Well, it happened, as it inevitably does with most half-assed, over-corporatized comic sites. Tapas decided that, because it's having trouble staying in the Apple app store, they're banning any kind of nudity – which they were okay with when they started, as long as it wasn't sexual.

Funny how that keeps happening: an unscrupulous profiteer decides to superficially and very temporarily support creative expression, then inevitably decides that they really just want endorsement from their corporate overlords. How unique.

They also often don't seem to learn from the history lessons that adult creators inevitably do. Sites that do that (and it's a by-the-numbers progression I called years ago) inevitably either fade in popularity and disappear, quietly shuttered after years of puttering along in peripheral obscurity, or they're bought and sold so many times that it's just a name.

I'm glad The Duck remains one of the very few places online to maintain creative freedom. It's just always a point of absolute frustration at stupid, ignorant, hateful people who all do exactly the same thing, but think they're special somehow, none of which admit that all they're in it for is money. They do not care one fig about anyone's creative expression.

I even did a video which I posted not 48 hours ago on this very thing!

Sorry to vent. It's not like I'm surprised; like I said, I called this years ago. It's just especially vexing that I can remember talking to one of the founders of the company and the site, back when it all began, and before I went there and posted a single page, I made sure he was okay with non-sexual nudity, because I absolutely wasn't going to excise that from my work.

I should've never even thought about censoring anything, ever. This is what it always, inevitably gets us: a loss of hosting and zero support, because there are “countless other places out there where you can do that”. But there aren't.

I've grumbled about this before, as well. Once a site goes corporate, it's just a matter of time before it goes all “Disney Land.” There's no point blaming the individuals and personalities at play; it's inevitable due to the built-in incentive structures at play. It's just not worth it to be offensive, to make waves, to stick your head above the parapet. They don't want grief from interest groups, or payment processors, or bad press. So the selection pressure is always to be increasingly beige and unremarkable.

Yes, it really does no good looking at the individuals involved, because they've ceased to be individuals anyway; they're just going through the same motions that countless others have, exactly the same way, with exactly the same flimsy attempt at justification to themselves. They might as well make it into a ritual, at this point, because it's as easy to call step by step.

It's revolting to me, especially as so much of it is trying to basically legislate their particular brand of “morality”, if not formally, then de facto. They hide our work from search results. They deny us payment options because they insist on conflating – completely inaccurately – anything adult with everything illegal. It's in there, down to the phrasing they use on their asinine terms of service.

I hate it, I've always hated it, and I will never support or cooperate with it. It's just sad that, all but twenty years after I went professional in this field and medium, you still have the same morons and assholes doing the same exact stunts. And all it accomplishes is that it makes new creators reluctant to push any boundaries, or even to do something as mild as nudity!

I've posted my work on Tapas, but I find the site and their creator programs a bit creepy. When I go there I feel like I'm in that movie with Ewan McGregor (can't remember the name) where everyone is dressed in white, living in a weird compound and hoping to be chosen to go to ‘the island’, but they don't realise they are really clones, waiting for their organs to be harvested.

That sounds like a spin on Parts: The Clonus Horror!

But yeah, it feels that way, and has always felt that way, to me too. It didn't help that they kept requiring things from creators, more and more, that would be only used on their site, with their dimensions and their requirements. It's always a little suspicious there.

Ironscarf wrote:
I've posted my work on Tapas, but I find the site and their creator programs a bit creepy. When I go there I feel like I'm in that movie with Ewan McGregor (can't remember the name) where everyone is dressed in white, living in a weird compound and hoping to be chosen to go to ‘the island’, but they don't realise they are really clones, waiting for their organs to be harvested.

I think that movie was called “The Island”.

I mirror at Tapas too, and I got a letter a year or so ago that my comic WM won't be appearing in the mobile version, or the itunes version or some such thing, because it's too violent and it has nazis in it. Meh.

EVERYONE!
Watch hushicho's video. he has a really cool voice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaS-NfYDlBY&feature=youtu.be

Wow! I was wondering why the video suddenly got a bunch of views. Thank you very much for your kind words, and thank you too for watching my extemporaneous video! I'm humbled and grateful for your kindness. Thank you so much for the support.

