroup, but a roll back and an apology needs to happen NOW. You can figure out how to properly roll this out another time, with MUCH more communication with the community involved. The more this is dragged on, the harder it will be to win us artists back. EDIT: I would also like to say that the fact that the sentiment is this clear even with how fucking hidden this channel is, and no official announcement about it, says a lot. If this discussion was truly open, I think it'd be even more obvious.

Not even a full day and its clear things have gotten worse. I will reiterate as I said before, I am not an artist, so ultimately I have no horse in the race, Im just a lurker/supporter/watcher. But its clear that FA and its Moderators, especially Dragoneer, are not taking this seriously. I mean you role backthe Pregnant teen thing, but clearly missed the rest of the feedback and we might as well be back at square one. Adding my voice to the pile, we should rescind this policy update, and stick with what was WORKING. Banning Pokemon and Digimon is pointless, Debating Child like proportions vs actual CP is far too broad, and currently (under the current Policy) easily manipulated and prone to false positives. At this point it would be simpler to just make FA an 18+ only site, and stop trying to care about "protecting the children" outside of actually addressing IRL CP. IDK what else to say at this point. If sites like e621, Rule 34, hell even Inkbunny (and I know everyone has there own opinions on the Cub Friendly site) can handle this stuff, why the heck cant FA get its shit together? At this point I would rather yall just come out and say some outside power is forcing your hand, in which case every begs you to change server hosts, or still leaves the site. OR you admit that its just because some of your Admin/Mods (Dragoneer from my own observations) has some poor tastes that he is trying to force down the communities throat, in which case we still leave anyway. But at least then we dont have to worry about the guess work like we are now.

updated my doc https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F0pza8XE36-zn3j9DSatbsMCMuf4HIpc_Z9VhQ14rbs/edit?usp=sharing

The argument that the 2.7 policy changes were necessary due to technical and monetary reasons is speculative at best. The policy had been in place for over a decade without any recent changes or justifications provided. If there were legitimate reasons for altering the policy, they should have been communicated to the community. Furthermore, the new policy appears to be arbitrary in its targeting of specific species, characters, and art styles while giving a free pass to others. This lack of consistency undermines any claims of fairness or objective standards. If the goal is to create a framework that addresses concerns while allowing for artistic expression, it is essential to ensure that such a framework is applied consistently across the board. The argument that a team member's influence or control over the website or infrastructure necessitated the policy change is ridiculous. If one individual's actions are holding the website hostage, the appropriate response should be to remove and replace that individual, rather than catering to their demands at the expense of the community's trust. If the website's existence has become dependent on a single person, then it's already doomed and beyond saving. If that's the case, then we have no reason not to abandon ship immediately. Moreover, speculation and hypothetical scenarios should not be used to justify an unjustifiable decision. The community deserves transparency and honesty when it comes to policy changes. We've been offered nothing of the sort. Lastly, it is disconcerting to discover that Dragooner, the person responsible for implementing the policy, enjoys the very content that has been banned. This raises questions about the motivations and integrity behind the decision. Also, according to the policy: >Place Eevee egg on water stone >Eevee hatches, instantly evolves >This animal is now legal

Thanks for the update about banning pregnant minors. But it's still weird to not ban minors from common fetish content such like vore, diapers (even when not messy), Inflation, Hyper, Farting, Pics with high focus in feet, crotches and butts, hypnosis, bdsm, kidnapping. Even when the pics doesn't show genitalia and sexual fluids; Considering the sexual nature of the site, and that the goal of the new policy is to make it a safer ambient for minors in the site

(Edited to add) )Feedback for the Update: If this is the only change that will be done the staff disappointed many users and indeed our Feedback was useless. I only can emphasize that the main problem still has to be addressed: aged up characters and users who have small/cute sonas branded as cub lovers/pedophiles. Digimon and Pokemon aren't a reason to suddenly label a user as a horrible person, yet it still stays unaddressed, why? Please give us a full guide with a list and images of what NOT to draw. Please, give all the Pokemon and Digimon artists and writers finally real clarification.

The post says "Minors may not be fetishized."

I can't believe I'm saying this but banning depiction of pregnant minors in their entirety was not the correct approach to responding to feedback. The clarified intention with the most recent update was actually a good way to handle things! Because yes, unfortunately we live in a world where teenage pregnancy is a very real thing, and people shouldn't be punished for writing a story that tries to tackle the subject in a serious, non-sexual non-fetishized manner. The fact that the mods understood that and yet decided "oh people complained about our wording so now we're banning it outright" is, to put it quite frankly, stupid. And it sets a bad precedent of responding to negative feedback with larger sweeping bans. Clown site that can't for a moment take art seriously. If FA wants to be a porn site and specifically doesn't want sfw stories and comics that feature heavy subject matter, then ban minors from the site! Make it 18+ if that's what you're going for. But from how long its been a 13+ site, I'm sure that's not what mods or owners want FA to be. So don't treat everything challenging as if its all porn. You can write stories and comics that are neither pornographic nor fetishistic in nature that feature heavy themes such as teen pregnancy, and artists shouldn't be punished for doing so. At this point FA is banning things I can find in the comics section of my local book store. As it stands if I were to hypothetically write a comic about the life of my mother, it would be banned on FA, because she was pregnant with me before she turned 18.

"Art exhibitions would be less censored if they were rated, G or NC-17, like movies. People in general see galleries and museums as family-appropriate excursions. Censorship is a provided system which caters to lazy parenting, which is publicly-funded and socially accepted." - Adamo Macri "Art is in the eye of the beholder, and everyone has their own interpretation"

The current update that was posted is lovely, thank you for listening to the feedback and applying this. While I understand that people are never going to be happy with anything you do ever, especially when it comes to banning pregnancy with teens in forms of art/stories it is something that must be done to avoid the fetizhied content with it its an unfortunate irl thing that happens, a lot in my country too but even those that experience it must know that it is not what needs to be the norm. the one final thing would be to as said before by some other cool folk To extend this to having them involved around some fetishes thats what we'd love to see included we can tell the difference between say an artwork where the protagonist family in a comic getting eaten by a dragon, including his kids (Just a random example i made up not related to anything im aware of) cuz dragon stuff, without it being related to vore because of how detailed the scene would be, if the maw shots are detailed + inside shots then its just a fetish, if eat just to eat such as displayed in a lot of media regarding this then its just fine Am sure you can figure out a line just like this for other fetishes including TF where Ben10 type of thing is whatever and can figure out when it turns into a fetish and no longer acceptable for minors. Keep it up 👏

Oh boy do I sure love watching this community crash and burn -w-' Like tf even is this- like # I am still in disbelief that you can have minors voring each other but not a pre-evolved pokemon. Like IG vore isn't fetish content or anything 🤣

ok, the update clarifies some things, but muddies others. you're still not closing the opinion loophole which people might abuse to get a favorable ruling from the mod they know hates the thing being reported, and you left us in the dark as to how exactly it would be determined. you still have the "childlike body" problem, which makes it so that someone could still be reported under this updated rule for drawing in their own style. include context. context would solve everything. define the line, or you open everything up to subjective rulings. be explicit in what counts as "childlike body" and give the ability to be exempted if the artist's style shows that they are fully capable of showing maturity without requiring them to "age up" their characters or jump through hoops to say "my character is 18+". the way this looks is getting better overall, but you still have the "what is a childlike body" problem, which caused many artists to delete whole categories of their art just to be sure they aren't breaking the new change. and for the love of god, be explicitly clear what is and isn't! if someone reports an artist for violating this rule, tell them why it broke the rule! then offer a chance to counter-argue, since not everyone's style will be clearly evident based solely on the body shape. you're losing so many people with this update that i don't think you'll recover, and with how it's going it's likely that you've lost whole communities. TL:DR - you're going the right way, but you need to be clear with what you say. not everyone has the time to think long and hard about if their art fits with your interpretation, which is probably subjective anyway. ETA: well done on adding a shout-out to this existing, this might help get the feedback properly to you instead of having to wait months to be noticed in the ticket system like clarifying that offences do fall off... eventually.

The current update showed that they weren't paying attention at all. Banning any depiction of teen pregnancy outright, rather than rewriting the policy to say "All sexualized depictions of vore, pregnancy, and tf that involve minors will be removed,".... I'd be surprised if any of the admins so much as looked at this thread.

I don't even see why people care about this content in the first place don't like it, don't look. I get being squeamish or uncomfortable with certain fetishes or whatever but that doesn't mean you have to ban them entirely. The people responsible for this censorship are massive hypocrites because many of them are LGBT+ yet are acting exactly like the folks who discriminate against them for their sexualities and gender identities. EDIT: lol 6 hour cooldown

I appreciate the update regarding minors being depicted with pregnancy involved being something FA Staff addressed and banned all together as a result of folks who use the website, that is commendable and I appreciate it, but unfortunately that isn't the only thing that we are concerned about. I think we all know that the phrasing in the update could've been worded a little better. I'd like to think it had good intentions, but the point still stands with shorter characters and pokemon/digimon being on the table as something worth banning is not going to help your userbase. I get that pre-evolutions can be seen as children pretty easily from far away but I think we just want some clarity on how you will determine what is fine and what isn't, because a lot of us are concerned with being targeted as being something that were are not (Pedophiles/Zoophiles). I won't deny that I am worried, even if I know that my art does not include children. I draw a decent amount of Size Difference content and of course that means one character is smaller than the other. My main sona is a Charmeleon, which is a Middle Evolution, but with what was written, I still worry about losing the site I put FIVE years into, it was the site I started on and I do not want to lose it because I am at the risk of being labeled as something I am not. (My Charmeleon is 20 years old btw, and if I have to say it out loud in my description, so be it.) I say this out of giving criticism and not out of being cruel or harsh, but FA Staff, I feel the best thing to do here is to just go back on this whole implementation. I haven't seen so much backlash over a change to a site since Tumblr's ban of Porn in 2018. Tumblr crashed and burned as a result of their change, I do not want yours to either. Things seemed just fine before this was announced. I am sure we all know that children in pornography should rightfully be banned from your site, but a lot of us are concerned about being targeted for problems we weren't making.

