Regarding Our Stance on Censorship

First I want to say that as head of the site I apologize for the mess we’ve created and the sense of whiplash many of you will likely have from the rapid changes. In an attempt to curtail the spreading of stuff very much against the message of the show and community inclusiveness, we took the wrong approach and applied censorship without the proper regard for freedom of expression, and this was wrong. We have listened to your concerns regarding policing hate speech and have taken it to heart.
 
Effective immediately we are removing the recently added rules and will not be considering political ideology or beliefs when evaluating if content is compliant with the rules. While we don’t necessarily endorse any specific content or viewpoint, we are a large public-facing site that chooses to not censor content that we disagree with, simply because it may be distasteful. Low quality/low effort content that is simply for trolling/baiting will still be handled by mod discretion as it was before.
 
One of the most fundamental rules of this booru is that users should be excellent towards each other. Balancing that with hosting art can be a hard balance to do, and we apologize for when we’ve been too heavy-handed, or allowed too much and thus made things not excellent for users. We have heard numerous concerns regarding targeted harassment and hate speech; we affirm that this is unacceptable behavior. We will work to ensure a more consistent enforcement of these rules to ensure that this rule shines through our actions.
 
Over the next few days we will be restoring posts that were removed during the ban, as well as any force filtering that was applied.

@Parasprite  
So, this means that for example, nazi content supporting their behaviour will be what exactly? I do honestly wonder. Thus far things like Aryanne have not been deleted on the basis of not supporting nazism, but allowed due to aryanne just being a character that is a nazi. I know, i might not be making a lot of sense but im wondering if nazi content, racist content, and general hateful content will be allowed or deleted under rule 0 or other related rules.

To clarify, i support the site being as it was originally, considering it was going nicely then.

Too late, you guys have broken the trust with your users over the last several days by being aggressive or quiet

I want to believe this. I really do. But we’ve been beaten on pretty hard.

@Parasprite  
Will you remove the mods that were troublesome to the community during this mess?  
Is there any guarantee at all that you won’t have another kneejerk in a year or two you can give us?  
Will you implement an audit page so that all admin actions have full transparency?  
 
Will you have any form of rotating staff to prevent people getting too used to being in charge and it getting to their heads?  
Will you make it possible to see mod-erased messages without having to go off-site?
 
Just what of the last week has given you any reason to trust you at all? What?  
The situation here isn’t just you kneejerked. The situation here is you’ve slowly established a system, for several years now, that gave you the confidence to do this. By reverting the hurrdurr hunt the nazees rules, you didn’t fix the rules. You just reverted them to the previous stage of frog boiling because you realized the heat raised too hard this time.  
Do we even have any idea of where the patreon bucks go to? Is there any accounting done on that that we can see? A site of this scale can’t cost more than two or three hundred dollars to host.

So, where is Smiling at during all this since he’s both quiet and ghosting off the staff list.

Hahahahahahahahahaha
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4

@Cammera  
This is the most well thought out, reasoned response to our disbelief of the sudden change of heart we will ever get.

This is good news overall, but it’s going to take a while before people will be willing to trust the mod team again.

@Jinx  
Nazi pones will not be deleted for the sole reason of them being Nazis.
 
@Xppp1  
Trust takes time to build but can be destroyed in a glance. We have absolutely broken the trust of users but I think this is still a step in the right direction.

@Parasprite  
Well, obviously. The question is whether or not hateful posts, specifically made for the purpose of promoting Nazism, racism, or otherwise hateful groups, will be deleted or not.

Trust as been broken too much that i honestly say we should still have alternate sites. Who says they are being genuin with this? Who says they wont try to pull thiss off again in a few months once things calm down so it wont get too much attention?

Thank you.
 
Also fuck you.

@Parasprite  
Please answer to my previous post.  
And on purpose, just talking for myself but I also want the BLM shadowban system to be gutted completely. It was the moment you went too far at all and it has no place in a site for the sharing of art that we’re suddenly not allowed to point out that badly drawn art is badly drawn art and we don’t like it, regardless of its political leaning.  
Don’t implement goddamn code to play favorites.

@Parasprite  
That’s a somewhat vague answer. Are you explicitly saying that this will be reverted to the previous standing where Aryanne is free to be posted?  
How can anyone be sure your word be trusted when at least one moderator has been repeatedly and poorly lying to the userbase? Will members of the moderation team receive any type of reprimand for poor behavior such as that and the recorded instances of unfair moderation?

epic

A lot of immediately negative responses to a positive announcement.
 
Thank you for stepping up and responding to concerns regarding freedom of expression. It does mean a lot and as others and even you stated, it will take time to normalize again if it even can. I do hope so, rebuilding from scratch is a pain.
 
All this said, alternate sites will no doubt continue to be built up, and this is a good thing. I should imagine even staff here will agree with this. Backups are a necessity for everything from simple files to backups of entire communities so to speak. Ensuring one wrong move can’t destroy something that’s been built up for years is vital.
 
To those out there developing the alternate sites, thank you for your hard work and I will do what I can to contribute to any and all of them as I can.
 
Really I think most people just wanted to see derpibooru return to the relatively stable way its been for years now, and I do hope this is what this means. If so, thank you for listening to the many artists who voiced their concerns and other users who did the same.

Dont let your guards down yet people.

@Parasprite  
Any response on mods/admins pretending to not be mods/admins while still having the powers of a mod/admin and not being on the staff list?

@Background Pony #6A31  

This is a solid step in the right direction. Nice work.

@Parasprite  
While I find this too good to be true, in the event it’s genuine I thank you and the rest of the staff.

@Background Pony #8F0D  
Derpy resigned temporarily, actually.