Part of the reason why Discord may be cracking down on NSFW content stems from the fact that it has historically had a well-documented issue with hosting child sexual abuse and nonconsensual adult material. Just normal people that like to look at art or porn and hang out in those sorts of servers,” he says. “I think these are the type of people that will be hit the hardest. It has become a major traffic driver for artists and NSFW creators - “someone shares an image on one of those sites and it might not stay for very long, but it reaches a lot of eyeballs” - but perhaps more importantly, during the pandemic such servers have blossomed into socialization hubs for members of marginalized communities. “ is definitely an important part of how I make a living,” he says. His server has not been taken down, but he does worry that it may happen as the new policy rolls out. Watsup is an artist who runs a 2,400-member Discord server that hosts many furry members, and membership rewards programs for Patreon. But its “geeky or niche” roots are still apparent, says Valens: “I’d say gaming spaces and fandom spaces are still the most popular on Discord by far.” NSFW content in particular is an “enormous part of the platform’s culture,” says Valens, with many Patreon artists and fandom communities hosting NSFW channels in their servers. Though it initially started out in 2015 as a messaging app geared towards gamers, in recent years, Discord has grown tremendously and garnered much more of a mainstream user base: as of the end of 2020, it has 13.5 million servers and nearly 140 million users. Szabla agrees, saying, “With bans on NSFW I often see a lot of queer art, and queer folks who are trying to view or create this work in order to better connect with their own genders and identities, getting hit the hardest and losing business and income because of these overreaching decisions by tech companies.” “This is a huge blow to many marginalized communities, particularly queer, trans, sex worker, and kink/adult play spaces that rely on Discord for community and communication,” says writer Ana Valens, who has reported on Discord’s previous efforts to curb NSFW content. In addition to furries, other stigmatized groups use Discord as a platform for NSFW content. For starters, as many adult content creators noted, Discord’s change in policy regarding NSFW content is part of a larger trend of major social media platforms cracking down on NSFW content, most notably Tumblr, which served as a bastion of erotica for years before the website unceremoniously banned it.Įvery Awful Thing Trump Has Promised to Do in a Second Term The update, though small and largely unheralded save for a few cursory posts on tech blogs, was notable for a few reasons. We always work hard to create robust controls to help ensure minors are not exposed to content that is inappropriate for them,” the spokesperson said of the decision. “We are committed to ensuring a safer experience for everyone on Discord. It will still be possible for Discord users to access NSFW servers on its desktop version, and on Android. The update went on to state that entire servers, as opposed to individual channels, are required to be designated NSFW if the community “is organized around NSFW content or whose content is predominantly 18+,” a spokesperson for Discord told Rolling Stone. On Tuesday, the gaming chat platform Discord quietly updated its guidelines to restrict adult content, issuing a ban on users accessing NSFW servers (essentially, chatrooms with multiple channels) on iOS devices.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |