anon55317 said:
Yeah that's actually a pretty good idea.

Considering the amount of released dopamine I've had from the 15+ years I've used this site, and for free at that (excluding whitelisting all of their ads), I've always wanted an option to donate to the site.
And I don't mean buying stuff from Bad Dragon where the money might be used for e621, but to help financial statistics that e621 is actually worth keeping around.
So if e621 launched a gofundme for server migration, I'd help out.

japanimater said:
Considering the amount of released dopamine I've had from the 15+ years I've used this site, and for free at that (excluding whitelisting all of their ads), I've always wanted an option to donate to the site.
And I don't mean buying stuff from Bad Dragon where the money might be used for e621, but to help financial statistics that e621 is actually worth keeping around.
So if e621 launched a gofundme for server migration, I'd help out.

No, that'd be embarrassing. Bad Dragon is a company, not some dude struggling to pay his medical bills. They can swing it if they want to.

anon55317 said:
... Much more, a viable alternative would have to be proposed, instead of just "Not this!".

I thought that daeeb1a had a good idea about that:

daeeb1a said:
...
Speak to cryptographers (that is, the people who put the 's' in 'https', whose only relation to blockchains is that the blockchain bros used a few of their inventions in am unrelated way), and work with them to design a protocol that makes it mathematically impossible for either the government verifying your age to know what sites you're proving it to, or the sites to learn anything of your identity. E.g. all the government knows is that your phone's TPM is refreshing its encryption key once a month, while the verification involves adding a random number in such a way that a different person's id plus a different random number would have produced the same output. Make an open-source app that implements the verification protocol, so that white-hat hackers and security researchers can fully analyze it, and confirm to the public that there are neither deliberate back doors nor accidental leaks.

Once an off-the-shelf solution exists, any proposal that skips using it can't claim innocence anymore. Once a privacy-preserving solution is made law, there's no leverage left to pass a privacy-invading one with.
...

At least then both sides can walk away with something they desire (furries don't have to worry about minors on their porn sites, or a more privacy violating measure. The people passing the bill can brag about accomplishing their stated goal without violating privacy). It's just a shame that such a system hasn't already been developed, as it would take far longer than 3 months, so when the 3 month timeframe is up, you can bet your ass some large, sketchy data processing company is going to grab that contract.

quenir said:
Where are you getting late 2025-early 2026 from, out of curiosity? The Ofcom statement update from last month seems to indicate the 25th of July as the date of enforcement.
Source: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/protecting-children/protecting-children-from-harms-online

When I typed it into Google, it was the first thing that showed up. I’ll admit I was in a pretty bad fall so I didn’t really read through the whole thing.

sanity_dance said:
No, that'd be embarrassing. Bad Dragon is a company, not some dude struggling to pay his medical bills. They can swing it if they want to.

I thought that daeeb1a had a good idea about that:

At least then both sides can walk away with something they desire (furries don't have to worry about minors on their porn sites, or a more privacy violating measure. The people passing the bill can brag about accomplishing their stated goal without violating privacy). It's just a shame such that system hasn't already been developed, as it would take far longer than 3 months, so when the 3 month timeframe is up, you can bet your ass some large, sketchy data processing company is going to grab that contract.

We’re not destined to stay topside imo, i would prepare for comfort navigating away from the surface web in general. There’s no fixing this, it’s too broken. We’re eventually taking anlib, internet archive, and Wikipedia somewhere and fucking off i think.
There was a barrier of entry that required everyone to sustain early usenets that lowered friction of use caused to erode and more and more perverse incentives to wind in.
It’s not bad people got online it’s just awful they lost the requirement to learn netiquette.
The Internet is our test bed. It’s too compromised a medium, and we shouldn’t be attached to it. We should be focusing on improving community savvy/online media literacy and pushing for more autodidactic entry to critical spaces. There’s always going to be a surface but it’s becoming more and more hostile. The platform we all moved to for art after yahoo killed porn is now a pipeline for surveillance and stochastic terror that has a psychotic chatbot attached doing Rhodesian apologetics (ask where people are now like Prabhakar Ragavan, responsible for gutting yahoo and filling the guts with bing, setting tumblr on the downslope that would shrug us all off in seven years)
We need to get out of this place someday
It’s the only way we’re ever going to own anything of permanence
Our communities do not deserve to collapse every half generation because of moral panic and social stigma

royalgator said:
When I typed it into Google, it was the first thing that showed up. I’ll admit I was in a pretty bad fall so I didn’t really read through the whole thing.

