Really appreciate the counter point, THAT IS NOT THE FUCKIN' CLAIM NOW IS IT?
Know your own history, there is a long and storied tendency for political actors and by extension private industry to influence communities and platforms to remove Queer content under the pretext of 'protecting minors'. Famously, this is what happened to Tumblr. Before Tumblr, a similar action of demonetization and delisting of LGBT+ youtubers happened when word leaked the FBI was monitoring specific channels (not queer content creators mind you) for activity used by actual offenders. These actions of removing content on certain grounds defined vaguely are almost exclusively pointed at [certain key examples] and in the splash a lot of people who were not in violation of AUP become fresh violators.
Once you start painting with a wide brush to purge 'potential depictions of minors' from a website with 20 years of history after a previous purge which introduced the explicit ban nearly 10 years ago, there is a new fresh hell opened. Furaffinity's pivot is likely not in a vacuum of on-site behavior. In recent months, the Forum closed down, all commenting on public policy updates was disabled, and any discussion was shunted onto a strictly SFW minors-inclusive social space on Discord. The intent is obvious: Building a wall between Minor-friendly and Adult-oriented spaces is expensive, and Furaffinity does not or can not afford to do so. Instead of choosing a harsh choice between these two routes forward, they attempt to slice with increasingly small precision at categories which could qualify in the eyes of a payment processor.
Furaffinity's primary funding avenue is provided through FA+ subscriptions, which are vended by Paypal. When previously, their Website Hosting Service threatened to take them down for Cub art, now it appears that the likely vector is Paypal restriction on acceptable content, which will likely slowly escalate due to the lack of boundary between Minor-Friendly spaces and Adult-Oriented spaces on Furaffinity's platform. Due to this mingling of the blood, an existential threat facing everyone on the platform is presenting itself through most likely monetary deplatforming. Dragoneer and the FA moderation team have gone silent on what motivated the change beyond what is written, and considering that many artists who are not into cub are getting works flagged for takedowns by July 1st? Well. That's not hitting the right target at all, now is it?
Queer Erasure is an extremely broad term because of the umbrella that Queer status evokes. However, it is worth the highlight: An artist who draws cute kobolds with boners is likely based on how round, soft, and anatomically cartoony stylization to face deplatforming on Furaffinity. Watch the situation much closer.
Small Edit: Nothing fatigues me quite as much as people thinking that this exact problem somehow does not affect Queer communities. Ya'll motherfuckers need to experience the adult world where imperfect people are congregating on shared interest for community, and that means you brush shoulders with polite creeps. Some of them are hiding in plain sight, passing well as 'normal', and others are more clear. The clinical data speak for a different story entirely.
A slight update here, I do wanna apologize for the curt, rude opening on this post, IDK if the OP will ever return to my space coz of it, assuming they didn't autocorrect in their brain that somehow I'm a pedo apologist. Not very civil, or sexy. Don't fucking hurt people, ya'll. It's goddamn easy not to have sex with someone's kid, get a grip.
I say uncomfortable words about an uncomfortable reality in which real children are abused all of the fucking time, and yet some fucking teenagers on the internet wanna cry about a lewdly rendered, fake cartoon character as the ultimate moral compromise facing Queers.
Anyway so Furaffinity.net allows users in the U.S. of A to sign up so long as they are 13 or older. The site features lots of pornography, people know it has lots of pornography, almost everyone I remember growing up with in the fandom came to FA for the furry porn and stayed for the community. I was quoting figures where it was 16 to sign up, and that's for the members of E.U. and international regions.
No wonder a 16yo from the UK was really distressed that they couldn't participate in my NSFW 18+ Discord Community in recent weeks, it's not just that the gates are flung open widely, they are absolutely SPREAD to bring minors in. That's not right. We have pornography on Furaffinity.net, and the wall between the Minors-Friendly and the Adult-Oriented segments of the community is fucking MICRON thin.
When I was a kid, the saying was "lurk moar", that way you didn't get yeeted from porn communities. In the 2000's we had a legacy of cultural media telling us kids to lie low, hang out, enjoy responsibly when you sneak into somewhere, as you might imagine. Today, with the internet being far more real, it is UNACCEPTABLE for Furaffinity to continue to navigate this major internet etiquette violation and risky organizational approach by having a community that integrates Pornographic community content with stuff meant for the general public.
Why do we not have "After Dark" indicators on profiles which mark segments of the site's content as barred off behind a formalized wall that requires a verification of some kind to penetrate!?!? It should be obvious: Adults and Kids should not be looking at the same porn in the same community spaces!!!! Fuck sake. People projecting loud about my LITERAL CLINICAL EXPERIENCE AS A PSYCHIATRIC PROFESSIONAL as somehow advocating for sexual misconduct. Fucking. I'll bet the people talking that shit aren't 18.
Ya'll ain't been out there in the real world. You know what happens to us who survive being sexually assaulted as a minor? We have to move on with life. That happens to the pedos too, and the ones we catch are often intellectually disabled-- RETARDED as you might say in anger. Get your fucking gonads in a bunch and walk your ass the fuck out of here if you think that these people magically go away when they rarely are the ones producing and consuming fictional pornography of minors in the first place.
The average pedo? It's a white dude with kids, and yes, its his own fuckin' kids he's molesting. The other cases are OLDER SIBLINGS, members of Clergy, fuckin' Teachers. Career Republicans in general have way elevated risk of being convicted of a sexual crime involving a child, Jesus Christ. Fuck off the edge of my transgender dinosaur dick, I know as a fact that some loli in a swimsuit existing on a website I don't visit is better for the fucking thousands of kid-attracted people who don't do anything because they can jerk off their cock and/or pussy to gratification with some cartoon pictures instead.
