sharpiepaws I'm speculating why AF is banning fetishist art. Which from what I've understand from the vague wording is anything they perceive as 18+ regardless of if it's SFW or not. I'm speculating, because we have filters for lingerie and nudity, but straight ban on fetishist art, it's because Paypal has done the same to other artists who were SFW but still lost their paypal account to a perceived fetish. I mentioned this in my first response on the matter, and it's what has most people worried right now. Having to take down their characters due to a perceived fetish.

But again. It's entirely speculative and based on presumptions from what I've seen happen in the art community. Whether or not this is the reason, we probably won't know, but I see this stunt pulled alot when websites are worried about some sort of funding issue.

lunarhallow that is just an example that a website with a controversial past can still run with paypal

newgrounds ABSOLUTELY has a lot of hardcore porn, and every nsfw artists and animator has a ng account at this point 

lunarhallow artfight does not allow 18+ content, never has. all of these sites that DO have 18+ content have been running just fine, some of them for many more years than artfight has been around, and have accepted paypal that entire time. paypal withdrawing their support would def be something artfight would have to worry about, IF they even hosted 18+ art. but they don't. and they never have. i promise you paypal does not care about pulling support from a site where the majority of art on the site is totally sfw. that just would not make any sense from a business point of view. paypal takes a cut from every donation. why on earth would they cut out that revenue stream? i think the difference between this and what you mentioned is that the majority of the art can be misconstrued as nsfw. not the case here.

hi guys. how do i make an account on artfight

Akivaq What you listed falls under violence/gore, which in the US (Paypal is hosted in the US, which is why this is applicable), violence is treated much more favorably than suggestive NSFW  For some reason. (Which is a whole other can of worms) 

sharpiepaws At the same time, Paypal has pulled support from other websites for hosting certain suggestive themes, and others have made an attempt to curb NSFW only to walk back on it due to losing most of their profits and add another payment processor to their options. (Patreon as an example) While it's true most 18+ websites have run successfully on it, it's also a very insecure payment processor for 18+ and there's a chance they will be dropped at Paypal's whim.

aussies are hurtinggg

Akivaq +1 this. furaffinity uses paypal. toyhouse uses paypal. neocities uses paypal. OTW (the ao3 people) lets you donate through paypal. all of these things allow fully explicit nsfw and have been operating just fine.

Electro-Sweaters I don't think this has anything to do with "think of the children". This is entirely speculative, so take this with a grain of salt, but they use PayPal to get their funding, which has archaic policies on NSFW and what counts as p*rn. The furry fandom itself (as an example as it's an entirely queer space with open kink and fetish art) has has a bit of trouble with the payment processesor, even SFW swimsuit artists getting their accounts banned. My entirely speculative opinion is that AF is trying to stay within Paypal's ToS as much as possible, which inadvertently is hurting queer spaces on the site.

This new rule makes no sense imo. Absolutely anything could be a fetish, and the ‘exaggerated body features’ is lowkey like telling somebody not to draw in their art style or; shaming people with those features irl. I doubt that was the intention at all but as I said, ANYTHING could be a fetish.

This honestly had me myself questioning if my characters would count as such or not, as I personally like to exaggerate some features I think need it or would look good. Not to mention, a lot of my oc’s are nsfw & contain fetish-y themes. 

I’d say update to better filtering rules. A sensitive option with a label of what the image and/or character includes. Like ToyHouse. There is an extreme nudity filter / sexual content, but I literally had a minor in my dms telling me that explicit genitals were not allowed?? Idk, imo the filtering didn’t make any sense before and tbh think it just got worse lmao. 

After taking some time to formulate my thoughts on the changes, my biggest concern is the mod strain. The change in what characters are allowed was made to benefit mods, but then adding a stricter guideline on suggestive content that is up to mod discretion so it's essentially putting more strain on mods...I'm not going to say one way or the other whether the rule should exist or not. It's not my website and the Artfight team can choose what they want on their website. But I do think y'all should have ran this by some beta readers or something so that it wasn't pushed out in such a a way that isn't so clear cut to some, as well as have more comprehensive guidelines so people know for sure whether to send in a report.

Exavier Hope you don't mind the ping - I don't believe this is a new rule. A lot of people have asked about this rule in the Artfight Discord server, and have gotten the clarification that if "the main focus of the background was a premade brush with minimal added detail, that would be counted as no background." I've even seen an image attached to demonstrate this. However, your response is absolutely understandable because the on-site rules are not nearly as clear as they could be. I really think that Artfight needs to consult more people on how their guidelines are written, maybe something like a sensitivity reader. For example here, the wording of "excessive" feels judgemental when it doesn't need to be. There are also needs to be an actual rundown of what rules were changed in announcement posts like this, because otherwise people don't know what are actually new rules and what aren't.

Everybody' has covered the fetish rule by now but what in the world is this? "Pre-made brushes and assets are okay, but excessive use of pre-made brushes (such as for trees, etc.) must be rated as "No Background""
So because I have severe arthritis my art wont be considered art? Because I use a lot of premade brushes for nature features like rocks, trees, grass, bushes, flowers to lessen the pain of detailing? 
I don't usually feel the need to comment on this kind of stuff but this sets a bad precedent. A lot of these brushes are considered by artists like me to be accessibility features and you talk about it like it's lazy. Nasty ableist attitude.  

MortuaryWolf its like they view queer kink culture as more innapropriate than straight kink culture
both lingerie and leather gear stem from sexual intent and only one is banned. but well i guess they arent unsusceptible to being subtlely queerphobic

either be consistent and ban both or none at all