What's going on with Derpibooru and Nazis?

p0nyguy

Apparently there is some controversy with this site and something about Nazis. Can someone explain to me what’s going on?
PoemeMystique

Yeah, I can explain. There are these Maoist tossers, right? And they like pretending the world is full of Nazis, hiding in plain sight, everywhere, ready to build the new 4th Reich. In particular, they like pretending that people who upload images they dislike on Derpibooru are the main culprits of this, and that the images they dislike are the main way the Nazi Empire will return in the 21st century. As part of their fantasy-cum-delusion, they decided to try and force the site to censor depictions of ‘istophobia’, the complex of various politically incorrect views. Yesterday (and today) the site refused, then agreed, then refused again, then agreed again.
 
Long story short, the Maoist tossers are now flouncing off the site because it doesn’t slam the jackboot of censorship down on all of our throats hard enough or quickly enough, and everyone else is just confused and angry about the imposition of censorship.
Background Pony #0F22
this fandon dont longer exist in the void they claim to be all this year one way or another reality can be escape no matter how hard you tried.
Background Pony #0F22
@p0nyguy  
someone in the internet decided to say that in derpibooru that this website there is a nazi ploblem bad people who sopport a idology of genocide because of drawing of aryanne and pedo because of foal con drawing of mlp nsfw as kids
Background Pony #0F22
me i living this fandom and becoming a furry this fandom dont represent the messege of mlp is a false a list they tying to clean there shit and is a friendly fandom
Clear Vision
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@p0nyguy  
Despite the fact that I’m not completely in the loop with this, I’m going to attempt to give a detailed, neutral overview of what’s been going on, with as little bias as possible. If I’ve missed any key events, feel free to correct me.
 
With that out of the way, here’s a summary of the way I see things:
 
 
Summary
 
George Floyd’s death has made the world more conscious of things surrounding racism as a whole. That’s not to say it wasn’t a problem before, but it’s definitely something that is on a lot of people’s minds right now. However, this all started back when people started posting BLM art on Derpibooru, which was mass-downvoted. This caused people to start complaining on the double standard of why other political things weren’t being heavily downvoted in the same way. Some people suspected it was users from 4chan, but it’s against their rules to organize raids like this (bear in mind I’m not a 4chan user).
 
There were also artists uploading artwork that were mocking the BLM protests and/or George Floyd’s death, which caused them to respond saying that they won’t allow images that are either mocking the protests or deliberately trying to start controversy. In my opinion, this is fair enough, at least for the few art pieces mocking Floyd’s death.
 
When did Nazis come into all of this? On June 23rd, an article was uploaded to The Atlantic titled My Little Pony Fans Are Ready to Admit They Have a Nazi Problem, which is why the debate has switched from BLM to Nazism. This article in its nature was quite biased, because they supposedly ignored a lot of what Derpibooru staff had to say, and the way that some things were phrased made it seem like all of this was a bigger problem than it actually was:
 
The most popular of these sites is called Derpibooru, a combination of a character’s name and a common term for image boards. Derpibooru hosts millions of My Little Pony artworks, plenty of which are simple tributes to magic, friendship, and magical friendship. But a substantial number of them are extremely, jarringly violent. An image that I recently viewed on the site depicts a My Little Pony character presiding over three lynchings and one beheading of cartoons drawn to represent various marginalized groups. Derpibooru even lists “racist” as a searchable category, and more than 900 pieces of art are tagged as such.
 
They did mention that Derpibooru hosts millions of pictures, but when I read this article, I wasn’t happy with it because it definitely felt like it was pushing a certain narrative. Yes, there are 900 images tagged racist, but the issue is that there was no mention of the fact that:  
  • Users are able to create normal green tags and OC name tags at will  
  • The fact that racist images are tagged with racist allows people to subsequently filter said content so they don’t have to see it
     
    What confuses me is that art tagged with “Nazi” (and subsequently Aryanne) is already filtered by every default filter on the site. Everything doesn’t count as a filter, because that option turns filters off. The only way you would even see this is if you use the everything filter, or have created your own filter with custom perameters, both of which require you going out of your way to do so. It’s not forced upon you and the site itself isn’t trying to push any sort of agenda.
     
The sites’ rules are respectful of copyright and other laws, but otherwise do not restrict the content of artwork at all. In fact, they actively forbid complaining about content and instead instruct visitors to use the site’s filtering tools to avoid images they don’t want to see.
 
This is the only mention of filtering across the entire article.
 
