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FurAffinity Update Breakdown by Calypso_Koalasaur

I’m going to paste Dragoneer’s journal here, since he’s finally made a statement, this way you can read his comments without having to wade through the Fur Affinity Comment Section. The actual statement was delivered by Chase.


Hello Fur Affinity!

This is chase broadcasting to you today alongside dragoneer.

Who is still saying nothing and not taking responsibility for his own website.

I’m the Director of Operations for the website and I am currently working with our digimon overlord

"Digimon Overlord." I will let that speak for itself.

to help improve the website for everyones’ use, including staff relations and communication. I wanted to address some concerns that our users have had as well as some recent issues of which I have been made aware, and then comment on other things that may be weighing on curious minds.

2014 DDoS and Fundraiser

Dragoneer had been exploring options to provide users with a way to donate to the website since this option had been unavailable for about 3 years. Originally, users were able to use Paypal and AlertPay; however, those options were removed due to Fur Affinity hosting mature artwork.

Actually, let me clarify here since Chase didn't. Paypal was taken away as an option because of mature artwork. AlertPay was working fine until they caught wind of FurAffinity's cub porn subsection and told them to hit the bricks. This was the basis for their decision to ban cub porn.

He originally had settled on GoFundMe; however, I protested against opening for donations until we could provide users with meaningful updates to the website as a show of good faith. {CITATION NEEDED}

Soon after the GoFundMe was created in preparation, Fur Affinity was DDoS’d by unverifiable assailants which resulted in loss of access to the site. Smaller attacks have been launched in the past with varying levels of impact on the site, including financial, but this one was the largest. With the intent to alleviate these issues, Dragoneer launched the GoFundMe.


This is the first thing we believe to be a lie. As was posted before: https://twitter.com/WilliamcaFox/status/523234904629604352

The donation drive was started hours before the DDOS. Right off the bat, you are being -blatantly- lied to. It's like they didn't even read the evidence against them! Wouldn't that just be the tits. In before Dragoneer says "Chase said some things wrong" and gets Sciggles to write another journal for him.


Unfortunately, the donation site was closed due to people filing reports stating that Fur Affinity was a pornographic website in an attempt to prevent him from collecting the maximum allowance. There were also unfounded conspiracies posted about the timing of the DDoS and the creation of the donation page, falsely leading patrons to believe that Dragoneer had paid to attack his own site and other furry art communities in an attempt to collect money for his own personal gain. These lies {CITATION NEEDED} unfortunately lead to approximately $500 in chargebacks against the donation drive.

In spite of these setbacks, Dragoneer was able to raise $18,932 in donations for Fur Affinity to help combat future DDoS attacks and improve the website. No receipts here!

$18,932 (Gross Total Donations) None here either!

-$1,827.77 (GoFundMe Fees and Chargebacks) Nope!
-$2,500 (Taxes) Still no! And what a conveniently rounded number!
-$2,500 (Supporter Gifts and Shipping) Nope, not here either. Wow, the exact same rounded number as the taxes! They must use monopoly money.
-$1,710 (Promised Donation to SoFurry) Lie. Toumal has stated he had no idea the money was coming his way until it was delivered.

=$10,394.23 (Net Total Donations)

The money set aside for taxes and supporter gifts is a rough estimate. Any additional funds necessary or leftover will be accounted for and used appropriately. ESTIMATES IS NOT WHAT TRANSPARENCY MEANS.

Supporter Gifts

For our amazing patrons who have donated, we are providing the following gifts:

$25 Level: Thank You card
$50 Level: Fur Affinity T-Shirt
$100 Level: Fur Affinity T-Shirt, Patch & Lanyard
$250 Level: Fender Wall Sticker

And how are they paying for the manufacturing of these gifts? You can chalk that up to more wonderful transparency. Also, as I touch on below, you can see that if you give them the same amount of money they are spending monthly on the site, you only reach the first level of gift and get a really spiffy Thank You card.

We are working diligently to garner these supplies and send them out to patrons; however, there is a setback concerning T-Shirts. We do not know the sizes of the patrons who have earned this gift and we do not have access to email accounts to send inquiries. In lieu of this, we will be sending out letters to the addresses we have on file to seek out these sizes so that we can batch order the shirts and get them out. These letters will be sent out no later than Friday, December 5, 2014.

All other gifts are scheduled to be ordered no later than Monday, December 8, 2014. We will keep you updated on the status of these gifts. {CITATION NEEDED}

Fur Affinity Taxes

There has been concern about the donation drive and taxes that Fur Affinity owes. Fur Affinity currently owes approximately $10,000 would you just look at all of that approximate transparency to government agencies for taxes on advertisements and
Fur Affinity United. These taxes were not correctly appraised. And they are now? I have discussed this with Dragoneer, and to prevent this error in the future, he has asked his certified public accountant to calculate taxes on a quarterly level, resulting in higher accuracy when estimating taxes and saving more money to cover any unforeseen issues. Like what?

Dragoneer originally stated that it would be ideal to use part of the donations to alleviate this burden; however, I have dissented against this since supporters were not told originally when donating and would constitute a breach of trust. As a result, none of the donations will be applied to any owed taxes and will be only used to support the website. And whenever any of this donation money is used to support the site, it will be publicly announced.

Donation Money Uses

$10,394.23 (Net Total Donations)

-$25.00 (Cloudflare: 2014/10) [Monthly]
-14.99 (OVH VPS: 2014/10) [Monthly]
-252.72 (Pingdom: 2014/10) [Yearly]

-$25.00 (Cloudflare: 2014/11) [Monthly]
-$9.31 (Amazon SES: 2014/11) [Monthly]
-14.99 (OVH VPS: 2014/11) [Monthly]

-$25.00 (Cloudflare: 2014/12) [Monthly]
-$9.31 (Amazon SES: 2014/12) [Monthly]
-14.99 (OVH VPS: 2014/12) [Monthly]

=$10,002.92 (Donations Available)
=391.31 (Spent to Date)


Quickly, let's look at this for a second.

