Dogpatch Press

Are you old enough to remember downloading lo-fi toon porn from sites like VCL? (Slo-o-oowly…) In the 1990’s, furry butts and bits came from pencils and ink, and the small niche of “spoogey” fans could probably fit in a single furpile. Not that it was easy to find ones close enough for hookups, or a rudimentary murrsuit for a hot-glued fantasy scene. Furverts were sensationalized with party scenes on CSI, but quality furotica was rare.

Today, your spank bank can come from a wealth of platforms. They’re stuffed with crisp digital renderings from full-time professional artists, and hi-rez live-action videos with a kaleidoscope of fetishes. It just takes a smartphone to put thousands in show value on screen. For those with gear and a dream, it’s as easy as finding a partner with a room at a convention. Adults new to the fandom don’t know how good they have it.

They’re doing what healthy adults wanna do. But corporate overlords just gave a sign of how fleeting this freedom can be.

(Vulture): Pornhub Just Deleted Most of Its Content.

Prior to this decision, since Pornhub’s launch in 2007, anyone with basic computer literacy could upload any video they wanted, and trust us, they did. Before the content purge on Sunday night, Pornhub held around 13.5 million videos per its own metrics on the home page. As of writing Monday morning, the site shows a mere 2.9 million.

This was forced on Pornhub (and Xtube) by outside pressure.

They didn’t just choose to screw their users. But now they have a policy of only allowing verified uploaders.

This pressure affects a lot of furries who used these platforms. Some have being doing kink for decades for free expression, while some newer ones are doing it as a profession in the top 8% on Onlyfans. Some artists make 6 figures a year. Whether SFW furries approve or not, furries with After Dark accounts are as devoted as anyone else to fursuiting, art and events. Displacing them can make a ripple effect across the fandom.

(SIDE TOPIC): SFW furry artists can mingle with the mainstream, but the NSFW kind can’t. Furry isn’t just a kink — comparing both kinds is apples and oranges — but you see lots of kink when an indie subculture may be the ONLY place for it. It may even be a backbone for everyone by supporting a key section of artists.

Normie sites might not interest the average furry, but fandom art sites have been kept from having payment processing before. First they remove adult videos…

(NSFW) A popular video removed from Pornhub. It’s still up on Twitter for now with almost 360,000 views.

Pressure came from politics and payment processors like Visa, and it’s not new.

• Pornhub’s statement about the reasons
• Their Trust and Safety policy

The main pressure is about safety with exploitative uploads. They include child victims, who are re-traumatized again and again when videos are shared against their will. Any amount of incidents is too many. It happens on porn sites… and on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and anywhere that hosts user uploads.

From Pornhub’s statement, watchers found 118 incidents on their site during a 3-year period where Facebook had 84 million.

This pressure didn’t start by finding problems on Pornhub. Some of the sources are religious organizations dedicated to abolishing porn altogether. Good, bad, all of it. They didn’t come to save victims on the site; it’s a revival of an old War On Sex.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Consider the sources. In the 1980’s, ultraconservatives attacked porn and LGBT rights, pushing it through the 2000’s with opposing gay marriage. But I think the War On Sex went bust for a while. The internet helped anyone get private access in their own homes, and prudes couldn’t beat it. (Maybe that was their personal problem to begin with.)

Echoes of this pressure rose in furry fandom in the 1990’s with the Burned Furs puritan agenda, false claims that persisted for decades, and attempts to shut down furry cons for hosting porn artists.

While the internet raised healthy organized sexual liberation, there was also darkweb crime, sex trafficking, revenge porn and the like. Websites were protected by “Section 230” law to be platforms, not publishers, and not responsible for what users posted on them. But if they were safe from the government, shareholder value was another matter. This also involves financial concern instead of saving people.

Payment processors and banks started tightening the screws for adult business. Business pressure coincided with political lobbying and making dubious study data — such as treating all voluntary sex work as sex trafficking — to gain funding and push legislation.

In 2018 this led to closing of furry social site Pounced, and in the mainstream, Craigslist Personals, then the Tumblr Purge. They couldn’t afford measures to meet standards of a new law: SESTA/FOSTA carved out exemption to the Section 230 protection.

The collateral damage I covered in 2018 continues.

Freedom for furries

This is meant to stop exploitation, but at what cost for good users? Out of thousands of furries affected by this, I’m not aware of any of them who did anything wrong, because exploiters like to use private messages and groups instead of advertising what they do in the open.

Pressure against internet freedom serves corporate power at the expense of indie community. Users on corporate platforms who can stay and be verified are more likely to be the professional type, not the explorers and newcomers and DIY kind.

Will there always be places to relocate if a whole industry is under attack? Alternative places may include small sites like Furries Xtreme, or Telegram channels.

There’s a downside to being more DIY and fan-run. This may push users to places with lesser standards. In researching this story, a clue surfaced about an unnamed furry site where a mod may have been a source of doxxing harassment. Porn doxxing by mods is a long-known issue with another deeply embedded private furry group. Trusting volunteer fans has always been an issue — they may be the most devoted to the community, but also the ones who can’t be fired from jobs. Ideally, bigger platforms that offer reach, stability (and maybe income) could complement an indie scene.

Here’s more furry thoughts and a press request to Pornhub. This may get updates.

UPDATES: A reddit discussion on r/fursuitsex says: “Getting verified on Pornhub isn’t hard… This will help murrsuiters have more control of their work, which gives them more incentive to share.”

That’s a good point. I thought I read the process wouldn’t start until the new year and wasn’t known. It’s hard to cover every angle, so this is just one furry one.

I think a point still stands that having 10 million videos purged is drastic and can do a lot of damage. If people are depending on paying their bills, losing income without notice can cause a pileup of problems and threaten stability anywhere.

More feedback: “This is pretty much the life of anyone who works in the NSFW field, wondering when the platform they’re on will kick them to the curb. You get relegated to a nomad-like state bouncing from site to site to peddle your wares. When it comes to these mass bans and who the target usually is it’s clear that they take advantage to toss out those the deem ‘undesirable’.”

It’s scary where it came from too.

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