This easily could've been a reply to the "DeviantArt is committing suicide" thread, but considering how much magnitude this aspect of it has compared to the rest of the situation on DeviantArt, as well as its gravity in other places, it's ultimately getting its own thread.

There have been mass bans on DeviantArt recently. This much is undeniable. If you go to the DeviantArt subreddit, there are loads of people asking what happened. Some people had no reason to expect anything would happen to their accounts because they hadn't done anything wrong except if going by a super interpretational definition of rules which DeviantArt had previous dealt with using something more akin to benefit of the doubt, rules which by bureaucratic standards are arguably vague, with somewhat of a bias influencing things as well. They dealt with appropriateness, something many places touch upon, and so the fear arises that other places will make the same mistake that's going on within DeviantArt currently.

There exists a set of questions at https://archive.ph/tvwln which I have compiled which I myself have thought over (note that Archive is wonky at the moment but will work on some devices perfectly fine, or you can use the link at https://buzzly.art/~Twonaps/literature/once-upon-a-time-i-asked-the-deviantart-admins-the-following-questions if that doesn't work, though I put it on Archive too right before marking it as "mature" because it's a sensitive topic and Buzzly doesn't let people logged out to view anything of the sort, and I'm not in a position where carrying them over word by word would've been better). These questions are based on the points of confusion when it came to DeviantArt. In the spirit of the idea that it's better to decide upon difficult things ahead of time rather than play it simple until it bites you in the butt (hence this isn't me trying to undermine anything but in fact the opposite, to build a sense of a more vivid realization, namely in obedience and striving to that), I wanted to ask, when it comes to this place, what would be their verdict(s)?

N.B.: Not speaking with Mod Authority on any of this.

To add context to the OP: recently there was an uproar over DeviantArt conducting mass bans of accounts without warning or explanation. I said my piece here: there's guilt to go around, with accounts that blatantly and unapologetically broke the rules on one hand, and dA Staff failing to explain that people had broken the rules on the other. The discourse quickly descended into a dumpster fire: much like the Buzzly flame wars, the primary issue of administrative procedure and shortcuts taken thereto, has been buried by self-serving propagandists trying to spin this as a censorship conspiracy in an attempt to force a rewrite of longstanding content policy.

The question that warrants clarification for Side 7 is "aging up" of characters for adult situations. One of the main targets of the dA purge was NSFW fanworks of children's cartoons, as adult versions of canonical minors is expressly prohibited. So far as I know, S7 doesn't have an official position on this.

Site rules come first. Side 7 is registered in the U.S., and U.S. law standardizes age of majority in online contexts to 18.

The official rule on bestiality reads somewhat vague, but @BadKarma clarifies here that the defining line is sapience: if a "feral" character can express clear and positive consent, it's considered anthropomorphized and therefore fictional. When in doubt, use the Harkness Test. ;p

Most of the other questions would seem to boil down to context and common sense: As long as characters are communicated as bona fide adults, they shouldn't cause issues. If the artist is acting cagey, or is trying to blur the line by rules-lawyering technicalities (see Question 5), we can plausibly ask if they're trying to smuggle something through.

I think one thing we're forgetting to acknowledge here is how the ban wave resulted in artists who clearly did nothing wrong getting banned as well. The new staff are... well, new, and at least in this case, are pretty unprofessional, because they just look at their accounts and assume. There was even an artist I stumbled upon who everyone is currently talking about who was banned, presumably because they were accused of aging up underage characters for adult purposes, but in actuality, their characters were all original, meaning they, in fact, belonged to the artist, and every single one of them was over 18. And yet still, when they attempted to appeal the ban, they were denied.
DeviantArt users being banned for no reason is nothing new, it just became a bigger issue nowadays, because the current staff aren't being trained properly. For an older example, I remember seeing a video that got deleted unfortunately, but it was about how there was a toxic user, I think their name was "cutiekitty something", that relentlessly harassed LGBT users, calling them slurs, threatening their lives, and saying things like "this is what happens to you for being a f*, then linking to gutwrenching gore images of mutilated corpses, and the person uploading the video was sadly one of their victims. However, when kitty finally got banned, the OP was also banned, because the staff just assumed they were an alt of theirs, when all of the proof shows otherwise, and they were victimized by this person. They got an email saying they were banned for "unacceptable activity using alternate account cutiekitty something", and the staff presumably gave them the silent treatment when they made an appeal, explaining how they not only banned the wrong person, but they also had a core membership active on that account that's now going to waste due to the ban.
Related to Buzzly, all content on-site is visible to guest users, unless a registered user chooses to set it to be visible to registered users only, but I haven't touched it in a very long time, because after the Buzzly ban wave, I'm having a similar issue. I attempted to appeal my ban, and I'm still being ignored to this day, not even an email back in response as to what I did wrong, but I of course changed my mind and decided I don't want to go back there anymore after hearing about how users are being accused of being attracted to children or animals just by having accounts there. Besides, my @ got taken over by a new person that signed up, and their account died immediately upon creation, so if you see someone there by the name of Shadane, that's not my account anymore.

I learn something new everyday. I always thought Side7 was a UK property, since the official website time zone matches up with the prime meridian. Someone else said this too, so yeah, I thank you for clarifying this.