25 + 9.31 + 14.99 = $49.30. FA, a website with 1.5 million users and millions upon millions of submissions, operates at a lower monthly cost than my phone bill. During the other donation drives, they've received thousands of dollars and have not upgraded their services or their hosting options, due to...?


Expense Reasons

Cloudflare (Monthly Expense):
Offers a limited amount of DDoS protection and asset caching that decreases page load time, thus increasing site performance.

Amazon SES (Monthly Expense):
A bulk-emailer utility that provides cloud storage for site resources, increasing email reliability to ensure users receive emails concerning account registration and password resets.

OVH VPS (Monthly Expense):
An email host system that provides the site with separate bandwidth for staff communication.

Pingdom (Yearly Expense):
An uptime and monitoring suite which provides both users and staff to active server monitoring. Text alert notifications are sent to technical staff in the event of downtime to increase response times to server outages.

Bugs Affecting Site Performance

Missing Notifications:
You may have noticed that when you attempt to upload a submission or post a journal that it takes an excessive amount of time before the content is available on the website. This issue is compounded when a user has a significant following. The reason for this delay is due to the notification system attempting to send out messages to all of these followers in unreasonably sized batches. In order to counter this issue, which also causes site lag as a byproduct, our tech team moved to a new system which staggers the batches. Unfortunately, this system inadvertently allowed these messages to start building up in bulk to the point where messages were lost or never sent out at all.

To counteract this issue, the tech team has made changes to prevent notifications from being sent to accounts that are permanently banned or deceased and is in the process of deleting millions of rows of notifications on those accounts. This process is estimated at about 1 week and may impact notification delivery during batches that time out. The work began last Friday and is estimated to be completed on Thursday, December 4, 2014. Many of you may have already noticed an improvement in the system, and when the process is complete, performance should increase greatly.

Furthermore, we are discussing pruning notifications that are old to further augment the system being put into place to increase performance further. In the meantime, we apologize for any inconvenience and will keep you updated.

Icon Images Not Loading:
Cloudflare offered a feature to increase mobile performance. Unfortunately, this feature resulted in improved mobile performance at the cost of overall site performance. It has been removed and icons should be loading properly now. Which means they're paying the same for something with less features with -your money.- Oops.

Uploading Content Errors:
Users have reported timeout errors when attempting to upload content. These errors were often accompanied by a Cloudflare message. This issue is tied to length of time it takes to upload content to the website. Upload times should be drastically reduced when the notification system maintenance is completed. In the meantime, the timeout windows have been increased to compensate and users should no longer be experiencing this issue. Oh boy, can't wait for the exploits on this one.

Database Error When Accessing Deceased/Banned Accounts:
We have recently been made aware that some users are encountering database errors when attempting to access deceased accounts and their content, including favoriting. This issue is the result of current maintenance, and will be resolved once it is completed.

How Do We Improve Fur Affinity?

Currently, our tech team Who will hereafter be referred to as Charmander, since he's the only one actually working on the website if the Trello is to be believed is working diligently to correct all of the aforementioned bugs which promises to deliver a great deal of performance improvements; however, site performance is not the only issue at hand.

Increase Content Capacity:
Dragoneer is looking into the possibility of purchasing additional servers


ARE YOU KIDDING ME.

https://trello.com/c/a9KTMfJd/38-enable-master-slave-replication-from-finn-jake
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6265766#cid:43149631 - Anyways yes, Jake has been sitting idle for almost a year, and it was constantly talked about internally.

They cannot be seriously asking for more servers when they've got one -sitting there.- Not only was it sitting there, the Trello deck indicates that it is -still- sitting there. It has been inactive for a year, and they're going to use your donation money to buy more servers that are just going to sit there and do nothing. This statement is more infuriating than anything I've read so far, because not only did they write what I believe to be a bold-faced lie earlier up, but they are refusing to acknowledge that their last server drive yielded a doorstop that cost thousands of dollars that weren't even theirs.


so that we can increase content upload sizes for all users. This will also come with new coding to properly provide site resizing in addition to being able to download the full resolution.

Conquer Trouble Tickets:
Fur Affinity is a massive website home to 1.15 million accounts That runs on less than 50 dollars a month and we do not have enough staff answering tickets, resulting in a backlog. Hiring and training more staff is a necessity that I will discuss shortly.

Transparency and Accountability

There are those buzzwords again, but can Fur Affinity stay true to its promises?

According to this link, there are 190 times where they have not: http://imgur.com/a/85ShP

I think the issue with saying that “Fur Affinity is going to be more transparent” is that there is nothing attached. Are we going to be completely transparent across the board like a public agency or are we going to be more transparent in specific areas of our business, like the private company we are? Furthermore, how does accountability play a role?

As Director of Operations, I am making the promise to you to uphold the standards I present in this journal. If my position is ineffective in making a difference to this website whether due to my own incompetence or due to roadblocks outside of my control that I am unable to overcome, then I will resign except you didn't and you hid behind a sockpuppet so why should I believe you now?. Like many of you, Fur Affinity is my home and the website has given me so much for nothing. I’ve used this site for over 8 years. I have volunteered to serve this site for half of that time, and now have reached a position where I feel I can do a great deal of good, helping transform this outdated site to something modern of which we can be proud.

Let me highlight the hilarious hypocrisy here. Carmen was an admin account that was made after the allegations of animal abuse came down towards Chase, which was used by Chase to hide his identity. In the same vein as Zidonuke, he was hidden after controversy and found out. However, he did not leave.