A matter of time, like you said. I've been saying for years that corporations are not your friends, and when we let corporations decide what comics are worth seeing and ones that aren't we lose something special. Tapas might have a rounded, friendly aesthetic, but it's not your friend as a creator…

hushicho wrote:
Wow! I was wondering why the video suddenly got a bunch of views. Thank you very much for your kind words, and thank you too for watching my extemporaneous video! I'm humbled and grateful for your kindness. Thank you so much for the support.

You earned a subscriber. >:)

And here's another one👍 Way to go, Hushicho👍

Once upon a time I wanted my comic to go to Marvel or to Cartoon Network. But when I discovered that I could lose all of my rights to my own chaarcters…and be booted from my own creation that I've spent a DECADE creating, I said no.

In addition of not being creative by not pushing bounderies is boring as hell. BORING! Who wants to sit through all of that bullcrap? Not me. So, I'm just gonna stay independent.

And now these sites are banning nudity. Come the fuck on!

I considered Tapas as well as other hosts and rejected them after a thorough reading of the terms and conditions. I knew from the legal language they weren't about supporting creators or freedom of content and that they'd slap any restrictions on things when they felt the need as well as looking the other way and winking at other possibly objectionable content.

So I guess having a wife that's a legal secretary came in handy again.

I'm grateful not only for the very appreciated subscriptions, but also for people talking about this in a much more wide-reaching podcast and talking about it here on the site! It's so important to me to get people talking about this and realizing that it happens, because so often they don't.

And it's most often us adult-oriented creators who end up learning the lesson, and everyone else not figuring it's their problem (or sometimes even realizing that it's a problem at all) and ending up completely disenfranchised eventually and inevitably.

It's really a shame. And as MegaRdaniels said, these big companies don't really care about their creators or their readers. They just want something to cash in with, and as long as they can get that, they're satisfied. Few if any of them really ever think about the long-term.

I just really hope that more people can understand that this really is the landscape for us, and we are the future of sequential art. We will always have people trying to censor and silence our voices, and they don't really care about art or the voices of minorities or anyone they don't care to acknowledge the existence of. If it coincidentally gets them some cash, they're cool with tolerating our existences. If it doesn't, or if it even potentially demands something of them, they hate us like any other hateful company.

I mirror at Tapas and can receive up to a mighty 4 or so views per comic. I suspect half of those views is me checking to see if there are any views.

I have a Tapas account, from 2018 I believe and have it a bit forgotten. But I really don't like the site, one of this days I'll delete it or at least delete whatever pages I've upload there.

On the bright side, this could bring a lot more readers/creators to The Duck.

Honestly I keep expecting to wake up to find furaffinity to pull a Tumblr and yank all the adult stuff because the corporate sponsor.

Silly, but that fear will always be there.

hushicho wrote:
If it coincidentally gets them some cash, they're cool with tolerating our existences. If it doesn't, or if it even potentially demands something of them, they hate us like any other hateful company.

Exactly. YouTube is the perfect case study here: if you're at all difficult for them then they punish you. Claims of copyright violations are your fault, you are absolutely guilty until you prove yourself innocent and even doing that is hard.

Services need to treat users more equally instead of as inferior.

I first started posting my web comix on Tapas. It was very different from the comic pages that I’m used to. One thing that I really liked was that Google really saw the comix posted on Tapas. I was also amazed at first about the Apple iOS software for viewing Tapas comics but in the last five years, the top four comix of my list are viewable, while the rest below were blackened out. I’m now good with a simple web browser.

I’ve read about the Smackjeeves buy-out here. Perhaps it’s dealing with similar deals.

The Smackjeeves postings

Also Tapas diversified, getting into novels. Their comics were a certain romantic style; not quite manga but fairly close to that. The Duck, and quite frankly a lot of other comic web sites have very diverse cartoon styles. I love pen and ink myself and I really like that this is okay on the Duck, and as an underground style cartoonist, I love that the Duck lets me post adult stuff.

Fuck 'em