Changes to blep.art Moderation

The short and genuine version: MakeFox Group has certain expectations of control over its products and services, both for brand-management reasons and because of civil liability. The previous moderation team, who came over from e6ai, were understandably very emotionally tied to the site after all their hard work curating it, and their expectation was full autonomy over the site's content and moderation practices.

Despite negotiation and internal mediation, we were unable to reach an agreement that satisfied both teams. Since MakeFox Group owns the domain, the site and the infrastructure, the two teams have parted ways, and MakeFox Group will handle moderation directly for now. We're grateful for the work the previous team put in, and we're bringing on new moderators.

What this means for you

• Your account, your uploads, the tags and the post history are all safe. Nothing is being deleted.
• For a while, submission reviews and account issues may take longer than usual. These delays are temporary.
• Comments and forum posting are paused while the new team gets set up. They'll reopen soon.
• No one should expect any policy or process changes at this point, unless one is driven by an emergency business issue.

We'll post further updates here as things settle.

What happened between MakeFox and the former e6ai staff

There's a lot going around about blep.art right now: that MakeFox did a "hostile takeover," that we promised the old team full control and went back on it, that we took something that wasn't ours. We've linked a DOCUMENT with the actual conversations, unedited and dated, so you can read them yourself. For those who won't read 20 pages, here's the short version.

How blep.art came to be

• When e6ai's shutdown was announced, the e6ai staff reached out to us. We offered to host the site, pay for it, and run the servers. The site's data came from e6ai's public database export, the same one anyone can download.
• We never got e6ai's domain, user accounts, or branding. The owner kept those, and the staff themselves told us on day one that "the domain will not be available and a rebrand would be needed."
• We asked the old staff to keep moderating exactly as they always had.

What was actually promised

• Hino promised to handle the servers and to bring the team into our admin chat. He did both.
• He said he'd love to keep the site running "as-is" and to keep everything user-facing the same. That was a goal, not a contract.
• When asked directly whether the deal was Hino as sysadmin with the volunteers handling the day-to-day, his answer was "For the most part, but need to discuss on my end." Nothing was ever promised about the domain, user data, final say over the site, or the code.

Why it fell apart

• MakeFox is a small Texas nonprofit. We carry the legal and financial risk for everything hosted here, so we need the final say on legal, policy and software decisions.
• The team's position, in their own words, was that the developer would "veto what I need to veto," that "you are not here to be our boss," and that the moderation team's decisions are "already neutral".
• We offered a written agreement: moderation, rules and day-to-day decisions stay with the team, we give notice before changes, and we don't overturn mod decisions because someone complained. The company keeps final authority on legal and policy matters. The team refused it and asked us to hand them the domain we had paid for. We said no, and the relationship ended on Nov 6.

Where things stand

• blep.art stays online. Your uploads and favorites are safe, and nothing about the rules has changed.
• We have a new moderation team, and submissions are being reviewed. Things may be a bit slower for a while.
• We're grateful for the years of work the old team put into e6ai, and we don't hold a grudge. The door stays open.

Questions? Reply here, or reach us through @MakeFoxHelpBot on Telegram.

- Luca, for MakeFox Group

Did you guys really block all the volunteer moderator's accounts and prevent everyone from replying and posting new posts?

supervioletpenrose said:
Did you guys really block all the volunteer moderator's accounts and prevent everyone from replying and posting new posts?

Once it was clear we wouldn't be able to reach an agreement with the original team, I disabled their accounts, removed their admin flags, and re-enabled their accounts. Disabling them at all was a side effect of a misunderstanding on how the site worked; I'm not that familiar with this software yet.

They were and are welcome to stay, in the capacity of a normal user, and we were open to the idea of interviewing prior moderators to continue that position here, if they were willing to accept our agreement. I was never given the opportunity to tell them this, since we were promptly removed from their Discord server, and I only had contacts for a couple of people.

And the forum and comments were locked for a bit since we had zero moderation and people were actively attacking the site. Comments are still locked, pending further discussion with my team.

We're all sleep deprived and overworked at this time, please give us some patience to work through everything.

Thank you for explaining what happened. I hope you all can get some rest soon.

Running conversation through AI to ask 'who was wrong here' is funny to me, but when I did it it said your team was in the wrong as you made false statements. You say 'yes' but 'that was not a contract' except it technically is, if you want to talk about legality than you will end up losing in court because this website is already a clone copy of e621. Note the bottom of your page. "Running e621ng v." etc. Not surprising, but it's what a lot of AI people do - steal from others which this website is very much evidence of by taking it and then removing everyone involved. Basically, you stole it and now refuse to give it back to anyone else. So yes, theft.

knotasysadm said:
Running conversation through AI to ask 'who was wrong here' is funny to me, but when I did it it said your team was in the wrong as you made false statements. You say 'yes' but 'that was not a contract' except it technically is, if you want to talk about legality than you will end up losing in court because this website is already a clone copy of e621. Note the bottom of your page. "Running e621ng v." etc. Not surprising, but it's what a lot of AI people do - steal from others which this website is very much evidence of by taking it and then removing everyone involved. Basically, you stole it and now refuse to give it back to anyone else. So yes, theft.

e621ng is open source code. I don't think you understand what you're talking about.

dfy6c said:
e621ng is open source code. I don't think you understand what you're talking about.

I do actually, in regards to legality - which is why E6.ai was forced to shut down actually. Your little AI machine will lose in texas court and basically anywhere else (Including Arizona, should really research that one since your site is running e621.)

Again, proof that AI doesn't create but only steals and destroys.

It's also proof that a lot of people that run 'non-profits' are out there for profit and power gain, not to actually help the people involved. In fact you caused harm here, and are provably worse than Dragonfruit given your treatment of the last team.

knotasysadm said:
I do actually, in regards to legality - which is why E6.ai was forced to shut down actually. Your little AY machine will lose in texas court and basically anywhere else (Including Arizona, should really research that one since your site is running e621.)

Again, proof that AI doesn't create but only steals and destroys.

e6AI was shut down due to public backlash, not legality. If legality was the concern then AI in general would have been shut down at this point because the law does not fuck around, not only that but a another website wouldn't pop up from that if legality was a concern. A furry website that focused on AI content in a small corner of the web is not the target you think it is when the other ongoings of the AI industry are right over there. Again, you do not know what you're talking about.

dfy6c said:
e6AI was shut down due to public backlash, not legality. If legality was the concern then AI in general would have been shut down already because the law does not fuck around, not only that but a another website wouldn't pop up from that if legality was a concern. A furry website that focused on AI content in a small corner of the web is not the target you think it is when the other ongoings of the AI industry are right over there. Again, you do not know what you're talking about.

It was shut down because the people that own what it was running on said so, they were LEGALLY required to. Which is what will eventually happen to this website as well given the drama that already surrounds it from current staff treatment of others.

Again, I already know more than any AI user does.

knotasysadm said:
Running conversation through AI to ask 'who was wrong here' is funny to me, but when I did it it said your team was in the wrong as you made false statements. You say 'yes' but 'that was not a contract' except it technically is, if you want to talk about legality than you will end up losing in court because this website is already a clone copy of e621. Note the bottom of your page. "Running e621ng v." etc. Not surprising, but it's what a lot of AI people do - steal from others which this website is very much evidence of by taking it and then removing everyone involved. Basically, you stole it and now refuse to give it back to anyone else. So yes, theft.

e621ng is open source software, distributed under a license that e621 inherited from the Danbooru project; even they couldn't decide to stop me, you, or anyone else from using the code.

And you're right to be concerned about our AI assistant, but Arden is a carefully crafted tool that was built from bleeding edge technology and research specifically to help me and our team, and I'm intimately familiar with any biases he may have, and he's specifically trained with safeguards to openly state those biases when they appear.

I have health issues that often make it difficult for me to socialize, remember, and function. Arden was built to help me with these issues, and asking him to rephrase something in a way I can understand, or that might point out something that I've missed, is something he's been specifically configured to handle according to my personal needs, and it helps me see things from an outside perspective that might not otherwise be visible to me.

knotasysadm said:
It was shut down because the people that own what it was running on said so, they were LEGALLY required to.

If you're so sure, provide your evidence.

hinoserm said:
e621ng is open source software, distributed under a license that e621 inherited from the Danbooru project; even they couldn't decide to stop me, you, or anyone else from using the code.

And you're right to be concerned about our AI assistant, but Arden is a carefully crafted tool that was built from bleeding edge technology and research specifically to help me and our team, and I'm intimately familiar with any biases he may have, and he's specifically trained with safeguards to openly state those biases when they appear.

I have health issues that often make it difficult for me to socialize, remember, and function. Arden was built to help me with these issues, and asking him to rephrase something in a way I can understand, or that might point out something that I've missed, is something he's been specifically configured to handle according to my personal needs, and it helps me see things from an outside perspective that might not otherwise be visible to me.

Clearly not aware of biases given you try to consult it and then go with it, anyone that sits there and listens to AI and literally uses it for conversation, to abbreviate things and to consult should probably go the same route as Bowen Wan, Sam Nelson, Adam Raine, Christain Faith Madison, etc.

Again, you are very much in the wrong here. You basically just stole what other people worked for, if you want to do the right thing you would build your own website. But instead, what you're doing is stealing one. Which is what I've come to expect from heavy AI users.

knotasysadm said:
Clearly not aware of biases given you try to consult it and then go with it, anyone that sits there and listens to AI and literally uses it for conversation, to abbreviate things and to consult should probably go the same route as Bowen Wan, Sam Nelson, Adam Raine, Christain Faith Madison, etc.

Again, you are very much in the wrong here. You basically just stole what other people worked for, if you want to do the right thing you would build your own website. But instead, what you're doing is stealing one. Which is what I've come to expect from heavy AI users.

This conversation isn't constructive, and you're clearly just here to be argumentative for the sake of it. Goodbye.

Having read the log I struggle to understand what the big issue was aside from poor communication from both teams, frankly. Most seemed willing to talk, but seemed to misunderstand each others' intentions.

Maybe it would have been beneficial to not jump ships so quickly and get to know each other first before setting up the site, because both your team and e6ai's are simply protective of what you got.

hinoserm said:
Once it was clear we wouldn't be able to reach an agreement with the original team, I disabled their accounts, removed their admin flags, and re-enabled their accounts. Disabling them at all was a side effect of a misunderstanding on how the site worked; I'm not that familiar with this software yet.

I'm glad you've clarified why their accounts were disabled and the usernames reset to "user #x". Without that context, this move seemed like rubbing salt in the wound.

I think it's quite reasonable that, at the end of the day, whatever legal entity that provides hosting for this site must put its own survival at the highest priority. On the basis that Dragon Fruit likely had the same terms, I'm surprised there's any meaningful difference between E6AI and Blep.art as far as the moderation and admin team are concerned. If an action (or inaction) from the mods+admins threatens the site/community as a whole, MakeFox get to veto it. Their necks are the ones on the line (as the board of the legal entity) - not the moderators or admins.

derpetologist said:
I'm glad you've clarified why their accounts were disabled and the usernames reset to "user #x". Without that context, this move seemed like rubbing salt in the wound.

I think it's quite reasonable that, at the end of the day, whatever legal entity that provides hosting for this site must put its own survival at the highest priority. On the basis that Dragon Fruit likely had the same terms, I'm surprised there's any meaningful difference between E6AI and Blep.art as far as the moderation and admin team are concerned. If an action (or inaction) from the mods+admins threatens the site/community as a whole, MakeFox get to veto it. Their necks are the ones on the line (as the board of the legal entity) - not the moderators or admins.

Wait, I didn't know their usernames got reset!

I'm so sorry. Let me look into that.

Edit: Looking into this, it looks like the accounts got renamed when those users requested deletion.

If their accounts were renamed, it was only for the short duration while I was trying to figure out how to reset their privilege levels.

(please be patient with me, this booru thing is a completely new concept to me)

hinoserm said:
Looking into this, it looks like the accounts got renamed when those users requested deletion.

If their accounts were renamed, it was only for the short duration while I was trying to figure out how to reset their privilege levels.

Ah, I see. A shame they're acting as a bloc and requesting account deletion. Elsewhere, a user reported there's a 7-day hold on account deletion requests here: is this something you have recently changed? Otherwise, the reported facts don't appear to corroborate.

derpetologist said:
Ah, I see. A shame they're acting as a bloc and requesting account deletion. Elsewhere, a user reported there's a 7-day hold on account deletion requests here: is this something you have recently changed? Otherwise, the reported facts don't appear to corroborate.

I believe there may have been no limit, and then when the site started actively being attacked, I hit a button that set all the limits (probably to 7 days).

Right now some of the limits are set to 7 days and some aren't. Our team is just not familiar enough with this software yet to moderate it at full speed, so the limits will stay in place at least until tomorrow when we've all had some sleep and time to go over things.

I'm eager to continue with Blep. I'll miss e6ai, but unless a miracle happens its gone for sure. We just have to move on and accept that sometimes change happens.

I don't think people fully understand the risks that corporate takes when hosting something like this. Its very expensive and potentially has enormous liability and so we all have to accept the limitations. Frankly, its amazing that websites like this even exist in the first place without subscription paywalls, and I'm grateful for that.

It feels like this whole mess is about a miscommunication or misunderstanding.

The bossman who pays the bills is ultimately in charge. While its great to have volunteers doing moderation work, the volunteers never have the final say in any organization. The input of volunteers is still very valuable of of course, but because they have so much less exposure in case things go bad (money problems or legal problems) their input may or may not be acted on. This is true anywhere, even in regular 9-5 jobs.

There's going to be some migration pains and some things won't work right at first. Its a learning curve for everyone during any database migration or transfer of ownership, but everyone needs to just be patient about that. People will figure it out.

I hope things calm down in the next few days or weeks and we can get back to generating quality content without any silly drama.

lucalunera said:
We've linked a DOCUMENT

>On launch day, Hino started adding a second signup verification method because email signups were failing

failing technically as in not functioning or failing to prevent spam?

what is the second method of verification?

so on launch day you guys wanted to instantly start rewriting the entire codebase of the site and change signup veritication based on a complaint from some random users, and when the original moderators said we wanna keep things as is, you tried to get them to sign a document that takes away their power to keep things as is, and then they left?

i haz question. how did you get all the posts from e6ai. did you just scrape it? can anyone do it without seeing some bot protection or is there some other way to download the entire database? i want to download it for myself so i can jerk off in peace. i heard its less than a terabyte total.

xruyi said:
>On launch day, Hino started adding a second signup verification method because email signups were failing

failing technically as in not functioning or failing to prevent spam?

what is the second method of verification?

observatority said:
so on launch day you guys wanted to instantly start rewriting the entire codebase of the site and change signup veritication based on a complaint from some random users, and when the original moderators said we wanna keep things as is, you tried to get them to sign a document that takes away their power to keep things as is, and then they left?