Transparency Subsection:

Money:
Fur Affinity will be transparent with all donations made to the website and how those donations are used. Sure buddy! Just like you said that last journal, then gave us a bunch of estimates.

Staff:
Fur Affinity will be transparent with our System and Community Administrators, Directors, and Owner.

He says while the account that delivers warnings and bans is called "System Account"

The Owner is Dragoneer. He’s ultimately responsible for the total management of this website. But not writing this journal!

Directors have a broad range of responsibilities, including overseeing daily operations, reviewing staff performance, training, etc. Currently, I am your Director, and I hope I’m making a good impression! You're not.

System Administrators have access to Fur Affinity’s code and database.

Community Administrators supervise Moderators and primarily answer disputes made via the Trouble Ticket system against actions taken by Moderators.

Moderators will operate under anonymous accounts, which is standard business procedure; however, their responsibilities are restricted and communication between them and users will mostly take place via the Trouble Ticket system.

Site Performance and Bugs:
I am doing the best I can to ask the questions I see raised by users in tickets, on the website, and experience myself so I can help resolve performance issues and bugs. As you have seen, I have provided you with a great deal of information concerning this topic earlier. No you didn't. Hopefully, this section will be mild while performance is awesome. Either way, I will do what I can to keep you all in the loop!

Accountability Section:

Staff:
Since I’ve worked for Fur Affinity, there has not been a unified way to train new staff members. Typically, a new volunteer is taken under the wing of a veteran and taught the basics before being allowed to work solo and without any supervision.


The second thing I believe is a lie.

I detailed my speech with Hasky/Haskell in my previous journal here: https://www.weasyl.com/journal/70399/another-fa-donation-scam-update-new-information where he let slip that he was let on as a member of Project Phoenix right off the bat after being hired by Dragoneer (who didn't check his credentials at all.) This access to the code allowed Hasky to find an exploit that allowed malware to be placed into submissions and thumbnails to be destroyed, and if he was brought in under a "wing," this would not have happened. In fact, the thumbnail hack was happening -WHILE HASKY AND ZIDONUKE WERE TALKING- and Zidonuke did not report to anyone about the problem, he laughed about it and let it ride. As a new hire. And he reported it to nobody, so he was -also- under no such thing as a wing.


There were no checks and balances nor any way to maintain performance standards.While Sciggles served as a member of staff, she saw these issues and did her best to enact reform by creating moderator teams based upon content to improve training and provide a supervisor to lead and instill company policies. This was a big improvement, but was left unfinished when she stopped volunteering to focus on personal projects.

I have taken it upon myself to finish where she has left off and will be providing staff with a handbook that will not only provide training, but serve as a reference guide to ensure uniform and efficient performance. I will be building upon her team skeleton and providing Fur Affinity with a true business model to augment professionalism and treat Fur Affinity with the respect it deserves.

Although content removal notifications are sent by the Fur Affinity system (@SystemAdmin) and communication may be with anonymous Moderators, WOULD YOU JUST LOOK AT ALL THAT TRANSPARENCY rest assured that all removals and conversations via the Trouble Ticket system are documented and can be appealed. In addition to the handbook, I will be working to provide users with clear information as to how staff actions can be disputed for easy reference. Lastly, staff will be subject to nondisclosure agreements WOULD YOU JUST-you know what and will need to provide documentation of identification to protect your privacy and the website’s.

I am currently estimating that interviews for new staff members (Mods, Admins, etc.) will commence on Monday, December 15, 2014. If this timeline changes, I will note it.

Zidonuke/StarryKitten:
On November 13, 2014, Zidonuke was made Lead System Administrator of Fur Affinity under the alias StarryKitten. He was volunteering for Fur Affinity since Summer of 2013 (about a year) as a consultant under supervision Lie and had no direct access to the site’s code or database at that time.


3rd thing I believe is a lie.

As posted here: https://www.weasyl.com/journal/70711/the-curious-case-of-fa-s-missing-money-update - [8:38:36 PM] Zido: neer can't afford to actually hire someone, and everyone else should be untrusted unless neer can personally know them or else there is a threat of someone will fuck shit up
[8:39:07 PM] Zido: there is no graduated access levels for FA
[8:39:09 PM] Zido: its all or nothing
[8:39:32 PM] Zido: Actually its more like, Site Admin, then Server Access
[8:39:34 PM] Zido: thats it basically

Zidonuke confirmed that Furaffinity's code is wholly and openly available to every single person who has any kind of connection to it. No graduated access means Zidonuke had the exact same abilities as someone like NetCat or Yak.


Dragoneer was aware of Zidonuke’s past and wanted to give him an opportunity to start anew within the community and try to make things right due to his checkered history as a black hat hacker. It should be noted that it is not unusual for companies to hire reformed hackers to help improve performance and the security of websites due to their desirable skill sets and experience.

Unfortunately, since Zidonuke was introduced under an alias and was eventually outed for his past hacktivities, many users felt unsafe with him and his new role on Fur Affinity. This led to outrage and serious threats made against him, {CITATION NEEDED} ultimately resulting in his resignation.

As a user of this website, I sympathize with everyone who was uneasy with the decision to appoint Zidonuke to a System Administrator role. I do not condone his past actions nor was I involved with this decision. I only knew of this appointment after the announcement was made. Although this appointment was intended to be both beneficial for Fur Affinity and Zidonuke’s future, the way that it was handled was embarrassing. I have been assured by Dragoneer that I will be kept aware of all future staff nominees and will be able to appropriately give weight to decisions in accordance with my position here on Fur Affinity.


