tos schmos

[stainless]

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/345071.html?thread=1996634863#cmt1996634863

Wait, so pillowfort didn’t just announce that drawings of prepubescent characters aren’t allowed after people decided to migrate there from Tumblr (which is just bad timing), they actually banned someone for posting clearly marked loli without even telling them it was a bannable offense?

While I’d prefer that not be in the TOS of a site that capitalized on people running afoul of idiot censors, I wasn’t necessarily going to die on that hill. (Though I did think their tos sounded like it might ban, say, flashback scenes in a graphic novel depicting a character’s csa, and I think that seems... a bit lacking in nuance of so.)

But not letting someone know loli is banned and banning that person entirely rather than sending a heads up or just deleting the post in question?

Yeah, I’m less okay with that. Loli is not against US law; this person’s ignorance of the rules wasn’t about being an Illegal Thing Doer, but about... well, I could be wrong, but my guess is the mods seeing something they’d meant to ban but never mentioned and losing their shit.

Which I’d get if it was something obscure they hadn’t thought of that was clearly iffy, but if people are fleeing Tumblr, where antis yelling about “pedos” Are basically fandom herpes?

Not Very Thought Out.

Comments

[caiusmajor]

Welp. That's a BAD sign about Pillowfort's mods. Sigh.

[gingerspark]

Eh... They fixed it and reinstated the account when it was contested. To me that makes a lot of difference. "No mistakes" is not a good standard, especially with large organisations.
It's not a good sign, but actually being responsive to complaints is probably good. Honestly if they get flooded with antis complaining about age-gap relationships or some shit they'll probably make some very clear guidelines on what is allowed.

[kalloway]

Here's a post I made with a lot more info about the situation.

It's basically the handling of the situation that's put me off, along with seeing walls of comments in some of the staff posts asking when a lot of the fictional content that I personally like will be banned. Like, yeah, I can't see my time on PF going well if that's the vocal attitude.

[plugz]

Hmn. Yeah i get bad vibes.

I don’t like what falls under ‘child rape/sexualisation is sexy/good’. At all. Rather have that fictional content and anyone who likes it away from me. But that sudden tos change is very...bad. And we don’t know *who* made that decision.

Thou there needs nuance on the topic bc ‘don’t depict your abuse ever because it’s perverted and corrupting :)’ is. Bad.

I said this on twitter too, but does anyone know *who* the PF admins and mods *are*?
I don’t like em not having a human presence of some kind myself—I can get why not if dealing with antis you’d want anomity—but idk. We know the people who run DW rather then a faceless tumblr style mod.

Also if they really didn’t think about content they might wanna ban...then I don’t think they thought *any* of this through well enough. I’ve been around a site/admins that was working out a TOS, you have to think of *everything* you can.

[insecuriosity]

EXACTLY. This is exactly how I feel. This course of action just showed me that the people running pillowfort are indeed fans - fans who don't want to have their persona squicks on their website.

If it was possible to make an effective rule on which art is not okay and which art is, I'd be alright with it - but they just say "There is a gray area and uhhh we'll know it when we see it." BAsically giving them the freedom to delete whatever they want.

[championshawke]

(I'm not really sure how commenting etiquette works on dreamwidth, so sorry if this is rude. I do follow you on tumblr with a different username, if that helps)

Ultimately, as wary as I am of banning content, this policy wouldn't necessarily have been a dealbreaker for me. Most of fandom could have survived this. But the way they went about it! That's the thing that really makes me nervous.

1. They deleted someone's blog BEFORE announcing the tos change. That's just....so bad. What's preventing them from doing this again? It creates a bunch of uncertainty, you can do nothing wrong according to the rules you've been told and still wake up one day to your blog being deleted for something you never could've predicted.

2. No warnings, just deletion. This also makes me nervous, especially since the policy is so vague. They decide you're in violation of the policy and then boom, you're gone, no chance to take down or backup any of your stuff.

3. It's at moderator discretion, but there doesn't appear to be an appeal policy. All it takes is one overzealous mod to really mess things up, especially if you can't appeal it or it results in insta-deletion.

All of that put together is enough to make me a bit leery of the site. I don't know, maybe they'll get it together and write a clear and coherent policy, set up an appeals process, and promise to never delete blogs before TOS changes again. If they do, I think it could potentially work out. If they don't, who knows. Could be mostly fine, could be a disaster. I'll be interested to see what happens.