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Abandoning FA Journal : What happened? by Midnight Hyperion
You may have noticed that the journal calling Zaush and Dragoneer out is gone. it has been removed as per the ToS, and here's why :
When I set out to write down the journal discussing the events that lead to a lot of people resolving to leave FA, and why I feel that it is morally responsible to, I wasn't sure if it would have ran afoul of the ToS, but I felt that I had to take a risk, for obvious reasons, at the time. Months later, I got the memo that call-outs like this is actually against the ToS. This is unfortunate because I would have liked for this information to stay up indefinitely. However, fighting to set a precedent that could lead to the abuse of call-outs to damage the reputation of others, whether or not it is justified, is not something I would like to do. So I have decided that it is finally time to sunset the journal as is. If you would like to know what the journal was, I have prepared archives and mirrors of it if you have to know. Just send me a private message or contact me through IMs and I can tell you all about it.
I would like to take thank everyone who were supportive and in helping to raise awareness. Rape is a serious issue, and it should never be taken lightly. If you have been a victim of sexual abuse, or know someone who had gone through it, do not hesitate to speak out about it. As long as we keep silent about abuse of this ugly nature, we cultivate a culture in which rape is normalized.
The following is the remaining part of the journal in which I am allowed to repost :
2 Moving on from FA
Moving from a popular established website can be a daunting and intimidating task, especially if you rely on the services it provides to make a living, or to keep in touch with friends. Thankfully, plenty of tools and resources have popped up in the wake of this debacle that makes moving a lot easier. They are as follows :
- Project Valkyrie is a great support group/forum that gives tips on moving on from FurAffinity and moving to Weasyl.
- Simple Ottermatic Follow Transfer allows you to enter your FurAffinity and Weasyl usernames so your watchers who moved can find you easily. You can also paste your FurAffinity watch list and find artists and friends who have moved to Weasyl. It uses a vouch system that allows users to verify that the usernames are indeed correct.
- Waxpost Weasyl Crossposter is useful if you use Chrome, and want an easy and fast way to transfer all your uploads from InkBunny, FurAffinity, SoFurry and DeviantArt to Weasyl.
- Weasyl Markdown Cheat-Sheet includes the basics of the formatting language used on Weasyl. This should help you adapt fairly easily, as it is simply an abstraction of HTML that is easier to type.
- The FurAffinity Exodus Database Tumblr blog is one of the best ways to regain exposure if you have moved from FurAffinity and are not posting elsewhere, including Weasyl. It is also a great way to discover artists who are no longer posting to FurAffinity thanks to the recent debacle.
- Let's Help Weasyl Out
- How to Make Weasyl your Main Gallery and Encourage Others to Follow
- Weasyl Tips
- The Benefits of Starting Over
To add to all of the above, I would also like to include a short set of instructions on how to move on completely from Furaffinity :
- Nuke your FA Notes - Back up any personal or business correspondence to local documents if you have any. Regardless of whether you believe Zaush has access to your notes or not, or if back ups exist of them, you will want to mitigate the chances of your personal correspondence being used against you by the FurAffinity administration as much as possible.
- Move all of your submissions to Scraps/Delete them - This is to call attention to the fact that you're no longer posting on FA to all first-time visitors in a very obvious way.
- Nuke your Journals and Profile info, leave only links to where you're posting - Same reason as # 1. You do NOT want Zaush going through your Journals, and scraping as much information on you as he could from them, as well as your profiles. it also serves to redirect all visitors to your new galleries.
- Change your FurAffinity password to a unique 16-character gibberish string - If you haven't already done so, change your FurAffinity password to a 16+ character long string of gibberish, so that if the administration tries to use your FurAffinity passwords to break into your other accounts, they will be unable to do so. It is also generally good practice to do so. LastPass is an excellent tool that can help you generate secure and unique passwords for websites that you visit.
- Spread the word! - This is very important, as it will help you and all other artists who have moved out from FurAffinity gain more watchers and attention, as well as encourage artists who are on the fence about moving that the cons of moving on from FurAffinity aren't as much of a deal-breaker as it may seem.