Let's recap:

The first discrepancy. As was posted before: https://twitter.com/WilliamcaFox/status/523234904629604352

The donation drive was started hours before the DDOS. Right off the bat, you are being -blatantly- lied to. It's like they didn't even read the evidence against them! Wouldn't that just be the tits. In before Dragoneer says "Chase said some things wrong" and gets Sciggles to write another journal for him.

Second discrepancy:

I detailed my speech with Hasky/Haskell in my previous journal here: https://www.weasyl.com/journal/70399/another-fa-donation-scam-update-new-information where he let slip that he was let on as a member of Project Phoenix right off the bat after being hired by Dragoneer (who didn't check his credentials at all.) This access to the code allowed Hasky to find an exploit that allowed malware to be placed into submissions and thumbnails to be destroyed, and if he was brought in under a "wing," this would not have happened. In fact, the thumbnail hack was happening -WHILE HASKY AND ZIDONUKE WERE TALKING- and Zidonuke did not report to anyone about the problem, he laughed about it and let it ride. As a new hire.

3rd discrepancy:

As posted here: https://www.weasyl.com/journal/70711/the-curious-case-of-fa-s-missing-money-update - [8:38:36 PM] Zido: neer can't afford to actually hire someone, and everyone else should be untrusted unless neer can personally know them or else there is a threat of someone will fuck shit up
[8:39:07 PM] Zido: there is no graduated access levels for FA
[8:39:09 PM] Zido: its all or nothing
[8:39:32 PM] Zido: Actually its more like, Site Admin, then Server Access
[8:39:34 PM] Zido: thats it basically

Zidonuke confirmed that Furaffinity's code is wholly and openly available to every single person who has any kind of connection to it. No graduated access means Zidonuke had the exact same abilities as someone like NetCat or Yak.

As you can see, this journal raises more questions than it answers. Why are we being given estimates after months have gone by? Have they not counted the money yet? What about the unused server? What about the people being banned for offsite comments (and one banned for simply copy-pasting the definition of "transparency" onto Dragoneer's shoutpage) on this matter? Why was Dragoneer faving porn and having fights on Twitter while all of this was happening? And most of all, why have they refused to address a single allegation of theft?

I believe the answer is quite apparent.

FurAffinity Update Breakdown

Calypso_Koalasaur

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Comments

  • Link

    Thank doge for Cal.

  • Link

    Calypso for journalist of the fucking year! Nicely done. Dragoneer and the people he surrounds himself with are just... disgusting. I've called them righteous trolls a couple of times now but honestly, after all that's happened... do they even care?! It seems almost like they're reveling in how pathetic they are!

    • Link

      I know, its almost as if I don't even need to out their lies anymore because they're doing such a great job of doing it themselves.

  • Link

    I'd like to state that on my comment Chase said that no, Neer wanted to make the fund drive and Chase said that they shouldn't do it before they could provide a better website.
    They made the donation drive but it was not made public then and wasn't going to. Then the DDoS started and because of that Dragoneer thought that was a good reason to put the drive up to help fund the DDoS protection.
    I'm not one to point fingers, but this just gives people a motive to Dragoneer to actually DDoS the website so Chase would let him make the funding public. Before one could at least say "Well, if he wanted to get money from the donation he doesn't really need to DDoS the website, people have given then money for less". Now if Neer doesn't want to go against Chase it makes sense...

    • Link

      I'm sorry, but I disregard Chase's comment. The difference between his quickly crafted backpedaling and our statement about the timing is that we have picture proof of the lie, and he has "I'm sorry you're gonna have to believe me."

      Unfortunately, the truth doesn't work that way. He needs to post a log of that conversation or it didn't happen.

      • Link

        It's hard to know who is lying and how they're lying when it comes to the big three ('Neer, Chase, and Scigs). They are all totally full of shit. = _=

  • Link

    I actually...am quite curious, because in a chat log with zid, someone asked him and he mentioned bringing down the site and getting paid, makes me wonder if that''s why he was there, to DDoS and get the donations. But that is speculation. Just a thought.

    I don't have a problem with zidonuke, and if he really wanted to turn himself around, all and good, but the whole situation was fishy and i don't trust the site owner himself, so how can i trust his word on someone he hid under a name instead of letting us know from the start, which would have been better, because he'd have been honest and we could have probably got somewhere. (but we know how that really goes)

    • Link

      I actually asked about this. Crashdoom, who is one of Zidonukes "pets" (ugh) accounted for where he was on the night before the DDOS, but where he was during it is anyone's guess. Zidonuke came to Dragoneer afterwards and was the one who recommended cloudflare for hosting.

  • Link

    The only possible way the journal could have been more fake is if Dragoneer read it from a teleprompter.

  • Link

    Chase is probably the last person one to go to for this sort of PR shit.

    Not liking that the staff member who handles issues would be private, this can lead to all sorts of biased treatment and is certainly not transparent.

    "I only knew of this appointment after the announcement was made."
    So the staff don't get transparency on who is being hired, either? Only Chase now? That's fantastic, we all know how unbiased he is about shitty behaviour.

    • Link

      The issue is very simple: FA's structure is paramount to Dragoneer's standard of life. Without FA, he is nothing. He will only trust his friends to run it, and they are all as disgusting and irresponsible as he is. Therefore, that's the only type of person who will be hired, Chase included. The only faith I have in Chase is that he won't fuck FA, because it's not a dog.

  • Link

    Good journal, keep up the good work.

  • Link

    I thought the same thing as GameDog. Of all the people to collaborate with on this statement on a sensitive topic, why did Dragoneer choose the guy who's infamous for being a dog fucker? And I also laughed at the bit where it says Dragoneer plans to buy more servers. Is he starting a doorstop collection?

    • Link

      My thoughts exactly.

