So recently, I've come under the purview of the censorship police by PIXIV asking me to start re-uploading all of my works on the platform that show genitals (including objects such as dildos resembling human genitals), gore-y areas, joining areas of intercourse or insertion of objects replaced by mosaics or bars, or else face forced removals of works by the platform with an upload ban, and/or but not limited to permanent account ban from the platform. Thankfully, I have a previous subscription to pixiv's premium content, so I am able to replace images without losing likes, favorites, theme followers with ease.
While I am personally against this form of censorship as this limits expression of creativity, I have conceded to PIXIV's censorship demands for two primary reasons.
1. Evolving laws around the world regarding the online posting/publications of cub, or even loli/shota works to an extent are shrinking the once-large grey-areas of what is legal or not, and PIXIV is no exception, as their policies follow Japanese law, which are one of few countries in the world that allow such materials with restrictions (namely the genital mosaic censoring).
2. Related to the first reason, more online platforms in recent years are following suit to restricting or outright purging cub/shota/loli material after years of relative peace and/or moderate tolerance for fears of getting caught in the web of liabilities and LEAs (law enforcement agencies). Countries that do legalize it (surprisingly, I found Russia is one of them) to an extent have restrictions on them, but if that means the opportunity and continuation to lawfully sell such works, including the 18+ works (I do sell works on booth.pm, pixiv fanbox, and pixiv factory), I'd have to concede to their demands.
I've already had to self-report to PIXIV which works I've "censored" and show proof, and they've approved it and followed-up on their promise by lifting some warnings (but not all of them, gotta go through all of them). They were very considerate and accommodating unlike some of the horror stories I've heard here and on Twitter about a certain blackmail-savagery, promise-breaking, backstabbing-psychopathic, money-hungry, uber-moral-high-ground, crusading behavior exhibited by the likes of Patreon.
Some artists I know have already moved to borderline-fringe platforms like channels on Telegram (which I have also joined recently, but try to stay away from far-right, nationalistic, Q-type conspiracy groups that also exist on the platform), but others have plunged or dragged into into the dark web in order find desperate, idealistic, survival of their works for another day (okay, maybe I should install a Tor Browser soon), even if that means having to co-exist with the one thing cub/shota/loli artists for long don't want to associate themselves with: real p3doph1les and p3d0pr0n.
But that pushes it further into the realm of illegality and the "anything goes in the darknet" and as much as I'd hate to do it, I'm not risking my personal freedoms, sanity, or the risk of actually going to prison because I decided to publish my works on a sketchy darknet marketplace. Since there are platforms on the public surface web that allows such content (and sales of it too), even if that means restrictions, it's better to cut back on some personal beliefs on what true freedom should be rather than unnecessarily increase personal risk by going to the deep end. If you're reading this, please don't compare this to the politics of mask/vaccine mandates, because they're not the same, although it's easy to make general assumptions and comparisons between the two.
Now as a casual, non-committed, not-quitting-my-day-job-for-art, mostly law-abiding global net citizen, I will be spending some time on PIXIV going through my art posts from 2007 (when I first published shota/cub works in high school) and editing genitals/intercourses/insertions/gore as needed before I get that temporary watchlist status lifted on my account. Back then though, self-censoring your artwork was a personal choice/discretion even said so by PIXIV staff at the time (includes the non-censored cub stuff I have duplicate posted here, but I'll leave it uncensored here until things change as well). But that all changed in 2014 when the Diet (Japanese parliament), and don't forget the heavy Western pressure on them, passed a censorship law (which at the same time just criminalized possession of actual p3d0pr0n) but made exceptions to fictional, creative works that depicted no real persons or is a photograph replication of one, so as long as certain areas like genitals were censored. That law fully came into effect in 2018, and active police enforcement started in 2022, but as long as you consciously self-censored them, you're fine. Me, I was borderline-on-and-off and started to self-censor my works from 2018 onwards. But my notice also included works from pre-2018 era as well and not covered by grandfathering because it was an "active publication". Only print publications pre-2018 for cub/shota/loli works carelessly not censored by artists were exempted, but can no longer be re-sold, only disposal.
So I do apologize if I don't visit or post stuff here in a while as I'd be mostly on my other platform self-censoring stuff.
