The wanton destruction of fandom space

[navelgazed]

Okay, yes, that's a bit dramatic. But I found out today that pillowfort is going to be taking the road of not allowing any sort of sexy art of anyone that looks like they could be under 18 or would be on the cusp, which in theory is...whatever, but in practice, they even said that due to the stylistic nature of anime, cartoons etc., that would be impossible to enforce without extreme prejudice, especially if they're planning on being the 'replacement' for tumblr, so to speak. And I just... *facepalms* Dreamwidth is looking more and more like an attractive alternative despite being web 1.0. And that's saying something.

I was also thinking about starting a McElroy products community on here to talk about their podcasts and whatnot. Let me know if there would be any interest?

Comments

[cabalsruin]

i saw that, too, and i'm also pretty disappointed. Like, disclaimer, I'm completely sex-repulsed and I keep all nsfw, much less underage nsfw 1000 feet away from me.

but in light of what literally just happened with tumblr, i.e. they started off cleaning up CP (as they should), which progressed to underage art, and then banning nsfw art ENTIRELY, pillowfort coming forward with this new policy is uhhhh... a bold move to say the least.

like even though the pillowfort team seems socially conscious and good intentioned, I feel like by the virtue of the society we grow up in this is going to inevitably hurt minorities more than straight people.

i saw some discussion saying they might be trying to steer clear of Canadian obscenity laws. my hope is that if/when they have a larger audience, and feel they can fight any legal battles that might arise, they change the TOS.

for one thing, if their site gets anywhere near the size of tumblr, i doubt they can hold to their policy as written. reviewing EVERY single piece of "gray-area" art would be incredibly expensive and time consuming. so either they'd have to change the policy or starts using bots, putting us back at square one.

[navelgazed]

Yeah, big same. I mean, I'm a big shipper and I was thinking about this earlier but a lot of media is aimed at and stars teens, so just saying 'uh, actually, nope, no shipping art for you' to teens who are exploring (usually non-normative sexuality) would definitely hurt.

It's just so impossible to enforce. I wonder what was going through their heads that made that seem like a good idea.

[cabalsruin]

agreed on the impossible to enforce part.

honestly, i’ve been letting this stew and it just makes me angrier the more i think about it.

it partially feels like a huge bait-and-switch, like a lot of their kickstarter and promotional material was based on an anti-censorship platform. but now that they’ve hit their kickstarter goals and have drawn in people fleeing the tumblr purge, they come out with this new policy.

And considering how much of a hot-button issue underage content is in fandom recently, I can’t imagine this never came up before. It feels super shady and dishonest.

And their policy is super vague too. They don’t have an age cutoff, so people affected don’t know what to avoid. They’re not going to check canon ages, so what about characters from fantasy that are Older Than They Look. what about kinky shit like macro/micro. if you draw art that looks underage but you put a disclaimer saying “everyone here is over 18” is that fine? if you just say you’re drawing nsfw of a character with kallman syndrome is that cool?

furthermore, htf do you determine the age of a character that’s not drawn in a realistic style? they’re not real????

[navelgazed]

Preeetty much all of that, yeah. I figure when their policy starts getting enforced, either they're going to drop it once it gets to be too much of a hassle or people are going to leave en masse and ask for their refunds.

*sighs* I wish there was still a platform that had the image-sharing capabilities of tumblr that wasn't...like that. I know it's partially the government's fault, but it still really sucks.

[princeofdoom]

I'm not even sure how I feel about that because of both how loose it is AND how it could be used to hurt people by either being too lax or strict. But it doesn't really matter to me at this point since - due to weirdness with an old paypal account - I can't use paypal directly for anything. So even if I wanted to buy a code, I couldn't and I'm not asking anyone to get one on my behalf.

So I'm not going to worry about it until it goes public and I can look into things then.

[navelgazed]

Yeah, I'm not looking to make an account at this point either. I really don't even make NSFW art that often so I doubt the rule would even affect me, but I sort of think it's dubious on moral grounds. Adults don't 'look' a certain way and trying to use arbitrary things like breast or hip size in determining the age of a stylized character is just...eugh.

[princeofdoom]

Definitely the same. I've looked a bit young most of my life and there were times as an adult people have thought I was under 15. I understand that actual people can only change their appearance so much whereas characters can be presented however someone likes, but the idea that character X looks Y age because Z traits just ties into a lot of bs that girls (and guys) that are underage but have certain attributes are somehow more mature or "adult enough" and that's just entire rotten kettle of fish itself.

When you add in stylization.... That's just an entire other mess.