for the no fetish rule, i think this can be a massively exploited. i understand extreme fetish gears and stuff, but if things like a leather gear counts as suggestive, how does one deduct that something is supposed to be fetish material or not? 

one of the two outcomes can happen:
1. if a fetish artist decides to post something relating to for example, a character wearing a leather suit, they could just say that its not supposed to be fetishy and is just fashion sense. making content is basically shrodinger's fetish art and allowing everyone, including minors, to see it
2. if a sfw artist decides to post something that is completely sfw, but puts some details that some people might consider fetishy (like for example slightly overdetailed feet, detailed mouth, or an overweight character) their art can risk getting taken down because of what others think, even if the artist has 0 intention of making it sexually enticing

this is one of the rules where the boundary between breaking the rules and not breaking the rules is very thin. i think its best if some levels of fetish (like light bdsm) are allowed only under a filter. i mean, only adults are gonna see that, no? 

edit edit: also, this is the internet. anything *can* be a fetish if you think hard enough. how are yall going to reinforce this rule anyway? someone could have a fetish for like building legos and nobody would know. like.. yall remember the wonderbread guy..? 

edit: i also read the comments and realised that heavy depictions of violence and gore is still allowed, but acts of love and sensuality are getting more and more restricted. i dont think this is gonna look good for art fight, yikes

Thank you for the quick response, admin! Looking forward to seeing the new guidelines and hopeful for the clarification we've been looking for. 

vv  bro this site requires you to tag bloody steaks as "extreme gore"  

My fellow art fighters, are you ready to RUMMMMMBLE??

consider banning extreme gore too. It's just as unnecessary for a 13+ art trading site as the newly banned things are, and 90% of "extreme gore" is just fetish art and falls into the new rules anyway. Don't make a double standard. a few concerns about vague wording stand but the rest of the outrage is unnecessary and blown out of proportion

lonely_space_egg My thoughts exactly. I really think this new rule is going to lead to more people who don't want to see fetish content being exposed to it because, as you said, people will post fetish art and not filter it for fear of it getting taken down. I'm also baffled that, for example, a drawing focused on a person's feet is banned entirely, but a drawing of a person getting disemboweled is fine for people of any age to see or draw. Plus, I've seen several people on here admit that gore is their fetish.

I'm going to expand on something that SirMeo [excellent comment overall] said, because it's been on my mind as well:

"And I really think that the "no fetish" rule is because we don't want a deviantArt situation where someone with a "technically" sfw fetish like anime girls blowing bubblegum while wearing woolly socks, or the infamous wonderbread guy, tricking people into drawing fetish content for them (remember, don't make people participate in your kink without their informed consent!)."

A major problem with the new rule is that, if anything, it will only encourage this kind of "tricked into drawing fetish art" situation. If someone with a [to use this example] bubblegum kink posts art of a girl blowing bubbles under a suggestive content filter, they are essentially "self-reporting" and under the new rules, their art would be taken down for "appealing to a fetish." But if the same person doesn't filter their art, they can just play it off as SFW, and because you can't prove something is a fetish, they just get to keep posting kink art without any content warning/age gating. The new guideline actively discourages setting boundaries by incentivizing people to deny what kink art is and put it up with no filters.

And, I will ask again: Who does it hurt for a grown adult to draw anime girls blowing bubblegum while wearing wooly socks behind a mature content filter that only other adults can see? Why is SFW kink art deemed more harmful than say, a character with spilled guts or flayed skin, which are both allowed behind an extreme gore filter, which isn't even age-gated to my knowledge? I've had a full night's sleep since the rule change happened and I'm still shocked that a rule change that helps no one and only serves to alienate previous users was approved.

Can it be possible to open art fights other than july? Many want to use this more than one month in a year. I would recommend hosting at least 3 times art fights in a year. People would decide which month they join

Hey everyone! 

Thank you for taking the time to write down your thoughts regarding our new filter rules - we really appreciate it. We're reading each comment and are currently working on a response to better clarify our intentions with the new rulings. The actual filter page will also be updated once we are ready to respond. 

Jesus, when i opened the comments i expected to see ppl guessing on what theme won, not... whatever this all is 💀

SirMeo Sorry I might be repeating the same points cus I wrote this and fell asleep but you articulated incredibly my exact thoughts on that, admins likely meant to prohibit obscure "DeviantArt" type fetishes but that unintentioned works will be 'caught in the crossfire' thank you very much.

So sorry for prolonging this but when bringing up specifically collars and harnesses, the guidelines do specify those are allowed without filter as long as it's non-sexual. But yes, like SafiraCoyfolf mentioned, there can be issues if it's drawn on a suggestive pose and the collar isn't actually meant to add sexual appeal. The issue is with little specification on "extreme emphasis" and "overly-exaggerated proportions", and I want to highlight "fetish gear".

If they truly mean to prohibit anything that can be considered non-conventional sexual interests/implications, SFW depictions of "fetish gear" or objects that could resemble it, and allow only "vanilla" suggestive interests collars, harnesses SFW lingerie only, then so be it. I hold nothing against admins but (yea everyone's said this) they must go into further detail into the terminology used in the guidelines, just as they do on the guide regarding what kind of nudity is allowed or needs to be filtered. I hope this all ok to say.
But otherwise yes I'm excited for Artfight this year and early theme reveal RAAAHHH.