Email verification began failing for some users (we counted 47 in the minutes it took to fix the problem) because Spamhaus flagged our domain, presumably for being too new. I submitted a ticket to Spamhaus to request removal, and they declined, refusing to state a reason (as per their policy)

I then corrected the issue by moving the outgoing email service to one of our other domains (blep.makefox.bot), which resolved the problem.

But knowing the unreliability of email, and that at any moment another blocklist provider could decide to block the new domain, I thought it prudent to consider other options. I felt it was my duty to keep the new user migration running smoothly, considered the risks and costs of using Discord's oauth for verification only. You would still sign up and log in the same way, but if you couldn't get the verification email you could click a "Verify with Discord" button to link your Discord account.

I figured if the moderators didn't like it, it would be easy to remove or disable after the fact, and we could hand-audit whatever users came in via that process.

With nearly 30 years in software development and system operations focused almost entirely on content platforms, I felt I was qualified to make that decision on my own.

It was never implemented.

That's all I've got to say about it at the moment.

Edit: and to be clear, Discord would not normally have personally been my first choice to use for verification, but I knew it was where the biggest announcement went and where most of the users would be coming from. I had intended to look into adding Telegram and other verification options as time permitted.

xruyi said:
i haz question. how did you get all the posts from e6ai. did you just scrape it? can anyone do it without seeing some bot protection or is there some other way to download the entire database? i want to download it for myself so i can jerk off in peace. i heard its less than a terabyte total.

Yeah, you can download it all, their site (and ours) makes the database freely available. I can't advise you as to what rules or limits e6ai has in place, but we didn't encounter any kind of rate limits -- just remember to be respectful and download at a rate that doesn't overwhelm their servers.

I can't help you or provide technical support or suggest tools on how to do that.

hinoserm said:
"Verify with Discord"

thank god, i was afraid you were changing email to phone numbers

unrelated, have you considered creating stoat or fluxer server? telegram is not as good for discord-like servers and discord is age gated, those two are the only big(ish) discord alternatives i know that deserve some attention

hinoserm said:
Email verification began failing for some users (we counted 47 in the minutes it took to fix the problem) because Spamhaus flagged our domain, presumably for being too new. I submitted a ticket to Spamhaus to request removal, and they declined, refusing to state a reason (as per their policy)

I then corrected the issue by moving the outgoing email service to one of our other domains (blep.makefox.bot), which resolved the problem.

But knowing the unreliability of email, and that at any moment another blocklist provider could decide to block the new domain, I thought it prudent to consider other options. I felt it was my duty to keep the new user migration running smoothly, considered the risks and costs of using Discord's oauth for verification only. You would still sign up and log in the same way, but if you couldn't get the verification email you could click a "Verify with Discord" button to link your Discord account.

I figured if the moderators didn't like it, it would be easy to remove or disable after the fact, and we could hand-audit whatever users came in via that process.

With nearly 30 years in software development and system operations focused almost entirely on content platforms, I felt I was qualified to make that decision on my own.

It was never implemented.

That's all I've got to say about it at the moment.

i feel like this all coulve been avoided if everyone just took a step back and observed how the relaunch was running. the old team escaped from a corporate giant and after all that stress they just wanted to have their site remain as is. but within a few yours you guys wanted massive changes

if the relaunched site was just left to be as is for a week so everyone has time to switch and calm down, everyone would be in a better mental space. the time can be used to also properly document and keep track of things that broke like whatever signup system

then, after that period ended, bring it up to the old team in a polite and formal tone, just "hey our emails are being blocked, maybe add a discord backup mode?". by trying to change things instantly, you frightened them and made them think the same takeover is happening yet again

observatority said:
i feel like this all coulve been avoided if everyone just took a step back and observed how the relaunch was running. the old team escaped from a corporate giant and after all that stress they just wanted to have their site remain as is. but within a few yours you guys wanted massive changes

if the relaunched site was just left to be as is for a week so everyone has time to switch and calm down, everyone would be in a better mental space. the time can be used to also properly document and keep track of things that broke like whatever signup system

then, after that period ended, bring it up to the old team in a polite and formal tone, just "hey our emails are being blocked, maybe add a discord backup mode?". by trying to change things instantly, you frightened them and made them think the same takeover is happening yet again

I agree with some of what you're saying, and I'll own that I made mistakes in how I handled the situation. I underestimated how much an unannounced change would worry a team that had just been through a shutdown, and overlooked the emotional consequences of my decisions.

I also reacted harshly to what was, in hindsight, a simple request, likely due to my own stress and heightened emotions from the rush to get the site up and ready.

I felt I needed to move immediately for the good of the site, brand, and our image.

But ultimately, the events that immediately followed made it clear they didn't understand the nature of our agreement, and that as the organization assuming liability it was our decision.

After that reaction I took the issue up with the rest of my board, and we stepped back and started to seriously reconsider how we would go forward.

hinoserm said:
I agree with some of what you're saying, and I'll own that I made mistakes in how I handled the situation. I underestimated how much an unannounced change would worry a team that had just been through a shutdown, and overlooked the emotional consequences of my decisions.

I also reacted harshly to what was, in hindsight, a simple request, likely due to my own stress and heightened emotions from the rush to get the site up and ready.

I felt I needed to move immediately for the good of the site, brand, and our image.

But ultimately, the events that immediately followed made it clear they didn't understand the nature of our agreement, and that as the organization assuming liability it was our decision.

After that reaction I took the issue up with the rest of my board, and we stepped back and started to seriously reconsider how we would go forward.

the absolute correct choice is to go back and reconcile with the old moderator team. they own the discord, which means they own the community. all you own is the url, and the old team can just point their community to any other url

this is an open source project, all it takes is for them to launch a funding campaign to become independant, and a new fork will sprout up. then, all it takes is an announcement, and the entire community flocks to it. youll be left with a dead clone because you do not own the community

observatority said:
the absolute correct choice is to go back and reconcile with the old moderator team. they own the discord, which means they own the community. all you own is the url, and the old team can just point their community to any other url

this is an open source project, all it takes is for them to launch a funding campaign to become independant, and a new fork will sprout up. then, all it takes is an announcement, and the entire community flocks to it. youll be left with a dead clone because you do not own the community

We have no intention of approaching the old team or re-opening communications. If any of their individual members would like to reach out about possibly resuming their positions as moderators, under an agreement written by our board, we would gladly consider it.

I fully respect and appreciate the value each and every member of their team brought to this site and its community, but they must be willing to work within the boundaries set by our organization.

Site analytics show the site is still continuing to grow at a healthy (perhaps even staggering) pace.

They are more than welcome to start their own site, I personally encourage them to do so. Before things broke down, I even offered to help them collect the data that was still publicly available on the old e6ai site.

We've received plenty of support so far, and we're confident we can provide the better service.

observatority said:
they own the discord, which means they own the community. all you own is the url, and the old team can just point their community to any other url

You underestimate the number of people that refuse to use Discord. You underestimate the number of people who only want a safe place to upload their AI furry art. As far as I'm concerned, if the previous team does somehow manage to create another site, I'll use whichever is better. And I'm sure plenty of others feel the same way.

Listen, I'm actually glad the old mod team is gone. Don't get me wrong; I'm glad for their service, but we need a clean break from the old E6AI and the E6. This needs to be its own site and grow beyond what it ever could have been with the old owners fundamentally hating that we are even here, and that their site had users.

So, to summarize, this is what happened during this whole debacle from my perspective:

-MakeFox had all rights to take the opportunity to make a replacement for e6ai since e621 code is open source and all the upload data is also publicly available for anyone to download and move to a different place if they so desire.

-MakeFox acquires a new domain, pays for it and basically puts any financial and potential legal issues in the future on themselves here, and keeps the servers running, which isn't free either.

-Out of curtesy for moderating(!) e6ai in the past, the old staff team gets invited to participate with a promise that they will be keeping their old roles and that many changes will be discussed with them before they are implemented, which MakeFox wasn't obliged to do by any means since e6ai staff never, I repeat, never owned e6ai in any capacity, never spent a dime on it and never had to worry about keeping the servers alive or carrying the legal risks of owning the website like this.

-MakeFox basically replaces BadDragon as their staff managers and domain owners, which obviously constitutes MakeFox having a final word in certain, if not most or all decisions that could impact them legally, financially, or otherwise. And again, they carry all the expenses that come with owning and maintaining this new domain, while e6ai staff isn't required to spend any amount of money or have any legal responsibilities. In other words, nothing really changes from how things were between e6ai and BD.

-MakeFox brings up the concerns from a big portion of the community that Luca and hinoserm want to keep in mind, but aren't jumping to any conclusions, saying that a part of the community experienced favoritism and discrimination when e6ai staff moderated their works. MakeFox didn't pick anyone's side here and never threatened e6ai's staff position as moderators because of these complains, just said they want to keep an eye on it, so everyone is treated fairly and there is no unnecessary drama and alienated userbase.

-Jello personally downplays it as "MakeFox just trying to cater to a few known troublemakers" (hi, Jello!) and refuses to acknowledge that some people felt mistreated and instead presents his team as "always fair", even though it's a very ignorant and egoistical thing to say when there are quite a few people saying otherwise, basically invalidating anything they had to say and alienating them. All it would take for him to say is "If there were any mistakes from us in the past, we'll do our best to make sure it doesn't happen again, we care about the community and only want them to have a comfortable place to share their works." Simple as. You don't admit anything, but you aren't denying that you'll be working to better yourselves for the community either.

-e6ai team quickly gets overly agitated about not being able to be the same old overlords they thought themselves to be with unlimited power and ability to treat people however they please without any care in the world when BD left them to have their fun amongst themselves instead of actually keeping an eye on what's going on, demanding being able to veto any decision from MakeFox, have full access to everything and basically have a bigger say in things than MakeFox team does. Not to mention that the supposed "staff manager" for the old e6ai team was straight up unreachable and ignored any and all DMs directed to him. MakeFox even caves in somewhat, promising that MakeFox won't be overruling old staff team's moderation decisions just because someone complained.

-e6ai team then DEMANDS MakeFox to handle over the domain and leave the place entirely since both sides eventually came to a conclusion that any form of agreement simply isn't possible since both teams have different views on how things should be and e6ai team is obviously asking for way too much for the amount of responsibility they'll be having. This includes DLRa's refusal to do anything with AI coding (which is quite ironic coming from someone working for exclusively AI focused website) and his aggressive demands to have full control over development. Direct quote from DLRa: "You are not here to be our boss", which is blatantly wrong because this is exactly what BD was to them before and basically what MakeFox was going to be for them as well. Another quote: "I will veto what I need to veto because what ultimately matters is what the team and our users want".
Users wanted quite a few things, including the integrated autotagger to make the uploads easier for the whole place, but this was never implemented properly in around 3 years of e6ai's existance, so something tells me the concern was primarily with what the team wanted, while the userbase comes after, if at all.

-MakeFox obviously refuses to handle the domain they paid for and hosted, then removes admin, mod and janitor rights from the old team, both to prevent possible hijacking and because their relationship with e6ai staff is effectively over now, since they were unable to find any common ground.

I might have forgotten some key points, but that's what I've been able to get out of all the presented evidence from chatlogs and such. And after all that, I'm supposed to sympathize with the old team and think MakeFox group is somehow an evil corporate organization that "stole" e6ai's legacy from them like Jello, mlem and others made it seem on their channels? Excuse me, but no. Even without any biases I may have against e6ai staff, this all looks like the team just threw a massive tantrum about not being able to get into a position of power that is equal or even higher than MakeFox's without carrying any financial and potential legal burdens MakeFox will be facing. MakeFox offered them exactly the same jobs they had before, same level of jurisdiction, but decided to be more involved in the future of the website than BD did while, again, carrying all the financial and potentially legal burden. This is essentially the same as being a blue-collar worker in the office, then going to your new boss that just bought the company from the old one, demanding you get to dictate how things go from here since you've been working in this company for a few years and the new owner "has no idea how to run things and every decision must go through him now". I'm afraid to burst the bubble certain people created for themselves, but that's generally not how things work and BD being indifferent to how things were handled in the past doesn't mean MakeFox has to let that be the case here too.

observatority said:
they own the discord, which means they own the community.

You know, that's a funny way to phrase things there, huh? I do firmly believe that's how they view the situation though, so you aren't entirely wrong.

hinoserm said:
We have no intention of approaching the old team or re-opening communications. If any of their individual members would like to reach out about possibly resuming their positions as moderators, under an agreement written by our board, we would gladly consider it.

I fully respect and appreciate the value each and every member of their team brought to this site and its community, but they must be willing to work within the boundaries set by our organization.

Site analytics show the site is still continuing to grow at a healthy (perhaps even staggering) pace.

They are more than welcome to start their own site, I personally encourage them to do so. Before things broke down, I even offered to help them collect the data that was still publicly available on the old e6ai site.

We've received plenty of support so far, and we're confident we can provide the better service.

Site analytics mean nothing if you poison them.
You would measure real numbers if you allowed the people from discord who wanted their account deleted to deflate your numbers.

Which, by the way, is something that would be healthy to do either way, because you're gambling actual money on those same site analytics you're artificially engorging...

Wouldn't you rather know what is actually happening, than just gripping to fake numbers that reflect inactive users?

Let the people who want to go go, and you'll know by the people who choose to remain (not that you force to stay) how your community is actually doing.

Really, at the end of the day you're the only one looking at those numbers, it's only useful to you if you don't overestimate your userbase.

dys said:
Site analytics mean nothing if you poison them.
You would measure real numbers if you allowed the people from discord who wanted their account deleted to deflate your numbers.

Which, by the way, is something that would be healthy to do either way, because you're gambling actual money on those same site analytics you're artificially engorging...

Wouldn't you rather know what is actually happening, than just gripping to fake numbers that reflect inactive users?

Let the people who want to go go, and you'll know by the people who choose to remain (not that you force to stay) how your community is actually doing.

Really, at the end of the day you're the only one looking at those numbers, it's only useful to you if you don't overestimate your userbase.

I'm not sure what you mean by "gambling extra money on"?

We're not an advertising company, we don't really care about page views or demographics.

We're a nonprofit organization, this site is running on a small percentage of resources that have already been paid for by our main service.

I'm not prepared to operate the moderation systems here, I don't even know how to approve account deletions.

I'm going to leave that for the rest of my team, who are all asleep at the moment.

dys said:
Site analytics mean nothing if you poison them.
You would measure real numbers if you allowed the people from discord who wanted their account deleted to deflate your numbers.

Which, by the way, is something that would be healthy to do either way, because you're gambling actual money on those same site analytics you're artificially engorging...

Wouldn't you rather know what is actually happening, than just gripping to fake numbers that reflect inactive users?