So, in response to this article, Derpibooru made a change to their rules to disallow artwork “Promoting Nazism or other hateful ideologies.” However, it was stated that any artwork of Aryanne or anything else tagged with Nazi that pre-dates the rule change will remain on the site and won’t be affected. This was when I say things really kicked off, because artists started requesting DNPs in protest of this because people didn’t like the fact that Aryanne was being censored. It started out small, but then artists like Shino with a massive following and reputation started submitting DNP requests. It goes further than just Aryanne though, because I think people were upset for either 3 reasons:
 
  1. They are neutral to Aryanne but are extremely concerned that this would result in further censorship  
  2. They like Aryanne, but don’t actually believe in Nazism, and are upset that pictures of her were getting deleted regardless of context  
  3. They are actual Neo-nazis.
     
    To clarify, the vast majority of people who were against the change fell into either 1 or 2.
     
     
    The rules were changed again to revert the changes in response. However, that resulted in people getting even more upset, and the complete opposite situation to happen regarding DNPs. Artists were now submitting DNP requests because they didn’t want their art on a site that “supported Nazism” which caused the Derpi staff to backpedal on themselves once more which has pissed off even more people, which leads us to where we are today. People are upset that the Derpi staff are very indecisive about this, and to be honest, even though I’m still not on any particular side, I can agree with that. It didn’t even take a day for them to go back to the “do not promote Nazism” rule which makes me wonder what is going on and what they were thinking. Backpedalling so soon and so many times would have resulted in everyone being against you and I’m shocked that they couldn’t forsee that. It would have been better to have just done nothing, despite the fact that a spotlight has been put on to the website ever since that article was released.
p0nyguy

@Clear Vision  
So in a nutshell: 1. Derpi made changes so that Aryanne was going to be censored which led to a lot of angry artists and DNP requests. 2.Derpi reverted this decision which made people think that they supported Nazism and that angered them. 3. Derpi changed their mind again and are now currently banning Nazi imagery but people are still upset. Do I have that right?
Background Pony #9137
people were upset for either 3 reasons:
  1. They are neutral to Aryanne but are extremely concerned that this would result in further censorship
  2. They like Aryanne, but don’t actually believe in Nazism, and are upset that pictures of her were getting deleted regardless of context
  3. They are actual Neo-nazis.
To clarify, the vast majority of people who were against the change fell into either 1 or 2.
 
Exactly. Most people got upset because of the first two reasons.
 
And then the vocal minority of people, so much blinded by hate towards nazi that they see nazi everywhere regardless of context, began to rage and they still do.
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@Clear Vision
 
Yeah this basically summarizes things so far.
 
Worth nothing perhaps is also that a lot of the upset currently also has to do with the lack of transparency and communication on part of site staff, stuff like, staff acting condescendingly towards users in regards of all this, admins and mods stepping on each others toes and saying and doing contradicting stuff, etc, which has led to an overall lack of trust and people leaving regardless of what is being done or happening.
 
Rumors and suspicions are afloat and people have the impression that this wasn’t really planned out or discussed with staff at all, that there is strange back and forth division and infighting, and that a bunch of mods have absolutely no idea what they are doing and are kind of just acting on their own accord.
 
Right now a lot of people aren’t entirely sure where this is leading or what staff is actually planning to do or what.
Clear Vision
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@p0nyguy  
Yeah, I’d say that’s right. Hopefully I was able to give you a good idea of what is going on.
 
 
@Background Pony #9137  
When it comes to the people who are against Aryanne, I feel like they jumped to that conclusion because they didn’t take the time to step back and fully evaluate the situation first before saying anything. You don’t have to be correct 100% of the time, we’re humans and make mistakes or poor judgements. All I want is for people to not be so emotional and to show that they’ve considered both sides of a debate before sharing their opinion. It would have definitely resulted in things not being escalated to the point that we’re currently at.
 
Before any of you say “whether Nazis are bad or not shouldn’t be up for debate”, anyone who falls into the first two categories I mentioned will straight up tell you that both Nazis who were a part of Nazi Germany and Neo-nazis today are bad without hesitation. However, we’re talking about the use of it in artwork set and based on a fictional universe. Yes, art can be used to spread a message but I think we need to assess how something is being used first rather than just blanket banning everything as a “solution”
 
Blanket banning achieves very little despite being easy to implement.
 