Figured I'd drop back in. First off, a reiteration of my old points. https://discord.com/channels/991855522913460224/1110644832289968138/1110874668698701884 My main concerns remain - The fact a bunch of innocent people are now made out to be pedophiles. - People feel unsafe. People can feel unsafe by going to Florida, thank you, they don't need FA to help. Personally, i don't think kids would want to be on a website that might banhammer them just like that either. So, ironically, you're scaring them off too. - A bunch of angry artists watching their livelihoods to be put in danger (in this economy, that's assault) - This damage is continuing to spread with every passing hour of nothing being done. - I don't want FA to be for 13+. Make it 18+. If you keep insisting FA be for all ages, get a kiddy pool, or make it another website/URL. Fur Affinity Teens/Kids (FAT or FAK are bad acronyms though) (FA All Ages? FA For All? FAFA does sound cute, or go FA For Adults if you want FA to be the all ages site) that mirrors white-listed main-site content, and can only be 'passed through' by being of age. Just. Let adults have their own dang space. Too much puritan scrubbing. We need it more than kids need theirs nowadays. Maybe you can use FAFA to funnel your money around if payment processors are being lil shits again, IDK, probably illegal tho. - Optics optics optics. From how the staff looks, to the movements, to the accusations. People don't like being treated like disposable garbage, children n pedos. Weird. I also find myself agreeing with A Noodle~'s post a lot. https://discord.com/channels/991855522913460224/1110644832289968138/1111001118118531082 - Moderation needs an upgrade. You take money from your users at this point, and if you wanna be the nexus for Furries, give it some respect. (and maybe pay them) - There's a lot of busses and a lot of mods being thrown under them by a minority. It's clear the mod team lacks the needed manpower, training, or something, to respond with clarity, unity and speed. Which, given the size of FA, it sorely needs. - If this is a big payment processor thing. Be open. FFS. People have empathy for those struggles. - Yes. FurAffinity is TOO DANG OLD for permanent marks; let Strikes fade over time already. People change A LOT in the 18 years its been aruond, so please, let them expire. Permabans are just weird and cruel now that the internet is a Real Thing used for Actual Jobs and True Friends. People should be able to make mistakes, and not be permanently punished by their younger, dumber selves. Nuance is required for bad faith actors, nothing you can't figure out. Here's a more radical idea. If you disagree with the following suggestion below, just vote 🇦 (for Awful) and if you agree with it vote 🅱️ (for Best), to keep it separate from the more general post. Maybe get a community council that cycles out every year or so (old furs, new furs, rising stars) (and naturally bad actors are booted, they can't all be winners) that has input on policies, controversial bans, etc. Maybe have a place to poll the community. Seeing a poll get 75% of the votes is very different from "the majority of the community loves our new ban on porn pinky promise 🤞" a lot of bigger websites crap out nowadays. You're one of, if not the biggest Furry Community. It needs to shape up and INVOLVE that community. Professional, communicative, involved, a finger on the pulse. Facebook can ignore specific fandoms because there are many. You have ONE. Give them some power, give them a reason to trust you, and build something nice. Maybe people will stop being near constantly pissed about everything, that would be very nice. Does mean giving up some of your supreme power. tl;dr aoe to big, too dps, mod banned me cuz i won, pls nerf

My thoughts after reading the small update today (May 24th): - The discord server was mentioned on an FA-published announcement post. This is good, it will help bring more attention here, where much of the discussion is taking place. - Transparency on decision-making and intent was given. This is good, we want this sort of insight. - With the explanation given, the pregnancy thing seems more understandable as a rule developed with good intentions. It may be helpful to include insights like these within the actual site policy itself going forward. - I am not sure how I feel about the pregnancy thing, now with the official explanation available. I see how it can be helpful, but I also see how it can be abused. However, I worry this is distracting from other (in my opinion larger) issues presented by May 19th and 22nd's posts - characters and/or art styles at risk of being banned, artists fearing for their livelihood, etc. Discourse in this feedback room seems to have gotten more heated as time goes on. Many people are frustrated at change not happening soon enough, but also do not want a change to be half-baked and rushed. This situation needs to be handled delicately. - Please delay the update as described on May 19th and 22nd, at least while feedback is being collected. This should be quick and easy to do - it's not like there's pressure to maintain the July 1st launch date, is there? I don't see how FA staff could expect to still launch it at that time, after all that's transpired. - I don't expect FA to present a solution to this entire ordeal immediately (although several have been offered). I imagine some internal discussion needs to take place. However, delaying could at least act as an olive branch acknowledging the community pushback to May 19th/22nd's changes. In my opinion, this would establish a much greater sense that feedback is being heard than what today's update established. - Removing the July 1st deadline through a delay would also ease some of the tension, at least. I think the community would be more willing to have optimism and patience when they're no longer pressured to get answers before a fast-approaching date.

My feedback of the night is: I don't like the piecemeal update approach. I appreciate that you are willing to take feedback and apply it, but at this point you guys should just take the update down for now until you can fully absorb all this feedback and actually pool it together into a new full and proper update.

First, I want to express my appreciation for creating a place to receive community feedback. Since the first announcement of Upload Policy 2.7, the entire part of the Fur Affinity Community that I personally watch has been in an uproar. I'm talking 100+ journals from artists and commissioners, with a combined following of many tens of thousands of people, all worrying about the integrity of their accounts. Never in my 14 years of daily use of the website have I seen such turmoil. They are faced with the situation of being branded as publishers of explicit material containing minors due to the proposed change, as well as an end to their careers for some of them. All of that because they were exercising their artistic freedom by creating explicit material involving fictional, completely disconnected from the real world, creatures. A practise that has been acceptable for many years, often confirmed by the site administration itself. As far as we were told, this change is now bound to happen because of _"[...] years of receiving user feedback via trouble tickets [...]" (From the clarification on May 23.: 4. Why am I hearing about this now?)_ Seeing this immense backlash this past week, it seems to me like that was a case of a small vocal minority. While I want to mention that the strive to improve the protection of minors is an extremely noble and commendable goal, the way this strategy tries to achieve this completely misses the mark. A blanket ban across an entire _(fictional)_ species or a distinct _"cute"_ artstyle that an artist spent years to develop offers no practical benefit. Arguing that heavily stylised, cartoonish creatures exhibit _"childlike proportions representing a child"_ is so farfetched. It is an issue that lies with the viewer, who wrongly perceives similarities between fiction and the real world. Of course, loopholes are unavoidable, and there are individuals that will try to exploit these, but that is true for all types of content. I just refer to, as Fur Affinity themselves call it, _"non-sexualized interests"_. But I refuse to believe that it is such a widespread issue that it warrants this kind of escalation. You don't burn down your beautiful flower garden due to one bad root. What has to be kept in mind is that censorship is an extremely powerful tool which has to be exercised carefully and sparingly, especially for a platform like Fur Affinity that praises itself for its openness to all kinds of individuals. Following through with this will only create and exacerbate new problems in the future, with, for example, feral content or anatomically correct body parts landing on the chopping block next. There are far less severe measurements that can be taken, many that have already been mentioned. I personally like the idea of: A blacklisting system that is enabled by default for content that is deemed to explicit and has to be willingly disabled. Wide-ranging restriction of accounts of minors _(e.g. being unable to receive/send notes, upload photography)_. * An 18+ rating for the site as a whole. A website that hosts such a plethora of explicit content is no place for a child anyway. I believe the reason why this is such an emotional topic for so many people is because most of us grew up with a strong emotional attachment to these franchises and a desire to have them develop and still be present in our now adult lives. For the vast majority of us, it has nothing to do with an association with minors. I strongly suggest rescinding UP 2.7 and exploring other possible solutions instead. There are plenty of worthwhile suggestions in this very thread and on Fur Affinity itself.

Hello, concerned artist/animator here, debating on jumping ship after July 1st, if it's my only option. I am skeptical to trust whoever is in charge of moderating what does and does not look like a child. I understand that obvious depictions of kids or kid characters isn't going to fly, but having opened up this policy even further by not only fandom specific things like Digimon and Pokemon, going by "child like" has only opened the flood gates and put many non rule breaking users in harms way. None of us have any clear guideline of what and how you define child like and leaving that to the discretion of mods that are potentially egregious with bias to short characters in general or anything nsfw with cute aesthetics or goofy cartoon proportions has made a lot of small and major artists turn tail and run or considering leaving. We're not inclined to believe it stops there with Digimon or Pokemon. This rule has only made drawing for those fandoms a risk in general. What next, anything Animal Crossing? Beastars and Zootpia? This policy is so vague and the only things me and some others seem to get out of it is "if you draw these things, do not make them anatomically correct or recognizable. Or else". Me and many artists here now feel we have a target on our heads and don't know if or when we will no longer be welcomed here before or after July 1st. If I had to throw in some option of reason in this cacophony of angered, sad, scared voices, Revert this rule back the way it was before and just keep it to no cubs/kids and have a sit down with many artists that could help make some kind of chart and guidelines to what you don't want seen on this site. Short and simple. We're scared. We feel like we've been given an eviction notice. And we don't have long to pack up.

Age verification system and a blacklist to slow down the problem and remove or clarify "childlike body" becomes its confident short stack of chide that it? Sorry

First of all, thank you for trying to make the site more safe. I really appreciate it. Basically, I understand and accept the rule (Specifically about content in regards to underage minors (not Pokemon, etc.) But some points will raise questions (Some of these points have already been discussed here dozens of times). More specifically, these are related to Pokémon, Digimon,Animal Crossing and Yoshi. Due to the ban on some Pokémon, many people switched to Inkbunny (A place that is notorious for hosting cub material) 🤨 Consider archiving this rule and think carefully first, or do a poll on twitter or any other platform to give it more time for a conclusion. With your updates to this rule, you've already shown that you can listen to your followers, just keep going and listen to the opinion of the majority, because we really love this place and also want to make it better

The current update is promising. I can understand the difference between something like Juno and Fetish content. Where I find issues when it comes to the tf/vore/pregnant debate is how the courtesy of applying context when handling reports was only given to specific categories. Why isn't context taken into consideration with a nsfw on model Eevee? If you guys want to use context while making rulings then do so across the board. The label of "cub artist" being applied to some for drawing an adult on model nsfw Eevee regardless of context or artists intent but being able to use context to say "Yes this child is just being eaten by a dragon for comedy, not vorephillia" is.. frustrating. You show you're capable of it, just refuse not to? I also appreciate Flamingo's earlier response. I couldn't say so at the time due to slowmode but wanted to thank you for handling those concerns people had. I also agree the rule update should at the very least be paused until you've gathered feedback and are fully ready. Every new ticket response I see regarding this makes less and less sense to me. I saw a Sprigitito, who was off model and aged up, in all regards this was an adult cat. As someone who draws primarily sfw cats, this would have been exactly what I'd draw an adult cat as, a small adult but still an adult. To test I showed warrior cats friends of mine, they agreed in no way was this a kitten. This is a dangerous precedent. It's been made clear that ALL art was already being policed by this vague proportion rule. This makes it dangerous for feral artists to post nsfw art. These proportion rulings we've seen apply to their art too. These guidelines that ban Eevee/Cubone/Rilou etc. Effectively ban any feral animals similar enough to them. Or styles close enough. Also mods should be handling people calling others cub artists and pedos even if the person slandered didn't report it. Especially if they aren't in the server to defend themselves from slander. :/

Many others have said this better than me, but I at least want to give my feedback and say that the blanket ban on specific species of pokemon because they're supposedly "minors" is unfortunate and unfair. The series itself acknowledges that age is not related to a Pokemon's evolutionary stage at all (Baby Nidoqueen from Mewtwo Returns and the elderly Treecko in episode 281 of the anime literally prove this) Also, the definition of what constitutes as a "child-like" body type need to be very concretely clarified. I have short and stout OCs who aren't minors. There are people in real life who have these proportions, some of which look prepubescent because of one reason or another (Several trans men I know come to mind) and it's unfair that these people shouldn't be able to see themselves represented or fear potentially getting banned/having their livelihoods taken away because of arbitrary lines drawn in the sand over fictional characters. This rule really needs to be rolled back either until you all can come up with a concrete way of determining and explaining limitations, or not go into effect at all.

I defer to my intial post because I think I got most of the pressing points I needed to so instead id rather comment on the current state of affairs. I think given the overwhelming amount of criticism this change has seen, that the best course of action at this moment in time is to just announce that this rule clarification is being fully suspended until all of this feedback is taken in and accounted for. I understand the rule is not in effect currently but to many artists/commissioners who are still scrambling to delete entire swaths of their gallery this at least stems a bit of the bleeding.

I don't agree with the addendum that completely bans depictions of teen pregnancy, it absolutely does away with a story element that can very meaningful to character's background, progression and their interactions in society. Teen pregnancy as a trope, story element or background element is not inherently pornographic in nature, it's a feature of reality. If it isn't pornographically depicted and not fetishized it should be allowed. Yes the subject matter is delicate, yes it's sensitive and it may be uncomfortable to some. As are many other types of subject matter ranging from self-harm, mental illness or physical disability. But exactly because of the sensitivity around the subject matter does it allow for writers and other people who want to create engaging stories to tell them in a way that is emotionally impactful. I see no reason to ban a subject that is not inherently pornographic like that. It's controversial, sure, but so are many other things. I feel this specific restriction is just damage control because of bad faith actors being unwilling to consider entirely good faith implementations of the subject matter, and as a result has been lumped in with other subjects that it does not belong among. Its needlessly constraining the ability to tell those types of stories borne out of ostracization, stigma and or mistakes made, just to name a few. As an artistic platform I feel FA should strive and do its best to allow for as broad as platform as feasibly possible to allow for good faith, non pornographic and non-fetishistic representations of reality as we live it and as it may have been lived to paint our imagined worlds.

