Greetings!

We've got a doozy this time.
Due to challenges stemming from changes in the political and legal environment, both offline and online, we have had to adjust our content guidelines to preserve access to our site. As a result, any content featuring young human or humanoid characters in explicit situations is now prohibited and will be deleted. This change also applies retroactively, and we have already removed all existing submissions featuring such content.

As with all irrelevant content, we will not issue records for uploads that violate this policy; the content will simply be deleted.

Thank you for your understanding, as this was not an easy decision for us to make.

For everyone's convenience here's the new section of the Uploading Guidelines:

Bad Things to Upload:

• Underage Human & Human-Like Characters: Any submissions containing underage human or human-like characters involved in explicit sexual activities, or featuring those characters nude with visible genitalia and / or anus, are not allowed.
• "Human-like" means all humanoid fantasy races, especially ones that have more skin than fur, and either no or only very minor animal features, like tails, ears, claws, etc.
• This includes, but is not limited to, elves, orcs, vampires, dwarves, gnomes, "human but has a tail and animal ears", stylized humans like The Simpsons, and similar content.
• Visual appearance counts for what is "young" first and foremost, but canonical age may also count for borderline depictions.
• If the young character is uninvolved in any ongoing explicit activities themselves, or is not nude themselves, that is allowed.

FAQ:

What exactly is now forbidden?

Young humans and anything that looks vaguely like a young human in NSFW contexts. This includes plain humans, stylized humans like cartoon characters (The Simpsons, etc), elves, orcs, vampires, zombies, kemonomimi, humans with a few glued on animal features (noses, tails, ears, whiskers, etc.), and similar content.
Basically, if it mostly looks like a young human (even with stylistic or other small changes), it is no longer allowed.

What about cub / anthro?

Young anthro characters / cubs are unaffected by this change and are still allowed to be posted.

The sudden deletions pushed my upload limit into the negatives, what do I do?

Email us or DM an administrator, and we'll bump your limit back up to being usable to you.

I think one of the submissions you purged was done in error, as it does not feature a young human or young humanoid character. Can that be reinstated?

Yes! We're working through everything we deleted to restore content that got caught by error, and if you know something that's affected, we'd be more than happy to have a look and restore it if applicable. We hope to get all false hits sorted out by ourselves, but that might take us a while due to the massive volume of posts to go through.

I believe I have found a submission that breaks these guidelines, but was not deleted, what do I do?

At the moment, if you find anything please send us an email ([email protected]) and we will have a look. However we will try to have an on-site option in the Flag For Deletion menu for this ASAP, and will edit this entry once that’s all sorted out and live.

Why didn't you manually vet all deletions before deleting anything?

This whole ordeal had to be implemented sooner rather than later, and as such, it was sadly not feasible to go through all of the content first. But as we can restore things without lasting consequences, we believe our approach outweighs the negatives of some false hits being inaccessible for a small period of time.

Ah, well, no more scrolling through the comments to see how many bans have been applied to people.

Do draenei count as human-like?

toradrow777 said:
Do draenei count as human-like?

Yes, particularly if they're rendered with more human like skin instead of fine fur.

RIP all kirlia and ralts lewds.

My god, these really are the dark times...

Might as well purge all explicit cu-- I mean, "young" anthro arts while you all are at it.

Saves the trouble of waiting until it happens next year.

Oh, fuck off. e621 was one of the last safe havens for all kinds of fictional content and now that you're banning things too I'm pretty certain I'm done posting any of my art here. This deletion shows me you aren't afraid to cater to puritans and nothing else is off the table for being banned as well.

If you're gonna make lame excuses of "legal changes" then please specify what has changed, as to my knowledge that's been nothing, especially considering that the content that's being banned is legal in the United States where e621 is hosted and operated from (especially considering this is what the United States federal government explicitly told the United Nations Human Rights Counsel in 2019, check page 5). Changes in the "political environment" are 100% irrelevant as peoples' personal opinions don't effect the law.

Is there any chance at all that this will be undone in the future? This seems like a really excessive course of action.

EDIT: Also yeah, the ambiguity with "changes in political environment" is hardly an excuse. I agree fully with what MkLXIV said above.