So wait, I am confused. Are they in the same boat as e621? Or is this about cubs? Cause they have that human rule from a long time already...

anon55317 said:
Yeah I've noted a lot of similar things annecdotally. For all the sexual progressivism that's been held to be popular with Gen Z, this more comes from a place of apathy than active support (most people these days don't care what you are; e.g. everybody has a gay friend). Which is great for normalizing and people living out their lives, but makes concerted effort to overturn the very popular backlash to something like porn unrealistic.

Most people, if they even admit to using porn, view it in contempt. Similar to how doomscrollers call themselves addicted and say they hate social media; same idea. Now layer on the objective of these sorts of things: to protect kids from harmful content. And layer on how everybody under the age of 30 remembers just how damn much corporations sexualized and sold sex to them as children (e.g. that ~2013 Bruno Mars song being sung by 3rd graders).

Even if ~40% opposes these types of bills for varying reasons. At most ~10% of the population would oppose the principles of these bills. At most ~1% would publically express contempt for a bill like AZ HB 2112 after being signed into law. The core nature of it, even if you could viably argue against it's execution, is near universally popular. Much more, a viable alternative would have to be proposed, instead of just "Not this!".

This feels like a logical fallacy speedrun in an attempt to avoid talking with anyone before forming sweeping generalizations
Yeah man i know how all Americans feel
Don’t need to check in on that

Remember when we argued that principles and policies were good or bad based on ethics and not pretending to be a psychic for the national will

Also you may want to project less you’re telling on some really personal insecurities here and substituting your personal preferences for what “everyone” believes

You should try like
Talking to real people about porn bans, out loud, to their face
I don’t speak for everyone but im confident you will not find what you expect

Anyone who gives a shit about anything at this point should assume they don’t know fuck all about what Americans think and need and go talk to their faces to figure out what gets them out the door with us when the only thing that changes this is available to do democratically
Politics as everyone knew them are over
Hi go meet your neighbors
This will not stop sucking until you’ve brought them up to “ready to march with you”

wolflobe said:
This feels like a logical fallacy speedrun in an attempt to avoid talking with anyone before forming sweeping generalizations
Yeah man i know how all Americans feel
Don’t need to check in on that

Remember when we argued that principles and policies were good or bad based on ethics and not pretending to be a psychic for the national will

Also you may want to project less you’re telling on some really personal insecurities here and substituting your personal preferences for what “everyone” believes

You should try like
Talking to real people about porn bans, out loud, to their face
I don’t speak for everyone but im confident you will not find what you expect

Anyone who gives a shit about anything at this point should assume they don’t know fuck all about what Americans think and need and go talk to their faces to figure out what gets them out the door with us when the only thing that changes this is available to do democratically
Politics as everyone knew them are over
Hi go meet your neighbors
This will not stop sucking until you’ve brought them up to “ready to march with you”

You write like a chatbot suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect.

lost_user said:
So wait, I am confused. Are they in the same boat as e621? Or is this about cubs? Cause they have that human rule from a long time already...

Same boat, mostly. Anything deemed pornographic will need a robust age-checking system. Different jurisdiction, though, they're in the UK.

frostii_7 said:
You write like a chatbot suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect.

And you are an ideological fascist we see each other completely
I save my neighbors from people like you every single day what’s up
The Internet is not where i fight people like you
You don’t go outside and it’s very easy to move people away from being as broken as you are when i have a real face and you are text on a forum they will never see

Well shit the bill was passed… I guess this is how liberty dies… with a bunch of retarded republicans drooling all over it… I haven’t checked in on this since Monday so I’m a bit late to this

I hope the site admins post a announcement/gameplan for us soon because I really hate seeing everyone so panicked and anxious, including myself. I know on their Discord a admin made and pinned a message about how the site isn't going to be shut down but I think a big announcement about the future would help temper peoples fears a bit.

I am also happy to see how many of us are willing to donate to the site to help the owners do whatever needs to be done. I think that the owners should consider taking advantage of that as a means to both help their finances and to help make the community feel like we're doing something.

question !
from what i've heard the website as a whole is only 10 TB, how hard would it be to just move the server to a place like Europe ?
where they wouldn't have this kind of problems ?

