yea the new rule on fetish stuff is kinda ridiculous. a character who just has a pup hood as part of their design is entirely banned off the site, but i can cut a dude open and lovingly render every entrail and that's fine?? but collars and harnesses are okay? that's it? fetish gear is fine as long as it's "normal" fetish gear lmfao
it's just so clear that these rules are designed to disproportionately target characters (and by extension, people) whose sexual expression isn't """normal""". a completely sfw character in full lingerie requires no filter but that same character wearing a pup hood, or latex, or a gimp mask is suddenly so explicit it's not allowed at all. you're disallowing shit i can find in a spencers lmao. just allow it under a filter. isn't that what the filters are for?? i find it extremely unlikely that somebody is going to draw fetish art for someone who doesn't clearly ask for it, so what's the harm in allowing it if the people who don't want to see it can just hide it entirely? you have such a good filtering system, why are you afraid to use it?

Tsumuan 

TLDR; people are upset because it is not clear what is counted as "suggestive", and what counts as a "fetish", let alone " purposefully appealed as a fetish"
there are also many other reasons why people are not happy with these rules. 

The reason why people are upset is because. You can't objectively say something is suggestive or not 

for some, let's say, a charactet eating an ice cream it can mean something, meanwhile for others it can be just a character eating ice cream, despite that they're shown literally the same image. I understand that people will keep insisting on the fact that it's easy to defy what's suggestive or not, but this is literally not true. it is hard, and a serious case-by-case situation (and artfight staff assigns itself to just dig through these cases, and they have literal hundreds of thousands of them!) 

because of that, the mod team will, most likely, have to deal with a ton of false reports and people constantly worrying if something is suggestive or not.
these rules make it harder for literally everyone involved. and it doesn't "protect minors" in the slightest, especially when you can have photorealistic gore just by another turn. (also not allowing almost anything suggestive related meanwhile allowing hardcore gore is straight up offensive, and im not even the one who's affected.) 

a lot of people feel rightfully betrayed, too. receiving this surprise in such a queer and open space can genuinely feel very awful, especially when you have a very copl filtering system that hides unwanted content from you (they could also make suggestive content for minors simply unclickable, like it is in TH and all that could be avoided) and when mods themselves can put filters on your content if they deem necessary. 
and it's not like people are asking for literal intercourse to be allowed, too. People just want clearer rules, or a complete ban of everything suggestive/NSFW (that includes gore!). Because again, it is just too vague to be anything reliable, and even if you think it is clear enough, it is simply unfair.

there are also many other reasons that you may find while reading other people's comments. id love to sum up them for you, but i am not very good with words. 

draw hands too good or boots too detailed and someone will think it's a fetish thing lmao 🫡 good luck soldiers.

aw heck i have glasses in my avatar and some people have a glasses fetish... oh no

We can't use our OWN bases!?? wtf why!??

Yeah please clarify what you mean by "fetish gear", I have several characters who wear gas masks and clothing made of leather/latex (jackets, tops, skirts, etc) which could fall under "fetish gear", even though my reasoning for giving them that kind of clothing has nothing to do with sexual gratification and more that I just find it to be fashionable/aesthetically pleasing. Super confusing.

(edit: Also, add in the title that you changed some important stuff regarding rules/filters, or at least at the top of the post. I was talking to my friend he totally missed everything at the bottom of the post; he just looked at the announcement date and clicked away)

it feels like many people in the comments are only reading other comments and not looking at the actual rules/filter sheet. 

in the filter cheat sheet it is mentioned that you don't have to filter or remove collars or harnesses if they aren't used in suggestive ways?
also the sheet mentions that the type of fetish stuff is not allowed which purposefully appeals to a fetish. .

but i really dont understand why "ban" these things when filters should exist for these specific reasons?

I feel like the content for take down is my fault because I have an oc named mintfire who is my Zelda oc and she looks a lot like wolf link which if you can just pm me about her I can make a small change in her design just don't take her down from my account I also have ocs I need to add filters too but I need help filtering the ocs  that need filters

As someone who draws nsfw publicly and in spaces where people have nsfw and separate sfw accounts there is always going to be people who cannot separate our nsfw work from our sfw. No matter what harmless art of ours is always going to be considered gratuitous to some even if it’s just the most regular art we’ve created. Anyone can claim a part of a work is “overly exaggerated” and ESPECIALLY with the point about… “fetish gear?” Leather and harnesses are a huge part of queer fashion and not even in nsfw ways, just normally. I wear chokers with leather all the time and to some people they love calling it a fetish thing when it’s not. Im begging artfight staff to go into a Hot Topic or the front of Spencer’s. I’m gonna also echo the fact that fetishes can literally be anything. People are just going to do what they did on tumblr when they banned pornography and find sneakier ways to post NSFW content and fetish works with more of the innocent people getting hit in similar ways to the “female presenting nipples” fiasco.

I’m also going to play devils advocate here and say it sounds a bit anti queer and gross to allow lingerie without filters, you know, a type of clothing also made for sexual intent but not leather gear period. It’s hypocritical.

