Sakimichan images on Danbooru

Personally I've always felt that banned posts being visible to paying members is pretty shady. If it were all down to me, I'd have them limited to staff members for the aforementioned management purposes (is it really so hard to send a mail with one or two sentences requesting a change to a small subset of posts?).

Seems I was days late (being on a forum hiatus) to respond to this topic.

Elfaleon said:

The most worrying thing about this trend is that a disturbing number of long-time users are participating in the posting of pieces. If an artist goes out of their way to get put on to the 'do not post' list, we as a community should respect that.

I would agree with that statement, but we aren't really a community with that kind of control per se. albert has already expressed his opinion on how we treat banned artists -- We're a site by users, for users. The fact that we treat banned content the way we do is simply a matter of turning a blind eye to the notion of a 'true' ban, simply because a 'naive' ban suffices for most non-native English speaking users that will likely never pay to discover that undocumented feature. In the case that an artist does notice some part of their work shared here that shouldn't be, they can either request such posts to be hard-deleted from the server (as with ricegnat) or request to not have their work uploaded altogether (in which case they become a banned artist).

If I remember correctly, sakimichan is banned because some of her patreon works were uploaded here without her permission; if that's true, then this thread is correlated with topic #11399. The difference between sakimichan and ricegnat, both of whom are rather well-known native English speaking artists, is that ricegnat knew for a long time that being a banned artist would never really accomplish the goal of limiting exposure to his exclusive artwork, the stuff you aren't supposed to share on social media networks and the like. Sakimichan instead opted for the system we have currently, which is now our current predicament.

Log said:

If you see posts from a banned artist it's because someone opted to upload them without an artist tag, that's all.

If you're a member-level user, that is (as kittey mentioned above). If you're a Gold+ user, you can see anything in the private gallery. Part of the discussion is if banned content should be bumped to Builder+ or approval perms only users. That would limit the ability at which some users could fix or moderate tags (or content to begin with, as slime mentions), but it would help prevent this narrative of having banned content be paywalled.

Sacriven said:

Why don't we pluck the roots of this problem directly? Like, instant IP ban for those who deliberately uploading banned contents without artist tag to avoid ban status?

This is a disastrous anti-solution. IP bans should be handled in extreme moderation, especially with users that may just innocently upload banned content out of naivete. Entrusting such a powerful privilege to an automated system is really only begging for trouble.

daniel95312 said:

Shouldn't banned content just be deleted off completely? no one gets to see it and no one gets to manage it. Basically deleted on sight. I don't know if it's possible or not. Like, if an artist doesn't want their content uploaded here, then that means no one gets to see it. So just having it as status:deleted means some people still have access to this content.

As much as this sounds like a novel solution, this really isn't. It would just lead straight to confusion, and depending on its' implementation it might even encourage users to upload without the artist tag on it (which is one problem we're trying to avoid in the first place). Then the artist tag gets added after, and then what... not to mention sometimes some users make mistakes and accidentally tag banned artists where they shouldn't belong. It isn't consistent.

I'm in agreement with Chinatsu that an ideal form of "concealing" banned content should be reversible; if an artist chooses to unban themselves because of changing circumstances, then poof, all their work is made available again. And, like as said before, just having a list of banned md5 hashes doesn't help at all since it's easy to spoof such a system. You can always change the md5 of a file, easily. Change a pixel, add a trivial comment in the metadata, you name it and it'll be altered.

OOZ662 said:

Personally I've always felt that banned posts being visible to paying members is pretty shady. If it were all down to me, I'd have them limited to staff members for the aforementioned management purposes (is it really so hard to send a mail with one or two sentences requesting a change to a small subset of posts?).

Mmhh... Maybe? But as I recall, when albert gets a request from an artist to C&D uploading their work immediately, that usually implies a blanket ban, as they're not entirely concerned with which posts are supposed to belong and which ones don't, unless I'm misunderstanding your question.

I think the solution to make them Builder+ only or staff member only is an acceptable one. That is besides the fact that there's a number of contributors that also aren't Builder+, and instead are just contributors hanging around with Gold or Plat privileges. The Builder role is pretty much the de facto equivalent of a "Contributor" position on this site, yet there are certain levels to that assignment such that not all users that should have it do.

There's not really any better "solution" to skirting banned content, otherwise. If it's uploaded with the artist tag and the artist name is correct (as indicated by the uploader), then it's pretty much invisible, especially now with the recent changes to make viewing banned content more difficult (as was indicated by patching the BBB exploit). It doesn't really solve the problem as much as it does just throwing a blanket over it, if there's even a solution that is desired.

Mikaeri said:

Mmhh... Maybe? But as I recall, when albert gets a request from an artist to C&D uploading their work immediately, that usually implies a blanket ban, as they're not entirely concerned with which posts are supposed to belong and which ones don't, unless I'm misunderstanding your question.

I think that bit is referring to people who in that situation would no longer have access to the posts wanting to make changes to the post. Not about the artist themself.

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As for my position on this, the less presence banned content has the better. Meaning that the less people have access to it, and the less likely someone is to stumble upon it by accident, the better.

kuuderes_shadow said:

the less presence banned content has the better. Meaning that the less people have access to it, and the less likely someone is to stumble upon it by accident, the better.

I agree with this. There's also a chance the artist might also find out that his/her art hasn't been completely removed and will take further action against the site and have all the work removed completely.