I wanted to update my feedback based on the latest update. I do not think that the most important criticisms, the ones that are leading to thousands upon thousands of artists to experience undue mental and financial stress, have been properly addressed at all. I do think that pointing to the discord being a place for feedback is a minor step in the right direction, credit where credit is due. We need to know for sure that we are being listened to. Not expecting miracles, but the fact that after this much feedback, the "important criticism" that got addressed first was one of the side issues, does not help us regain trust that we're being listened to and that this policy will be revised with the community's well-being in mind. At the very least acknowledge publicly that this policy is on a moratorium until ALL the feedback has been addressed in its fullest. We NEED time, and we NEED to know that everything is being listened to, and with a 1 july deadline still approaching, no clarity as to whether our sonas and OCs that we have had for years are suddenly in the firing line, the slowness of action is not acceptable. No, I do not expect results tomorrow, but we need a break for our wellbeing. The mods need time to review the feedback and come to a much more thought out conclusion, and I DO genuinely want them to have the time to consider things without either of us stressing out. My demand will remain the same, the policy is being enforced like a sledgehammer, the amount of false positives is astounding. People should not be punished for drawing characters on the shorter side and despite assurances that you take context into account, I have several friends who have SHOWN me that mods have deemed their adult characters to break UP 2.7 despite literally just looking like fantasy kobolds, imps, stout corgis, etc. Do better. Take the time, reassure the community that NO policy will go into effect until everything is addressed IN FULL. And MAYBE FA will be able to regain a modicum of trust again from the members of its community.

The problem with the 'not being fetishized or pornography' is that the people applying the standards will almost always see any aspect they don't like as fitting that description. Eliminating the previous exemption on depictions of minors in images showing childbirth, breastfeeding and the like was a perfect example the last time. It had to be walked back, and now that exemption verbiage is completely missing...again. I didn't write a huge posting as others have longer, more eloquently worded posts....and there we are, the 'if you're against this, you're the problem we are trying to remove' post...

Probably my last comment on the matter, those who make shorter comments that are just reactionary is not critical feedback, you are just reacting in the moment. At least give something more in your feedback that is tangible like the others here who have put in the time to give that feedback. And to those who have instead tried to encourage the idea of including minors within fetishized content, you are clearly a problem and also the problem I’m sure the moderation team wants to address, you are not helping, you are contributing to a long game of grooming tactics employed by adults onto adolescents within the fandom, a dangerous game, do not do that, it’s a violation of the rules, it’s a violation of a minor’s safety, and at worst it is extremely manipulative. I’m baffled I even have to bother saying this after seeing some of the comments try to encourage minors being added into fetishized content when that is exactly what a majority of the community wants to avoid.

2nd post after the 6hours cooldown. This morning alone I have received messages from 5 different people asking if I was availlable on other furry sites since they wanted to leave FA. In my 13 years on this site I have not had this happen before. The damage that this policy change, the vagueness of the rule enforcements and the lack of communication has done to the community is just not deniable anymore. At this point only a drastic turnaround can prevent more people from leaving. - Either completely sweep the 2.7 update under the rug and pretend it never happened, or at the very very least, roll it back until you have guidelines and rules that are actually substantial and presentable without creating further confusion and even more loopholes. - Make FA 18+. As much as I don’t want to ban minors who just want to enjoy the SFW aspects of FA, maybe the site is just too adult-oriented after all. People have made the comparison of FA to a DVD store with an 18+ section, but sometimes it can feel like the whole store is 18+, with just a small section for minors. Other things that would be infinitely helpful: - Blacklisting features - Announce publicly that this discussion here exists and is important - Get rid of a deadline until 2.7 is in a presentable state, it only makes people anxious. - And for the love of all that is holy, give us the reason why this policy change was even made in the first place

Give adults back their adult spaces. Stop trying to sanitize it. Let adults enjoy their material as long as it isn’t hurting anyone or causing detriment to the website (such as a payment processor dispute.) Everyone looking at this material is an adult. (At least they should be.) We don’t need puritans and politics telling us what we can and cannot do. Subjectivity leads to censorship. Please for the love of Fender, please give us some control so we don’t have to go through these divides anymore. It can start simple with a simple artist block tool. I’d rather be blocked by people rather than silenced by overreach. Please give us a blacklisting feature in the near future. There are things I don’t like but I would never trample on another artists style or choice of art simply because I don’t like it. Please, stop with this labeling of Pokémon and Digimon art as underage. It’s subjective and painful to those of us who work so hard and share with everyone.

Here's my feedback, from someone who's been on FA since its inception. FA was a better place a decade ago. If people didn't like a lewd of an Eevee or Lion King, for the most part they would just ignore it. It felt silly to try and regulate that. And I don't think the fandom was any worse than it is today, on the contrary. I've never considered leaving before this, I could see how some rules would be a slippery slope down the line, but I didn't care at the time. I didn't, because it wasn't affecting me, because it wasn't my thing. Now, I can understand why some stuff can and should be excluded. It is after all, your site. The problem with this update is that it reaches out far beyond and impacting many wonderful artists that have absolutely nothing to do with it. Worse, the new ruling over Pokemon/Digimon empowers bad actors to harass and call other people and artists things that they are not. Whether you want it or not, by implementing it you are giving them the fuel they need to keep going, and keep pushing. And since it's a slippery slope, I'm naturally inclined to believe that the next update will impact all feral characters, or whatever the new sensibilities will feel like targetting next. I believe you should at the very least consider: - Remove species ban, including Pokemon/Digimon species. - Explain what motivated this decision in the first place, as beside outside pressures from Twitter and the likes this doesn't seem to make anyone happy. - Take a firm stance on what you want this community to be and stick to it. This includes not only Pokemon/Digimon, but also other species/body types that have been under constant attack lately, like ferals for example. Then let people stay or leave. - Make it clear how to provide feedback, as I had no idea this was even a thing until someone mentioned it in a journal. - As many mentioned before, maybe consider making FA +18 only. This would solve a lot of issues frankly and there's many other spaces for SFW art.

My feedback on both this policy and its handling by management is the closing of my account. It's a real shame that FA has chosen the path of selecting and excluding 'others' instead of giving members of the community adequate tools to manage viewing preferences and clear policies promoting the possibility that people with differing ideals can co-exist. I'm disappointed and sad and I'm leaving.

Couldn't have said it better myself

Firstly, I am all for trying to cut down on minor/cub art being uploaded to FA, and is great that you listened to feedback over the teen pregnancy issue. However, the thing many people are upset about, are what are effectively blanket bans over certain species of pokemon/digimon/characters like yoshi, as well as forcing artists that use certain artstyles to completely change their artstyle. Things like pokemon evolution do not equal age, as was said by many people in this channel, and while I can get why some pokemon (basically all the baby pokemon) would be targeted, I don't see why pokemon that aren't baby pokemon should be under fire, as it is very easy to tell the difference between someone making normal art of something like eevee vs someone making cub art of eevee. Shorter characters and sonas seem to be in the firing line as well, as people have asked if their sonas that are of age breach the new policy, and were told they did, meaning that they'd have to radically change their sona if they wanted to have art of them. Some people are on the short side irl, does this mean they cannot represent themselves on FA? Different staff members also gave differing responses, so whether an artpiece violates the policy entirely depends on who reviews it. The newest policy update didn't address any of the community's concerns, it feels like it was only added to cover yourselves from the "13 and up pregnancy" thing people have been pointing out. Many species aren't allowed to be drawn how they canonically look, but teen vore and TF are still allowed of course! If your entire community is in an uproar over an upcoming change, maybe that change isn't such a good change. It has already damaged your reputation as well as made many artists leave already, and more will be soon to follow. Also, while this channel existing is great, the fact it is semi hidden to make it harder for people to find it and give feedback feels maliciously done.

I've little to add to the for/against of banning stuff at this point. I think the % of people into porn of cutesy things who also harm anyone is likely low. It's the same way I see ferals: there's bound to be overlap with people into real animals, but to assume all are would cause needless hurt to people who don't deserve it. If you can't write rules that only target those who do harm—and judging by the ticket responses people have posted, you really can't—it probably does less harm to just leave well enough alone. What I do want to suggest is to figure out who this site is for. When it comes to allowing content and creative expression, there's a broad spectrum out there from people who would let you do anything you can legally get away with, to people who think furries in porn are bad because animal anatomy in a sexual context is inherently zoophilic. I know you know that's not a joke. You cannot please this whole spectrum of people, but critically, you CAN displease this whole spectrum of people. One of the best ways to displease it is by creating uncertainty. If you show people you can be pushed into banning what they want, or allowing what they want, they will push, and in the aftermath of that nobody will feel confident they belong here. For all they know tomorrow you might ban something that takes out half their gallery, or allow something they can't abide. I think you have avoided this by accident over the years by doing so little that you stumbled into a kind of stability, but now you're showing people it wasn't on purpose and they're uncertain. They don't trust you anymore. So choose something. Decide who you want on your site and stick with it. Even if what you choose isn't what I want from a website I'd rather face the certainty that I don't want to be on it than the prospect of investing energy into a site that might wreck itself trying to contort into every position demanded of it at once.

I'm not sure if this has been asked already, is there a time limit on how long -this- thread will stay open?

Since the update im just going to provide a TLDR version of the feedback post it - The issue that most folk are actually worried about is the whole "is my pokemon/digimon fine" because youve listed only a few. i get that with digimon this is largely impossible, but specification of what is and isnt would help - I know you dont want to, but youre going to also have to ban vore and TF on minors, you added the clause on this and only walked back one of them (which you argubly gave a better reason for keeping it when banning it than you did announcing it, it was actually explained). Vore and TF have to go, otherwise everyone will come to assumption youre just keeping the kinks the admins/mods like which at the moment alot of people assume is why it was even there in the first place - The issue of "being too short/stout" for FA is still way to mod dependant. alot of the issues folk have is with trust of the team, this still needs addressing. like if a mod says "yes" that should be referenceable and locked in as fine, or if they say no a full list of actual hard written guidelines - Realistically at this point, my advice is to walk back (remove) the whole policy, consult some experts on policy making and wording, make a defined and thought out policy and come back with it once youve done that, adding 25 amendments 1 at a time will not help. Realistically i would prefer you to just make the site 18+, keep the "cannot sexualise minors" but add "in any way" without the Vore/TF loopholes (its in a cartoon =/= its ok) and add a blacklist. but i get the latter wont happen. If you insist on keeping the policy and wont walk it back forever it minimum needs a few more months in the oven to actually think out.