I also didn't know about the Harkness Test before. I remember on Reddit (or DeviantArt, can't remember) I had "made" my own test once, the way that one works is you think of the earliest humans (tens maybe hundreds of thousands of years ago) and think "how do they look, how do they communicate, how intelligent are they, etc. and are there existing animals that are like them" (spoiler: probably not, but a case has been made for dolphins, Douglass Adams is famous for entertaining the idea) with the idea being that the difference between us and the first humans would be the largest tolerable difference a human can have with another life form before you go into bad waters with the idea. But I'm prepared to accept most websites would probably favor the Harkness Test now that I've read it.

Yes, I knew that Kitty user. Wasn't a fan of them, but decided to tolerate them for a while while strongly disagreeing with them (and supporting their victims), though they didn't take kindly to this. I didn't know about the victim and their ban though. A lot of people to this day think DeviantArt doesn't IP ban (because it's impractical/collateral and because of a passage where they seem to denounce it) but then we read about these kinds of things.

If I were to say two cents to any website, it's that the easiest effective way to approach this is to just ban VPN's and other forms of IP-disguising technologies/methods. This is opposed to DeviantArt which tries to be a champion of nations where it's blocked, despite itself imposing its own non-nationally-ordained block on at least one nation, I think Kazakhstan or Syria or someplace like that (looking it up is difficult, I just remember it was a Middle Eastern nation). In other words, banning the IP changers and not the router/modem IP's which also might have other household members (while also banning the device since devices have their own IP's). There is a reason people don't hesitate to bring up that IP banning is an example of something that both overperforms and underperforms when it comes to enforcement and compare it to cutting down a tree containing the nest of a bird you don't want in the yard, arguing the guilty bird just finds another tree while you end up killing the squirrels.

That and more (such as the thing about the first artist) are always good things to contemplate, especially when there are financial (for a lack of a better word) circumstances.

Another thing I'd like to add to all of that (and something I never hear about, probably because their own admins watch rulebreakers like Zeus on Typhon, maybe even have their site name on Google Alerts) is, while many people are skeptical of what's going on, you can see a window to that on the Tropes website. Their culture and DeviantArt culture blend both creatively and one could say administratively. They had the same mod/ban/appeal/etc. issue simultaneously. It was like watching two nations have the same revolution and then both splitting the clues. Many say the amount of details I have regarding the situation seems suspicious, but that's what I'm going by. I don't dismiss I might be wrong about things though.

Just to clarify why that is: it's standard development practice to store datetimes in UTC/GMT format. That way, timezone shifts can be applied more easily and directly when displaying the datetime.
-- BK

Good ol' dA: "We won't prosecute blatant art theft unless the copyright holder petitions us directly (good luck if you're dead), and even then we might choose to side with the thieves instead." RIP Crabamoustache. ;_;

Given they already sockpuppet b& users, I shouldn't even be surprised B*zzly's database integrity would be so slipshod that randos can usurp defunct tags. :/

I think VPNs are banned, not that I agree with it, because all though banning VPNs can help keep the bad actors out, it leads to innocent VPN users getting the boot too. In my case, I was put at risk of a third doxxing incident happening, because I wasn't allowed to use Tunnelbear anymore, so I can only submit using PostyBirb+.
Yeah, to this day, "they're" still at it, stalking me and trying to expose my personal information.
From my own experience, IP bans are far less useful than banning individual accounts, because even with VPNs being banned, the bad actor can use a different device to sign up and continue the same activity that got them banned in the first place. The last person that harassed me, albeit outside DA, signed up with a new account at a library to continue bothering me.

Yeah, profiting off of dead artists' art is true scumbaggery that DA doesn't seem to want to do anything about. It happened with Qinni recently.
As for Buzzly, that was exactly what I was afraid of for a myriad of reasons.

Buzzly in my opinion was by far worse than DA.

At least DA had something, it was like a big dirty slum... But it had some charm, some culture to it.

I was around on Buzzly for a few months until it all fell apart.

There was nothing inviting or endearing about Buzzly to me, it felt sterile and had no community spirit.

Even drama there was just... Impersonal and pointless.

Drama on Deviantart was AMAZING. It was utter madness, absolute fucking chaos and you could feud with and hate people for YEARS. You could also make good friends and be tight for years.

Deviantart was definitely more on the toxic side, but it had soul.

Buzzly was dog shit right out the gate.

I've seen Mods on DA like PheonixLeo, who were stand up, professional and respectful people... Then you had scumbag mods like Morbidman.

But on Buzzly, all mods were just trash, cliquey, nepotist, power tripping cockroaches.

Wysp was my love; so many great, unique and innovative artists and I'm sad to see it go. I'm thankful for this place, because it reminds me of old school forum culture mixed with Wysp.

I thank God for Side7.

I feel Deviantart definitely started to decline more rapidly when it wss bought by Wix... But who knows? Maybe it would have been the same no matter who bought it or whether or not it was sold at all.

But it's the artists who made Deviantart what it is, they made it relevant and appealing for outsiders to join. But it was also some of the artists that made DA a fuckin mad house.

What about the art/community?

This is just how I feel, I'm not the end-all, be-all of this discussion, but there was nothing good about dArama from my experience, usually because I was either at the center of it as the target of said drama, or rather trauma in my case, considering how I turned out at the end of it all, but even when I'm witnessing drama from the outside, looking in, it's so draining... I get tired just by looking at it. Buzzly drama just happened to be worse, especially since even bystanders would tell you that I was pretty chill during my time on there, which is why I especially felt wronged by my ban. Then again, it's probably for the best, since people are being accused of very serious crimes just for owning accounts there, due to pro-ship content being allowed, despite sites such as DA, FA, Itaku, and probably a few more that I'm forgetting about not having rules against it on their own platforms.

The Oxygen is limited!