- Do NOT harass artists who decided not to leave FurAffinity - I shouldn't have to say this, but some people are going around harassing artists over their decision to stay on FurAffinity, and that is NOT okay. There are plenty of artists who have too much on their plate to be able to deal with the debacle, or rely on friends and commissioners who still use the site, or simply do not want anything to do with the debacle. That is perfectly understandable, and you would only be adding to the problem if you give artists trouble for it. And especially do NOT go around calling artists rape apologists for making that decision, you are only going to serve to trivialize the severity of the incident, and that would help no one.
- (Optional) Turn FurAffinity into an advertizing platform for Weasyl business - This should make it easy to make the move to Weasyl without much drop in income and watcher count. To encourage watchers to move to Weasyl, you can try things like hosting Weasyl-exclusive freebies once every few weeks, posting art exclusively (or semi-exclusively if you decide to stayon FA.) on Weasyl, advertizing sales, commission slots and auctions a few days earlier on Weasyl first, or finally, Weasyl-exclusive discounts.
Some of you may be unconvinced to leave FurAffinity altogether, and that's okay. It would normally be unwise not to cast your net wide for exposure for your work, and I can perfectly understand if you decide to stick around. However, I strongly urge you to take measures to protect yourself as much as possible while you use FurAffinity. The first thing you should do is to remove any personal correspondence via notes that may contain sensitive information about yourself or the people you correspond with, and use other channels of communication for them. Also try to keep personal sensitive information about yourself away from your Journals and your Profile. You should also change your passwords on FurAffinity to something that you don't use anywhere else. Don't be afraid to pre-emptively block users who have shown behaviour that you are uncomfortable with, or remove comments that make you uncomfortable. Finally, if you go out to meet with FurAffinity users in person, always keep at least 3 close friends or relatives up to date on where you're going, and how you are doing, (Friends being with you in-person is preferable.) and do carry personal defense items like a stun-gun or pepper-spray.
3 Shout Outs
You should all check these artists out, they do neat artwork and are pretty cool.
Abandoning FA Journal : What happened?
Journal Information
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- General
Comments
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Actually, that's a good guideline for meeting up with anyone from online for the first time.
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It is, but the point was not presented like that in the slightest.
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Seconded, I always meet people online in a public location with a friend present. The stun gun and pepper spray may be a bit much (and I'm 99% sure is illegal without permit in my state) but especially for women, who may not be strong enough to defend against an attacker, it's still good to have.
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Actually, they are legal. Personal Non-Lethal Defensive Weapons aren't governed by any state's Concealed Weapon laws. They're only applicable to weaponry that can kill, including firearms and even swords.
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I live in Massachusetts. As of just 2 months ago it seems that pepper spray is now legal to carry without obtaining a firearms license. So yes, up until recently I would have to be a licensed carrier of pepper spray in my state. NA is also a May Issue state, which basically depends on the color of your skin, gender, mental background, criminal history, the mood of the officer in charge, and the phase of the moon - and even if it all checks out, they still can just say no if they feel like it. The chances of me getting a firearms license is slim to nil.
Stun guns are still restricted in MA. In fact, most weapons are illegal for me to carry - for example push daggers and slungshots (Monkey's Fists) are not permitted to be carried by the average citizen, or really any citizen at all.
Even with the legalization of pepper spray, it still doesn't help me in public spaces like furry conventions, where defense weapons of ANY kind are not allowed on the premises (granted, for good reason - you'll gas out the entire hotel).
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As a former Mainer, thanks for reinforcing my opinion that Mass is a giant festering shithole. It's pretty fucked up when people can't carry NL options for personal defense. Then again, Mass contains Boston. If Bostonians were allowed that stuff, the ER would probably full of the maced and tazed.
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It's just a simple general safety tip. It's never a good idea to meet someone from online for the first time without some form of self-defense.
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I should also note that, I'd have gone so far as recommend a handgun like a Beretta M9A1 or a Glock for concealed carry, but guns aren't legal everywhere.
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I would like to change the concept of leaving FA from 'career suicide" to "moving to a more updated gallery system". There are many artists that only use FA, who use it as their primary means of contact, so moving from FA completely is impossible depending on how dependent the people you're currently watching are. I've been boycotting FA for about 9 months now and yet I still have to log in to see the activity of some artists I like. If they want to remain, fine, that's their choice, but there is literally nothing about FA from its code to its staff that makes me feel secure there.
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Yep, the thing about FA that drives every decision they make is complacence. If they can get away from not doing anything, then they will not do anything.