Alright, serious time. No shitposting, no insults. First and foremost, I agree with the change. The update to 2.7 closes a much-abused loophole in the rule and overall will go a long way to stopping a large amount of pornography in which the artist chose young-looking pokemon/digimon, seemingly for the explicit purpose of skirting around the long-standing ban on cub characters. Can I prove that's exactly what they're doing? No, of course not, not without them explicitly stating so. But it is rather telling that, when I asked why they don't draw adult-looking characters, I was met with middle finger gifs, threats, and people calling for my removal from the community entirely. I've had every accusation I can think of thrown at me in the past few days, seemingly in an attempt to find something that sticks.  Am I saying that EVERY artist or furry who depicts a Mew, Gabumon, or Snivy, is doing so for the purpose of depicting a cub character? No, I am not. I believe there are a great many of them that this rule was never intended to target; before the massive backlash, Twitter cancelation and constant arguing forced the administration into the defensive, they never would have BEEN targeted by the rule change. Alas, as the administration have been pushed on the backfoot, they have started banning species in a vain attempt to provide a hard definition when one was never needed, to appease a group of people who would not be appeased by anything less than total concession. I do hope this particular addendum is rolled back. As is, a plurality of arguments against the new change offer the exact same arguments that people have made for cub pornography to be allowed. 'If you don't like it, don't look at it, we need black lists, stop policing peoples fantasies' were the primary arguments then and now. Such arguments ignore the detrimental effect that allowing such things have on the community. For the long term health and safety of the Furaffinity community, such artwork needs to go. If you wish to call me a censor or a puritan, so be it. But much as cub artwork inherently encourages the sexualization of children, the Pokémon and Digimon artwork targeted by this change, for the vast majority, encourages the sexualization of children's bodies. Those opposed to this change point out how the lines are blurry and the guidelines vague. They find the definitions to be confusing. I do not find them to be so. If it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. If the description says it's a dragon, that doesn't make it any less duck-like. I find myself looking at arguments that are well trodden ground in the western legal system to apply to this change. The so-called "Elephant test" applies as well. "It is characterised more by recognition when encountered than by definition." "It is hard to describe, but instantly recognizable when spotted." Justice Potter Stewart of the United States Supreme court, when asked to define hard-core pornography, famously said, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." Is this not ultimately the guidelines that the moderation team are using? If it is a good enough standard for multiple legal systems to apply, then it is a good enough standard for the furaffinity moderation team to use when judging if a pokemon is a stand-in for a cub character. I do hope that the administration steps back from the proposed species ban to simple enforcement of their original intention, and I so hope they move away from the notion of 'safe for work kinks.' Alas, I'm out of characters to address the 'transformed minor who vores people' notion that is now allowed. I will attempt to address it in a post tomorrow.

I'd like to quote Dragoneer on the original cub ban in 2010: > AlertPay canceled, and specifically cited cub art as the reason. We will not be able to maintain and improve without a reliable payment processor at our backend, and that can not happen while they continually have a disagreement regarding certain specifics with what we host. > > Right now we have to make a choice. Do we continue on with cub artwork and protect the artwork in the name of freedom of speech? Or do we remove the one Achilles heel that has proven itself to be a liability and a frustration? > > If we want to keep Fur Affinity alive we have no choice but to remove cub art. It's been a limiting factor for us, and it's been impacting us for a while. But now it's become something we can no longer turn our eye away from. > > What happened to us can happen to any other furry site out there. It's a grim reality, and when it comes to grey areas, corporations don't want the legal risk. > > So, with that, and this update... we have no choice but to prohibit mature cub art on Fur Affinity. The site must come first. We know this will impact some users more than others, we know it will be stressful and frustrating, but we have no choice in the matter. Note the tone. This was not joyous. This was not done proactively. This was not done to protect minors, or as some principled stand against the evils of cub. It was done at the behest of a payment provider, to keep the site alive. It was done with regret. It was done with remorse. If that was the situation here, if the Pokémon/Digimon ban was a result of serious external pressure threatening the existence of FA, there would be understanding and acceptance. As is, the update appears to have been made to cater to puritans like you, for reasons the majority of the fandom cannot fathom. We got rid of the Burned Furs 20 years ago, and while that sort of hateful ideology can never be extinguished, it can always be fought against.

I feel by outright banning things like child pregnancy makes it feel like staff may have slightly misunderstood things? While it is a VERY uncomfortable thing, this should also just fall into the whole category of "We will use our nuanced context reading skills to determine if this is trying to fetishize teen pregnancy or if its a tool to tell a story." You were very big on the whole "taking things into context" thing, so you should be able to easily tell what is fine and what is not, right? The actual issue that some people voiced is that there seems to be a COMPLETE and UTTER lack of understanding in the nuance of "what is actually supposed to be SFW and what is NSFW" from BOTH Dragoneer and Sciggles. Because comparing a disney movie where something like that happens with a good bunch of art that floats around on FA just doesnt hold up. Especially if Dragoneer comes around and says that stuff like fat fur is fine in SFW situations and that we shouldnt kinkshame people??? Either its not a kink or it is, you cant pick both. If you truly need to do this out of the protection of minors, this wont fly (cause then a child might as well draw anything in the specialty category and post it on FA case it is non-sexualized, and thats dangerous.). If this is for some payment processor reason i can GUARANTEE you that this kind of art involving minors is gonna get you banned as well. Also please do not post things in bite size updates. I know the situation is fragile right now and you may want to try putting the fire out but... this just makes it seem like you are ignoring the rest of the feedback, which I believe is not the case.

"We're protecting the children!" is such a low-effort copout excuse that gets abused again and again. AI Dungeon did a similar thing, where they claimed to be "banning pedophilia" while doing a sweeping ban of all sorts of unrelated fetish content and made super vague and ambiguous guidelines. Then when anyone raised concerns, they'd simply shut down their argument by calling them a pedophile. Meanwhile, nothing substantial was actually done to protect actual children. How does this policy change do anything to protect children? If they're underage, they should not be viewing any porn on the site, period. How does arbitrarily banning certain characters/species and art styles in porn protect anyone from anything? At the time, Fur Affinity was owned by IMVU who had a firm stance against children presented sexually, and the rule was clarified by defining a minor as: “real or fictional humanoids with a childlike body or younger than 18 years old, and any adolescent animals.” So now that it's NOT owned by IMVU... They decide to make it more strict, in the dumbest possible way? Shit makes no sense man, when are they gonna tell us the actual reason for the sudden sweeping ban on cute Pokémon (which were considered perfectly fine for a decade under the draconian rules of a real company)? IMVU thought these images were fine, Discord thinks they're fine... So then who, specifically, is saying otherwise? How do you take your website back to being a personal project and then decide it's a good idea to place more restrictions on creative freedom? Sounds like they're just getting ready to sell it off to the next highest bidder tbh People shouldn't have to beg for you to not make changes that nobody wants when absolutely no good reason was given for the changes in the first place. Which begs the question, why are you even doing this? To stop a few people from bitching at the cost of half your userbase? It makes no sense from any feasible standpoint.

I just want to know how you can look at Gabumon and see a child, and no it's not NSFW. That's just official artwork with how he looks without the fur on. Yes, it's cursed. https://i.imgur.com/dbjWNlm.jpeg I have seen plenty of flat chested shortstacks/cutesy characters with far worse "proportions" on this site. These rules need a serious rethinking, or at least common sense.

I’ve been watching the reaction to this whole situation out of curiosity, and thus far the only groups I’ve seen with widespread, large-scale support of this update are ultra-puritans who already just consider all furries “sexual degenerates” or worse, and are just enjoying watching the fandom crumble in on itself. They already hate Furaffinity and aren’t going to change their mind - you can’t win them over. Are you sure they are what you want to sacrifice your existing audience for?

I don’t think i can say more than what countless of people here already have said, be it that context matters or that the handling of the current situation is shameful at best. My issue lies with something that has come to my attention thanks to all this I quote from the ToS section 3.1 "By registering an account, you agree that you are at least thirteen (13) years of age in the US or are sixteen (16) if you are a resident of the EU." This website is not for minors period. You already have been forced by EU law to increase the age requirement. If you need laws however to do whats morally right then i am deeply disappointed.

Some responses to various things I've seen here. - My original post, for reference/convenience https://discord.com/channels/991855522913460224/1110644832289968138/1111085104786321418 I know the questions won't get answered here (they don't have simple answers) and that's okay. But want to keep them afloat all the same. - Posting one small policy update does not mean nothing else will change. There's a lot of "but why not [other thing] I wanted changed/removed?" or "I can't believe this is the only change we're going to see ever!" They were able to make this one small change, because it had wide, public-verifiable negative feedback, despite their intent to leave it open for nuance reasons. So they changed it. This is great! It means that feedback does matter! Keep posting it! - Incremental changes are fine, because it's much easier to make a tiny change (and potentially roll it back) instead of doing it all at once, which leads to a lot of different conversations having to be had. - ...But with a change this widespread and damaging, the first step in this case should be to take it down 100%, then gradually, in small increments, PROPOSE a new change to leave open for public feedback - If you think every instance of a Pokémon/Digimon currently getting classified as 'childlike' does not make the artist in question a cp artist, then you should not support this change. Because guess what it does. In one of the incredibly rare instances of "I like this change" posted above, this was the claim. That means you shouldn't like this change. I won't link it so I don't 'target' the user, but the trend of the few "I like it posts" seem to, in actuality, not like it. But they're up on the "I don't like cp therefore it's good regardless of how it operates or the obvious damage it does. - Similarly "Well, I don't see anyone in my watchlist leaving/affected over this, therefore it's not a problem" is an equally-terrible take. Something isn't good just because it doesn't penetrate your personal bubble. If a company lays off 10,000 people, that's bad, even if you or people you know weren't directly impacted. - @Dara https://discord.com/channels/991855522913460224/1110644832289968138/1111136582615957504 points out the "minors can't be fetish" line of the AUP 2.7, but I refer to my original post, asking the question about the contradiction between this statement, and the FAQ that seems to add an exception to this. The exception does not only limit it to vore and tf, since it has "such as." Is there a distinction between "fetishize" and "sfw"? Because the AUP does not distinguish SFW and otherwise. - This thread, despite the six hour cooldown, has been active constantly since its inception non-stop. As of my post here it is at 294 posts. Yeah I think this policy has Problems, to say the least. Tons of great, multi-paragraph feedback. Users are spending hours of time to emphasize and educate on how bad this is. This is leaving that nebulous "positive feedback" in the dust. If this policy came about due to this feedback, and no other reason, then it's time to roll it back. - While I don't think this is some secret agenda pushed by the 'puritan' crowd, it's hard not to think that given the climate of online nsfw content treatment in recent times. "If we can get x labeled child content, we can get more stuff we personally don't like banned!" smacks of similar tactics pulled elsewhere. Is it true here? Probably not. Sure feels like it though. - While it's nice "you can leave feedback" was mentioned at the bottom of the latest post, FA should make an announcement on-site and on twitter that links to this Discord, links to this very channel, and there should be a temp email/etc. setup for those who can't use this Discord. - The direct link to this channel is https://discord.com/channels/991855522913460224/1110644832289968138. Advertise it, FA!

Just 2 cents: "Open for feedback" i found this thread here through a link somewhere on twitter. And in order to join i had to join the discord first, which i also had to google the link and then click the link to the thread.. That is still not "open community feedback". oh and well... 6h cooldown? that is a joke right? thats a big unfunny joke. This just makes me happy that i deleted the content of my page years ago.

According the their current guidelines, that whole list of fetishes aren't fetishes to FA and are SFW. So minors can get involved in vore, and that whole list. As long genitalia or sexual fluids aren't shown in the pic :l - Minors involved in SFW or non-sexualized interests, such as vore and transformation, are allowed.

