Devious Journal Entry

since the new fad is making journals rightly complaining about DA's nonsensical policies and actions, i decided to just compile all the complaints i have about this website into one journal.

first is the core memberships. complete nonsense. i don't even have to explain why. and no amount of cat OCs based on the core logo will convince me otherwise.

second is this business about raffles/contests/giveaways being against site rules. if they don't want those things on the site, that's their decision, but they never cared about them until now. the "More from DeviantART" section on every single journal i've read in the past year, if not more, was flooded with contests/raffles/etc. there was no way they didn't notice those journals. i couldn't get away from them. if this is a recent rule they decided to add to the site, they need to make this very clear to people, because everyone else seems to be as surprised by this as i am.

but no, i get it, i get it. maybe they just missed those journals somehow. DA is a big site, and maybe conveniently nobody at all on the staff decided to look at popular journals on DA for the past year. but do they really just not notice it?

i remember back in 2014 when i bothered looking at the Daily Deviations. there for awhile, it seemed like every single day they had several pieces of artwork involving humans with horns. i found that to be strange, so i left one single comment on a DD about it one day, and sure enough, some staff member noticed that comment and hollered at me for leaving this comment that was an UNSUBSTANTIATED LIE, even though it clearly wasn't if you looked at the DDs they gave out for the like month before. after that, i didn't see any artwork at all with humans with horns in the DDs for a solid week. there is no way they didn't see those journals. oh, i randomly checked the Daily Deviations once a couple weeks ago; sure enough, there was a piece or two of art involving people with horns!

third, another, more minor complaint i have is their spam policy. see, it's considered spam when a company is advertising for free, but it's apparently not spam when a normal artist is going around on random pages and advertising. it's "annoying", but not actually breaking site rules. i feel like by complaining about these rules, i'm actually promoting immoral practices, as though i'm bringing loopholes to people's attention and giving them a green light (lol, green) to go do whatever they want on here. do DA care about this site at all anymore?

fourth is channels. i've never even heard of that feature. i can think of nowhere on the site where i could access this feature, and according to one person, that actually wasn't even possible, because they removed all links to it. and then they said they were taking it away since nobody was using it. half of the comments on that journal were people upset that they were taking the feature away. and a good majority of those people were people like me who never even heard of it, but liked the idea once they heard about it. you can pretty much guarantee that any complaint the community has like that will go ignored, and that never, ever fails to disgust me. Google did the same thing with YouTube, just do whatever they wanted without listening to the users at all. why would you even have a site if you felt that way?

please don't go digging up old examples of rare instances where they actually listened to the users on something in order to prove a point. they do not listen, the vast majority of the time. and no, just because i know some people will say it, when the vast majority of a site is complaining, it's not something to roll your eyes at or pass off as "well, haters gonna hate", it's something to take into serious consideration.

but my biggest complaint about this site is one that doesn't even apply to me personally, and i just care about because i'm a human being with respect for others: copyright. first off, i know a lot of people on here have, shall we say, very strict copyright policies. i think some of you get really carried away with those things if you ask me, i don't go to your page to be hollered at by CAPITALIZED TEXT and copyright graphics, y'know, but whatever. and the "please enjoy :3" at the end doesn't really help, to be honest. anyway, i see that a lot of people here don't want their artwork being traced. here's the problem, apparently DA are actually okay with that, but just won't admit it. the original post about that has since been deleted, but an artist's work was clearly traced. they reported it, and the staff member who handled their report didn't even care, because the resulting artwork wasn't the exact same character. when confronted, the staff member started dodging questions and ignoring messages altogether.

and what about art theft itself? they might as well not even have copyright policies in place, the rules are that useless. let's say you're an aspiring artist who's making a few dollars per month on Patreon, and you spent 12 hours on a drawing. someone else joins DA today and steals that drawing. now let's say i watch you, and notice this person stealing your drawing. i can't do anything about it. i can't report it. DA won't take my report because it's not my artwork, and they have "no proof" that you have a problem with the person reuploading your art. i have to send you a note about this, and then you have to report it yourself. if neither of us spots it, it won't be taken down. as long as you're not made aware of the art theft, nothing will be done about it.

people today talk a lot about "victim blaming", apparently that's DA's actual policy on art theft.



i don't plan to actually fully leave the site. i have friends on here whom i care about, and enjoy talking to, and i don't actually know any other way to get in touch with most of you. i also enjoy being a part of the brony community on here, and looking at and commenting on pictures you guys upload. it's... probably one of the only really friendly places left online. and recently, i even enjoy uploading the odd MLP thing myself. but here's the thing about that. i'm not a serious artist. i don't currently want to be a professional drawer/painter/photographer/etc. any artwork or photography i upload here is just a hobby for me. you might say the site is basically made for people like me now, but even that's not true. i don't hold my artwork in high enough of a regard to care if people steal it, but i do have morals, and i believe lying is wrong. if someone steals my art without giving credit, that's still not right.

people aren't taking this stuff sitting down like we did back when Google was ruining YouTube every year, and those protests went nowhere. people are actually leaving the site because of this. if you're one of those people who takes your art seriously enough that you feel inclined to leave gigantic copyright graphics and bold, capitalized text in the description of everything you upload, i'm not really sure where else you would go with your art that it'd actually be protected online, but i would seriously reconsider if you want your art to be here. if you take your art seriously and are often renewing your core membership using real money, i would think about if this site is really worth the effort. at this point, they clearly do not care about you.