It's disappointing to, once again, see a failure to distinguish between fictional and real content as well as the reduction in free expression. It's obviously not the first (and probably not the last) time we see these weird overkill purges on sites. Fur Affinity and SoFurry both removed all cub content at one point. FA supposedly due to pressure from payment processor (a decision which was not reversed when they stop used using the processor) and SoFurry claimed to be responding to a legal threat. Outside of the fandom, Etsy recently announced it would ban selling erotic items. And when Pornhub had to act on revenge porn, they wound up nuking everything that wasn't submitted by a paid account, certainly a large overreaction.
To me, the strangest thing about the e621 purge is how the admins say that there was no specific tipping point but also that everything had to be done immediately and in a rush. That doesn't quite add up for me. If there's no tipping point then they had time to think before giving in to pressure. A rush means there was some imposed deadline from outside and that would certainly count as a tipping point in my mind.
Hopefully they get everything sorted out soon and restore the submissions which were inadvertently removed despite not meeting the criteria.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
It's disappointing to, once again, see a failure to distinguish between fictional and real content as well as the reduction in free expression. It's obviously not the first (and probably not the last) time we see these weird overkill purges on sites. Fur Affinity and SoFurry both removed all cub content at one point. FA supposedly due to pressure from payment processor (a decision which was not reversed when they stop used using the processor) and SoFurry claimed to be responding to a legal threat. Outside of the fandom, Etsy recently announced it would ban selling erotic items. And when Pornhub had to act on revenge porn, they wound up nuking everything that wasn't submitted by a paid account, certainly a large overreaction.
To me, the strangest thing about the e621 purge is how the admins say that there was no specific tipping point but also that everything had to be done immediately and in a rush. That doesn't quite add up for me. If there's no tipping point then they had time to think before giving in to pressure. A rush means there was some imposed deadline from outside and that would certainly count as a tipping point in my mind.
Hopefully they get everything sorted out soon and restore the submissions which were inadvertently removed despite not meeting the criteria.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~