The wording is also specifically insidious if you take into account the next line > Minors are defined as real or fictional humanoids with a childlike body or younger than 18 years old, and any adolescent animals or fantasy creatures. While Im not a lawyer this wording could potentially be taken to mean that depictions of ACTUAL CHILDREN are now allowed if the fetish is ""SFW"" enough ETA: To be entirely clear, I don't mean to accuse the mods/site of allowing actual illegal content, but I want to point out that if the concern was primarily child safety on the site, this wording would have never gotten through in the first place

After someone had to post a link on Twitter to this, had to search for invite link to server that was hidden, i came to say. Damn Daniels

In the realm of FurAffinity, where furries find their home, A policy change occurred, causing an uproar to groan. The previous rules were sound, no alterations needed, Yet small creatures were added, a decision ill-conceived. The impact was catastrophic, galleries wiped away, Artists forced to wander to Inkbunny and Twitter's dismay. Their reputation suffered, a blow they couldn't withstand, Both users and creators, united in anger, took a stand. A digital mob emerged, torches held high, From staff's poor communication, their fury amplified. Within their echo chamber, the top Admins resided, Their leaders, dismissed our voices, leaving us divided. I sip the juice from canned beans last, my final cans farewell, Five days have passed, awaiting answers, caught in a spell. A ticket caught in hell, my heart filled with dread, Surveying the angry crowds, their fury widespread. A blacklist, not this rule, could have eased the strife, Allowing users to filter content, regaining control of their life. "Children over 13, they can bear," they said, Claiming "Vored younglings safe," causing fears to spread. Within the echo chamber, FurAffinity's staff Colluded, Unaware of the consequences, their actions deluded. But I, amidst the chaos, made my presence known, Contribute to the conversation, a voice standing alone. No regrets shall plague me, despite time's limited flow, Every six hours, a chance to speak, to let my thoughts glow. And in one swift declaration, a word that defies fate, I share my proudest moment thus far. "Kobolds!" I did state!

It you cant take back the update, this would be my suggestions: 1st Give Artists a visual guide for clarification so that they know what they should avoid 2nd Publish the full list of Pokemon/Digimon that could be problematic. The number of Pokemon and Digimon is not endless. 3rd Context has to matter. A look only policy will only punish many artists and writers.

Ive been using FA for the better part of a decade now over a couple different accounts (no bans, just cause) and never even realized Minors were allowed to make accounts there till this Fiasco. I wont comment much on the AUP changes as 99.999% of people in this thread and on twitter and everywhere else have overwhelmingly said the exact same thing of no, but I certainly will comment on this bit on minors on FA as even if its a bit off topic it _needs_ to be said and addressed. The furry community has always been since its inception, currently is, and always will be till the death of the fandom itself, a highly sexualised and NSFW fandom. to the point where purely nonsexual furries, artists and communities are so small in comparison they could be written off as a statistical anomaly and practically not exist at all. With this in mind why were Minors allowed onto the internets single largest furry p*rn website in the first place and continue to be let in? Making a safe space in any furry community for minors makes as much sense as a safe space for minors on p-rnhub and should be looked at with the same amount of suspicion.

I'm mostly reiterating points I've already made in the original chat, but here's the situation as I see it: -Claiming that pre-evolved Pokémon are "children" shows a total disregard for series canon. These "children" are totally self-sufficient in the wild, where they fight, kill, and reproduce with each other. Yes, even the small cute ones. Are we meant to believe that nobody responsible for this new rule played enough Pokémon to see what most of us take for granted? -It seems as if the staff are trying to purge the site of the "old guard" to make way for frothing, implacable puritans by pissing off as much of the current userbase as possible. In response to overwhelmingly negative feedback, the only alteration that's been made has been to the depiction of pregnant teenagers, which wasn't even the main point of contention. -The irony here is that, in their crusade against art intentionally misconstrued as "cub", the writers of this new rule are driving artists to a site well-known for actual cub art who normally wouldn't touch the place with a ten-foot pole. -The rule as written, and the unhelpful "clarifications" in response to feedback seem spiteful more than anything. The only way all these parts fit together is that we've been lied to about external pressure being a factor, either because: a)The site is likely to be sold again, and an NDA is preventing the staff from sharing anything. OR b)Somebody has dirt on someone in power, and is blackmailing them.

Six hours later and I'm back again. I had hoped with the inception of this new chat I might actually get answers and was even one of tge first to post in this one, yet I've heard no feedback at all. Has anyone gotten anything?

How anyone can look at gabumon or agumon and see a child’s body beyond me, they are buff built shortstacks, (sure it’s more evident in the Bandai card art than the simplified style toei uses for animation but still) and impmon? Are goblins kids too now?

I agree that having minors on FA itself is subjectively a bad idea/not right, given the site IS one of the largest nsfw furry websites, and sfw filters don't work very well. However I disagree with the notion that there shouldn't be any safe places for minors in the furry community in general. The furry community itself has never been solely nsfw. Simply because there IS a large nsfw presence within the community, doesn't mean that is the only aspect of it. Many of us became furries as children. Many furries are strictly sfw. Many people enjoy fursuiting and drawing fursonas whilst not enjoying furry nsfw. It's not good to ignore these facts.

Honestly I am opposed to getting rid of minors entirely. I discovered the furry community as a minor and the artwork I saw then not only encouraged me to go deeper into the furry community but inspired me to be what I am today, and gave me a real appreciation for artwork in general. I don't think minors should have access to porn, but TRYING to create a way for them to access fa's sfw content is an admirable goal. It's just a really hard goal to achieve safely.

minor thing, or agree with the newest change on the late 24th, but at the same time it does not help people think that things won't get stricter

I know this is a feedback channel but this irked me. I need anyone, especially FA staff, who would listen to understand how frustrating this particular line is "Its an unfortunate irl thing that happens...but even those that experience it must know that it is not what needs to be the norm" Depicting something in an artpiece is not the same as normalizing it!! My mother was 17 when she had me; telling that story doesn't normalize it, it makes it known that this is a thing that happens and is something that needs to be talked about. Bad things that happen in this world shouldn't be hidden away out of fear of normalizing it. This is not me saying "oh FA should just allow everything" but rather that banning whole narrative topics from being depicted is missing the point of criticism and is now affecting nonsexual non fetishistic comic storytelling. Depicting teen pregnancy as part of a narrative with no sexual or fetishistic intent will not make teen pregnancy more likely to happen. There are PG-13 movies with teen pregnancy in them. Comics you can find at the book store that depict this. They're not trying to sexualize the minors involved. FA is an art site, and banning the depiction of something that can be part of a narrative that has no sexual or fetishistic intent behind it just hinders the stories people can tell in their art, even autobiographical ones.

Fur Affinity just cured teenage pregnancy! 🥳

I hope that the FA moderators will think again about these guidelines that are very confusing. I understand that you want to plug loopholes. But it also punishes artists who simply have a cute style or draw Pokemon without having ulterior motives for minors. A detailed explanation with examples would perhaps reassure some. Are Evolis now banned without exception in nsfw content? Or only if you depict them too childish? How do you manage to make a Pokemon look childish, when they normally always look bulbous and chubby? 😧

Solution: Make a tag that is opt-in, that minors on the community can access. All other stuff is immediately put into the 18+ section, ensuring only new posts / posts artists/writers etc go back on is marked as under 18+. Sorta, a 'Safe for Under 18' catagory or something. Obviously, with a massive penalty for abuse, since, you don't really have a leg to stand on if you're actively, intentionally posting fe*ish content specifically on the minor-side of furaffinity.

Declaring that certain fictional species are always underage is like saying that all dogs are boys and all cats are girls. - And YES, people DO actually think that. I've met them. Granted, I live in Florida so those people aren't that hard to find. That's my message for the next 6 hours lol

So I had a follow-up question that I only just noticed is not being asked (or not being asked actively) that I do think is important to the conversation (shoutout to @Tygre for even causing this lightbulb to go off) - Though in fairness my last response more cynically asked this same question: What prompted this sudden change in the first place? Why this sudden desire to ban Pokémon/Digimon (lets not pretend its not happening) and the sudden broad-stroke on "Child-Like proportions? Regardless of ANYONE's stance on Cub art - (I can acknowledge that artistic expression or being able to separate Reality from fiction are not always simple in a world where IRL pedophiles and groomers exist) - we can all agree that when FA decided to ban cub art, it was at least made clear that it was due to OUTSIDE pressure from a more "Corporate source" that you either would have to take a larger effort to maintain the site as it was (which at the time was alleged to be the harder option) or simply ban it outright. You chose the former and thats fine. At least (at the time) it was COMMUNICATED. So, in the spirit of communication, whats forcing your hand (allegedly)? Is it another outside power? If so, just tell us, and I think (even if we disagree and there is still a mass exodus) we all would be more receptive to your stance. Yet as it stands (especially as a non-artist looking in), it just feels like your giving in to the Vocal MINORITY that is the "Puritans crowd" who was already against most NSFW stuff anyway, or secretly anti-furry. Heck if its not that then then it just seems to be because (as I am more inclined to believe based on recent and current actions by some FA staff and mods, including Dragoneer - Sorry, not giving a pass to the user who both touts hate for a type of art, makes rules against that art, while still posting the same art. ) they simply dislike certain artist or style and want an excuse to kick them off the site, which feels pretty darn petty

If the rules change goes ahead as is, which please note I do not support, the absolute bare minimum that FA can do to make it less disastrous would be to ensure that users cannot be permanently banned for content that retroactively violates the new policy. It can't be the case that someone could potentially be banned over a couple drawings they did of riolu in 2006 that they failed to remove. Give people some incentive to remove content if they can, sure, but the idea that someone could be banned forever from the site over old content that could be lost among thousands of submissions, that was perfectly allowed at the time, would be unfair and would set a really bad precedent for how future policy changes would be enforced.

Dropped this point in my doc last night, but lemme drop this little fun fact again for those who haven't read it: People can change their Date of Birth in account settings, which is a thing that should absolutely NOT be a thing. Any possible pretense of "protecting minors" goes out the window when there's a barely functional NSFW filter mixed with THAT being a feature.

It's fucking depressing seeing some people suggest that children shouldn't be part of the furry fandom at all. You can't gatekeep an interest as universal as anthropomorphic animals like that. Literally, it's not possible. Nor should it be. It seems to suggest that it's the fault of children that they are the subject of sexualization and not the fault of the adults sexualizing them, which is indeed a huge issue in the furry fandom that does need addressing, but not like this. Also as a pansexual trans woman I'm fucking tired of bad actors co-opting leftist language to imply MAPs have any place in the queer community. Anti-pedophilia is not anti-LGBT. Fuck off with that shit.

A reminder most of the outrage is external pressure to adhere to homophobic puritans. What happened to the word nuance? Since when did thought crimes count as real crimes? When did we get so anal about what someone draws or indulges in behind closed doors alone? If you want to protect the minors, then make them a space for themselves that isn’t encroaching on adult interests, or exposing them to them. Just an example here but who are you protecting by saying someone can’t draw eevee as a blob or tails as a giant? Both of those characters are so damn ingrained into my identity that I viewed tails like an older sibling growing up and even modeled my sona after him and somehow that source of comfort is illegal to put in funny scenarios because some people can’t separate trope from fetish for a trope? It’s only adding unnecessary stigmas to something historically known for its depth and exploration of the human psyche, the legal definitions should be the ones that matter as those are the ones that can be used to prosecute the pedos hiding amongst us. And as others have said, making it harder to find them makes it harder to stop them. Opt in blacklist with community suggested tagging that is mandatory for new pieces to be tagged properly, that can only be changed by third party age verification ala patreon is the only solution that does not piss off everyone while leaving art free and fair not policing thought crimes or perpetuating Salem 2.0 where a small anti lgbtqai+ group from 4chan has the power to stretch definitions to frame innocent people. Art isn’t all going to be clean or comfortable, and trying to “cleanse” it to appease to a vocal minority of puritans only lets them take us away one by one. First acceptably it was the forbidden 3 (good thing), then we got something about feral discourse, now the definition of minor is being stretched to include not minors, this reads like that “they came for the socialists first and I didn’t speak out” posters.

The near complete lack of staff communication on this entire issue outside of Luffy has been extremely concerning, especially the directors, who are barely here communicating, yet they can be easily seen in the user list, online, so they're here and presumably watching us. But not saying anything. There's still been no word on why this change was even made in the first place and any attempts to ask have seemingly gone nowhere. Why was this change even made to begin with? Who legitimately asked for this? I want to try to put my trust in FA and the staff but when we're left this alone and on our own and we can't even really get straight answers, how are we supposed to feel? It comes off like we're just supposed to sit down and not say a thing because a majority of the time it feels like we're talking into the void. (I appreciate what Luffy's been trying to do and say but they're only one person and can't do everything themselves.) EDIT cause I forgot to put this on when I was thinking on it. But it's convenient you have a gallery deletion period forgiveness that was right before stuff really hit the fan huh.

It’s been over a full day now since this feedback channel was created, almost a day and a half. I don’t know what else the team at FA needs to see. The sentiment is clear to anyone with eyes. The response has been overwhelmingly unified against this rule, asking it to be reverted, and for the team to focus on actual features that people want and that would actually protect people (blacklists). If the mod team is hoping there’s going to be a sudden wave of support, it’s not coming. This isn’t something you can take a week to reverse. You can’t take your time on this. Every day, more people leave. Every day, more galleries are deleted. Every day, and every post you make that isn’t reversing this just makes your reputation worse. Your last “update” only made the situation worse. So did the one before that. This thing has to be shut down and it has to be shut down NOW.

Furaffinty exists because adults use and subscribe or advertise on the site not just solely because it's owned by one person, if people leave the money to sustain the website goes too. If anything people who are subscribed to furaffinty, or advertising on it should start to pull their funding, money talks, more than people do apparently. That's what caused Wotc to change their response because people were starting to boycott their movie and possibly causing the company to lose millions.

I am curious is it possible for FA to do a FA poll (Inside the website itself not twitter cuz of how twitter blue works and what not i dont trust its polls anymore) Within a rule that accounts older than a month can vote so they can get a better statistics because judging only by the few people coming to this discord to decide if its "most" isnt that fruitful. So a POLL held on the furaffintiy website itself is probably the best way to at the very least see the scope of this thing also to people saying why arent the rest of the staff but luffy commenting or whatever, the amount of harassment they are getting over something they have nothing to do with is disgusting and people are dying for the next screenshot they can take here out of context to have one more gotcha moment on twitter. a poll + announcement held on FA would help greatly Though has to be allowed for older accounts 30+Days or more to avoid people trying to abuse it. Also a small point to add, dont use reactions in this thread as an indication if people mostly agree or disagree a lotta people no really a lot have me n other people here that disagrees with them blocked hence we cant do thumbdowns on them cuz thats how discord works :P so it'll seem that all of their points get more positive reactions on this thread no matter how you spin this, think about the people that dont use discord or dont wanna join this place with their main accounts cuz they're afraid of getting any type of harassment or backlash for whatever opinion regarding these policies, idk this probs the best idea i had all week. an FA POLL is needed.

The post that drove me to write this has since been deleted! Makes sense because it was the perfect example of why this has gone wrong. The confluence of poor messaging, dismissal of concerns, drawing upon historical prejudices and all wrapped up in alienatingly stiff and condescending language built upon a foundation of completely dissolved trust. The recent evolution of the rules have been explicitly contradictory. Soft borders are necessary in rules about such sensitive topics, otherwise people will get right up to the border and toe the line. But when they're logically impossible, they're meaningless rules that are impossible to follow. Thus, no one feels safe or protected. You claim there is a lot of pushback from queer people. Have you considered why there is especially strong pushback from queer people? You say you only knew of this subject because of reports. Have you tried listening to queer people? As actual people and not as part of a threat model. If there is a clear causation from your action to a defensive reaction from a group of people who are currently and historically oppressed, what have you done to illicit such a reaction? What have you done to assuage that reaction? Queer people are not a hive mind monolith, but I can tell you nothing has been done to smooth over the reaction. Because there is no trust left. I personally no longer have any reason to believe you'll do the right thing. From the suspiciously Gulimon shaped hole in the rules, to labeling every argument against you as "bad faith" or a misrepresentation, to the artists you yourself follow who have written at length about how much they love drawing underage. The trust thermocline is pierced. The strong reaction you're getting are the death throws of a userbase you branded as pedophiles because of rules you shift around as it suits your personal tastes. People are pushing back with such fervor because they care. And if you're not cautious, it'll be the last time they ever do.

@Eonis There's a lot of good examples posted already about the issues of trying to define a cartoon character based on head-body ratio + whether they "have breasts/buns/beef" or no. The graph I linked in the message I'm replying to goes in depth as to why that is. But to word it another way- ### Ducks don't look like Animal Crossing characters Cartoons are by nature, harder to parse and translate into recognizable identities and demographics, harder than realistic still-life portraits and even more so than the average human anime character design. If it's an animal crossing character, or heck even a couple of Pokemon, it's not unlikely that they'll even get mistaken for some other kind of aquatic bird, like a goose, or a pelican with wacky proportions. Literal entire species misunderstanding is not a stranger to the Pokemon fandom. And because I feel like it, I'm just gonna throw another glaring flaw into the limelight. ## Meowths. The majority of the Fandom's exposure and recognition to that species, comes from the one from Team Rocket. And in spite of his Canon on-model build and proportions. (Which is even more extreme in the head-body ratio and being lithe than nearly all stage 1 evolutions,) ### He doesn't come across as being genuinely childlike in the slightest. Not even when he's being genuinely dumb or immature.

So yeah, I spoke in here twice yesterday, and I see there's still no moderator response, and nothing (other than the correction of the "pregnant minors" bit, which is good, but it's a very small thing within the grand scheme of things) has been done. No response has been made. There's no indication that this feedback forum is anything other than a swear jar, except for a few sycophants who've shown up to say "ignore the haters, you're doing great, trust me there are a lot of us who are happy about this." We don't need to "see the scope of this thing" any further. The "scope of this thing" is already painfully obvious, beyond the near-universal condemnation of the update in this barely-promoted-at-all forum (aside from the aforementioned sycophants). We see it in the reaction on Twitter, and we see it in the reaction on FA itself. And even beyond the vocal reactions, there's a lot of users who won't react vocally or give feedback - they're just gonna leave. I think FA's staff may be waiting for a wave of sudden support to come in to balance out all the criticism (it's not coming), or maybe, like the sycophants in here, they're counting on there being a "silent majority" who just doesn't care enough about this update to uproot their galleries and leave. When people get dogpiled on Twitter or dragged in a forum like this, they love to act like victims as if they didn't bring 100% of the negative reaction on themselves. Whether the scope of that reaction is fair or not, the only thing FA can do to stop it at this point is to walk back the thing that prompted it in the first place. That should have happened yesterday. FA can absolutely take the time to consider the best way to proceed - frankly, they should have taken more time before announcing it in the first place. But in the meantime, they need to be saying "This update is cancelled until further notice" so that they can take that time, because every moment they don't is doing damage to the site. All I can do is reiterate what I said yesterday: you will ignore this forum's feedback at your own peril. Yeah, the trolling, brigading, etc. may not be helping the situation, but it's not going to stop if you don't roll this back. Worse, the site is going to continue to hemorrhage its userbase as long as this goes on. EDIT: And now I see we're limiting reactions to shield those sycophants and outright lying about resetting them to obfuscate the numbers. At your peril, FA. At your peril. Best thing to do is leave them on and let people vent through them - it's harmless, but turning them off has turned into much more of a distraction than clown emojis were. You can't keep saying "we're monitoring the feedback, we'll provide an update soon." You've had two days of almost universal feedback in here, and a TON of it is saying "you need to walk this back." You don't need more time to consider that. Time's up. ETA: This entire feedback process is indicative of the whole issue, because it's basically been one giant game of FA trying to skew the feedback in their own favor (which, despite Herculean efforts, they still haven't been able to do). - "File a trouble ticket." Sorry, no one's gonna do that. Twitter's easier to post and harder to hide. - "Fine, we'll have a Discord topic." The response in the Discord topic is universal, so it's deleted for "going in circles." - "We'll have a Discord channel (that we will not announce anywhere until we're forced to) where people can only post once every six hours." The response is still near-universal. - A few people come in to make vapid counterpoints, to which the entire forum reacts negatively. "We're going to turn off reactions now because people are abusing them." It's really not a good look, guys. It's doing absolutely nothing to inspire any confidence that this forum is being taken seriously, no matter what you SAY on the subject.

Reactions removed because people are abusing them to make fun of those they don't agree with. I think we have a pretty clear understanding from feedback what the concerns are and what would generally be agreed upon by users. I won't be removing any neutral reacts to previous messages, but will be removing stuff like clown reacts.

Actually can you all click the react above?

Cool, I'll just add x and checkmark to them.

i have not removed any ✅.

To be _more_ clear, I'm adding check or x to posts that don't already have something like it. Ex I won't add a check to one that has a this or point up emoji. Have to wait to remove emotes from posts til I'm at my pc, and will continue to add them to posts then, too.

I don't know what kind of response I was expecting to see more than a day after my first post, but somehow the biggest reaction being removing reactions and the feedback they contain seems to be about par for the course, and gives me even less hope about this mess being fixed than I already had. The response is nearly unanimous here and the silence from anyone except Luffy is making things worse, also I would like to ask why Razzle's reactions weren't reset at all like everyone elses? If, as Razzle points out, users blocking them makes their post invisible as well as them unable to react to anyone, does this mean that the admin staff is blocking people and therefore unable to see and take their responses into account? (as much as I disagree with every post Razzle has made, the mere concept of admins blocking people here is EXACTLY why there's growing distrust) Edit to add: Razzle's last post was less than an hour ago, there were changes to MANY posts before it, it was skipped entirely as if not seen at all.

I deleted a few emotes from a couple posts but then found that it's absolutely nightmarish on mobile so will need to go back through when I'm on my PC. I can't do it easily without just removing all, which I won't be doing.

I think removing emotes is the least of your concerns right now. The lack of communication is still an issue and unless the admins start taking this seriously, this will have been a colossal waste of time and resources. Are we able to trust the admins word that they’re really considering what we’re saying, Luffy?

Not feedback but, what do all the ❌'s from you mean?

It's a balancing act - at least for me - to try to find a way to allow some sort of reaction to feedback if I cannot allow a discussion. People need to, at the very least, be able to react to show how they feel about specific feedback. It's also unwarranted for either side to be harassed, even if "just" with reacts. Dogpiling and harassment are reasons that some users feel as though they can't leave feedback. I am personally very much considering everything that's happening here, and I've been relaying feedback back to the team. I also know that a lot of other team members are watching this channel. I will not be elaborating any further on 2.7 myself and await direct clarification from Fender or another more official FA source. I will be facilitating this thread and the ability for people to participate within the guidelines we've been given. I am going to get clarification on when the old Post will be removed and when this thread will be locked. I am also going to add it to the channel list for everyone (forgot this was a thing, sorry).

I disabled reactions as they were being abused, so I am adding ✅ and ❌ to each post for users to react with. It is not a personal opinion or staff acknowledgement. Some reacts may be late - I apologize. Working n stuff.

I could leave a message complaining that my single post out of thousands didnt get a bespoke reply from every moderator, or accept the whole point of this thread was feed back, everyones going to be angry. And complaining about the lack of feedback then complaining if they leave feedback isnt helping. People complaining about the lack of feedback lead to the small update which then people complain about for not covering everything and thats made things worse. And how is any mod/admin supposed to talk if they either get attacked for saying something, while simutaniously attacked if they dont say anything. Its obvious why most of them are staying quiet and sure thats not helping, but they arn't going to sit down here and talk just to get attacked. I get it, its sucks we have to wait, the amount of people joining the discord shows that its that big a concern and yeah I wish they could just say, we put it on hold/rolling it back. But its clear everyone is now worried about any future changes that could happen and I imagine all parties feel aweful every hour that passes. Honestly the only people happy in this situation are the trolls and puritans who most likly flooded the ticket system in the first place causing the whole mess, FA is big, moderating is complexed and not free.