      • Link

        Also, no responses to what Hasky revealed, such as Zido confessing he was planning to destroy fA all along?

        • Link

          Or the offsite bans of Mander and Cal himself.
          I think Neer is just using Chase as a shield.
          Someday he's going to have to come out of his closet and give us some answers. Obviously yesterday was not that day.

          • Link

            Yeah he really really needs to come out of the closet. I have never seen a married man fav so much dick porn. No wonder why Sciggles needs animal things to love. Probably the only things that give her attention.

            • Link

              He was dating a man before Sciggles, his sexuality isn't exactly a secret. :P

    • Link

      I am thinking since Dragoneer basically took Chase under his wing during the whole dog fucking scandal, Chase may feel the need to pay him back for his... tolerance? Therefore why he has taken the soapbox in the most fucktacular way possible.

  • Link

    Can i just say thank you for staying on top of this and posting these updates for us? Like really. Thanks a ton. Hope you're not stressing too much over this and taking breaks from the compy. C=

    • Link

      I am! I got a lot to do, I'm busy moving myself and my business down south right now. To be honest, this isn't much work for me because everything Dragoneer says is such a boldfaced lie that all I really have to do is post it up again and shake my head. Thank you for being worried about me though!

      • Link

        Good good good~ well best of luck with moving your business! =D
        And yeahhh, it's pretty embarrassing. Such a shame though because so many artists use that site to make a living only to be slapped in the face like this. -.-

  • Link

    I reposted on twitter. This was written exceptionally well and explains exactly why anyone who paid this guy, who COULDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO WRITE HIS OWN F@%$ING MESSAGE, is an idealistic idiot. Invest in yourself, not in that mound of failure.

  • Link

    Personally, Dragoneer should have said it himself, not have someone with a bad history make the journal.
    Other then that, I don't find the journal chase has done to be believable since so much of this stuff was too expected.
    Also Calypso, you are one heck of journalist.

  • Link

    This it utterly stupid and rediculous. And the fact him and his staff pretty much make jokes about all this makes it even more stupid. They are not professional at all and I desperatly wish I didnt have to be on that site. Alas, people are too lazy to shift over sites :/ this pisses me off, Though I never donated to FA at all before, as someone who lives UNDER the poverty line, the way they are dealing with this pisses me off to no end and I want them to be stopped and replaced with GOOD people

    • Link

      Same exact thoughts right here.

  • Link

    I haven't read the ENTIRE journal you've got posted here yet, but I wanted to point out something.

    AlertPay didn't drop FA due to cub artwork. That was the excuse that Dragoneer used to get people to go 'Oh, alright, good on them to ban it then!'

    He fully admitted that in some comments he made in a journal to an FA user.

    The original AlertPay/PP announcement: https://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/87380-The-New-Policy-on-Cub

    Screenshots of where he said that this wasn't true:

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24886100/Furry%20Drama/Neercomments01.PNG
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24886100/Furry%20Drama/Neercomments02.PNG
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24886100/Furry%20Drama/Neercomments03.PNG
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24886100/Furry%20Drama/Neercomments04.PNG

    Just in case you don't trust screenshots, here's the journal in question:

    http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3828350

    Just thought I'd put this out here: Despite how you feel about the cub art being banned, he LIED about what the reasoning was behind it.

    • Link

      Dude, you can't believe what 'Neer says, especially after the fact.

      In those screenshots, he even tries to claim that FA "doesn't even use Alertpay" (suggesting that it wasn't the kick in the ass to get cub porn removed, and also trying to imply that they never used Alertpay, when they did - note in 2012 was when Alertpay got all weird and shortly after shut down), then he tries to claim that cub porn was removed because the majority wanted it removed.

      In the original notice, he says "AlertPay canceled, and specifically cited cub art as the reason." This is after Paypal shut him down for the same reason.

      "If we want to keep Fur Affinity alive we have no choice but to remove cub art." This wasn't a "the majority wanted it removed" situation - this was a "I have no way to take donations, fuck, I'm screwed, get rid of it!" situation.

      These days if you ask why FA doesn't allow cub porn, he'll say it's because of the laws where the server is hosted.

      • Link

        I'm well aware of it; I'm posting it more for the author of this journal, who wrote "Actually, let me clarify here since Chase didn't. Paypal was taken away as an option because of mature artwork. AlertPay was working fine until they caught wind of FurAffinity's child porn ring {read: cub artists} and told them to hit the bricks. This was the basis for their decision to ban cub porn, which was delayed because this is one of Dragoneer's personal fetishes."

        Which is incorrect. Whatever the reason for the banning of cub art, it wasn't PP/AlertPay.

        Plus, since the servers are located in the US, that means that legally drawn 'cub' artwork is protected due to laws and court decisions.

        So yeah, I want Neer to tell me another one. >.>

        • Link

          I'm confused - are you saying that you believe 'Neer's excuse that "the majority" no longer wanted cub porn on the site so he removed it? Or are you just providing screencaps of 'Neer changing his mind again?

          Because it really was the dropping of payment methods that got him to get rid of it. He was very adamant about keeping it on the site prior to that, because he was really into babyfur stuff at the time, and would just ignore people complaining about it. Right up until Alertpay was all "lol no." Then suddenly he was accepting of the idea of getting rid of it.

          Claiming it was "for the majority" makes him seem like he's actually a good admin who listens to his community (snork LOL) which is why he changed his tune. Then changed it again when he realized people weren't buying that claim. :v Saying "it's cause of the law" pushes all responsibility off of himself so he doesn't have to feel bad about it, after all!

          I'm just not sure why you would believe him when that screencap clearly shows him lying and being very scattered (claiming FA "doesn't even use" Alertpay? Wat?).