 
@ManualReplica  
I forgot about that, but that is true and also something I’m concerned about as well. I haven’t been keeping up with this too much as I’ve previously said, but I want to know what on earth made the mods change their minds so quickly. Something else that I forgot to mention is that it didn’t even take them a day to go from Aryanne being okay (for the second time after her being okay originally), to her not being okay for the second time. In fact I don’t even think it was 6 hours. What is going on with Derpi’s management?!
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@ManualReplica  
@Clear Vision  
Regarding mods not being in the decision making process, it’s 100% confirmed, not just a rumor.  
https://www.derpibooru.org/forums/meta/topics/an-announcement-from-derpibooru-s-staff?post_id=4844570#post_4844570  
Whether Parasprite was consulted is unclear, but give their reaction in that same thread i’d say it’s unlikely.  
Given that TSP is the only one that could overrule Parasprite in this instance by virtue of being site-owner, the only thing that’s certain is he and Blossomforth are involved, everything else being hearsay.
Amm
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@Clear Vision  
To add to this, hilariously the DNPs submitted for the pro-censorship side were mostly of accounts that had no art on the site, weren’t artists, or had stopped drawing ponies years and years ago. They weren’t actually part of the community, they were just gathered from Twitter randos.
 
In the end the pro-censorship DNPs affected 1/7th the content of the anti-censorship DNPs.
Muridae

@Clear Vision
 
@p0nyguy
 
I think I can help clarify things a little more; I was lurking during much of last night’s thread blowup.
 
First, it should be noted that they did not go right back to “Aryanne is not okay”; that’s a bit of an overreaction. Granted, it’s an understandable overreaction, but an overreaction none the less. Charitably, Blossom’s big post on the topic last night seems like an effort to make things clearer that somewhat backfired - and while the thread moved far, far too quickly for most to catch it or take it to heart, the replies which followed answering questions made a few things clear:
 
At the moment, the rules are unchanged from where they were a ways back. They are not reinstating the initial changes related to BLM that spurred this whole thing, nor are they banning all Nazi imagery nor all communist imagery nor all jokes nor satire nor references, nor are they banning users (except for one particular drama llama who got the ban hammer dropped on him for doxxing). They are explicitly trying not making big rules changes without community input, but they will be trying to more actively and consistently enforce the rules they already have regarding this. The fetish porn is safe, as is Commie Glimmer and Aryanne. They will be more active in enforcing Rule 0 regarding things that are blatantly hateful, but that was already in place. They will also be more clearly enforcing Rule 4 - which is to say, if it’s not blatantly hateful, filter it.
 
Now, @Clear Vision, you wanted to know what made the mods change their minds so quickly. If I had to guess, it’s a matter of pure volume. We can’t see it on user-end, but apparently the anti-censorship movement DNPs were outnumbered in hours by the anti-Nazi DNPs, and it looks like Blossom felt the need to clarify that they are not endorsing Nazism, nor other forms of hate, and that they already have rules against that stuff.
 
Meanwhile, the mods are stressed right the heck out. Like, all of them. And it was great to see a measure of sympathy for the mods in that thread, even if it came with a dose of “brought this on yourselves”. Give them a bit to recover; nothing big is changing, they’re not endorsing the Nazis or the Commies or whatever, they’re not censoring all images.
 
Basically while folks are still taking this personally and others think everything is burning down, it’s just another day on the internet. In short:
 
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DRCrai

My two cents is this is just a cluster and in a month or two everything is just going to go back to normal and nothing really is going to happen in the long run at this point. Besides the thing, people complain about have been around for so long and now everyone is losing their minds. Plus the mods keep saying if you see something that breaks site rules report it. Like why is it so hard to do that?
Clear Vision
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@Amm  
To add to this, hilariously the DNPs submitted for the pro-censorship side were mostly of accounts that had no art on the site, weren’t artists, or had stopped drawing ponies years and years ago. They weren’t actually part of the community, they were just gathered from Twitter randos.
 
If that is true, then that is just completely idiotic, at least for the people who weren’t even artists to begin with. That also just makes me believe that this whole DNP thing is just to encourage herd mentality. It’s only an effective means of protest for the people that actually have influence, either through having a large follower count, being well-known for producing high quality art or both. That’s why I decided not to post a DNP in favour of either side because I really don’t have that much influence at all and I really don’t need to add to the staff’s workload right now.
 
 
@Muridae  
Thanks for the further clarification! I had no idea the DNP waiting list is now days, and might even turn into weeks long. I just hope for the sake of the mods that most of it isn’t just spam requests from people who aren’t even artists…
ManualReplica
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@p0nyguy
 
Oh.  
No, nothing is going to happen to derpibooru my dude.
 
Sorry to give you a tangent here, but the overwhelming majority of users are completely indifferent to either side, and have probably not even seen or really been aware of anything going on. What you are seeing are the more vocal elements of both sides expressing dissent over site rules and staff conduct, and over a subject (tag) that majority of people probably don’t even know exists since it’s not something you just find willy nilly on a random tuesday afternoon.
 
Like if you go to the main page right now and just look at new uploads or the trending section you’ll see plenty of artists who aren’t even involved in any of this and who either just don’t care or are indifferent to whats going on, these are the kinds of people who aren’t going to react at all really unless something super major that directly impacts their ability to use the site happens.
 
