Witch Hunt – 'wat happun' (Pixiv Fanbox)

Let's just talk about what happened and what we can gather from that Discord thing that occurred. The purge, witch hunt... whatever you want to call it - it affected more than just us and fellow artists' servers. It was kinda widespread. And this time it was different from what I am used to. Last time our FANbox Discord server was exported to heaven, only my account and server got bonked. This time everyone on the server (even people with 0 messages recorded on servers and in DMs got disabled).

tl;dr version on the bottom

I will post a whole Witch set with Declan I made for this, so you don't get bored with the wall of text I am about to post here, hahaha. And it fits the theme of what I am about to write. First pic is 'fixed' version of previous posts' - I was like 10 hours into investigating what happened and wasn't looking at details enough. So that got re-rendered haha.

Sooo... Wat happun? At least (to my knowledge) 10 servers got purged entirely. Those servers had owners/admins of others servers inside them, so when "disabled" on their account go into "deleted" state - those servers will also go away. Usually that takes around 2 weeks. There's a thing though - Discord staff loves their numbers - how much they did and how much they can present. Just look at this link from their Twitter account: https://discord.com/blog/discord-transparency-report-q1-2022

In the linked report there are is some data that was interesting - it seems that they are more "proactive" - 2/3 of all bans for shota/loli stuff is not from reports but by discord staff looking out for us. Hence, whole servers bans, they looked deeper this time than we are used to. Shota/loli stuff isn't report-able outside of discord because it's legal in many places in the world. So don't worry about that, it's very unlikely those bans will have a follow-up.

My servers got a full wipe - all users both on my FANbox and private servers (even if I was just an admin, not owner) had full wipes - what it means servers got deleted and all users there had their accounts disabled. Methinks they went a thread from one admin to another from the server they started on. I regret having my second account on FANbox server, because:

1. It could save the FANbox server;

2. Could give credence to some of my theories.

There are definitely a lot of theories. I spent some time discussing recent occurrence with other people and looking at interwebs how much of the servers and people were affected. And there's quite a bunch. It definitely didn't start on my servers - they were small in comparison to some others and not very open to public.

So what I know from this occurrence:

1. All servers were wiped at the same time.

2. It were some close communities alongside of more open servers.

3. Discord will now wipe entire user base of servers they deem worthy, instead of just deleting the server and banning admins and server alone. It used to be only servers and admins in the past.

4. Discord will be now more proactive about how they find sholi stuff.

5. It more likely started in loli space - not to be angry at them, just they are bigger hence bigger target. They also tend to be more open to the public.

6. My private server had a lot of shota artists and few loli ones. A lot of them had their own servers - some of them were wiped and some of them not.

7. It was done on 11th of July. So, start of Q3.

So... theories. Methinks Discord guys were gathering info about shota and loli folk for some time. They didn't delve that deep, left some servers alone without checking them. Q3 only started, and they post public transparency reports at the end of a quarter. There had to be some investor meeting, some deal that was about to happen, so they pulled the trigger at that moment - deadline. Just to nudge numbers up on 'how we make discord safe'. We would be okay for a longer time, but we weren't safe, we had the red dot on our forehead anyways.

Also, I want to note that they still continue banning shota and loli - it's not like that thing stopped. It was just bigger than usual.

What's next? After our second try at discord being a place for us to gather, I am kinda done with that service - especially for FANbox. I am sorry that this purge affected your accounts, guys, especially if you were logged on my server with accounts that you had for some time and were active. Looking at Twitter and people being angry so much recently with discord, it's not immidiate that someone would point the finger at you "you into shota" because of your banned account. Random people get banned for no reason around the globe recently. They really want those numbers...

There are three services we could go instead: Telegram, Matrix and Guilded.

Telegram as always - there's a problem of giving them a phone number. And I do not want you all to invest in fake phone numbers. Especially that Google Voice numbers seem to be banned there? And they were US-only anyway. It's a good service with end-to-end encryption and very unlikely ban, but the phone thing makes a lot of people iffy about using it.

Matrix is a decentralized federation. Think of it as Mastodon of messengers. You can create an account for free on any of the nodes, not even e-mail required. There is a lot of encryption going on there, unless you voluntarily post your private information there is very little that can go wrong. The only problem I see is a server. It has to be hosted either on one of the public services for matrix nodes or self-hosted. Second option is out of the question because I am not good at internet backend. But I am looking into it, asking people with more knowledge about it... and also ShotaWorld is looking into creating their own node. It will take a while to set up, but that would be a pretty cool space for us, if we could get an additional server (even if it costed some) on their node.

Guilded.gg - it seems some shota and loli artists went there already. Their TOS is basically the same as Discord's. I got an info that 'they won't ban you for stuff that is outside their service and only linked' buuut... I am skeptical about it. The service doesn't need you to give out a phone to register. And it's not a huge corpo like Discord is nowadays with unlimited money to throw at proactive search for TOS violators. This could be a good place for us to 'wait it out' till we have a more permanent solution.

I am interested in any input about it from you guys. Discord server was a good place to have all works in one place, have easier time to talk about them and connect with each other and without it will be kinda... empty here, just me talking usually haha. To be honest, I am willing to set up a guilded account for the time being. Then look out for alternatives, encourage ppl with more knowledge et cetera... But to still be able to connect with each other before we transfer to some more permanent solution, that would be good for us all. What do you think?

Time for most anticipated TL;DR! \o/

Server went POOF! We were not the only ones. It was a big gesture from Discord showing that even small closed communities are not safe and very, very unwelcomed on their service. I am unwilling to make you register there again, and am unwilling to start again just to be banned over and over.

We can go to guilded.gg (only mail required, smaller service, same TOS), but wouldn't invest in it like we did on Discord. It would be temporary solution while we look for something more permanent (preferably a matrix service hosted somewhere where we cannot be banned ever).

I would like your input on all of this :)

LAST PIC: