In which we examine the curious case of Colabo, PAPS, and other feminist NPOs in Japan doing far too little with far too much public money, before studying the questionable behaviour of Pixiv and their recent rules changes and "clarifications".
@JapanAnon Thank you very much Japan-anonymous for covering these issues! I also try to cover these events whenever I become aware of it. PS: Merry Christmas! :aqua_salute:
@Yakotarun@Ota1504@JapanAnon If really good alternatives existed, yes. For example, on pixiv I can post a completely naked loli who only covers herself with her hands, and rate it as "all-ages/general", with only the "includes adult-content" flag set, because according to their rules it's only implied nudity and doesn't even need an R-18 rating. For R-18 pics/animations the required mosaics are annoying, but besides that it's difficult to find another gallery site with such relaxed rules. Iwara sounds good in theory, since it allows anything fictional, and doesn't require censorship, but discoverability sucks so much on that site these days, since you basically rely on people to browse the "recent videos/pictures" page, and your thumbnail being clickbaity enough to stand out from the masses of chinese spam. Once your video/pic drops off page 2 or 3, that's it. So if you post your well-made hard work with shitty timing, it will get easily flushed off the visible pages by a load of shitty low-effort content.
I guess hosting my own site would be an idea, but I would need to find a hoster that doesn't cause problems, and find an anonymous domain registrar that doesn't steal my domain. But that would move the problem from getting seen on a crowded site, to getting visitors to even visit the site. The idea behind onionket is pretty nice, but an artist would need to provide something really good, so that people are willing to use tor to access his stuff. What's that Mitra he talked about btw? Some kind of crypto shop system?
@Takuya@Ota1504@Yakotarun Discoverability and promotion are areas that are difficult to do anything about, unfortunately...
Mitra is Fediverse microblogging software with integrated crypto subscriptions. Aside from one-off payments, subscribers can pay on a monthly schedule and get access to Subscriber Only posts... kind of in the same way some people have Patreon Exclusives or the like. Since Sub Only posts can also have attached media, it would work well for art exclusives.
I'm running a test instance to show off in OnionKet 4. Right now it's lacking some of the more advanced features, but the dev, @silverpill , is planning to integrate a "View Only" mode to allow subscribers to create an account that lets them create an account, sub, and view private posts right away (though that functionality also works with Fedi accounts on other servers):
That'd make a smoother experience for getting new subscribers on board, assuming of course they have crypto they're willing to spend.
Nothing in Onionket or Mitra will be able to do much about the discoverability and promotion issue, unfortunately. Those are areas where highly centralized services have the advantage, thanks to the network effect.
All we can really offer is tools and a space to share one's work freely and without censorship, even when others want to prevent it. Solving the discoverability problem will have to be the work of someone else, hopefully building on this foundation.