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            The screenshots prove that he LIED about the payment options being why they dropped it.

            He calls it a 'rumor' that needed to die.

            In short, he LIED about why they banned it.

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              AlertPay dropped everybody because they were pointed to a particularly brutal cup pic commissoned by someone for the express intent of antagonizing anti-cub people. AlertPay gave zero indication that any act would get them to reinstate FA's account. A >different< payment processor >did< tell Neer "yeah we get it, people make messed up stuff, but your rules currently allow it, so just put something in your rules that it isn't allowed for CYA and we can reactivate your account."

              Neer asked me to help chill out the cub people as this was all happening, I got all this first hand. I told him be sure to not say the ban is because of AlertPay since that is only true if AlertPay said they'd reactivate you if you banned it, which they didn't. Of course he agreed with what I said then after I'd done what I could to calm people down he did everything I said not to do, and ignored everything I told him would minimize drama.

              So, the cub ban happened as a result of AlertPay dropping the furry sites over cub porn, but it was inaccurate and misleading for him to present the matter as 'AlertPay is making us do this.' His other comments you showed were, of course, equally ridiculous and self-contradicting, calling it a rumor when he's the one that started it, awesome, but that's just who he is.

              The other sites managed to find ways to keep going without AlertPay. Dragoneer was unable/unwilling to do any of these, so at the time he made the decision to ban cub it was solely because one of their payment processors said they could reactivate FA's account if he did so and that was the only option he could process.

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                If all of that is true, tell me, why does Dragoneer claim that the reason they dumped cub artwork for PP/AlertPay was a 'rumor' up in that journal and the screenshots of the journal?

                I don't bloody believe any of that. He flat out admits he lied when he said that was the reason. He can't even keep a simple lie like that one straight.

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                  If all of that is true, tell me, why does Dragoneer claim that the reason they dumped cub artwork for PP/AlertPay was a 'rumor' up in that journal and the screenshots of the journal?

                  Because Dragoneer is a liar.

                  He feels the need to constantly change the truth into something else that he thinks either pushes the responsibility off of himself, or he thinks will make him seem like a better community leader.

                  He stupidly doesn't realize that THE INTERNET NEVER FORGETS and will always be able to show that he's lying, every single time. @ _@

                  As I stated last time, those screenshots even show him trying to say that they never took Alertpay to begin with. How can he be lying there, but telling the truth in the rest of those comments? (He's not telling the truth, is what I'm getting at.)

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                Thank you for clarifying.

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              Additionally: AlertPay was not ignorant of cub porn up until they dropped the furry sites over it. They'd been shown IB during a pre-launch beta stage ( when it was almost nothing but cub porn because it was just the owner's social circle) and they gave it the green light. Their stipulation was that they didn't care about cartoon animal crap, so long as nothing human - underaged or not - was on the same site. Hence IB's no-human rule.

              AlertPay had been critical to InkBunny's print service, so (like smart people) they made sure that AP had no issue with the content before they launched and advertised that service. AP did a complete reversal with no warning and no chance given to rectify things because of the excessively extreme nature of the specific cub porn they were pointed to, and the 'I'ma make legal problems' that came with it from the person that threw that pic at them.

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    where was this journal posted? It's not showing up on FA for me even on his page. >_>

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      The Fender account.

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        I found it, I was just so over FA's bullshit I overlooked the journal at the top. Sick of seeing their shitty announcements because we all know that 6 hours = 3 days to them.

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    Oh come, on, you guys are so mean... Look at how the staff understood your concerns and granted you, for these two weeks of debacles and this half-week of notification downtime, a fair trade with an awesome planned feature made in 5 minutes (never done before because reasons): https://twitter.com/furaffinity/status/539836954503024640.
    With their justifications:
    http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6311970#cid:43345210
    http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6311970#cid:43345433
    http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6311970#cid:43345602
    That's so beautiful in all possible wrong ways.

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      Oh boy, thanks! This totally glosses over tens of thousands of dollars! An @ sign! Now I can join the Quinnspiracy and post all of my ebin lulz hashtags for upboats ;^)))

      Fucking disgusting.

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    almost felt bad for chase, since neer essentially strapped bacon to him and threw him to the wolves.
    Also, I knew I could count on you to have a response to this bullshit. <3

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      To be fair Chase doused himself in bacon grease years ago with the accusations against him. He was a Zidonuke that wasn't smart enough to leave.

      And d-don't count on me I'm supposed to look up to you aaahh

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    I'd have actually read this if you wrote objectively, and might even have learned something useful from it. I'd probably even agree with your points.
    Such as it is, a smarmy attitude doesn't inspire credibility in your voice. It sounds like an attack from the first sentence. Pass.

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      I'm sorry that you feel that way. I hope your first-sentence reading capabilities work out for you in the future.

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    Why am I not surprised by this? It's been the same BS for years now...

    I would stop frequenting FA if more of the artists I'm currently watching over there would make the jump to Weasyl/InkBunny.

    It's been a slow process, but many of them have already, thankfully.

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      It's a long, drawn out game of "you go first, no you go first" when it comes to moving. Everyone was new at FA once too. Wolfy Nail once had a profile with zero views just like everybody else, and now he's #1. It's not the fan base that speaks for you, it's your skills. If what you make is good people will make an effort to come find you. You just have to have confidence in yourself, which is something most furries sadly lack.

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        That's quite true, but I've also ran across those self-entitled a-holes who think they're artistic gods. Confidence isn't a problem at that point...

        In either case, it's still the same result.

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        It's not just the artists, either. A lot of artists won't come over here (or hardly use their page they made here) because they know that Weasyl has a tiny fraction of the userbase that FA has. People who have no artistic talent (like me!) just inexplicably won't make Weasyl pages. FA gets worse and worse, is barely functioning half the time, and they just... REFUSE to make use of this site right over here that solves 99% of those issues. They could migrate over here literally overnight with very little effort, but they just... won't. I'm not even talking about leaving FA entirely, just using both sites at once so that Weasyl can at least be a viable option for artists. The fact that this didn't happen long ago continues to absolutely baffle me.

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    Your journals and twitter are my favourite shops on the Citadel.

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    Ouch... just... ouch. And yet, I have a feeling it will continue to thrive until it one day is suddenly gone.

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      I wouldn't say it is thriving or has been for a very long time. You don't rack up 10k in taxes overnight.

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        Ooooh, not financially - I just mean the user base. :P

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    Oh hey-- Everyone and their grandmother keep linking back to this. xD

    This is like the 3rd time today I've seen this. I guess cause you speak for just about everyone whose pissed off and do it well! [:

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      Thank you very much. I'm trying my hardest to get the word out, because everyone deserves to know the truth. If Dragoneer thinks he can get away with it this time, that's only because he hasn't met me yet. I promise you he will not know peace until answers are given.

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        Tbh-- I doubt you, me, or those other pissed-off peeps on the furry reddit will ever get thru to his thick skull (no offense to either of you who are still trying!). LOL
        I think it would literally take people protesting out side of his house with picket signs until he realized how deep this goes.

        He just...............is too proud and too thick-skulled to understand this. And the people who are too busy saying "LOL WHY DON'T YOU JUST LEAVE!!!1111 FA IS AMAZING THE WAY IT IS AND PLUS IT'S FREE!!!!!!!111 XXXDDD" backing him up so...EH.

        At this point I just wish the site would crash so that everyone could just LEAVE and be done with it for good since I know me-- like most others are in a way binded to FA for the simple fact of that's where their $$$ comes from. At this point-- FA being forced to shut down seems like the only fix for all of this to me.

        But I still applaud those of you who think that if you push 'Neer and those who are still blind enough to be pro-fa/pro-it's-a-free-site-so-shut-up to change their minds tho. Since a lot of us have just given up hope, peeps like you are our only hope for a change. (unless 'Neer suddenly has an epiphany that MAYBE....HE SHOULD ACTUALLY DO WHAT HE SAYS HE'S GOING TO DO...., but that's probably never gonna happen) It's....just.....not worth the stress anymore for a lot of us. So we're actually willing to go broke and/or ATTEMPT to get money from sources other than FA.

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          sorry if my comment seems kinda ALL OVER THE PLACE I've been reading comments and whatnot about this stupid shit all day and it just kinda has me burnt out. QAQ

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            No, I know exactly how you feel. EXACTLY. (journal's back up c:)

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              Oh! oAo We're back!
              Glad you got it back up!

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    I've been keeping tabs on their current work on the notification thing (that they somehow broke).

    Weds 3 at 7:30am is when I logged off, the notice said the progress was at 73%.
    Weds 3 at around 1pm (when I logged back in), the notice was at 82%.
    Weds 3 at 7:30pm, the notice was at 84%
    Currently it is Weds 4 at 2:10am and the notice is still at 84%.

    It's impacting a lot of people. The more watchers you have, the worse you're affected. People aren't able to make sales and a lot are missing out on submissions because of notices just never going out to their watchers. I think it's going to take them quite a bit longer before it's fixed.

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      They've got one more day to reach their deadline of Thursday, so I'll decline to comment on their timing until then. The second point, I can comment on though.

      As you can read in the comments for the journal, Yak is being very adamant about not changing the code because it will break. This is because it was shoddily put together from the start, and in order for FA to be fixed, they need to completely remake it from the ground up. They will not admit this, they will not address it, and Yak refuses to admit that he built the site when he was a teenager and maybe your teenage work isn't your best. It will never, ever, ever, ever ever EVER be fixed until the site is completely rewritten. People are sending us emails about how they are making watchbots to purposely watch the most active FA accounts, then when they are banned for using a script, the artists and writers do the work for them in breaking the site, since the notifications still stack up. Did they address this exploit? Absolutely not. And they won't.

      I know you've heard multiple times through the years, "This time FA is really finished. This time they'll be done." This time, I believe it.

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    Hey, I notice you claim you have threats against you, and I was wondering if you might want to provide evidence of these, with the names of the people who sent them covered, just to show that it's true and that you do indeed have evidence, but I am unsure if that goes against any rules. I only really ask because it seems a bit of a discrepancy to claim you have evidence, without showing it while they do not while it may be true. So it does kind of come down to just believing what you claim, just as Chase says about Zid.

    I don't know of any threats to Zidonuke, but it is a distinct possibility and to say he didn't get any is kind of talking for too many people since some people were very upset about it, and we know how far some of these 'wonderful' people like to go, and if that's the case then I can kind of see why they seem to enjoy making you the scapegoat, considering it was you who he replied to admitting it was him.

    Also good to see the journal back up, thank you based Weasyl staff

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      I'm skirting the line very closely on the callout policy here and I don't want to stretch it further by posting names. Please understand.

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        Understandable, mentioned as such. Just figured I'd mention it. Although, One quick hing is I noticed you mention the FaTransparency user on Twitter as a "Troll account", but this also baffled me since I figured you and Rowedahelicon/bit were in good communication during this, uh. Series of events, especially before you were suspended on FA.

        I'm a tad confused about that sudden apparent division, was there something I missed?

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          We split ways. They had some views I was not comfortable with and didn't want associated with our movement. Posting as our name undermines the image and mission that we are going for here, and that's why I publicly outed them as trolls.

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            I see.
            Sorry for so many questions, but who do you mean by 'our' movement?
            And isn't calling them trolls just for having a different view on something, that if correct me if I am wrong, wasn't too related to the FA debacle a bit much, since as far as I can tell you both do the same things, but in different ways?

            I'm sorry again for the questions I'm just a bit saddened by division as I wouldn't want people who are sharing info to chase off others doing the same.
            i've tried to ask Row about it but no reply from him yet, so you've sadly got my attention on this stuff at the moment since you are the only one to reply so far, and Yak/Neer have been dicking around and ignoring any serious questions while replying to appraisals. Still.

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              I do not use the word I or me when referring to our movement because I am not the only one gathering information, I have a network of people watching and feeding me pieces to investigate. It also makes sure that nobody in particular is targeted other than me, so people are free to share anonymously and that helps them gain the courage to tell the truth.

              As for having different views, I was not the one who initiated the split. You are right in saying that people can do the same things in different ways, and that's an integral part of #FATransparency and telling and finding the truth. The troll account does not adhere to these principles that you or I see as common sense. I'm not trying to chase them off or say their info is wrong, but they can inject their personal views somewhere that does not involve our movement's name. We are for finding transparency in FA, not fighting social justice crusades or being an exclusive "lunch table" club. That hurts the flow of information and public opinion of our reporting.

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    The stuff about launching the GoFundMe only after working on the site, not using the fundraising money for taxes, and the stuff with Zido ... is it me, or is Chase throwing Neer under the bus for a lot of this?

    I mean, don't get me wrong; Neer is the owner, and I'm sure he really did drop the ball on all those accounts, and it's hilarious when even his own staff is calling him out on it. Definitely not complaining about that part at all. It's just odd, is all. This is a statement made throug the Fender account. It is Fur Affinity's official response. That's like if the White House got caught up in some huge scandal, then released a press statement that said, "Yeah, the administration did all these terrible things, I told them not to, I tried to stop them, I really did, but they wouldn't listen and they did them anyway. Don't look at me; I'm just the guy who writes press statements."

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      He threw Zido under the bus as well. Someone made an interesting comment, and I'd like you to try it as well. Ctrl + F the words "sorry" or "apology" on this page. See if any of those are present in this journal.

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        They apologized for the inconvenience of the missing notifications. Y' know, the #1 necessary function of the site, but nothing else. xD

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    ohhhh looks like princess piche is looking for some investors
    http://www.invstor.com/users/sean-piche

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      We've read that.

      "Hello sir, would you like to invest in this project that makes 200 dollars a month in user-generated ad revenue and has a 10,000 dollar tax bill due to my personal projects? I'm paying for it with my credit card."

      I'm not worried.

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        Which puzzles me more. Why doesnt he just sell it? No investor in their right mind is going to invest when they do a general inquery into the site / founder. Obviously the dude is done, his actions speak more loudly than words. Since we havent technically got any word from him yet adressing any of the real problems. I think he just likes being high on a pedestal for the ignorant. Which is really really sad when I think about it.

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      Number Employees: 1-10 people
      FFS really?

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        He has zero employees because he pays nobody. He's lying to investors just like he's lying to you.

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          The real question is when has he ever told the truth?

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      I hope you screencapped that, because the Digimon princess removed it.

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    I'm sorry. But I'm going to make CERTAIN Yak's hilariously delusional comment is permanently known.

    "If Titanic was built like FA nobody would have had to die."

    I was 900000% done after seeing that.

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      Can you get me a picture of that? And draw more butts.

      But the picture too.

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        https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B4CDlwvIEAAQACN.jpg:large

        I actually sent this to Ferrox News Network. :B

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          How absolutely fucking arrogant and disrespectful.

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            And he was responding to my friend Runefox. Runefox has been working with computers on an advanced level probably longer than Yak. You better be some top notch hacker cracking Pentagon firewalls like it's a quick time event to pull a fast one on Rune when it comes to the PC. So the patronizing bullshit Yak was trying to pull here was laughable. Runefox is not stupid by any margin and he only opens his mouth when he knows what he's talking about. Not that you need to know much tech to understand that FA IS shit.

            For Yak to tacitly belittle his intelligence is as you put it, arrogant and highly disrespectful. The man's a fraud if I've ever seen one. lmao

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    Well apparently he is working on getting some more updates out before he posts a response. As detailed by a shout he left on a Mr. TreeWeasal's FA page http://www.furaffinity.net/user/treeweasel/ I have a feeling the next post will be truly more entertaining than the last. Especially if he writes it himself this time.

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      I can't see it. You have to have an account.

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        Dragoneer: "We're working on getting more updates out and we're working on another post/follow-up."

        I can grab screencaps in a bit.

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          You might as well, we can add it to the growing evidence pile.

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    You can add this to the pile to alert FA users of : A few years ago a artist stole art from me in violation of FA rules I asked her to credit me or please take it down if not I would contact mod/admin. I was promptly told to piss the fuck off because she was friends with squiggles. I put in trouble ticket and who should rear their ugly face....Squiggles noting me that I need to leave her friend alone and if i did not leave her alone about stealing art she would personally ban my entire watcher list and me. I let her know that that was a abuse of power and I was going to report her to Dragoneer. I told him he wanted proof in Screen caps I go back to make the screen cap and Squiggles deleted every note in my account and deleted the art that was stolen in her friends account then the original art in mine was gone. I told Neer about this and he admitted to me that ANY admin can Read/Alter/Delete any submission , journal , note , user information on any non admin account at any time if they delete something they are supposed to come talk to him first. He was going to do a investigation few Min later Squiggles ban hammered me.

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    Wow! Makes me glad I migrated here those years back.

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    I'm Done with FA, it needs to come down like forever I hate the Staff who controls it even they have mistaken me for someone else.