Since the conversation right now is revolving around a tiny tag (nazi) that virtually no one actually frequently draws for, as well as a variety of politics related tags to some extent (that people also never really draw or care for or engage with) this means that it’s just kind of whatever for them.
 
This is true even for users here who aren’t artists, followers and so on, they are not here to discuss or concern themselves with politics and discussions, they do not follow people based on their principles, opinions and all that, they just want to look at ponies and porn. It’s not like you honestly give much of a fuck about the people and politics of Pornhub or iFunny or whatever either.
 
So in this regard don’t like, get the impression that this is some kind of intense 50% of the entire fandom vs 50% of the entire other half when it’s actually closer to maybe 5% vs 10% at best.
 
Pro-censorship side filing DNP’s and leaving isn’t particularly impactfull, since a fat chunk of those users either haven’t drawn for the fandom in forever, don’t actually use derpibooru or stopped using it ages ago, or consist largely of artists with less than 50 images to their tag. You’d probably not even realize these people are gone, given that a lot of them don’t really have an active presence.
 
Anti-censorship side is larger and more involved in the fandom, but even then, it’s not everyone.  
While “our” side (kind of obligated to say this given that I threw my name in the hat) has significantly more content, it’s not like the site is going to spontaneously evaporate even if 100% of us decide to stop using it.
 
IIRC, I think according to the people downloading archives and keeping track of this, that in total, if we are including every artist that has DNP’d on both sides, we’re talking about maybe 100k images in total. This sounds like a lot, and it is, but not in the context of the sites 2 million+ images.
 
Even if 100% of both sides fuck off from the site, those who follow us (any of us) would kind of just end up using derpibooru in parallel with wherever we happen to end up, because derpibooru has other content and is still a convenient and easy to browse archival site.
 
Regardless of what actually happens or whether anyone leaves or not, Aryanne will still exist, old content will still probably remain given that derpibooru usually doesn’t apply rules retroactively, pro-censors own drop in the ocean political oriented stuff wont be more or less engaged with or liked/disliked than before any of this happened, staff will still have to deal with spammy and rule breaking shitlords forever and ever, secret invisible nazis will still be secret invisible nazis with exactly the same influence or lack of influence as before.  
People will still complain and whinge about tags they don’t like, be they fetishes or politics, and as usual if anyone gets what they want they generally push for more and more until told no.
 
Articles will occasionally still be written about alleged nazi problems in the fandom - by outsiders - or whatever else low effort journalists happen to pick out during a dry news week, derpibooru will be mentioned in these regardless of what staff does and whether or not Aryanne content is still on site.
 
Majority will remain completely unaffected and uncaring either way, staff is still going to be shit on and smugly pretend like this was some inevitable thing that couldn’t possibly had been avoided by staying quiet and not rocking the boat.
 
So y’know, don’t worry about it, site itself isn’t going anywhere.  
Keep an eye on like, specific artists you like though, if derpibooru is the only platform you get your content from, since there might be a chance that you lose track of them if they delete all their content.
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aperture_tech
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@p0nyguy  
I think that the site can recover from this, so long as the anti-censorship people who filed DNP requests undo those. At the very least, they didn’t take their art down. They were mostly still active in the fandom, so I think had they been lost it would have been a greater sting.  
The pro censorship people are largely out of the fandom, and have not drawn for some time and instantly filed for deletion as well as DNPs. I don’t think they will come back, because they have long left the fandom behind. I’m sure some even used this as an excuse to virtue signal and to erase a previous affiliation with MLP, because now they are trying to market to furries. Some might eventually return, but a some have already announced they aren’t coming back, because they threw a tantrum the second that the admins said they were walking back a controversial decision.
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@p0nyguy  
Oh, some artists will absolutely come back. Likely the whole anti-censorship crowd if it’s finally decisively confirmed that censorship won’t be enacted, the ones out of pro-censorship crowd who were coerced into it with nazi boogeyman instead of drinking the kool-aid, and likely some twittermites (fucking thank you show staff for the best name of any MLP critter ever) too once they find out that maybe furries don’t like them either and it’s not fun to be sitting within an isolated community of basic bullies.
Barhandar
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@aperture_tech  
Some were still drawing pony for pony (Dawnfire, Aponty), some were drawing pony for profit (amarynceus, goat-train, crabapple), some were drawing pony because it’s easy, especially when you consider Mr. Google Images Whisk Man to be a good artist, and drawings of cartoon ponies can’t resist your filthy words being put in their mouth (dilarus’s 1925 mouthpieces).
 
But yeah, quite a lot of them (acesential, longinius, braeburned, couch “My content is not for bigots and bootlickers” crusader) are basically furries.
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