These new rules just seem like anti-sex Puritanism garbage trying to come off like “protect the kids!!!!” and are disgusting to me personally. Does it mean my sona with leather restraints who was originally perfectly adherent to site rules beforehand is now too sexy for Artfight…??? Even though she had a suggestive themes filter. You know, like what the filter was made for. If a kid lies to see her even though no pornography of her is uploaded at all and I don’t allow said content is that my fault?? No. And it never should be.

Just revert the rules. 

Yeah, I was all in on just making the guidelines actually specify what constitutes as "fetish content" but after thinking that over and reading more here, it seems like an unenforceable rule either way. Honing in on a few specifics also just gets rid of the whole point you seem to be trying to go for here, a good chunk of the people who actually make whatever content you arbitrarily decide fits will just get sneakier with it, while innocent artists get hit.

Just make it a new filter, I'd say, if you're so worried about it. (maybe with a custom additional text field to specify, something akin to how toyhouse's custom sensitive content warnings work, because it's such a broad concept.)

So many people have already put their grievances better than I have, but in short: the new filter rule seems vague, restricting, and honestly a bit redundant. Having been on Tumblr for a long, long while, I can attest to the fact that increasing moderation in regards to nsfw or fetish content doesn’t actually fix the problem, it just makes new ones. People who aren’t breaking any rules are going to get caught in the crossfire because, as others have said, fetish art can be literally anything. You can’t spot it right off the bat in many, many cases, including ones where the content is not, in fact, fetish art. For example, I saw someone below claim that gore artists are pretty much all doing it out of fetish and that is…simply not true? I don’t do a lot of extreme gore, but when I draw it it’s because I find it fun. I’m a big horror fan. And on the “no exaggerated body parts”, I’m not sure what that means? Like, I have a character, Carmen, who is a big, muscular guy and I usually draw him with a big grin full of sharp teeth because those are his stand out traits, they’re simply a notable part of his character. But I’m a little worried that if I draw him or someone else draws him, it can be reported as fetish art simply because some people have a fetish for teeth (maws, I think?), but fetish has absolutely nothing to do with any part of him. I simply do not make fetish art, because I don’t HAVE a fetish. But so much of what I make could be considered fetish to other people simply because ANYTHING could be fetish.

I’m not sure what the reason for these changes are, this is my first Artfight this year and I’m still really excited to join in, but what would be a better solution is either being EXTREMELY SPECIFIC on what constitutes as fetish (nearly impossible and incredibly tedious), or to just improve on tag filtering. Make a specific filter for fetish if you need to. Outright banning things like this is only going to make people posting that stuff sneakier and thus exposing more people who don’t want to see, and also genuine non rule breakers are going to get caught in the crossfire and that’s really going to kill the vibes for a lot of people. But having a quick and easy filter to apply will not only save those who don’t want to see it in the vast majority of cases, make reporting far more effective, it wouldn’t turn so many people off who are scared they’ll be falsely reported, and overall it could give people more agency in general.

Thank you for continuously working on the site and hosting Artfight for all of us, and I hope you all really consider the concerns I and other people have <3

just actively putting a handicap on artistic expression for the sake of remaining as sexless a site as possible. smells really really bad. not good at all. the hypocrisy behind banning fetish gear ON PRIDE MONTH while still allowing lingerie cannot be understated either. it's bad and you should feel bad. 

I really hope they update and / or clarify alot the stuff with these new guidelines, 
The whole "No Overly Exaggerated Proportions" and "No Extreme Emphasis on Certain Body Parts" just feels unnecessarily restricting, especially because they never clarify what's "Extreme" or "Overly Exaggerated"
I wanna participate this year, but if they go full on 1984 with this, it's just gonna be really unfun.

also what im wondering, did something..happen? like, what is the actual reason to get stricter with the suggestive themes filtering? was there a sudden influx of such content on the site last year, or is this just because of radical puritanism culture that is spreading everywhere in the internet nowadays??? sure, there is every year more users on the site, and many of them are minors. but also, like many have already stated, the filtering system already exist. and if a kid lies about their age and the perma-filtering won't be on, and they stumble upon something that they should have not seen, it's that kid's own fault. since i believe that at least most users filter their characters and works properly. it's not right to punish the people who do right and play by the rules if some kid lies about their age and then sees a boob/suggestive pose/etc. and then starts to cry about it, especially if the piece was properly tagged and filtered.

"overly-exaggerated proportions" is not allowed.
Well, this basically destroys part of the artistic freedom of many artists, [especially] for cartoon artists. Thanks a lot for that 😐
And how much would be considered "too much" anyway? If some characters have those "anime proportions", they're now banned? Or there's a certain level of tolerance? I literally have no idea.

"extreme emphasis on certain parts of the body" is not allowed too.
Again, what would be considered "Extreme"? Does that one part of the body have to occupy like 80% of the screen or something?

And oh boy, not even gonna mention the fetish part, I'll let people right here to talk about this one subject for me lol

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Those are very unecessary changes, especially when you have something called FILTERS.
But I do hope you're actually reading the comments and listening to the community. The new rules certainly can be hella exploited too.

The no fetish rule is kind of stupid, there is no way to know if a work is catering to a fetish unless explicit sexual content is at play. Which won't happen because NSFW as a whole is already banned on site.
A character crying, drawing detailed hands, etc etc could be a bannable offense then. This is limiting creativity and making artists hyper aware of things that shouldn't be a problem in the first place. Filters are already a thing...