SirMeo your points were articulated extremely well and i hope staff listens in editing these rules </3 just wanted to show my support for what you're saying because i 100% agree with you

The only parts I don't fully understand are the new rule against "low effort" drawings. Whose deciding what's low effort and why are they no longer allowed? Even if they're only awarded 1 point or even 0, why would that be against the rules? I like when people send me silly stuff. 
I also don't think exaggerated body proportions = fetish and that the wording could be changed to better reflect what is meant by that 

I didn't want to comment again because, eugh, cringe, but the person several posts below me is so wrong when they state "fetish art is obvious." It's just... not true. People get regularly accused of fetishizing fat bodies, trans bodies, poc bodies, disabled bodies, if they feature them in their art in any kind of positive light, even if the artist is fat/trans/poc/disabled themselves! Bodies that get targeted first by vague "this is inappropriate" ruling are traditionally the ones that aren't thin, conventionally attractive, white, abled and cis. I have a watcher on dA who has fetish for a specific piece of clothing, let's say, as an example, a t-shirt (basically just a normal piece of clothing that has nothing to do with fetishes, it's not actually a t-shirt but on the same scale) and every time I upload anything featuring t-shirts, he will favorite it in his "nice t-shirts" folder. Essentially, someone is flagging my non!fetish art as fetish because it fits their niche interests. I personally think mods are not going to blanket ban fat characters, but I am worried that vagueness of the rules lets people abuse the rules, add to moderation strain and general distress of the userbase. At the very least, it makes it hard to tell what is acceptable to upload.



Right now, the rules regarding fetish-y/kink content are these:

allowed:
not allowed at all:



"No suggestive themes" is only mentioned within the context of collars and harnesses being allowed when not suggestive. There is no elaboration what "fetish gear" means. "Ladydevimon", a character from Digimon franchise, is arguably decked out in fetish gear, but the franchise is not considered mature! Would she be allowed on the site under the strictest use of this rule? Trinity from the Matrix is dressed in rubber/latex, but is not portrayed in a sexualized/fetishized manner... would she be allowed on the site? Straitjackets are also frequently used as fetish gear, but Ripper Roo from the Crash Bandicoot series wears one without being fetishized? Would he be ok? If the answer to these questions is, "yes, they would be allowed on the site, because they're not portrayed in a suggestive manner", then the suggestive manner needs to be included in the rules, because RAW disallow all "fetish gear," except for harnesses and collars not portrayed in suggestive manner! Or, if chains and leather and full rubber and straitjackets don't count as fetish gear, we need some clarification on what exactly counts. And suggestive posing is already something people need to filter for, so it's already something people don't/can't see if they don't want to or are too young. Bulges/explicitly sexual situations are already banned all together!

"Overly-exaggerated proportions" and "extreme emphasis on certain parts of the body" are also (unintentionally?) targeting users with super cartoony/exaggerated styles, and the "extreme emphasis on certain parts of the body" really needs some clarification. What about characters with strong body part motifs? What about characters that _are_ a single body part? Can't think bigger "focus" than that. I don't think the mods would remove characters/art of a character that is like Thing from the Addams Family (that is, just a hand), but the rules don't reflect this. Again, there is no "portrayed in suggestive manner" clause here -- this is any and all works involving (non-defined) fetishes, with no exceptions or clarifications. "Not limited to", I think, is meant to say "mods know it when they see it," but it's not helpful to users looking to stay within the acceptable upload boundaries.

And I really think that the "no fetish" rule is because we don't want a deviantArt situation where someone with a "technically" sfw fetish like anime girls blowing bubblegum while wearing woolly socks, or the infamous wonderbread guy, tricking people into drawing fetish content for them (remember, don't make people participate in your kink without their informed consent!). I don't think this rule is a bad faith attempt at getting people to stop drawing fat characters or whatever. But I think the rules, as written, right now, are half-baked and will throw the baby out with the bath water. Functionally, how do you tell apart a fetish content - imagine someone having a fetish for giant women toppling buildings - and someone who is just into pulp schlock - imagine someone having a story and characters that are homage to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman - and how do you enforce the no fetish rule in this case? How do you decide who to ban? There are plenty of cases where you can tell when something is a fetish (just browse around on dA for 2 minutes and find someone who posts nothing but AI generated pictures of women arguing through sock puppets - real fetish I've run into on dA, no kinkshame, but really???) but plenty of people who post niche content always get caught in crossfire.

And the people who get caught in the crossfire I, as someone who does not post anything more suggestive than cocktail dresses and swimsuits on this site, am worried about. That, and the disheartening realization that once again we've marked "this might be a fetish to someone" as worse than hard gore. For the record, I like gore, I just think "the thought of sex is worse than actual graphic violence" is sad.


My suggestion is that you better define what you mean by kink content, (what counts as fetish gear? what is 'overly' exaggerated anatomy? how much focus is 'extreme' focus? is it context-dependent? if so, how? what might 'not limited to' mean?) and then require people to filter this content like you do with violent and disturbing imagery.
Filtering your non-kink sfw character because it has overlap with some kink might feel bad, but feels better than not being able to post at all, or getting flagged and possibly banned.

LETS GOO