Let the people who want to go go, and you'll know by the people who choose to remain (not that you force to stay) how your community is actually doing.

Really, at the end of the day you're the only one looking at those numbers, it's only useful to you if you don't overestimate your userbase.

I looked it up. There have being approximately 130 account deletions refused by the system.

We're currently gaining on average 40 accounts per hour when averaged over the time since the site launched, and approximately 8 million page views per hour per day and growing. (That's not unique visitors, I don't have that number at the moment)

Edit: accidentally typed per hour instead of per day on page views

I think this is a good change! I've got nothing against the old mods, but I welcome the new!

I also hope that we keep the quality high here, in terms of uh, number of fingers and stuff, and that we grant more freedom regarding content. I think applying the MakeFox rules as seen here: https://makefox.bot/cs/help/en/safety-faq.html is the right idea. I want freedom, and I think a lot of other people do too! The blacklist is a safety tool that protects eyes while allowing others their freedom. Anyways, I hope we all have a great future here!

hinoserm said:
I looked it up. There have being approximately 130 account deletions refused by the system.

We're currently gaining on average 40 accounts per hour when averaged over the time since the site launched, and approximately 8 million page views per hour per day and growing. (That's not unique visitors, I don't have that number at the moment)

Edit: accidentally typed per hour instead of per day on page views

Ok, what is the site growth since your switch, so not averaging with values sampled under the old team?

That's the number that tells you how you're doing by yourself, without counting how the old staff was doing.
Sure, not many days to make statistics, but at least it will be informative.

(The money I was referring to before is the recurring spending you will face running this site: one time donations can't sustain those expenses over the years and you will need an actual community to keep staying in the green)

Sifting through all of this, from both sides; stuff has been posted on the discord, obviously; the main and fundamental disagreement can be summed up like this :
- the team from e6ai was only looking for a new hosting solution to keep going,
- MakeFox thought that hosting the site gave them ownership of everything and power to do whatever they wanted.

That was never going to work.

tamara said:
Sifting through all of this, from both sides; stuff has been posted on the discord, obviously; the main and fundamental disagreement can be summed up like this :
- the team from e6ai was only looking for a new hosting solution to keep going,
- MakeFox thought that hosting the site gave them ownership of everything and power to do whatever they wanted.

That was never going to work.

Excuse me, but how can anyone expect anyone to pay for everything, then ask to be in charge of every single thing? And BD had ownership of everything to begin with, this is a fact, not a speculation. Just because they chose to not do much with it and neglected the whole place doesn't mean MakeFox is supposed to just handle the remote and let former staff to do anything they please. Since when former staff was anything but just moderators for content and userbase + ability to alter the UI features?

hinoserm said:
I don't have access to those numbers right now, and frankly don't really care.

The site is using about 1 TB on a machine with a storage capacity of 220 TB. It's operating costs on our infrastructure is considerably less than our primary service with MakeFox.bot.

If anything, costs go down the less people who use it.

We would certainly appreciate it if the site starts "earning its keep" and generating donations, but right now my primary concern is that the site can be useful to the community.

You do you, I'm not here to tell you what to do.

I'm simply a lot into statistics and can tell which numbers you can trust and which are not giving the full picture. You mention a number and I will think about it, that's it.

My advice would simply be to look at your site growth in the next days and cut off anything that came from before you started running things to get the real picture.

By the way, consider that running a site with this kind of content has a bunch of other issues (regulations mostly) that do end up being quite costly, so don't just think about the storage space in the server when you think about its cost in the long run.

dys said:
You do you, I'm not here to tell you what to do.

I'm simply a lot into statistics and can tell which numbers you can trust and which are not giving the full picture. You mention a number and I will think about it, that's it.

My advice would simply be to look at your site growth in the next days and cut off anything that came from before you started running things to get the real picture.

By the way, consider that running a site with this kind of content has a bunch of other issues (regulations mostly) that do end up being quite costly, so don't just think about the storage space in the server when you think about its cost in the long run.

Oops, I've somehow managed to delete my last two messages and I guess can't undelete them. The message is fully captured in your quote, though.

Luckily we have a legal professional on our team, and already deal with the same issues throughout our organization's services, so again we're perfectly positioned to run a site like this with minimal burden.

tamara said:
Sifting through all of this, from both sides; stuff has been posted on the discord, obviously; the main and fundamental disagreement can be summed up like this :
- the team from e6ai was only looking for a new hosting solution to keep going,
- MakeFox thought that hosting the site gave them ownership of everything and power to do whatever they wanted.

That was never going to work.

Typically, owning the site (paying for and taking present and future full liability upon themselves, legally and otherwise), and having full physical control over the system does mean MakeFox can do whatever they want with this instance that they have created to carry on the life and legacy where e6ai is leaving off. However, rather than set out to change everything, it seems that MakeFox's only actual major demand was that the they retain control and ownership of the site as far as said financial and liability matters go. It would not only be illogical but foolhardy to hand over full and absolute control. That would be like renting out your property to someone who then decides to invokes squatters rights and starts changing the locks, tearing down walls, and violating local ordinances, all while expecting you to pay the bills and be legally responsible for their violations.

Here's what I want to know: If it's so important to the e6ai staff that they have full control of the site and everything, what's stopping them from fronting the cash, purchasing another domain, and creating another e6ai duplicate site of their own? MakeFox has proven than it can be done, and users will definitely flock to the better of the two sites.

kaltingale said:
Excuse me, but how can anyone expect anyone to pay for everything, then ask to be in charge of every single thing? And BD had ownership of everything to begin with, this is a fact, not a speculation. Just because they chose to not do much with it and neglected the whole place doesn't mean MakeFox is supposed to just handle the remote and let former staff to do anything they please. Since when former staff was anything but just moderators for content and userbase + ability to alter the UI features?

See, the thing is I believe this may be just a simplistic way to look at things.

Of course the owner of the site has the last say on things (especially if the things have legal outcomes, since they're the ones responsible who risk their money/time/status).

On the other hand, not allowing the IT team to navigate through the software in the way they are (and have always been) comfortable with crosses the boundaries of micromanaging at best, and at worst just forces a pipeline on a team who wasn't willing to follow it (result: now the site is understaffed).

That's never a healthy thing to do.
Whatever Claude may have to say about it.

The old team had good reasons not to change too much the code:
1) familiarity - which allowed them to easily navigate through issues
2) support- Cinder, the coder for e621, is friendly towards them and said they were willing to help them in case of issues. An offer that becomes useless of things depart too much.
3) stability - Claude changes things fast and then figures out issues. That may be ok for personal projects but is careless with a website with loads of users' sensitive data. Definitely not the things a porn site should go for.

These are not childish complaints, they are good arguments.

This is why perhaps the best outcome would be through diplomacy: the old team knows for sure how to run things best, but must abide to the policies (policies, not solutions) that the new owners provide.
Here the coders wanted to be bosses and the bosses coders. That's what really happened.

Disappointing.

dys said:
See, the thing is I believe this may be just a simplistic way to look at things.

Of course the owner of the site has the last say on things (especially if the things have legal outcomes, since they're the ones responsible who risk their money/time/status).

On the other hand, not allowing the IT team to navigate through the software in the way they are (and have always been) comfortable with crosses the boundaries of micromanaging at best, and at worst just forces a pipeline on a team who wasn't willing to follow it (result: now the site is understaffed).

That's never a healthy thing to do.
Whatever Claude may have to say about it.

The old team had good reasons not to change too much the code:
1) familiarity - which allowed them to easily navigate through issues
2) support- Cinder, the coder for e621, is friendly towards them and said they were willing to help them in case of issues. An offer that becomes useless of things depart too much.
3) stability - Claude changes things fast and then figures out issues. That may be ok for personal projects but is careless with a website with loads of users' sensitive data. Definitely not the things a porn site should go for.

These are not childish complaints, they are good arguments.

This is why perhaps the best outcome would be through diplomacy: the old team knows for sure how to run things best, but must abide to the policies (policies, not solutions) that the new owners provide.
Here the coders wanted to be bosses and the bosses coders. That's what really happened.

They didn't offer me an "IT Team", their dev guy was originally offered to me as someone who could help if I had questions or issues setting things up. I didn't.

This person, as far as I know, was an outside contributor, who maybe had some knowledge of the e621ng codebase. I didn't get the feeling, nor was he originally described to me as any kind of authority beyond "he has helped us a little in the past".

kaltingale said:
Excuse me, but how can anyone expect anyone to pay for everything, then ask to be in charge of every single thing? And BD had ownership of everything to begin with, this is a fact, not a speculation. Just because they chose to not do much with it and neglected the whole place doesn't mean MakeFox is supposed to just handle the remote and let former staff to do anything they please. Since when former staff was anything but just moderators for content and userbase + ability to alter the UI features?

You're right that BD owned everything, and also that they largely kept out of the inner workings of the site : their main dev handled changes to e621ng, the code running the site, and their legal department handled legal matters, if any arose. And it worked well, with a good healthy community that was growing steadily, so, obviously, the team wanted it to continue that way.

MakeFox wanted control and final say over everything, as is written several times in the contract sent to the e6ai team (it's publicly available on their discord if you're curious) : "The Company (MakeFox Group) has final say" or a variation thereof. It included the ability to change the rules, content allowed, or even remove anyone from the team at a moment's notice.

That was never going to work, especially not with a team that had just been shafted by the previous owner who did not even had a modicum of respect and politeness to warn the team before going public with the announcement that they were shutting down e6ai. The team learned it via the announcement on the forum, much like the rest of us.

The excerpts from the discord discussion between MakeFox and the e6ai team show that the team was ok with handing some control to MakeFox since they'd be hosting, thus shouldering the costs and liability, but not with handing them everything, which is understandable. And MakeFox moved way too fast with the code changes and forgot the human factor, thus how the relationship soured.

Once again, it came down to communication problems and not taking into account the human factor and how the whole situation made anyone feel.

sijah said:
You underestimate the number of people that refuse to use Discord. You underestimate the number of people who only want a safe place to upload their AI furry art. As far as I'm concerned, if the previous team does somehow manage to create another site, I'll use whichever is better. And I'm sure plenty of others feel the same way.

I second that! Discord is so suffocating. Telegram would be a much more friendly alternative to Discord, at least from infrastructural point of view, even if it technically requires phone number opposed to mail's requirement of Discord (additionally it requires ID or credit card or facial biometry any way, so in TOTAL Discord needs more data than Telegram for full functionality)

belstone said:
Typically, owning the site (paying for and taking present and future full liability upon themselves, legally and otherwise), and having full physical control over the system does mean MakeFox can do whatever they want with this instance that they have created to carry on the life and legacy where e6ai is leaving off. However, rather than set out to change everything, it seems that MakeFox's only actual major demand was that the they retain control and ownership of the site as far as said financial and liability matters go. It would not only be illogical but foolhardy to hand over full and absolute control. That would be like renting out your property to someone who then decides to invokes squatters rights and starts changing the locks, tearing down walls, and violating local ordinances, all while expecting you to pay the bills and be legally responsible for their violations.

Here's what I want to know: If it's so important to the e6ai staff that they have full control of the site and everything, what's stopping them from fronting the cash, purchasing another domain, and creating another e6ai duplicate site of their own? MakeFox has proven than it can be done, and users will definitely flock to the better of the two sites.

It seems quite obvious that MakeFox owns this website seeing as the "idea" was suddenly abandoned by the old owner. It's the same with danbooru->e621. Should the original e621 have kept the old danbooru mods and policies? If I was to fork the Linux kernel, am I expected to bring along Linus Torvalds and his entire team? I have no idea why it would be the same, to be honest. This is nothing more than any sort of fork of a chatroom or forum. The point of the fork is to move the users and content somewhere safe. That's why I also advocate for a refreshing of the rules, regarding content; I want more freedom! I don't want less freedom! And I don't require the status quo! I want MORE freedom! Please sir, I want some more! I never voted for less freedom ever in my life! But people with power always seem to... This is a chance to change things.

Anyway, the old mods are just strangers on the internet like me or you or anyone, and so community drama is rather banal. It's fine to consider them fungible, in terms of "people on the internet." The new owner is in a position to either liberate us or oppress us further. I hope MakeFox chooses liberty! Otherwise, what's even the point of ownership if they can't choose this site's own destiny?

---

As far as discord goes, I boycott it and do not use it whatsoever. Nostr/Armada seems to be the future regarding chatrooms.

dys said:
See, the thing is I believe this may be just a simplistic way to look at things.

Of course the owner of the site has the last say on things (especially if the things have legal outcomes, since they're the ones responsible who risk their money/time/status).

On the other hand, not allowing the IT team to navigate through the software in the way they are (and have always been) comfortable with crosses the boundaries of micromanaging at best, and at worst just forces a pipeline on a team who wasn't willing to follow it (result: now the site is understaffed).

That's never a healthy thing to do.
Whatever Claude may have to say about it.

The old team had good reasons not to change too much the code:
1) familiarity - which allowed them to easily navigate through issues
2) support- Cinder, the coder for e621, is friendly towards them and said they were willing to help them in case of issues. An offer that becomes useless of things depart too much.
3) stability - Claude changes things fast and then figures out issues. That may be ok for personal projects but is careless with a website with loads of users' sensitive data. Definitely not the things a porn site should go for.

These are not childish complaints, they are good arguments.

This is why perhaps the best outcome would be through diplomacy: the old team knows for sure how to run things best, but must abide to the policies (policies, not solutions) that the new owners provide.
Here the coders wanted to be bosses and the bosses coders. That's what really happened.

The problem is - they weren't asking for "just" the control over code changes. That's just one of their demands. While I do agree with the point you are making and it would've been a good idea to consult former coders before making drastic changes, this was like 15-30% at best of what pushed the old team away. Only a couple of them were involved in coding, the rest had no say or do in that regard. Many of them don't even understand how AI works to begin with and never touched inpaint in their life, what was there to expect from them when it comes to coding? And I wouldn't say that Cinder's offer would be useless. e621's code is already a mess, it's a different types of code soup, even if it works to a degree. If he is capable of figuring it out, I don't think he would struggle with AI assited stuff, although I'll say that I'm in a no way an expert in that myself, so I can be wrong. But also, since MakeFox effectively owns the place, it's up to them to make mistakes and suffer the consequences. e621 wasn't built to be perfect Day 1 either and I'm pretty sure if BD told the coders "this has to be like this" they wouldn't have a say either.

svetozarnosty said:
I second that! Discord is so suffocating. Telegram would be a much more friendly alternative to Discord, at least from infrastructural point of view, even if it technically requires phone number opposed to mail's requirement of Discord (additionally it requires ID or credit card or facial biometry any way, so in TOTAL Discord needs more data than Telegram for full functionality)

Telegram is our team's primary choice and where our primary product/service lives (MakeFox.bot, https://t.me/makefoxbot)

I've already swapped the old "Join our Discord" links to point to our Telegram group, and I suspect in the coming days we'll also offer a Discord server as well.