Alright, please ignore that derailment and meltdown. I get that emotions are high, but continuing that drama or conspiracy theories directions will not lead to a good day for anyone.

Civil and reasonable discussion is still welcome. I trust most users can tell the difference and behave accordingly. Thank you.

Jesus fucking Christ. This thread is definitely getting locked in the morning.
I enjoyed talking to you all.

I'm sorry, I didn't realize a communist rant was what we were getting into when I initially agreed with him.
I'm not even a leftist/democrat, I'm only here because I oppose surveillance.

I will pay for my transgressions against the Cult of J.D. Vance by the end of this week. I can only hope they have mercy on me, and that the execution will be swift and painless...

Devs please move the server already. If the issue is financial then ask for donations to do so. And don’t assume this won’t happen at a federal level eventually - move the site to another country.

japanimater said:
Considering the amount of released dopamine I've had from the 15+ years I've used this site, and for free at that (excluding whitelisting all of their ads), I've always wanted an option to donate to the site.
And I don't mean buying stuff from Bad Dragon where the money might be used for e621, but to help financial statistics that e621 is actually worth keeping around.
So if e621 launched a gofundme for server migration, I'd help out.

I mean, they literally have a SubscribeStar. It's linked-to on the site.

sanity_dance said:

I thought that daeeb1a had a good idea about that:

[...]

At least then both sides can walk away with something they desire (furries don't have to worry about minors on their porn sites, or a more privacy violating measure. The people passing the bill can brag about accomplishing their stated goal without violating privacy). It's just a shame that such a system hasn't already been developed, as it would take far longer than 3 months, so when the 3 month timeframe is up, you can bet your ass some large, sketchy data processing company is going to grab that contract.

Cryptographically secure ID verification is already a thing in development, for example for eIDAS—the EU electronic ID system. See this talk. The current implementation has some issues.

amigaman said:
Cryptographically secure ID verification is already a thing in development, for example for eIDAS—the EU electronic ID system. See this talk. The current implementation has some issues.

12:51 29:23
Horrifying. I love living in the 21st century.

Imagine that companies get to access to more identifying information than consensually necessary and it ends up being SourceBans for IRL.

I think it's fine as a hardware wallet-like a credit card would be, but it should be only age/licensure/etc and nothing else. Simple values.

Can't believe this isn't locked yet xP

To be fair, Phoenix is a furnace-blasted suburban hellscape sprawl shaped like a square. If any of the staff live actually there, allow me to offer what assistance I can in Denver.

Laws aren't the number one reason to leave Phoenix. Any reason is, really. The only real reason to stay there for a time is work.

freezeblase said:
question !
from what i've heard the website as a whole is only 10 TB, how hard would it be to just move the server to a place like Europe ?
where they wouldn't have this kind of problems ?

Even if they moved the server to the most porn friendly country the owners could still be sued because they are based in the us. Because they are based in the us the site still has to follow us law.

I recall reading somewhere that the bill only applies to sites that are one-third sexual material, right? Could B.D. hypothetically merge some of their sites into a smaller number of sites in a way that put them into the 'acceptable' content ratios?
Maybe mirror the SFW content from each of their sites to each other in order to bloat the amount non-sexual material on each?

amigaman said:
I mean, they literally have a SubscribeStar. It's linked-to on the site.

Where exactly does e621 display the link?
Not that I don't believe, but I'd prefer to follow links from the original/official source.
Please and thank you.

japanimater said:
Where exactly does e621 display the link?
Not that I don't believe, but I'd prefer to follow links from the original/official source.
Please and thank you.

It has been in the top bar for months

donovan_dmc said:
It has been in the top bar for months

...
*Scrolls up*
Huh. I've never noticed that.

Are the chances of selling e6 to a company outside Arizona/the US nil?

monstar_mash said:
I recall reading somewhere that the bill only applies to sites that are one-third sexual material, right?

I don't even know how you're supposed to calculate the ratio of sexual material (in terms of "sexual content harmful to minors" as the bill defines it). The bill includes text (descriptions) along with images/drawings (depictions) of sexual material, so presumably the amount of text that includes sexual vs non-sexual material would count alongside the individual images. A site that hosts adult stories or has adults talking candidly about sexual stuff would surely have to comply with the bill as much as a site that hosts adult artwork. And in that case, the amount of non-sexual comments and forums posts should also affect the calculated ratio just as much as the amount of non-sexual images do. That's the most plain way to interpret the law as I read it, but I wager large portions of that kind of non-sexual content would be arbitrarily excluded or minimized to ensure a site that's presumed to be an adult site is over that threshold regardless of the actual content ratio (so basically ignore the all the content that's actually here; if they think you're a porn site, you're a porn site regardless of all that's being hosted).

donovan_dmc said:
It has been in the top bar for months

I use Firefox, but I checked in Chrome and while it does show up between 'Help' and 'More', there isn't anything there in Firefox.
Refreshing does make it visible for a split-second, but then it disappears.
I do have e621 whitelisted in my ad-blocker and script-blocker.

Update:Okay, so apparently, Tampermonkey was hiding the link.

japanimater said:
I use Firefox, but I checked in Chrome and while it does show up between 'Help' and 'More', there isn't anything there in Firefox.
Refreshing does make it visible for a split-second, but then it disappears.
I do have e621 whitelisted in my ad-blocker and script-blocker.

Update:Okay, so apparently, Tampermonkey was hiding the link.

Sounds like you have Re621, which customizes that top bar

alexyorim said:
Are the chances of selling e6 to a company outside Arizona/the US nil?

New management sounds like just as much of a catastrophe

donovan_dmc said:
Sounds like you have Re621, which customizes that top bar

I do and I managed to add it back in.
I didn't mess with any settings which makes it weird that it hid/removed that one tab by default.

alexyorim said:
Are the chances of selling e6 to a company outside Arizona/the US nil?

donovan_dmc said:
New management sounds like just as much of a catastrophe

If I was in their shoes, I would explore "spinning off" the websites, versus "selling off." You would have professionals help you create a new legal organization that is separate from the AZ organization. The new organization could be domiciled in another state or country. I think the current owners would have to give up control of the website(s) if they want the rest of their biz to still operate in AZ, but they might be able to enter into a contract with the new, spun-off holding company that says the AZ corporation pays for the reasonable expenses of the website for 10 years in return for exclusive advertising space for 10 years, or something like that.

This is more difficult to pull off in practice than I am making it sound, but if I had to guess, it's one of the better options that might be on the table.

freezeblase said:
question !
from what i've heard the website as a whole is only 10 TB, how hard would it be to just move the server to a place like Europe ?
where they wouldn't have this kind of problems ?

would be even worse, in an other way, EU loves willingly and falsely equating fiction to real, like what happened with bunnybits

not to mention 10TB is huge, would take hella long, and hella expensive move everythingg, then again, would probaly solve nothing and make maintenance/updating harder

styxghost said:
would be even worse, in an other way, EU loves willingly and falsely equating fiction to real, like what happened with bunnybits

not to mention 10TB is huge, would take hella long, and hella expensive move everythingg, then again, would probaly solve nothing and make maintenance/updating harder

Not really. 10 TB at 1 Gbps, a perfectly reasonable rate for even residential connections, would take about a day to move. I think even 10 Gbps is pretty common for servers, which would be less than 2 and a half hours. IIRC though e6 is closer to 20 TB, so 5 hours to 2 days. Even if e6's connection speed is too slow to transfer over network you can literally just ship the drives to the destination and upload there.

The real problem with relocation is spinning off a new entity to manage the site, or finding a trustworthy owner to sell or simply transfer to. Though when compared to shutting down, or worse complying, the difficulties are, IMO, well justified.

Privacy-destroying AV legislation now proposed for EU -- public feedback now open

(Please write-in)

skycorp said:
Privacy-destroying AV legislation now proposed for EU -- public feedback now open

(Please write-in)

Surprisingly, this AV proposal doesn't look downright horrible. Lets see how it goes, but at least their idea of verifying age without providing full identity is sound. That's a good start by comparison.

Also actual proposal pdf is here: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/commission-seeks-feedback-guidelines-protection-minors-online-under-digital-services-act

jamesfurry said:
I hope the site admins post a announcement/gameplan for us soon because I really hate seeing everyone so panicked and anxious, including myself. I know on their Discord a admin made and pinned a message about how the site isn't going to be shut down but I think a big announcement about the future would help temper peoples fears a bit.

