# What happened to "We will not be limiting the current site features for users who do not choose to subscribe"?



## ieatbees123 (Nov 27, 2022)

High-res uploads aren't new, weren't paywalled, and really didn't need to be when this previous, much-better feature existed for well over a decade, for *free*. Yes, "feature." you really can't tell me that it's not one by now, after this much time and usage, AND the fact that the workaround was literally stated ON the upload page.





(Edit: Including ^this up here as well.)
In order to "enable" high-res image uploads for the public, all you had to do was nothing. That's it. Literally nothing.


https://imgur.com/YLVXt5g

But hey, why do what y'all are great at when instead, for a few quick hyped-up subscription sales, you could make an objectively worse (paywall tier included) version of what we had previously, AND break the promise of leaving current already-free site features unaffected in the process, am I right?

Ranting and seething aside, I really am curious though. I'd like to read any actual reasoning behind this promise-breaking paywalled downgrade and why you think it's a remotely acceptable/agreeable course of action, if any higher-ups reading this are willing to share. Like, genuinely. ^^


----------



## vickers (Nov 27, 2022)

They're probably just trying to cash in on the wave of twitter refugees. (and also scared for state of the servers... somebody's gotta pay for those if the userbase ends up doubling)


----------



## Deleted member 160111 (Nov 27, 2022)

I have a feeling that you no longer know what to find fault with. My submissions are now almost twice as large as before. I don't see a problem in increasing the resolution three times or more for subscribers. You have been living with a resolution of 1280*1280 all these years and it was fine. Do you want a resolution of 7000*7000? Why don't you use cloud storage and leave a link in your profile? I don't understand why you're looking for problems.
I used 47/50 folders. A subscriber can have 75. How unfair!


----------



## TyraWadman (Nov 27, 2022)

People were exploiting the higher res uploads (if thats the correct term?) in the past. It was never intended to be that way.


----------



## RestrainedRaptor (Nov 27, 2022)

I spy my journal up there... I already updated it.

I figured it was inevitable that they'd clamp down on this. I am surprised, however, that FA+ only upgrades image limits from 2K to 4K. Why not 8K?


----------



## Inferndragon (Nov 27, 2022)

RestrainedRaptor said:


> I spy my journal up there... I already updated it.
> 
> I figured it was inevitable that they'd clamp down on this. I am surprised, however, that FA+ only upgrades image limits from 2K to 4K. Why not 8K?


8k is still overkill though


----------



## fox_whisper85 (Nov 27, 2022)

TyraWadman said:


> People were exploiting the higher res uploads (if thats the correct term?) in the past. It was never intended to be that way.



Well they certainly didn't do anything to stop people from bypassing the horrible low res limit.



Eyleifr said:


> I have a feeling that you no longer know what to find fault with. My submissions are now almost twice as large as before. I don't see a problem in increasing the resolution three times or more for subscribers. You have been living with a resolution of 1280*1280 all these years and it was fine. Do you want a resolution of 7000*7000? Why don't you use cloud storage and leave a link in your profile? I don't understand why you're looking for problems.
> I used 47/50 folders. A subscriber can have 75. How unfair!


Totally not a condescending attitude at all.


----------



## TyraWadman (Nov 27, 2022)

fox_whisper85 said:


> Well they certainly didn't do anything to stop people from bypassing the horrible low res limit.


That's what this update fixed! (?) XD It was called an exploit for a reason!


----------



## fox_whisper85 (Nov 27, 2022)

TyraWadman said:


> That's what this update fixed! (?) XD It was called an exploit for a reason!



As someone who makes 4K art, this is baffling


----------



## ieatbees123 (Nov 28, 2022)

Again, really not sure why people are still calling this an "unintended" exploit when this line was literally ON the upload page until just recently.




(Edited the OP to include this fact.)

Still open to reading the reasoning behind this thinly veiled, money-grabby objective downgrade, btw. Again, I'm genuinely willing to listen here.



https://imgur.com/AIjfXmU

Optional, but I'd also love to learn why you felt the need to hide this thread. (Did I strike a nerve by calling out the hypocrisy, or...?)


----------



## Dragoneer (Nov 28, 2022)

We allowed the loophole to be used, but it was never intended to be a feature. 1280px was always the official cap. However, as time went on, the issue exacerbated and became progressively worse, and our storage requirements became extremely problematic as the file storage requirements doubled to tripled from where we expected.

We didn't mind it early on, but at some point the loophole usage became so common that years of planned additional storage were soaked up faster than anticipated.

Again, the site's limitations were always intended to be 1280x1280px, which I understand is no longer a desires web friendly resolution. It's vastly outdated, and a reason we updated it. We never promoted this option as a feature, nor was it ever intended. However, until such time we could roll out proper upgrades and high res support we allowed it.

I would love not to have caps, but the costs are prohibitive long term (at least at this time).

We vastly increased the default size with this update, and are monitoring and watching performance bandwidth, as well as stability. I would love to not have limits, and once we've had enough time to evaluate the limits we'll look into revisiting them. The reality is hosting the site, mass storage, stability, and bandwidth have very real costs. A lot of real costs. We spent nearly $20K upgrading our storage earlier this year, a cost we had not expected to shoulder the burden.