I'm so incredibly out of the loop, what the hell is going on in the US for this to start being a thing? Nothing has been linked so as to clear up any confusion, so this seems to just be yet another thing done in line to appease to the normies who use the site rather than out of any legal obligation.

RIP piporete comics

So now I have at least 94 of my works deleted, many of which didn't violate the rule. Wonderful. Lovely. A warning would have been nice at least.
Or at least further clarification on what exactly these "changes in the political and legal environment" even are.

gheygar said:
RIP all kirlia and ralts lewds.

I hope not!

Is feral bestiality content also likely to be purged, or is it safe?

toradrow777 said:
I hope not!

Too late :(

RIP to all the artists who weren't furry enough to be here.

dimoretpinel said:
Too late :(

DAMN!!!

notasexualdodo said:
I'm so incredibly out of the loop, what the hell is going on in the US for this to start being a thing? Nothing has been linked so as to clear up any confusion, so this seems to just be yet another thing done in line to appease to the normies who use the site rather than out of any legal obligation.

the us will slowly start to become more strict

Man, fuck the current U.S. government.

hunter_35 said:
Is there any chance at all that this will be undone in the future? This seems like a really excessive course of action.

Deleted content can be reinstated later, and all of the deletions were tagged "YoungHumanPurge", so it could be undone, but it’s very unlikely it will.

So you're just straight up deleting works of artists, who're not from America's shitty political climate, who does this stuff without even warning them at least?

k4rn4ge911 said:
Man, fuck the current U.S. government.

If things get any worse, I'm thinking of moving to Canada.

notmenotyou said:
Due to challenges stemming from changes in the political and legal environment, both offline and online

So are we getting any specifics or...?

I'm honestly surprised it lasted this long, considering how any bank could close all your accounts at the mere suggestion of hosting the content. Thanks for hosting it while you could!

OH SHIT!!! Etcexera's artwork! We need to save them before they're lost again!

wat8548 said:
So are we getting any specifics or...?

There aren't any and they know it.

toradrow777 said:
If things get any worse, I'm thinking of moving to Canada.

Is it that weird 2025 trump project that's been rumored about a few years back?

friedy said:
Is it that weird 2025 trump project that's been rumored about a few years back?

It’s not a rumor anymore. It is real. It came back up recently because of Trump’s campaign.

notmenotyou said:
Greetings!

We've got a doozy this time.
Due to challenges stemming from changes in the political and legal environment, both offline and online, we have had to adjust our content guidelines to preserve access to our site. As a result, any content featuring young human or humanoid characters in explicit situations is now prohibited and will be deleted. This change also applies retroactively, and we have already removed all existing submissions featuring such content.

As with all irrelevant content, we will not issue records for uploads that violate this policy; the content will simply be deleted.

Thank you for your understanding, as this was not an easy decision for us to make.

I'm assuming this is a change that was unavoidable and was a matter of time of being implemented? There are some artists who do make Young Human characters in their works, it could be ideal to inform them that they should make changes to their art, including making their human characters more young adult (20s-30s) or adult (30+), just to avoid any unpleasantness for all involved. I don't think a lot of people will like this change, some will like it, some won't. Regardless at the end of the day, this rule was made for good reasons.

A warning or anything would've been nice :/

Like man, you can't just drop a bombshell like this and refuse to give any context as to WHAT exactly has changed. Not everyone lives in the US. You've told us exactly what laws were passed before or what laws were gonna be passed in announcements of this kind, so I don't see why you overlooked something so major this time.

Okay no seriously what political and legal changes are you even talking about?

notasexualdodo said:
Like man, you can't just drop a bombshell like this and refuse to give any context as to WHAT exactly has changed. Not everyone lives in the US. You've told us exactly what laws were passed before or what laws were gonna be passed in announcements of this kind, so I don't see why you overlooked something so major this time.

Nothing had changed. The staff aren't giving context because there wasn't any legal change.

dimoretpinel said:
It’s not a rumor anymore. It is real. It came back up recently because of Trump’s campaign.

And now, just like back then, not enough people are taking it seriously. I've read a few snippets of it, and it reads a lot like a playbook for the Ku Klux Klan or the Westboro Baptist Church. Not pretty.

wow this is pretty crazy tbh

Lol, looks like all those hate commentators were right at the end. So no minor sex anymore, yey. Also RIP some of Dagasi arts ;(

mklxiv said:
Nothing had changed. The staff aren't giving context because there wasn't any legal change.

