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It is with great regrets.....

by dmfalk

.....That I'll be taking down my gallery at the end of April.

It is also with great regrets that my future on Inkbunny is, at present, unsure.

At the very least, I'll still be here, following some artists and responding to PMs. At worst, I may leave entirely.

Why?

I don't feel that this site lives up to its original charter, as a place where all furry artists were welcome, and treated equally and justly, and away from the flamewars and bans that drove certain artists from other sites, namely FurAffinity.

It's partly about AI art, but mostly about artistic equality and fairness, regardless of technology used (and I do remember the flamewars over computer art, back in the 1990s).

As an artist whose principle form of art is textual, I even remember when writers were jeered as "not being real artists".

I do not feel welcome here anymore.

As it seems this site's administration wants to acquiesce to the AI haters by imposing separate rules for AI creation that resemble the rules to Fizzbin, rather than ensuring that AI art's place on Inkbunny is in line with Inkbunny's own charter. Who knows what the next artform will be, and if it'll have a place on this site?

I would love a new alternative to Inkbunny, one that lives up to it's own high words of being a welcoming place for all furry artwork, regardless of how it's made, as long as certain things are maintained:

No hate speech or threats.
No harassment.
No taking of someone's art and claiming it as one's own.

However, I don't see that as a possibility, as starting a new site is expensive. Inkbunny alone is completely funded by donations and swag, and we're talking about upwards of tens of thousands of dollars per month, mostly for server leases, so sometime in the near future, a furry like myself might not have a place to share my creativity, AI or not.

It should be noted, that the head admin of Inkbunny is the same one who brought me here from FurAffinity, with the very promise of being on a more positive and welcoming site, where various kinds of artwork that had been under fire there, would be welcome here.

To say that I'm greatly disappointed in the current direction of Inkbunny, would only be putting it rather mildly.

I don't feel I can rightly participate in a site where certain artists are placed under rules not applied to others (and if these same rules applied only to AI creation were applied to all other forms, the roar would be deafening), and as a creative furry in both AI and non-AI creations, this makes me feel quite unwelcome.

As such, I will be taking down my galleries at the end of April.
Journals may follow in the near future.
My own presence may follow after that.

I must stress the word may.

This all depends on whether or not I'm given good reason to stay.

At this time, I'm still going to be here, for PMs, replying to posts and submissions. There are some artists, and ongoing art (like the "Forest Hill" comic strip, as this place is one of the very few whose contexts can only be expressed here, in a cub-friendly environment) that necessitate my continued presence (have an account, see mature and adult artwork), but right now, this has no longer become a place where I can post my stories or artwork done of my characters.

I would love to be convinced to stay. I'm not holding my breath, though. I'm just one fur. I don't really matter, whether I'm here or not. It won't matter if one fur disappears, even after being here for 14½ years. I'm a nobody, and why I'm angry at this site doesn't really matter, because I'm just one nobody, or why I feel let down by those in charge.

As I'm approaching 60, I really don't have that much energy to fight, anymore, and I'm sure some would welcome my leaving, but mostly most couldn't care less- it's just one less fur to follow.

So, this is not yet goodbye, but it might as well be.

I have nowhere else to go, after this. Not as a writer, not as an AI and audio experimenter. Not even as a furry whose main character has a fair amount of fan art.

d.m.f.

Viewed:	42 times
Added:	3 days, 12 hrs ago 24 Mar 2025 03:29 CET

14 Comments on this Journal

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Dagnarus

3 days, 9 hrs ago

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I understand. I for one would miss you. I enjoy your views and opinions from your journals. Id say try amino, but that is a mess. Ive heard talk of other platforms and aps etc, but watchs to stop them changing, or anything really. Seems to be why so many are moving towards discord and telegram

dmfalk

3 days, 9 hrs ago

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@ Dagnarus

In spite of Discord's and Telegram's bans on cub art......

And thank you.....

Something I haven't said, was a couple of the dings on my AI submissions.....

Because of the site I was using (NightCafe.studio), when I typed my prompts, it would auto-generate an expanded prompt. In this case, the expanded prompts would sometimes mention an artist's name "in the style of", as a metaphor.

A metaphor!

The resultant art bore no resemblance to said artist's works, however.

As a writer, if I wrote such metaphoric prose, no-one would bat an eye.

Reason for such a ding? Plaigarism.

Another ding I got? Version numbers of the models used. In the texts, which I copypasted from the webpages, included the model names, and, if they had any, their version numbers. I mean, what part of "Juggernaut v9 Lightning" don't they understand? Or "Flux Schnell"? "Schnell" IS the version of Flux, there!

But the point is, IT SHOULDN'T MATTER AT ALL! Dinging someone on the software used was never supposed to be a matter of contention in someone's submitted art on this site! EVER!

I'd love to see the admins of this site go after non-AI artists about what software they use, version numbers, and compliance with "open source"! They wouldn't, because of the backlash they'd get!

The thing is, the correspondence I've received from this site's admins indicates that their stance is lenient in "allowing" AI art, by placing rules and barriers, that don't apply to others, rather than the other way around, that they're offering these "limitations" to quell the anti-AI users..... which runs counter to why this site exists!

But I've already deleted my AI works, and planning on deleting all the rest at the end of next month. Feel lucky that I haven't completely up and quit this site just yet.

This is how angry I am. This is how I feel betrayed. This is just not the Inkbunny I was promised when I came here in late 2010, after the cub art bans and the toon bans, both on FurAffinity.

The haters won there.
It looks like they're winning here.

I would love to be convinced otherwise.

I'm sick of it.

d.m.f.

Dagnarus

3 days, 8 hrs ago

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I wasnt aware of those bans on discord and tele, bit then i dont use it for that.

I think the ai "limitations" was a way to prevent the flood of ai content that come the sites way. Which i think is reasonable. The way it has been executed...
Easy way to fix it. No limitations on ai content. But pay inkbunny a small monthly fee to help with upkeep and the potential space required to host such a large volume of files. Would i care if i had to pay $5 a month? Nope, also gives me a big "fuck off i pay to put this here" stick. Should i need to? No. If i did have to pay to upload, would i expect other artist to have to pay the same. Yup.

dmfalk

3 days, 8 hrs ago

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@ Dagnarus

Of the, oh, I don't know, 500,000+ (and that may be conservative) accounts on Inkbunny, the fact there have been maybe 200-300 AI artists at its peak here (more than half gone, now), I don't think the likelihood of flooding was ever all that high! The maximum in a single submission was something like 102 files, up to about 300MB. IB has always been generous, even when submission limits were actually even smaller. I don't recall just how many terabytes are currently used, but it's a fair amount. And there's already a donation system, which last I heard, already has Inkbunny paid up for another year or two, I think. So it's not like Inkbunny can't handle the presence of AI creativity. It's how it's being handled! At first, I thought this was supposed to be about keeping the haters at bay, but I'm beginning to think this has more to do with how "generous" this site is for even allowing any AI art at all, which itself disgusts me. It's the opposite of what Inkbunny was meant to be, hence the feeling of betrayal.

And you're right: AI content should have the same allowance on this site as any other form of art, the same protections, privileges and restrictions everybody else has. But, because it's "NEW", it must be treated differently!

You shouldn't have to be forced to cite settings, software, models, loras, etc. This should be entirely voluntary, for educational and tutorial purposes, much as keywords aren't supposed to be required, but strongly suggested, as the keyword blocking system on IB is really the best of any furry site, period. (And the non-requirenent is specifically mentioned in the Inkbunny Philosophy, FWIW.)

Again I'd love to be convinced otherwise, but the actions and responses I've seen, not just to myself, but to others in this whole mess, leaves me quite in doubt.

And until now, until the last couple months or so, Inkbunny has been a great place, and has given me a great 14+ years without complaint.

I want my mind changed. I don't expect it, though.

d.m.f.

GreenReaper

3 days, 8 hrs ago

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Edited 3 days, 8 hrs ago by Owner

"	Inkbunny alone is completely funded by donations and swag, and we're talking about upwards of tens of thousands of dollars per month, mostly for server leases, so sometime in the near future, a furry like myself might not have a place to share my creativity, AI or not.

I think you may be mistaking IB for FA. Inkbunny costs ~$10/day for most of this stuff; about $320/month. Not nothing - which is about what we get from swag, donations really only cover it when we get around to doing a drive, I pay the rest - but not the end of the world.

If you do feel like rolling your own site you could try NearlyFreeSpeech, it hosts my personal homepage.

As for the thrust of your argument: we already have separate rules for photos and videos, for screenshots and 3D art (needs revising) and now, AI. Well, as of two years ago, but actually enforced properly now.

At the risk of repeating what I said to you already, this is in large part because it can be essentially "taking of someone's art and claiming it as one's own", unless you have the means to verify it's not. (I know this isn't strictly how it works, but the intent and effect of emulation matters. Enough have tried to slip artist prompts or LoRAs through for it to be an issue.)

Dagnarus

3 days, 6 hrs ago

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Edited 3 days, 6 hrs ago by Owner

@ GreenReaper

Soo, what happens, if by chance (now im actually asking out of curiosity, because im genuinely intetested) an ai image, that has nothing in the prompts to direct it to look like a specific artists work, ends up looking like an artists work. (Especially if you are unaware of that artists work)

GreenReaper

1 day, 15 hrs ago

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Edited 1 day, 15 hrs ago by Owner

@ Dagnarus

Well, the good news there is that if it follows all the policies it should show that you didn't use an inappropriate means to emulate their work, you just ended up in the same place. That's part of why we ask for the details - so we can use them to replicate the process and prove innocence. We've done this in several cases. In others, we found artist keywords had likely been used, because the generated output didn't match the image, but it did when adding e.g. 'Zaush'.

The specific wording is "You must not use the names of living or recently-deceased creators (within the last 25 years) or their non-commercial characters as prompts without their permission, nor train models and/or use artist-focused LoRAs to obtain a similar effect."

Dagnarus

1 day, 14 hrs ago

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@ GreenReaper

Thats fair, and makes complete sense

Andybanez

2 days, 15 hrs ago

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thats the social enthropy of every socially.ran environment: its demise.or its transformation into something else.. all in all, i accept and understand your choice

dmfalk

2 days, 9 hrs ago

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@ Andybanez

And sometimes, it needs to relearn what it has forgotten, to regain what it had lost.

d.m.f.

blindrabbit

2 days, 15 hrs ago

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I will really miss you DM.. Been on here a long time.. I support whatever you decide on..

Tiff

dmfalk

2 days, 9 hrs ago

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@ blindrabbit

As I said, this isn't goodbye, just yet, but it just as well could be. This depends on what happens in the coming months.

I've found my time here to have been precious, and gifted with finding new friends, as well as maintaining old ones.

I don't want to lose that.

d.m.f.