----------



## Inferndragon (Nov 28, 2022)

Probably doesn't help when you get some artists uploading 6-7 versions of the same piece art that has a few "Subtle" changes too.


----------



## GuffinDoesArt (Nov 28, 2022)

Wouldn't use of the "loophole" not have had an effect on actual storage use, though? The "loophole" didn't change the file size limit, it only lifted the resolution limit, so every image uploaded through use of the "loophole" still followed the website's file size restriction.

Also very disappointed with the high res paywall, especially since high res was always allowed and even officially accepted with that upload page screencap. Image resolution is not something that should be put behind a paywall for an art gallery website.


----------



## Dragoneer (Nov 28, 2022)

GuffinDoesArt said:


> Wouldn't use of the "loophole" not have had an effect on actual storage use, though? The "loophole" didn't change the file size limit, it only lifted the resolution limit, so every image uploaded through use of the "loophole" still followed the website's file size restriction.
> 
> Also very disappointed with the high res paywall, especially since high res was always allowed and even officially accepted with that upload page screencap. Image resolution is not something that should be put behind a paywall for an art gallery website.


Save a 6K PNG file with high detail vs the same image as JPG or even a more reasonable resolution. At higher resolutions the file sizes start to multiply greatly. We'd have to have multiple rules and size sets per file type.

File sizes drastically go up with resolution. 1280x1280 vs 2560x2560 is four times the amount of pixels and size. Now double that, and and four times more than 2560K.

File sizes start to balloon and grow, and with that the requirements to host and transmit them.

We don't want to have to paywall anything, but the costs to host the site still exist.

It's something we will monitor and review, especially as we have data usage. I'm not against lifting the caps further, but long term stability and storage are something we have to monitor.

Everything has a cost to it, and we have to try to find balance.


----------



## Flamingo (Nov 28, 2022)

ieatbees123 said:


> Again, really not sure why people are still calling this an "unintended" exploit when this line was literally ON the upload page until just recently.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Forum flagged it on its own. Probably imbedded image/age of account. Nothing nefarious.


----------



## QuicksandAndPalmtrees (Nov 28, 2022)

Seems fair to me. I wonder if images should be allowed anyway as long as they're under some file size limit, since file size is the bottleneck. It'd let people upload jpgs in large size rather than resizing it down for the site, at least. Jpgs at ~85% quality and above, the quality difference gets pretty subtle


----------



## fox_whisper85 (Nov 28, 2022)

Dragoneer said:


> Save a 6K PNG file with high detail vs the same image as JPG or even a more reasonable resolution. At higher resolutions the file sizes start to multiply greatly. We'd have to have multiple rules and size sets per file type.
> 
> File sizes drastically go up with resolution. 1280x1280 vs 2560x2560 is four times the amount of pixels and size. Now double that, and and four times more than 2560K.
> 
> ...



Can PayPal be trusted to use on a furry site though? Surely,. PP would ban accounts tied to potentially NSFW sites or get flagged by PP?  I'm wanting to sign up for FA+, but the fact PayPal has been rather...picky about furry/NSFW sites in the pass doesn't instill confidence in using them to pay for FA+, right?


----------



## GuffinDoesArt (Nov 28, 2022)

Dragoneer said:


> Save a 6K PNG file with high detail vs the same image as JPG or even a more reasonable resolution. At higher resolutions the file sizes start to multiply greatly. We'd have to have multiple rules and size sets per file type.
> 
> File sizes drastically go up with resolution. 1280x1280 vs 2560x2560 is four times the amount of pixels and size. Now double that, and and four times more than 2560K.
> 
> ...



Correct me if I'm misreading this response. You didn't really respond to my question about the "loophole", you just talked about how high resolution images means high file size, which isn't always true. If someone uploads an image that meets the file size requirements, it shouldn't matter what the resolution of the image is, because the file already has its file size, which meets the requirements. The only way I can see submissions gaining an unreasonable amount of file size after being uploaded would be if FA is converting uploaded images to different file types behind the scenes and bloating the file size due to bad compression or conversion (I'm guessing that's what you were saying in your response, you didn't really mention _why_ you were comparing PNGs and JPGs, or how file size increase related to that). If that's the case, then I'd like to know if that's something that would be fixed in the future, since storing bloated versions of a small file size submission seems like a huge storage issue that would take up a lot more server space than is needed, especially if the resolution caps are pushed further in the future.



Dragoneer said:


> We'd have to have multiple rules and size sets per file type.



This also seems very easy to implement. I know other art gallery websites have separate restrictions for image types.


----------



## ben909 (Nov 28, 2022)

i thought they said "core site features " not "site features " posting or faving something is a core feature, posting at a higher resolution is not necessarily a core feature


----------



## Inferndragon (Nov 28, 2022)

Probably people posting "Reminders" probably doesn't help with the bandwidth uploading costs...
Since it is usually posting the same image over and over again.

Maybe implimenting a system that literally does a reminder instead without people uploading another image to add into operating costs if that is the case?


----------



## Smityyyy (Nov 28, 2022)

If I read the update correctly… is the blacklist feature only for premium users?