Well, a definite response to bump up the privilege required will take some time, since it's only in the hands of the upper staff here. But seeing more support might be helpful, albeit this doesn't seem like an issue that popular for most users.

I would honestly like them to be available to Builders and up if a change is made, it would feel very annoying to have to bother other people everytime you are doing some tag gardening if they are only visible to approvers/moderators and up.

Just to throw in my two cents on this, particularly since people seem to be missing this point. While I have the liked the idea of moving the visibility of banned content up to builder+, we do need to also consider that we can't simply strip current gold and platinum accounts of their ability to see such content. Given it was originally offered as a feature and these users may have upgraded their accounts because it was a feature, we can't simply take it away from them. While it's shady to have offered it as a feature, it's just as shady to strip users of something they've paid money for.

In short, if a change is to be made it can only prevent future gold and platinum users from having access to banned content, and people will need to accept that the current population with access to banned content is the smallest the population with access to such content will ever get (currently under 1.5% of the accounts on the site).

NWF_Renim said:

Given it was originally offered as a feature and these users may have upgraded their accounts because it was a feature, we can't simply take it away from them. While it's shady to have offered it as a feature, it's just as shady to strip users of something they've paid money for.

Except it was never actually offered as a feature because it wasn’t mentioned anywhere. Users paid for loli and shota and the other technical advantages. Being able to see banned art was a bonus that probably nobody said “no” to. I wouldn’t have any qualms about removing that undocumented feature.

Edit: So it was an undocumented feature for all users who upgraded during the last three years.

kittey said:

Except it was never actually offered as a feature because it wasn’t mentioned anywhere.

Except that it was actually stated as a feature, and you just don't remember that it was removed from being listed as a feature about 3 years ago.

I might be playing devil's advocate here, but I'm neither for or against the system currently at hand right now. I think moving it up to Builder+ visibility is okay, but that already has its own problems since Builders make up even less of the Gold+ user count given how the role is merit-based.

I was not around when such a thing was actually offered as a feature, so I can't provide an opinion on that. What I can say, definitively, however, is this: We only have a banned system in place provided as a courtesy for artists; We have zero obligation to remove an artist's posts if they demand for it, and the threat of a C&D letter is only really as dangerous as their litigation power, which a majority of artists don't have much of.

Perhaps this is a problem that isn't really a problem more as it is manufactured, as my observation happens to be the opposite: banned content often has a pretty difficult time getting scores and popularity because they're already hidden to regular members, the majority of which propagate that popularity, even to paid members. I think most users who up banned content usually do so because they want to see a work archived, even at the risk of prying eyes.

This type of operation only has no consequences for us until someone makes a PSA to artists about this site lying about "banning" artists and profiting off of it. While there's no 100% guarantee that that will ever happen, it's generally foolish to leave yourself wide open to such a thing.

Correct me if I'm wrong but Isn't Danboory based in the US and operating under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act? If Danbooru receives a DMCA take down notice and fails to respond Danbooru and Albert could face criminal charges.

ion288 said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but Isn't Danboory based in the US and operating under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act? If Danbooru receives a DMCA take down notice and fails to respond Danbooru and Albert could face criminal charges.

DMCA is opt-in and I don't see anywhere on Danbooru that mentions it. Most US sites opt-in to it because it means they aren't liable if they follow DMCA procedures, but you don't have to.

I'll note that https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts?tags=howto%3Acontribute says "Danbooru will not host material from artists who have sent takedown notices or cease and desist orders" which is pretty obviously false. The current way Danbooru operates is a really bad idea since it's effectively ignoring legal demands.

NWF_Renim said:

Except that it was actually stated as a feature, and you just don't remember that it was removed from being listed as a feature about 3 years ago.

Wait what? I made the post ban thread 3 years ago when the albert added the ability to ban posts, it couldn't have been listed as a feature before it even existed.

edit: I guess you could argue that you could see them as *deleted* posts but there was no line between something that was deleted because the artist requested it and deleted because it just failed to meet danbooru quality standards.

I just looked through the history of help:users and couldn't see any version that advertised the ability to see banned posts as a feature. Perhaps NWF_Renim is getting confused with the ability to see deleted posts?

The only indication that anyone can see banned posts is the ability of approvers (Janitors previously) to unban posts.

Log said:

Wait what? I made the post ban thread 3 years ago when the albert added the ability to ban posts, it couldn't have been listed as a feature before it even existed.

If this is the thread from 3 years ago that you're thinking of topic #10295, then it was indeed stated in it that it was a featured listed on the upgrade information page.

Although given what is stated, it perhaps does negate what I said earlier about not being able to simply axe it as a "feature" of their ranks. Though I'm still of the opinion that existing accounts probably should be grandfathered instead of stripped of an inherent ability of their member level. Ideally something like a special permissions, and perhaps have it as opt-in or opt-out, I have no particular preference which (having it opt-in would likely greatly cut down on those with access to it).

NWF_Renim said:

Ideally something like a special permissions, and perhaps have it as opt-in or opt-out

Should such a thing be implemented, it would be preferable to not have the special permission be visible on the user's profile. Let it be a hidden one.

kuuderes_shadow said:

I just looked through the history of help:users and couldn't see any version that advertised the ability to see banned posts as a feature. Perhaps NWF_Renim is getting confused with the ability to see deleted posts?

Not help:users, but an older version of the account upgrade page. See the archived version.