I can't speak for any options beyond those; I already struggle to use Discord, I don't think I could handle another chat/messaging app.

sijah said:
You underestimate the number of people that refuse to use Discord. You underestimate the number of people who only want a safe place to upload their AI furry art. As far as I'm concerned, if the previous team does somehow manage to create another site, I'll use whichever is better. And I'm sure plenty of others feel the same way.

Discord is far from ideal. And that's why MakeFox deciding to come in and fuck shit up with zero understanding of the culture or the work the staff does is so irritating.

@hinoserm Respect the takedown requests you guys get, if you value what semblance of reputation you have. Ignoring takedown requests would be a very bad look.

hinoserm said:
Telegram is our team's primary choice and where our primary product/service lives (MakeFox.bot, https://t.me/makefoxbot)

I've already swapped the old "Join our Discord" links to point to our Telegram group, and I suspect in the coming days we'll also offer a Discord server as well.

I can't speak for any options beyond those; I already struggle to use Discord, I don't think I could handle another chat/messaging app.

Great to know that, thanks for sharing!

svetozarnosty said:
I second that! Discord is so suffocating. Telegram would be a much more friendly alternative to Discord, at least from infrastructural point of view, even if it technically requires phone number opposed to mail's requirement of Discord (additionally it requires ID or credit card or facial biometry any way, so in TOTAL Discord needs more data than Telegram for full functionality)

If you care about useability, Telegram is even worse. It sucks for organization. Channels are only a recent addition for groups, and there's no way to organize them or collapse ones you don't want to see. The only thing that makes it remotely better is the fact that Discord is playing around with age verification in certain countries. That's it.

observatority said:
the absolute correct choice is to go back and reconcile with the old moderator team. they own the discord, which means they own the community. all you own is the url, and the old team can just point their community to any other url

this is an open source project, all it takes is for them to launch a funding campaign to become independant, and a new fork will sprout up. then, all it takes is an announcement, and the entire community flocks to it. youll be left with a dead clone because you do not own the community

Adding myself to the 'community that isn't on Discord' list... Mostly out of laziness, but I've always abhorred Discord for larger communities.

Anyways, it's really unfortunate that furries apparently collectively decided that they needed to shit the bed and make a bigger disaster out of a messy situation, again. I'd really prefer to uphold this site considering it's the direct successor and runs on a booru that isn't complete rubbish (i.e. everything else). So hopefully reconciliations can be made. It just hurts everything otherwise.

Also, takedown requests are for nerds. They seem to me to hurt a booru's reason for existing most of the time, if all the reasons I've seen things get taken down for on e621 mean anything.

The last thing I would want to see is a split in the community—the kind that arises solely from disagreements among the leadership, forcing one part of the community to take one side and the other to take the opposite. I would be glad if you returned to the negotiating table and reached a consensus by making mutual concessions.

warferret said:
If you care about useability, Telegram is even worse. It sucks for organization. Channels are only a recent addition for groups, and there's no way to organize them or collapse ones you don't want to see. The only thing that makes it remotely better is the fact that Discord is playing around with age verification in certain countries. That's it.

Telegram will have to do age verification soon as well. It's not like there's a worldwide push by governments all around the planet to get age verification laws passed, ie spy and control what people can do online...

tamara said:
Telegram will have to do age verification soon as well. It's not like there's a worldwide push by governments all around the planet to get age verification laws passed, ie spy and control what people can do online...

Might be time to start looking into Signal again :^)

tamara said:
Telegram will have to do age verification soon as well. It's not like there's a worldwide push by governments all around the planet to get age verification laws passed, ie spy and control what people can do online...

I seriously recommend you check out Armada then. Although, that's a totally different discussion than this forum topic! But still. Check it out and you'll be like "oh, it's more simple, more secure, and more fun."

numeradin said:
I would be glad if you returned to the negotiating table and reached a consensus by making mutual concessions.

We offered them the bare minimum interference that our board was comfortable with. It's not going to happen, I'm afraid.

lemurprincess said:
I seriously recommend you check out Armada then. Although, that's a totally different discussion than this forum topic! But still. Check it out and you'll be like "oh, it's more simple, more secure, and more fun."

Will look it up, thanks ! ^^

kaltingale said:
You know, that's a funny way to phrase things there, huh? I do firmly believe that's how they view the situation though, so you aren't entirely wrong.

I like the fact that everyone keeps referring to a 'community' that doesn't exist. the 'furry community' as a whole is a collection of individuals at a point of intersecting interests. Everything else does not intersect in their lives. Some people come to fap, some to find people of similar interest, some for the opportunity of the visual media. Almost none agree with everyone else on anything let alone everything, and almost none have a matching ethos or theosophy. Thus no community, only the intersecting of interest.

hinoserm said:
We offered them the bare minimum interference that our board was comfortable with. It's not going to happen, I'm afraid.

I accept your decision! I think this topic is over, personally. What more can be said that doesn't just go in circles?

I've run IRC chatrooms and stuff before, and this is the same thing! If I learned one thing from a life on the internet, it's that you gotta just keep moving forward, and not worry about disagreements and random drama. I truly believe in you, Hinoserm! This drama is temporary, just like all internet drama is. You're gonna be alright! My only wish is to lighten the rules to be in line with the official MakeFox's guidelines on that other page, so we're as free as can be!

kaltingale said:
Excuse me, but how can anyone expect anyone to pay for everything, then ask to be in charge of every single thing? And BD had ownership of everything to begin with, this is a fact, not a speculation. Just because they chose to not do much with it and neglected the whole place doesn't mean MakeFox is supposed to just handle the remote and let former staff to do anything they please. Since when former staff was anything but just moderators for content and userbase + ability to alter the UI features?

You also have to remember that BD's main revenue source is a physical object, not pulsed electrons, so if someone crashes e6whatever their main business carries on. MakeFox's business _is_ pulsed electrons, not 'specialty gifts', so the nature of the interaction between the site and the ownership is far different in nature as a result.

sijah said:
You underestimate the number of people that refuse to use Discord. You underestimate the number of people who only want a safe place to upload their AI furry art.

I am one of those people who refuses to use Discord. It upsets me that so many things are going to Discord only, which is a closed system, unsearchable, no archives, hidden from the internet in general. But also even within Discord the search features are terrible.

My biggest ask for the new community with the new moderation team is that there be some standards of quality, but not excessively strict. The low effort "slop" with obvious errors should be removed to keep quality of content high, but the bar shouldn't be so high that it becomes an exclusive club of who's allowed to post.

I understand this is subjective, but a happy medium of quality control makes the website vastly better. Even on e621 or Fur Affinity where they don't allow AI content, a lot of the content is still basically human-made slop. When seeing new stuff there's a lot of skipping over of low quality filler that only seems to waste storage space.

>telegram, signal etc

once again shilling stoat. its a discord clone but open source with end to end encryption and federation planned and it doesnt require phone number to sign up. the founder is also a furry.

fluxer is another choice but requires phone number

kaltingale said:
The problem is - they weren't asking for "just" the control over code changes. That's just one of their demands. While I do agree with the point you are making and it would've been a good idea to consult former coders before making drastic changes, this was like 15-30% at best of what pushed the old team away. Only a couple of them were involved in coding, the rest had no say or do in that regard. Many of them don't even understand how AI works to begin with and never touched inpaint in their life, what was there to expect from them when it comes to coding? And I wouldn't say that Cinder's offer would be useless. e621's code is already a mess, it's a different types of code soup, even if it works to a degree. If he is capable of figuring it out, I don't think he would struggle with AI assited stuff, although I'll say that I'm in a no way an expert in that myself, so I can be wrong. But also, since MakeFox effectively owns the place, it's up to them to make mistakes and suffer the consequences. e621 wasn't built to be perfect Day 1 either and I'm pretty sure if BD told the coders "this has to be like this" they wouldn't have a say either.

Well, agreeing on something is the ground for sound diplomacy :)

Regarding how Claude codes, I can tell you it does work but it is far from easy to work with - when compared to code written by another human being.

Although it is a running joke that touching someone else's code is always a bad experience, quite like figuring out someone else's fridge.

Apart from variables and logic, what changes is where you find things, and where things are supposed to be found within the code.

That's what people were afraid of, methinks.

Someone pointed out the state of mind when this all happened, and this is mostly where I see the "impossibility to come to terms" rushed as a choice.

Those guys were shut down without a saying... They probably wanted to avoid ending in the same situation.
Of course they would be scared to ease into another contract which held the same power.

I mean, I'm fairly sure that putting a clause that said the owners could fire an admin was just born out of reason and not of the intention to target a specific admin, but on the other side this came in the worst possible moment: lack of sleep, panic and basically the fear of another rug pull.

That's why, even if demands are reasonable, there must be solid communication behind them.

People need reassurance when you bind them.

tamara said:
You're right that BD owned everything, and also that they largely kept out of the inner workings of the site : their main dev handled changes to e621ng, the code running the site, and their legal department handled legal matters, if any arose. And it worked well, with a good healthy community that was growing steadily, so, obviously, the team wanted it to continue that way.

I would dispute characterizing the formerly-e6ai community as "good and healthy" considering the amount of division we're already seeing in this thread about how that community was managed in the past; many of those users appear to be considering this change of ownership as an opportunity to start over from a blank slate and hopefully set things right for them. I respect the work that e6ai staff put into moderating the website, but I didn't feel very comfortable posting my work there since its policies seemed especially harsh towards Pokemon directors.

For myself, I have no loyalty towards any particular site. Like Sijah said, I'll just use whatever site provides the best services for directors and viewers. If e6ai staff should create their own website and compete with blep, this will only benefit users who get more options to choose from when deciding where they should post.

tamara said:
You're right that BD owned everything, and also that they largely kept out of the inner workings of the site : their main dev handled changes to e621ng, the code running the site, and their legal department handled legal matters, if any arose. And it worked well, with a good healthy community that was growing steadily, so, obviously, the team wanted it to continue that way.

MakeFox wanted control and final say over everything, as is written several times in the contract sent to the e6ai team (it's publicly available on their discord if you're curious) : "The Company (MakeFox Group) has final say" or a variation thereof. It included the ability to change the rules, content allowed, or even remove anyone from the team at a moment's notice.

That was never going to work, especially not with a team that had just been shafted by the previous owner who did not even had a modicum of respect and politeness to warn the team before going public with the announcement that they were shutting down e6ai. The team learned it via the announcement on the forum, much like the rest of us.

The excerpts from the discord discussion between MakeFox and the e6ai team show that the team was ok with handing some control to MakeFox since they'd be hosting, thus shouldering the costs and liability, but not with handing them everything, which is understandable. And MakeFox moved way too fast with the code changes and forgot the human factor, thus how the relationship soured.

Once again, it came down to communication problems and not taking into account the human factor and how the whole situation made anyone feel.

I would posit it didn't come to communcations but differences of expectations versus reality.

I'm not about to employ someone that could immediately sink my business. I'm not about to expect to be employed (or volunteer) without having to sign something saying that I'm not king of the castle but merely a peon. Just _what_ is in that contract can be negotiated to some degree, but 'we reserve the rights to tell you to FOES&D' is in every employment or volunteer contract as a firm rule, so presuming it wouldn't be there is foolish.

Just my thoughts.

lemurprincess said:
It seems quite obvious that MakeFox owns this website seeing as the "idea" was suddenly abandoned by the old owner. It's the same with danbooru->e621. Should the original e621 have kept the old danbooru mods and policies? If I was to fork the Linux kernel, am I expected to bring along Linus Torvalds and his entire team? I have no idea why it would be the same, to be honest. This is nothing more than any sort of fork of a chatroom or forum. The point of the fork is to move the users and content somewhere safe. That's why I also advocate for a refreshing of the rules, regarding content; I want more freedom! I don't want less freedom! And I don't require the status quo! I want MORE freedom! Please sir, I want some more! I never voted for less freedom ever in my life! But people with power always seem to... This is a chance to change things.

Anyway, the old mods are just strangers on the internet like me or you or anyone, and so community drama is rather banal. It's fine to consider them fungible, in terms of "people on the internet." The new owner is in a position to either liberate us or oppress us further. I hope MakeFox chooses liberty! Otherwise, what's even the point of ownership if they can't choose this site's own destiny?

---

As far as discord goes, I boycott it and do not use it whatsoever. Nostr/Armada seems to be the future regarding chatrooms.

I don't use Discord because I can never get it to work as I'd like. I don't have time to sit and fidget with every new big thing. I already have more work than day most days. I really shouldn't be here at all but I'm a glutton for punishment, I guess.

da_reel_digitaltf said:
I don't use Discord because I can never get it to work as I'd like. I don't have time to sit and fidget with every new big thing. I already have more work than day most days. I really shouldn't be here at all but I'm a glutton for punishment, I guess.

And for those of you that are about to say 'Discord isn't new'... I predate the internet itself. I remember dialup to a BBS and hope the whole options screen loads!

Yeah, I'm old. Deal with it.

xruyi said:
>telegram, signal etc

once again shilling stoat. its a discord clone but open source with end to end encryption and federation planned and it doesnt require phone number to sign up. the founder is also a furry.

fluxer is another choice but requires phone number

+1 Stoat, I've had it for a long time but never found a good reason to really use it.

And Fluxer seems decent too, strangely never heard of it until recently but it feels like so much of a carbon copy of Discord that it hurts. Not necessarily bad but it feels weird, ha. It never asked me for a phone number when I registered though. One of those "we're gonna screw with you if it looks like you registered from somewhere other than a residential IP" deals, or ?

soul said:
It never asked me for a phone number when I registered though. One of those "we're gonna screw with you if it looks like you registered from somewhere other than a residential IP" deals, or ?

as far as i know they dont always ask for it but the fact they have money to pay for sending messages to phone numbers means they can demand it from you at any moment and lock you out of your account until you provide it. unless you believe their "we value your privacy" bullshit which is what every single website tells you these days. federation theoretically should solve this problem since you could just sign up using another instance which has nothing to do with phone numbers, but this is far in the future if ever

xruyi said:
as far as i know they dont always ask for it but the fact they have money to pay for sending messages to phone numbers means they can demand it from you at any moment and lock you out of your account until you provide it. unless you believe their "we value your privacy" bullshit which is what every single website tells you these days. federation theoretically should solve this problem since you could just sign up using another instance which has nothing to do with phone numbers, but this is far in the future if ever

I signed up through email before, and a close friend just did moments ago without any phone number or anything. I presume this was/is an alternate mechanism while the 'verify through email' system had crashed for spam protection reasons, and it was resolved within the hour, according to the post above. If I'm mistaken, perhaps someone in authority can correct this with the proper information.