I don't have anywhere else to vent/rant about this so I'm just gonna do it here.

As a babyfur, I've long been glad that FA's been one of the few furry sites that straight-up disallows c*b NSFW. That shit's vile enough, but the libertarian policies of some other sites ("if it's not technically illegal in the US, have at it!" type stuff) are so repugnant that blacklists don't suffice to allow me to stomach visiting them.

With that said, this policy update is absolutely insane, ill-informed, and incredibly harmful to the babyfur community.

I don't have much babyfur art of my sona (I'm much more of an adult ABDL person than an age regressor in general), but I would certainly be creeped out if someone presented a sexual interest in any of the pieces I do have. But this new policy isn't about ameliorating that concern. It's about banning some subset of that art just because "oh a diaper's wet" or something, because they assume that that must mean there's something sexual going on.

Let's start with these sentences in particular: "While we were speaking to members of the ABDL/Babyfur community, we found that while some do not find messy diapers sexual, some do, and some only if the messing is to a certain extent. There was not a good consensus on where the line is because the content matter is too subjective and open to interpretation to be able to properly moderate." (Messy, in this context, includes "just wet." I'll be using the terms "wet and[/or] messy" in its stead, however, for less confusion over the specifics of that content policy.)

Now, I imagine it is true that some people would sexualize art of a wet or messy diaper on a character depicted as underaged, and I agree that that is fucking messed up and disgusting.

But their solution to this problem is to ban this art itself. This does not punish the people sexualizing it, but the artists and the commissioners.

I'm not trying to argue that it's somehow "easy" to identify and ban the people sexualizing this content; you can't expect someone to be able to scrutinize every comment under a post to get a sense of who's thinking what about a piece, nor can you investigate their presence outside of FA to make such a judgment call, either.

I don't honestly know if creepy commenters and sexualizers of babyfur content are an actual problem for FA; I don't think I've seen a creepy comment on this site myself. But if it is a problem, then I would imagine it's NOT an easy one to solve; it would require a nuanced, well-thought-out strategy to understand whether someone's intent is creepy.

Banning babyfur content just because a diaper's wet or messy is neither nuanced nor well-thought-out. Inwardly, it's a lazy solution by the mods. A decision to say, "forget trying to figure out where the line is, let's just excise this whole category of art."

_Inwardly_, it's lazy.

Outwardly, however? It's an accusation. You are telling the FA community writ large that babyfur content with wet or messy diapers is sexual content. You are telling the FA community writ large that babyfurs sexualize minors. THIS is where the harm comes into play. Not only is such an accusation insanely inaccurate to the vast majority of babyfurs, but it has the capacity to do real harm - to bring them undeserved judgment from other furries, just because you yourselves are too lazy to actually deal with the issue - if it even exists in the first place!

The policy is contradictory, too. Wet and messy diapers are banned on the justification that "some creeps may sexualize them," but that logic "does not apply to big or puffy clean diapers"? Plenty of adult ABDL folks (myself included) certainly enjoy an adult diaper being big and puffy; you don't think creeps would extend that to minors, the same way they would wet/messy diaper art? Come the fuck on.

Oh, but, whoops, now that I pointed that out, I guess FA's gonna have to ban all babyfur art where characters are wearing diapers without anything over them. Better make sure minor characters have onesies or overalls or rompers over them too.

Oh wait, some ABDLs like adult characters in onesies, overalls, or rompers too? Guess you'll have to ban babyfur art featuring onesies, overalls, and rompers as well.

I don't like slippery slope fallacy, but the point is more the contradiction than the fear that it's "gonna get even worse" (which doesn't even matter because the new policy is already stupid enough).

At the end of the day, it's pretty fucking clear that FA has no clue what the fuck they're doing with this issue. And for all they'd like to stress that "The Babyfur and ABDL communities are still welcome on Fur Affinity," it's blatantly obvious that these are no more than empty words.

I'm rather encouraged by SoFurry's content policies, so I may at least start cross-posting my works there. All of my works only feature adults of course, and I'm not honestly worried about getting mistakenly banned here or something, but I'm really not sure if it's worth bothering much longer with a site whose moderators haven't a fucking clue how to responsibly run it.