As @Razigator mentioned before I think a poll on the main site is a great idea to get everyone's opinion on the topic. Those who support the idea of banning CP won't come here to give their positive opinion because these people don't feel like they need to, including me (until I was being called a 'homophobic puritan' for not wanting to see CP on the biggest furry site there is) I wouldn't have known about the shitstorm that is going on right now here if I didn't check my notifications out of boredom. I didn't feel like I should give any positive criticism from the FA post that I read. Only those who are heavily affected will rage here, and it is a vast minority Also noone I watch has made any journals about this topic and if it affects them in a negative way. No one I asked from the fandom even knew what's going on right now, and most didn't want to participate in this 'conversation' because of how aggressive and rageful most people are here. That's why I think it's a great idea to make a poll so everyone can vote if they like this change or not. And it should be clear that EVERYONE'S opinion matters here, not only those who are unhappy with the change., because as I said, those who are happy with the change WON'T comment here

Any poll would need to be neutrally worded. If it just says “hey guys is “cp” bad” it will be like five million times worse

Also need a way for poll to have some measure against bots/duplicate accounts

Hi, I've also been on FurAffinity since around...2005 or so? I can't remember, lol. But it's bad enough that FA is losing its steam and relevance due to twitter and social media. Art sites like FurAffinity, DeviantArt, etc have been a formative part of me growing up on the internet. The fact that people are leaving in droves because of this policy is catastrophic. I hate the idea that furry should be an adults-only space. I joined furry as a teen, furry is continuing to get bigger and bigger and minors are getting exposed to furry every day. They're seeing fursuiters on tiktok, facebook, twitter, etc. They're making up their own fursonas and drawing them. To say that minors shouldn't be allowed anywhere is selfish and not constructive. The onus should be on the adults to not be creeps and sex pests, and at the same time, mods and admins shouldn't be babysitting for lazy parents who think the internet can raise their kids. I've always been in favor of removing CSEM where we can, like the big cub smut removal of 2010 was it? I don't buy into "well akshually it's a dwawing" because artists still need to reference something to draw said material. But I hate seeing the goalposts shift and shift because of new rising sensibilities. Truthfully, I think a better solution would be to introduce tag blacklisting to help calm folks who are genuinely upset by that material and to age lock accounts that are suspected of being a minor and accessing adult content. Otherwise, there are hormonal, horny teenager who will lie and/or conceal and may fly under the radar. There's really nothing we can do about that, but taking this nearly totalitarian approach hurts a lot of people, even the ones who otherwise mean well but still have fear that something they enjoy will be next on the chopping block. Communicate better with the community and community figureheads (longtime members, well known users, etc) before creating such controversial policies, please.

this is the the only kind of thing these new rules have brought for us \:( https://i.ibb.co/Km8m77w/Screenshot-20230525-113511.jpg

Nobody is saying children can't be part of the fandom as a whole, but FA (the community) is and has always been a hub that is catering primarily to adults. Let adults have their space. Make a SFW only alternative/mirror if you must. It's not like there aren't other spaces that can accommodate them. Children don't have to be allowed everywhere and it's quite frankly shocking that they are on this specific site. Even if this site was only anthro bears doing vanilla things, with none of the evil pokemon around, it would STILL not be a place for them. There is no way you'll ever get rid of the adult portion of the fandom. No. I'm sorry, you won't. FA would lose all its funding. Funding that is done exclusively by adults, who (mostly) visit the site with adult interests in mind. Also, this is missing the mark on what is actually making people angry, and I don't see many of the supporters of this change try to address it directly. The problem is that Pokemon/Digimon (at least those in the list) are not cub, but are treated as such by this rule and therefore is painting a target on all the artists overnight for the harassers to push on. "The rule said so 5 minutes ago, so this empowers me to say that these people are borderline criminals." is dangerous, and once again, shocking to see happening in our community, even more coming from a community that is already marginalized by people using very similar arguments. Finally, for the people supporting this who also happen to have a feral character (yes dragon count as feral for many), I hope you realize that by letting this slide, and given the current attacks on body type as an excuse for further harassment, you may be waking up one day being told that you are not welcome anymore. I'm all for a poll on the main site too, if it can help burst some bubbles.

The widespread reach of the policy essentially makes the site unusuable for a large portion of users, no one wants to post something if they aren't sure they will get in trouble for it. Even if 99% of art in the grey zone is ultimately fine, the uncertainty is uncomfortable. Like many have already, they will find other more reliable places to host their art. Do an adult rated search for Eevee, I'm sure at least 30% of the results of the 14,000+ images can be interpretted as against the new policy. But it goes beyond pokemon/digimon, many short characters are suddenly failing the check. What does an "appropriately adult" Yordle or Imp look like exactly? "Child-like" proportions are extremely difficult to define in fantasy races and across various degrees of stylization. While most of us are fine with and understand the reasons behind the cub art ban, when the policy starts to affect artists who explicitly refuse to draw cub art, it has obviously gone too far. It isn't practical to have to ask about every upload, especially when the answer varies depending on who responds to the ticket. We need guidelines that everyone can interpret the same way unambiguously.

I mean, if anecdotes matter, no I one Ive seen outside of this thread has been in support of the rules changes. The only people Ive seen who like it have been like three or four people who popped in here. Plenty of people in my server are against it, obviously, since they all watch me and whatnot. But Ive also been talking about this with some artists in a private TF server we've got and like, Deko, Grimmy, Nio Kasgami, 1bit deviant, Sweets, and MagicWritings all think this update is stupid and harmful, even though only me and MW are potentially the only ones at risk over it. And FA's twitter post got ratio'd like 5 to 1, which doesnt seem like it would be happening if people liked it (it was likely made much worse by the mention of the TF/vore/pregnancy bit for minors, in fairness. The original post did get more comments than likes though despite being just about the update, at least).

Genuinely this seems like the mods (dragoneer in particular) wanting to ban their own squicks while keeping their own personal fetishes safe. Not to mention this is literally all drawn fantasy art "cp" doesn't exist

This is the first part of my feedback but I will be posting the other parts later as I collect my thoughts. whether FA believes it or not cub is viewed as child porn by much of the community. Making accusations that someone has drawn cub you are making an accusation that they have drawn child porn . Whether you like it or not, that has been the larger communities perspective for a while now and that distinction needs to be respected regardless of your intent. When flagging art under this rule you are no longer just removing a piece from your platform. You are accusing that user of drawing child porn. A federal crime. 
this in mind the vagueness and grey areas your post has created is completely unacceptable and has already lead to many false positives.allowing any room for moderators discretion not only throws many non offenders under the bus, labeling them some of the worst things imaginable and harming their business. But also creates a fear of posting in the Pokémon space on FA in general. Accusations as serious as the ones you are making via this policy needs to be handled seriously, with no room left for doubt. Calling someone a child predator for having an eevee/ riolu character that they’ve been using as an adult for years is not okay.
FA simply put cannot get this wrong. Getting this wrong would cause a great amount of harm to the user even if FA does not intend for this to be the case.
 the worst thing though is that you already have. There are many reports of characters who have been flagged that are definitely not children but fall under this category. Although you said this wouldn’t happen, a number of kobolds,short stacks and other small fantasy races have already been marked as not okay despite.. 1. not being a Pokémon or digimon so supposedly already under the rule. 2. already being posted to the website. Not to mention the plethora of Pokémon ocs and sonas who have been always painted as adults being marked as child porn as well.

Honestly, this policy sucks for a lot of people but at the same time it's ABSOLUTELY hilarious how hypocritical of the change it is, and if you know...you know haha. Seeing people getting absolutely bomb by emotes for a L take was great to watch as well, but one post in particular really hit the nail perfectly in describing age with pokemon and digimon. A 1 year old agumon can become a god like being, or just be a short stack 30 year old goober, and pretty much the same for pokemon because of the evolution stones. REALLLYYY hard to set an age on pokemon because of it haha. Anyway! Back to my little corner.

Can we at least agree that drawing shortstacks and, like, agumon, is not CP with C standing for CHILD? Like if we have a poll it needs to make it clear which short characters we're banning, like kobolds, that fennec from zootopia, imps and goblins(?). I'm sure 99% of people here are against cub on the site, so if you just ask "should we ban cub" you won't get anything relevant, we're already against cub EDIT: and if I remember correctly, the feedback that led to this rule was people saying “we shouldn’t sexualize minor's bodies”, which was somehow interpreted as “we shouldn’t sexualize any short character (unless they’re very popular)”

Got a bot to auto-add the reactions so you don't have to rely on me. 🙏

I'll say it every six hours. Why does this UP target short OCs and characters with no age, and ignores r34 of canonically underage characters as young as 13 just because they "look adult"? Edit: I actually want to clarify, because compared to this point: letting a 13 y/o human child have r34 because he can turn into a dragon that "looks adult" PALES in comparison to anything else on this update. But nah, eevee gotta go.

I say we should have a vote of no confidence for the current mods and administrators over at FA.

Look, y'all don't have a CP problem. You banned that, it's gone. What you have is a bunch of folk traumatized by a world gone haywire, trying to feel like literally anyone has any kind of control over their life, like someone bigger and stronger and more competent than them is on top of things, expressing that emotion through their art, and y'all can't see past your own knee-jerk reactions. You've turned into your parents, screaming about how DnD is promoting satanism. I'm sure they're very proud of you, but it's time to stop. You have your feedback. Nobody supports what you're doing here.

At this point, the term "Let FA burn to the ground" would totally become a reality. The whole Pokemon / Digimon ban is kept on being ignored just because mods won't listen to the ramblings of a potential "sex offender" who do nothing but draw those kind of artwork. If this doesn't totally bring this site to the ground, what else?

Give adults back their adult spaces. Stop trying to sanitize it. Let adults enjoy their material as long as it isn’t hurting anyone or causing detriment to the website (such as a payment processor dispute.) Everyone looking at this material is an adult. (At least they should be.) We don’t need puritans and politics telling us what we can and cannot do. Subjectivity leads to censorship. Please for the love of Fender, please give us some control so we don’t have to go through these divides anymore. It can start simple with a simple artist block tool. I’d rather be blocked by people rather than silenced by overreach. Please give us a blacklisting feature in the near future. There are things I don’t like but I would never trample on another artists style or choice of art simply because I don’t like it. Please, stop with this labeling of Pokémon and Digimon art as underage. It’s subjective and painful to those of us who work so hard and share with everyone.

