Danbooru

Pixiv ToS Update for Fanbox, Booth and Requests

Posted under General

I know the forum is supposed to be just for Danbooru related posts but since a lot of the content here comes from Pixiv I figure this might be relevant.

Pixiv have just announced a major update to their terms of service for Fanbox, Booth and Requests that appear to either restrict or outright disallow artworks containing loli, incest, bestiality and rape. This seems like it may be in an attempt to appease international payment companies. The new ToS will take action mid December.

Still not sure what is going to happen exactly but I am seeing a lot of posts by worried and pissed off artists many of whom are now talking about moving over to Fantia.

We partially support Fantia on the upload page, however only for fully free posts, so posts behind a 0 yen subscription won't be uploadable directly and will have to be saved to disk before upload. When I implemented Fantia support I remember it was a pain in the ass to automate subscriptions, which is why I left it out, but we might have to try harder if there's going to be an exodus...

Was very sad to hear the news when they first hit, but given the reasons behind the shift, I wonder what the odds are of the same happening to Fantia as well. Still, better than nothing, so I hope the artists affected by this will move there at least, but I imagine this will drive users away as well, so in the end, this may just end up affecting even the artists who are not directly affected by this change.

Looks like everyone will have to wait until around the end of the month where Pixiv plan to release the new details of the ToS. If they really do remove loli from Fanbox I'm going to be pissed, most of the artists I support there are loli artists.

When I first heard about these changes I thought it was just to target real-life content. For months I have been seeing numerous sock puppet accounts used in Pixiv's loli tag trying to sell/share real-life photos. There is also the explosion of all the AI art some which is scarily realistic looking 3D stuff.

Then I started seeing many artists getting riled up and talking about moving to Fantia.

Isn't dlsite one of these Fantia-like platforms these days?

*edit*

I wonder if we should double down on uploading loli/shota art since I have a feeling it won't stop at Fanbox...

Updated

I'm wondering if it'll eventually spread to cover the free art as well? They could later pull a patreon and say that since Fanbox and pixivRequest are related to pixiv, that the now prohibited art can't be on regular pixiv as well, kind of like how patreon would sometimes tell artists to delete fetish stuff from other sites that allowed it or get banned from patreon. I just wish that there was at least one widely accessible payment processor that didn't care about "public order and morals".

Dogenzaka said:

I'm wondering if it'll eventually spread to cover the free art as well? They could later pull a patreon and say that since Fanbox and pixivRequest are related to pixiv, that the now prohibited art can't be on regular pixiv as well, kind of like how patreon would sometimes tell artists to delete fetish stuff from other sites that allowed it or get banned from patreon. I just wish that there was at least one widely accessible payment processor that didn't care about "public order and morals".

Such a payment processor would have to conform to "Japanese perceptions" of what construes as "morals" since this is clearly a case of the "values dissonance" trope, the credit card companies involved are either US or EU-based and have Christian mindsets. Japan isn't well-suited to a "closed system" like Chinese internet does. Though going to the topic at hand, I don't think pixiv would pull such a move unless they want to risk losing half of their artist base.

I saw a twitter thread talking about people attempting to sell/trade irl loli and other illegal content on Pixiv while trying to hide it among AI art. The new Pixiv terms might be aimed at tackling that while continuing to leave normal 2D hentai posts alone. I don't know if that twitter post had any proof or if it was just speculation. We won't be able to tell for certain until they drop the new terms at the end of the month. Quite a dick move to drop a notice that stirs up a lot of fear and paranoia and then leave posting the details until weeks later.

Speaking of AI art. I recall there was a part in the US law that drawn loli works don't fall under irl loli unless it appears indistinguishable from a real child. During my time in Pixiv's loli tag I have seen a lot of AI art that looks almost real. Doesn't help when those "artists" use face apps and deep fakes too.

Jigsy said:

Not sure. At least not without going through every single one of his images one-by-one and checking if they're still on pixiv...

All I'm saying is we shouldn't panic yet without any information on the subject, I don't see a reason for them to enforce these "new" rules on the regular site anyway.

Speaking of AI art. I recall there was a part in the US law that drawn loli works don't fall under irl loli unless it appears indistinguishable from a real child. During my time in Pixiv's loli tag I have seen a lot of AI art that looks almost real. Doesn't help when those "artists" use face apps and deep fakes too.

This is actually why I stopped using Pixiv. Ever since the AI thing there have been an alarming number of photorealistic CP being posted on there, which I don't doubt is probably trained on real life CP.

AI art truly is disgusting and will probably be one of humanity's worst mistakes. It was downright evil for that company Stability to release their AI free and open sourced without spending 2 seconds of brain power to ponder the consequences.

NoRecipe said:

This is actually why I stopped using Pixiv. Ever since the AI thing there have been an alarming number of photorealistic CP being posted on there, which I don't doubt is probably trained on real life CP.

AI art truly is disgusting and will probably be one of humanity's worst mistakes. It was downright evil for that company Stability to release their AI free and open sourced without spending 2 seconds of brain power to ponder the consequences.

I've mostly stopped using pixiv because of AI art spam as well, but at least there's now an option in settings to "display fewer" AI art which block nearly all AI art (in my experience I have not seen a single AI art after using this setting), so I'm using pixiv again.

Announcement is out, but looks like a nothing-burger after all. Still reading through it, but seems to be related entirely to photos/photo-like imagery and references to actual people.

Did seem like people held on to that hope, but the original announcement honestly seemed way too big (and possibly damaging) for it to turn out like this. Granted, I'm hardly aware of how many images falling into that category were being uploaded/sold through the site; thank god their AI filter is working like a charm, because it got annoying very quick to have half my search results blacked out because the AI tags were on my blacklist.

Edit:
Wouldn't want to 100% state that it's a safe bet to assume that everything will be fine since there are at least some ambiguities, but guess we'll have to see how it plays out or hope for further clarification, most notably regarding what amendments would entail and whether they'll actually be applied since you can't really change the picture itself. But yeah, I really wouldn't call this safe after all, depends entirely on why they'd go to the trouble of actually distinguish photos etc. from works that only contain the previously mentioned content. If it's only because they consider the photo stuff that much worse, then yeah, this is probably exactly as bad as originally envisioned, but that really depends on the extent to which they're willing to enforce this.

Updated

From the looks of it, they've started becoming active and are, indeed, unlisting posts with requests for amendments etc. if they don't remove them outright. Hit five of the artists I'm supporting in just the past three days, so it's probably safe to assume that we'll now be able to assess how far this actually will reach.

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