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There's just something about a down payment on a house (and a coincidental $10k tax debt suddenly mentioned around the same time), crowdfunding a cintiq in exchange for art that will never be produced, hiring unsavory folk in general, and a DDOS that coincides a little TOO nicely with a crowdfunding effort that just does not sit well with me.
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"Do NOT harass artists who decided not to leave FurAffinity"
There was a lot of that going around when this debacle occured (some of the artists listed there also did this. Calling someone a rape apologist just because they stayed on FA is not cool, regardless of what they think). It was, imo, a giant clusterfuck over what i thought to be was petty drama.
While i do still use FA, the only problem i have is downtime every now and then, and occasionally dealing with someone who thinks FA should still burn to the ground (which, ironically, that user posts here on weasyl). It kind of sucks when poeple treat this site like a soapbox to say things like this, when it just makes it feel like the site is unwelcoming. And yeah, some people can't really move to a site like this because it would mean starting over practically, and with the userbase being small, that's a really HUGE risk to take. Exposure is important (and it's reassuring you mentioned that).
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That's pretty unfortunate that you had to deal with a person like that. I wouldn't support that kind of attitude. Not everyone wants to be involved, esp if it's something that doesn't concern them. It wouldn't be fair to harass them over their desire to stay out of it.
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That's pretty much how i felt about the whole situation, and a number of people felt the same (ie. not knowing about the situation but getting involved regardless...which is naive).
And i don't; some of those artists who still have that attitude i have on an ignore list here; that kind of negativity is just unhealthy.
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ah, haha Im still burnin my bridges to FA but its like the only reason I keep access to it is so I can see when my favorite artists that refuse to leave are doing sales and such. tis the only reason.
otherwise I'd be gone and done, but those tips are really great!
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Awww, thanks for the shoutout! ; u ;
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I kind of like Weasyl since you can tag the journals as well as submissions. I mostly just watched FA for the dirty pictures anyway.
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This is an incredibly helpful guide, and actually what I followed when I left FA!
Also, thank you for the shoutout ;~; -
Huh, the staff took down the old journal? That's... disappointing, since to be honest, Dragoneer's censorship of journals talking about the issue is kinda what ultimately convinced me to leave FA in the first place. (actually learning about the issue through the old journal and the resources it linked to just convinced me to stay away)
I suppose it's understandable why Weasyl staff wouldn't want call-outs on their (primarily art-focused) site, and this site is obviously still miles ahead of FA in basically every way, but that's still somewhat disappointing.
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The staff actually came to me asking me to take it down, and pointing out the ToS violations. We had a short talk and were pretty nice and understanding about it.
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A bit unrelated thought here: Is Weasyl involved in any way with the /furry/ community of 8chan? Given that Dragoneer views the *chan culture with disdain and m00t himself made it so that furries are persona non grata on his website, there seems to be a vacuum that might as well be up for grabs.
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I have no idea, honestly.
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I admired this from the start and appreciated it, so I'm glad some of it is still up.
I saw a lot of people who initially ragequit FA for Weasyl go right back to FA. I thought the point was not to support a community run by incompetent people. shrug
I didn't know 'call-out' journals weren't allowed either. I think the nature of the callout should be considered, but what do I know? That's why I avoid even socializing on Weasyl. When someone owns their own community, they always have these dumb PC rules so nobody starts crying at their computer desks while reading things. I prefer dA because it makes more sense.
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I do think it makes sense from the standpoint of the person running the community, while calling people out can be an important aspect of holding charlatans accountable, it can also be abused by those same charlatans to further hurt their victims.
As a community manager, one must always consider the consequences of every arbitration and in setting exceptions.
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I just think the nature should be considered because it's easy to just delete abusive journals while letting legitimate ones inform others. You had cited sources and everything. :( Oh well, whatever. Spilled milk.
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Of course, it sucks that I had to do it, but there is not much I can do without uprooting the rules and setting precedents that could lead to bad consequences.
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Link
Calypso_Koalasaur
Thanks for the tips, but
"Finally, if you go out to meet with FurAffinity users in person, always keep at least 3 close friends or relatives up to date on where you're going, and how you are doing, (Friends being with you in-person is preferable.) and do carry personal defense items like a stun-gun or pepper-spray."
This I believe is uncalled for. As much as I hate FA, its 31 flavors of rediculous to imply that every user is out to rape you.