Do you think the purge is because young artwork scared advertisers away lol

dimoretpinel said:
Do you think the purge is because young artwork scared advertisers away lol

The site's advertising is all community-based, it's a folder of randomly-selected GIFs. There were no advertising companies to piss off.

musicw0lf said:
Lol, looks like all those hate commentators were right at the end. Also RIP some of Dagasi arts ;(

There's always their Pixiv account and the All The Fallen booru.

I'd love to share my thoughts here but (some) current staff probably wouldn't like that.

dimoretpinel said:
Do you think the purge is because young artwork scared advertisers away lol

That's gonna be an incredibly boring but also realistic reason for that to happen. No conspiracy, no "the mods are out of touch with their community and are trying to keep the image more squeaky clean to outsiders", just plain old capitalism being a bitch. I'm gonna be so disappointed, but not surprised, if that's the case.

Damn, this kind of sudden shot in the night reaction has me worried about every other non-vanilla post here.

Really has me questioning the stability of this site as an archive now, if Kirlias were too faux pas to make the cut.

It's Derpibooru all over again.

Which laws exactly were changed that this change had to happen?

So THAT'S why my favorite tab is looking so skinny.

This kinda blows.

toradrow777 said:
There's always their Pixiv account and the All The Fallen booru.

I know, just joking a little. And e621 has good search system imho.

calico_fox said:
RIP piporete comics

oh god oh no

sylveon-z said:
Which laws exactly were changed that this change had to happen?

Nothing, that's the post-hoc excuse.

mklxiv said:
The site's advertising is all community-based, it's a folder of randomly-selected GIFs. There were no advertising companies to piss off.

Reminder that I'm pretty sure e621 is co-owned by Bad Dragon or whatever, so there might be something to do with that.

kyubii said:
Damn, this kind of sudden shot in the night reaction has me worried about every other non-vanilla post here.

Really has me questioning the stability of this site as an archive now, if Kirlias were too faux pas to make the cut.

Since when e621 is an archive? It's mostly an aggregator.

Repeating myself here, but it would be reassuring to know if feral artwork is safe or not.

dimoretpinel said:
Repeating myself here, but it would be reassuring to know if feral artwork is safe or not.

Why wouldn't it? At least for now it's good.

e621: "Human child porn is not allowed anymore. All other porn is still fine."
"HOW COULD YOU DO THIS, THIS IS A VIOLATION OF MY RIGHTS, LITERALLY 1984"
Kek.

musicw0lf said:
Since when e621 is an archive? It's mostly an aggregator.

I thought it WAS an archive? Feels like it too.

dimoretpinel said:
Repeating myself here, but it would be reassuring to know if feral artwork is safe or not.

So long as there's no young human-looking characters in them, I'm pretty sure feral is safe, at least for now.

musicw0lf said:
Since when e621 is an archive? It's mostly an aggregator.

friedy said:
I thought it WAS an archive? Feels like it too.

It is an archive, it says it right there!
-> https://e621.net/help/about
"Our mission is to archive and distribute the best / strangest / most excellent furry-related artwork, regardless of content, for all those who wish to view it."

sbeewun said:
e621: "Human child porn is not allowed anymore. All other porn is still fine."
"HOW COULD YOU DO THIS, THIS IS A VIOLATION OF MY RIGHTS, LITERALLY 1984"
Kek.

Literally lol, but nobody hates, at least now. Just confused.

Ah yes. Y'all go radio silent on this website for like a month or 2 then drop this without explaining why? Man we sure doooo love you guys.

dimoretpinel said:
Repeating myself here, but it would be reassuring to know if feral artwork is safe or not.

if they'll randomly nuke artwork without posting warnings, I'd save your favorite artworks now just in case.

musicw0lf said:
Since when e621 is an archive? It's mostly an aggregator.

I think plenty of staff members have said in the past have insisted on the "furry art archive" and not "furry porn site" terminology. If they really were an archiver, they'd be doing a terrible job at it given the weirdly strict quality standards and mismanagement that turns plenty of artists away.

I don't get why transparency is so difficult. Was there an NDA of some kind involved?
If it's advertisers they're trying not to piss off, I would think said advertisers don't have a leg to stand on as far as the decency of where they advertise is concerned, being that they are explicitly on a furry porn site.

Oh man, seems like now only Gelbooru remains intact, too bad they focus on japanese content so most of the stuff deleted here can't be reposted there (tho most of the sources for the deleted posts were deleted long ago too)

sbeewun said:
e621: "Human child porn is not allowed anymore. All other porn is still fine."
"HOW COULD YOU DO THIS, THIS IS A VIOLATION OF MY RIGHTS, LITERALLY 1984"
Kek.

The issue is the lack of warning. It kinda just happened.

sbeewun said:
e621: "Human child porn is not allowed anymore. All other porn is still fine."
"HOW COULD YOU DO THIS, THIS IS A VIOLATION OF MY RIGHTS, LITERALLY 1984"
Kek.

Drawings aren’t CP.

mklxiv said:
If you're gonna make lame excuses of "legal changes" then please specify what has changed, as to my knowledge that's been nothing, especially considering that the content that's being banned is legal in the United States where e621 is hosted and operated from (especially considering this is what the United States federal government explicitly told the United Nations Human Rights Counsel in 2019, check page 5). Changes in the "political environment" are 100% irrelevant as peoples' personal opinions don't effect the law.

It's wishy washy because it's the best we can offer. There is no single law we can point to as the tipping point, and while we were sitting pretty unaffected by most things, the same can't be said to a bunch of our business partners who did not appreciate the heat we attract.
And since we can't function in a vacuum we have had to adjust.

theory0fstrings said:
So now I have at least 94 of my works deleted, many of which didn't violate the rule. Wonderful. Lovely. A warning would have been nice at least.
Or at least further clarification on what exactly these "changes in the political and legal environment" even are.

I've had a quick look through and restored anything caught by accident in your deletions that stuck out right away.
This entire thing had to happen much faster than we would have liked, so we went in with a shoot first ask questions later mentally.

Trust me, I would have preferred more of a heads up myself.

orphan_crippler said:
Oh man, seems like now only Gelbooru remains intact, too bad they focus on japanese content so most of the stuff deleted here can't be reposted there (tho most of the sources for the deleted posts were deleted long ago too)

There's the booru on All The Fallen. They specialize in this sort of content.

sbeewun said:
e621: "Human child porn is not allowed anymore. All other porn is still fine."
"HOW COULD YOU DO THIS, THIS IS A VIOLATION OF MY RIGHTS, LITERALLY 1984"
Kek.

Lack of any warning combined with loads of false positives make this a pretty shitty way to do this even if they're gonna do this.

dimoretpinel said:
The issue is the lack of warning. It kinda just happened.

This, if we were given even the slightest bit of warning they could be preserved. But I guess that's against the point, isn't it?

dimoretpinel said:
It is an archive, it says it right there!
-> https://e621.net/help/about
"Our mission is to archive and distribute the best / strangest / most excellent furry-related artwork, regardless of content, for all those who wish to view it."

Reads ironic now.

What a crock of shit

notmenotyou said:
[…] the same can't be said to a bunch of our business partners who did not appreciate the heat we attract.
And since we can't function in a vacuum we have had to adjust.

Ahh, so it was the ads?

earlopain said:
I'd love to share my thoughts here but (some) current staff probably wouldn't like that.

Wait, you retired? What happened? Weren't you the the one contributing the most to the site codebase?

Surely not the beginning of the end... right?

notmenotyou said:
It's wishy washy because it's the best we can offer. There is no single law we can point to as the tipping point, and while we were sitting pretty unaffected by most things, the same can't be said to a bunch of our business partners who did not appreciate the heat we attract.
And since we can't function in a vacuum we have had to adjust.

I've had a quick look through and restored anything caught by accident in your deletions that stuck out right away.
This entire thing had to happen much faster than we would have liked, so we went in with a shoot first ask questions later mentally.

Trust me, I would have preferred more of a heads up myself.

I appreciate you at least responding with this. I assumed that it would take ages to get through to you guys with the flood of similar requests.
I still REALLY wish you were less vague especially since theres apparently no law that was the tipping point BUT somehow it had to be changed RIGHT NOW. Something's not adding up, man. Sorry if you're just the middle man but the math isnt mathing.