Hoo-wee, what a mess - once again! So here 's a continuation to https://discord.com/channels/991855522913460224/1110644832289968138/1110931348308373574 story. Thanks for providing easy and meaningful way to post our essays! !snirk! The entire reaction from The Site has been patching up holes in the way the now-legendary meme of a man Darren the Pothole Inspector has taught us: "There is no hole if you start from the center". If you need to patch up more holes every time you claim to have plugged one, you're doing it wrong. If your ship is sinking due side-wide hole, 1 plank wont help. You need to sail it back to the shore. You're not addressing the core issues but keep trying to keep up a facade of "doing something and deeming everything is OK". This does, once again, more harm that good and only add to the already massive confusion and uncertainty. So, on the topic of facades.. Why has there not been any concrete attempt at clarifying what constitutes as "X-like features", the like and Why that is? Could it be that in all honesty people in charge on FA does not know? Is that the poor excuse behind a, let's admit it, blanket-ban on certain species, characters, styles and physical features? Why, for popular arguments sake; just being small, round and cute enough (yes, you're this vague) is deemed "childish" but add a tophat, fake beard and trench coat and suddenly it's 100% adult-ok? Current people or person deciding on the rules clearly are unfit for that role, unwilling to do them justice and unwavering in their own, personal views and biases. They clearly do not intend on listening to feedback and actually fixing this mess. Because yes, if you/they would be willing to take that hit on their personal ego, WE COULD STILL FIX THIS. If not: Just say fuck it, shut it all down and pull the plug since that's what the "only other solution" apparently is. Tune in next time- same place, about the same time: The FA Dumb'sterdive Saga! (typo intended, some fixed)

I know what the mods are probably thinking: “everybody is overreacting! This policy just extends our existing rules to a couple more franchises! They’re all just misunderstanding or dramabaiting, and pretty soon they’ll forget about all this, and the drama will all blow over.” But all the confusion is the sole fault of you being poor at communication and out of touch with your community. You said this policy was only changing the rules for Pokemon and Digimon, yet your mods replied to tickets asserting art of characters from other media were also going to be removed under this update. You said there was no list of species that were going to be removed. Then you revealed there was a list all along, and even more infuriatingly, you didn't post it in full, only referred to a few examples. You said you weren’t targeting shortstacks, but rather targeting canonical minors and baby Pokemon so that they have to be aged up. Yet you outlined a adult level Digimon as problematic while paying no mention to a hugely popular taller child level Digimon, indicating it is based on height; as well as characters like yoshi who are canonical adults (there are baby yoshis which look entirely different), just cutesy. To clear up all the confusion this generated you used the example of Judy Hopps (again, not a Pokemon nor Digimon, just creating more confusion on that point). Despite her having a “childlike body” according to your chart, apparently Judy is okay because she has a child version of herself to contrast against. What is this supposed to imply? All nsfw art of short characters should include an image of them as a child in the corner or something so you can tell the difference? If not, how was this supposed to help? At this point, I really have no idea what this update is gonna be. Maybe this was all overblown, and you really do have good intentions and are just going to ban some sneaky cub artists. Maybe, based on what your staff has said, you’ll go rampaging through tens of thousands of artworks of, say, eevees, deleting all those who ‘arent shaped like vaporeons’ - which is pretty much all of them, because who draws them that way? And maybe the worst rumors are true and you’ll go on a warpath against kobolds and avalis and anybody under 5’6”. I really have no idea. This has always been a problem with Furaffinity: murky, inconsistently enforced rules with artists being punished seemingly at random based on the mood of whatever mod takes notice of them. And now artists have to live with the knowledge that they can at any moment have their galleries cleaned out and themselves branded with the black mark of “pedophile” based on the notoriously arbitrary, contradictory, ever-shifting whims of the staff. No wonder so many are jumping ship. In some other context, I mightve supported this update. But the well has been deeply poisoned. I recommend that you apologize, cancel it, and do some serious introspection before trying again.

I’m strongly opposed to the 2.7 update - I recognize the intention is good, but it’s an absolute mess that will catch so many artists up in a net that they have no business being in. The judging based off of proportions is particularly egregious - are we really bringing out head calipers??? Seeing that this is the only way to submit formal feedback, I’m going to link here a long form podcast episode that my team and I released today detailing our in-depth feedback. I hope @jansi#0 and the team will take it into account: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1JpCAE9CfU8&feature=youtu.be

I've been watching this unfold for a good while now, and have only recently decided to say something about it. Bear with me a bit, since my thoughts aren't exactly clear cut right now. I don't like how the rule is worded, as it makes me incredibly anxious that my pokemon drawings involving Eevee, or even my Mewsona itself, (which was created as a way to justify having multiple forms at once without being too complicated), will get falsely flagged as cub art because the rules on proportions are too sweeping/vague, especially since most, if not absolutely all of my drawings are Pokemon based; i grew up on it, after all, so it's a big part of my childhood. It doesn't feel like a matter of "does my art break this rule" as opposed to "can my art be seen in a way that looks like it breaks this rule?" and that sort of stress of uncertainy isn't something i like at all. Barring DeviantArt, (which i haven't touched in ages), FA is kinda the only place i feel comfortable with. i've intentionally avoided branching out into other spaces because i'm not in it for popularity; i just wanted a place to share my artwork with others that wasn't Discord spaces, where they can and do get easily buried. Now i'm afraid to upload anything i've been working on for fear of an account ban making it pointless anyhow. If it happens, it happens; i still don't intend to go to another site (Idk, maybe inkbunny, but from what i've heard the site's full of what 2.7 was trying to prevent), but FA's the way i met a lot of the people in my life now (through links to discord, or even getting to know people through notes), and a lot of the artists i like are similarly leaving because of all this. It'd be a shame for the site to crash and burn over something like this. Now i'm not good with words, and this probably could have been worded more eloquently or something like that, but i think this gets the gist of my concerns across in my usual roundabout way.

Tl;dr: - Remove subjectivity in the definitions. Not even "as much as possible", all of it. This sort of rule that can wreck someone mandates the amount of work associated with such rule refinement. - I don't believe the rules are approaching the right issues. If the staff is as small as I think it is, then the limited time and energy should be spent on more meaningful rules & enforcement such as ones that crack down on things more directly harming real, living minors. - Link to this channel (going back and editing tweets & journals if need to be to include the link) everywhere discussing this topic. To be productive: Ditch the subjectivity in your rules. This may be a hard task, I acknowledge that, but if there is no concrete definitions better ensuring uniform enforcement then that opens itself up to exactly this kind of panic as people assume worst case interpretation (for example, my interpretation is basically any NSFW art in a not realistic style is potentially at risk, despite what moderation may say in response to that statement because the rules allow for that interpretation, period) and worst case, abuse by moderators (or even just confusion in moderation) and users reporting posts. Examples on a case-by-base basis do not help as species far and wide vary in all kinds of ways and some may not even canonically have the concept of young or old. Interestingly, as others have likely have mentioned, even if the rules are perfected they aren't going to do a ton to assist in protection of minors ultimately. For example, what I mean is it is already easy for minors to come into contact with porn (regardless of the presence of minors in the material itself) on the site despite the function being present to mark stuff as intended for the general audience or the more adult audience. I get that people are probably not always setting this properly, but that's where the enforcement should be first and foremost. Seeing minor non-humans depicted in situations like this makes people uncomfortable, but ultimately isn't harming an actual child (eg. as opposed to a photo). If the intention is to crack down on the interactions between adults and minors on the site (eg. via notes and such), this is a sideways approach to it, then. To be sure, I'm not happy with cub, just pointing out the nature of the issue here. Less helpful, just expressing agitation: I left a not emotionally charged post sometime ago, which I replied to in this message. I'm just going to follow up with I didn't actually use the site a ton (and started with a less-than-stellar impression of the administration before all this) and everything thus far (including the recent followup) I'll just say isn't going to have me using the site much more if at all. So you're not losing much from me but I'm far from the only one it would appear. I don't even really make art of really any kind (I do on occasion commission, though) and this whole thing just looks and feels absolutely wrong at every turn. I apologize for not really adding anything useful in this section - but stuff like this will inherently induce negative emotions in many especially when you consider the perceived malice (eg. you should be linking to this discord channel absolutely everywhere - even going back and editing tweets & journals about this topic to include it if they don't have the link, and that's just one of the issues on that front). EDIT: Sorry for length - yikes!

A major issue that stresses me out about this update is that staff can be pretty inconsistent and there is constantly moving the goalpost when it comes to this sort of thing. I've lost a lot of confidence with staff judgment over the years and It's getting harder and harder to want to post art of short characters because the rules seen to shift so much. It almost feels like the goalpost will be eventually moved once again to include short stack characters at some point. I wouldn't be surprised if even Chibis were eventually restricted. There is a lack of trust because of staff inconsistencies and that's a major reason people are frustrated. Even in the new update some things don't necessarily make sense, which other folks have explain way better than I could. I just want to voice my opinion so I'm not mistaken with a "silent majority" who supports this choice.

I'm going to start by saying this isn't directed at you Mods. This message is for your bosses. This! This right here is what I've been talking about. Snowsnow walked in here assuming all the people who are angry with this amended rule are a bunch of pedophiles that are angry that you took away our CP. That's NOT what we are and that's NOT why we are here. We aren't pedophiles, we are people who used pokemon as characters and sonnas and had no intentions of portraying children. We do not make CP and the insinuation thay we do from someone as powerful as the owners of FA is inexcusable. Because of this stupid rule people out there think all of us are pedophiles now and do you think changing websites will fix that? How am I supposed to go on living my life as normal knowing any second someone could call me a pedo. How am I supposed to look my girlfriend in the eye. My family, my own mother! Its been almost a week since this began and all you've done us ruin us! We want answers NOW not in two weeks when the rule has already passed. Not in five days when it's convenient to you. Every second you leave this rule in place your labeling all of us as child predators. Even if you were to take back that rule and apologize publicly to those you wronged there's no removing the pain and damage you caused! Please get your bosses in here! I get they are busy people but I don't care how important they think their work is it's not more important then the lives of the people they hurt. It won't kill them to spend five minutes talking to us about this problem!

There has to be an announcement to finally clarify things. Please staff, give us anything to erase the label pepophile that hangs above many users heads just because they have pokemon or digimon sonas. Many users are desperate, many artists already gone. If there is nothing done soon the collateral damage after this update is way too high to leave this change as it is.

I don't think I've pointed this out yet, but the way this policy is worded not only is restrictive on pokesonas and digisonas, but this hurts a lot of kemono stylized artists because their drawn to have different body proportions that are inspired by certain tropes. You put out this policy because you got feedback from people using the site that crafted this whole scenario, but my question is who or where did you even get any of this information from to even push out this UP? People here aren't overreacting because of just one thing, your first introduction of this policy was worded vaguely without any forethought about how you'd even conduct it, then your staff updated it claiming they would not bring about the fears those felt the policy would even hit, yet you did that anyway, and now you've updated it again with barely much of a change to quell those fears and concerns over the one bit of wording that was disastrously concerning while containing far too many loopholes that would certainly get abused. You're pushing your luck on you userbase's patience after several missteps and statements that do not put some of the staff into a good light, this isn't a knock on the staff either, I just want to point out that some things some of the staff as said isn't giving many here any confidence on how the site is run. I've been on FA since 2010 and we have been promised many updates to modernize the site for years and every time for the last 13 years the push for these updates has been minimum and mediocre at best. How is it we still do not have things like: - Blacklisting Tags - Not being able to see users we should have blocked - More robust gallery features such as actual folder organization, etc. - Groups, Clubs - Name Changes. Things other sites, even those that have tried to compete against Furaffinity before have, and have fallen either because they were too small, had certain policies that made the move not worth it, or had a site owner that people had to point out has a shady history? Why is it we are still waiting for things to improve by this point when more and more competitors are knocking at the door, I sometimes feel FA staff does not take things things too seriously. Why are you not working to better your site against would-be competition?

When I posted my opinion here yesterday morning, I stated essentially the following: Including the phrase "or fantasy creatures" in UP § 2.7 is fine. It's a minor change. FA's announcements have caused widespread fear over this rule update. The clarifications have done more harm than good. Through these announcements, FA has damaged a lot of users' trust in the system. The priority should be on restoring trust, not listing new criteria for judging "childlike appearances". FA could build a procedure for community volunteers to review flagged images and decide if the character(s) appear childlike. Regardless of what changes are made, the rule change should be delayed beyond July 1st -- possibly until January 1st, 2024. [Emphasis added.] Instead, the opposite has happened, with the latest journal announcement on FA's website adjusting the rules surrounding depictions of pregnant minors -- and stating in bold: > This rule change will go into effect on June 7th, 2023. While I am not affected by this change to the rules surrounding depictions of pregnant minors, I feel strongly that the last thing the community wants right now is _further_ rules changes, on an _even shorter_ time scale. Stability is needed to restore the community's trust, and that calls for a moratorium on new rules until users have had a chance to voice their opinions.