I am also happy to see how many of us are willing to donate to the site to help the owners do whatever needs to be done. I think that the owners should consider taking advantage of that as a means to both help their finances and to help make the community feel like we're doing something.

freezeblase said:
question !
from what i've heard the website as a whole is only 10 TB, how hard would it be to just move the server to a place like Europe ?
where they wouldn't have this kind of problems ?

sharck said:
Devs please move the server already. If the issue is financial then ask for donations to do so. And don’t assume this won’t happen at a federal level eventually - move the site to another country.

It's not as simple as moving a 10TB hard drive overseas since you still have the server hosting equipment in addition to any backups and sister sites (i.e., F-list, Furry Network).
Moreover, as an Arizonian company with server hosting overseas, you would still be subject to Arizonian law, so the more expected solution would be to either move the company out of Arizona or sell/transfer to another company outside of Arizona.

Alternatively, the servers could stay within Arizona (negating any cost for moving servers), but the company overseeing the "distribution" could be outside of Arizona, such as how the UK-based Inkbunny leases its servers worldwide. Not sure if that would be a viable option.
Fun fact: E621's parent company, Dragonfruit Ventures, owns one of Inkbunny's servers.

Also, ironically, by donating to the site via your credit card (not through Subscriberstar), you would have given proof that is needed for age verification.
Though, logistically, E621 is not going to do that for privacy reasons as well as ensuring the data gets permanently deleted after verifying.

If you want to see the potential solutions that could be presented, you can check out how Inkbunny's owner suggesting the possible solutions when their site is threatened by their country-wide age verification law.
As of now, I think they are still consulting with the relevant parties.

justkhajiit said:
Surprisingly, this AV proposal doesn't look downright horrible. Lets see how it goes, but at least their idea of verifying age without providing full identity is sound. That's a good start by comparison.

Also actual proposal pdf is here: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/commission-seeks-feedback-guidelines-protection-minors-online-under-digital-services-act

Also the specification for the digital wallet on GitHub.

I'm sure there's problems with it, but it really looks like the intention of this one is actually protecting children rather than the American bills that are complete dogshit with the "PROTECT THE CHILDREN" mantra thrown behind it to make it easier to attack the critics.

Maybe there's some bad intentions behind it that need more scrutiny, but it's not something that can simply be seen past by simply possessing a minimum of a double-digit IQ like other bills.

justkhajiit said:
their idea of verifying age without providing full identity is sound

First, I personally would never trust a government with a 'porn pass' system, especially given most governments desires to backdoor encryption and do other shady things.

Second, any sort of friction to new users is going to be detrimental to adult sites (and any sort of government ID is going to be a high source of friction). e621 might be fine given how large it is, but smaller sites rely on new traffic coming in -- if new users are presented with a demand to do more work to access the content, most people are just going to click away -- even if they're not worried about the privacy impacts. This means smaller sites will end up shuttering for lack of commercial viability. This is the whole goal of AV legislation -- to make adult businesses no longer commercially viable.

justkhajiit said:
Surprisingly, this AV proposal doesn't look downright horrible. Lets see how it goes, but at least their idea of verifying age without providing full identity is sound. That's a good start by comparison.

Also actual proposal pdf is here: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/commission-seeks-feedback-guidelines-protection-minors-online-under-digital-services-act

Having scimmed through the document it doesn't seem that bad honestly. From what I gather with the proposed solution no actual id is shared (only that you are 18+) and it won't (shouldn't) be tracable for what you used it for. So you aren't providing any full details and any actual breach won't yield much that can be used (if anything at all). It is actually sensible and seems to be written with that intent in mind.
Though the only problem you could raise here is the need for an app which might be too much for elderly people who are struggling with PCs/Smartphones and that stuff. And also those with older devices potentially? Not sure on that one. Interested in the solutions on how that will be handled exactly.

Though the interesting thing in the doc is that it might not apply to e6 anyway (might have misread it) as it might count as a small or microenterprise (does the staff here count as actually employed by e6?) so e6 might dodge that (for reference: I mean paragraph 5 and footnote 8 of section 2 in the doc) unless it counts as a video sharing platform but I doubt that. Not a lawyer though so I might be completely wrong.

I think this has run its course here.
There is nothing that can really change by continuing this discussion.
e621 isn't shutting down.
There will be an announcement once the higher-ups finalize their game plan for how the issue will be addressed.