----------



## ben909 (Nov 28, 2022)

Smityyyy said:


> If I read the update correctly… is the blacklist feature only for premium users?





			https://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/rumour-on-tag-and-block.1682481/#post-7367367


----------



## Smityyyy (Nov 28, 2022)

ben909 said:


> https://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/rumour-on-tag-and-block.1682481/#post-7367367



Thank you. The update message worded it a bit confusingly tbh.


----------



## fox_whisper85 (Nov 28, 2022)

I didn't seem to get any answer regarding the fact FA + uses PayPal and PayPal are notorious for banning accounts tied to sites and other NSFW related activities. How is this NOT a concern worth addressing?  I want to support FA, I want to sign up for FA+, but if PP is going to go full douche and ban accounts, what are we supposed to do?


----------



## luffy (Nov 28, 2022)

fox_whisper85 said:


> Can PayPal be trusted to use on a furry site though? Surely,. PP would ban accounts tied to potentially NSFW sites or get flagged by PP?  I'm wanting to sign up for FA+, but the fact PayPal has been rather...picky about furry/NSFW sites in the pass doesn't instill confidence in using them to pay for FA+, right?


PayPal knows we're using them.


----------



## fox_whisper85 (Nov 28, 2022)

luffy said:


> PayPal knows we're using them.



Okay, that's fair, then I'll feel better about signing up for FA+


----------



## RestrainedRaptor (Nov 28, 2022)

Of course, PayPal can choose to end its contract with a company at any time for any reason, and many other sites serving adult content have been destroyed by that in the past. We'll have to wait and see.


----------



## Deleted member 162282 (Nov 29, 2022)

RestrainedRaptor said:


> Of course, PayPal can choose to end its contract with a company at any time for any reason, and many other sites serving adult content have been destroyed by that in the past. We'll have to wait and see.


Yeah, but those many adult sites didn't have upstanding furry folk.


----------



## DragonSkyRunner (Nov 29, 2022)

Dragoneer said:


> File sizes drastically go up with resolution. 1280x1280 vs 2560x2560 is four times the amount of pixels and size. Now double that, and and four times more than 2560K.
> 
> File sizes start to balloon and grow, and with that the requirements to host and transmit them.
> 
> We don't want to have to paywall anything, but the costs to host the site still exist.



Except resolution in practice is arbitrary to filesize.

Hard drives cost money, server hardware cost money, bandwidth and hosting cost money, no one's going to reasonably argue the point that those costs don't need to be covered somehow. Which, a limit on the filesize of uploads and paywalling going higher is a genuine tangible knock-on to those hosting costs.
Resolution however? No. More pixels =/= a direct 1:1 increase in the amount of data required. A flat colour cartoony drawing can be compressed FAR more without any loss, and thus get away with a higher raw resolution for crispier linework (_Especially_ if the image is hard edged aliased artwork. Heck, trying to compress that kind of image usually _INCREASES_ the filesize.), than a digitally painted image with brushstrokes everywhere, effectively creating difficult to compress noise that would necessitate flat out either destroying the image with a high .jpg compression level or shrinking the resolution.

The stinging point I see in the immediate is this arbitrary restriction on raw resolution (FA+ or otherwise) makes certain kinds of uploads flat out impossible. Comic pages at resolutions high enough to get a decent amount of detail per-panel, sequences that are not particularly tall but get _*wide*_ to have every step of the sequence in a single image, and long 'n skinny tutorials that could easily be 10,000+ pixels tall but only a few thousand wide that's largely made up of text with interspersed image examples. All three of those examples have one thing in common: Because comic pages and sequences are usually flat colour affairs with minimal shading, and tutorials are 80% text for the entirety of their height, they compress down with minimal or even no detail loss incredibly well, but they *need* the raw resolution to resolve the detail they do have. Tutorials especially, can't read text on a "2K" or "4K" shrunk version of a image that's meant to be 12,000 pixels tall.

So as a solution that actually fixes the issue (reducing server costs) without being arbitrary:
- Remove any resolution limits _entirely_.
- Restrict file upload size for non FA+ users to 5mb.
- Make the limit for FA+ users 10-15mb.

In parsing through my own renders and saved artwork, up to 5mb seems to be the sweet spot of "You can get a reasonable amount of detail/information for many kinds of images without the the image being unwieldy.", while 10-15mb is the point where you can get _properly F###HUGE _with the detail without needing to compress it into a complete mess, but beyond that is straight up diminishing returns.
If nothing else, not having any arbitrary resolution limit but a tight limit on filesize means users who care about image quality will be encouraged to go out of their way to optimize how their image is compressed before uploading, which would absolutely have the net benefit of getting to the end goal of reducing hosting costs.


----------



## Deleted member 162282 (Nov 29, 2022)

DragonSkyRunner said:


> So as a solution that actually fixes the issue (reducing server costs) without being arbitrary:
> - Remove any resolution limits _entirely_.
> - Restrict file upload size for non FA+ users to 5mb.
> - Make the limit for FA+ users 10-15mb.


This^


----------



## quoting_mungo (Nov 29, 2022)

Tbh I think _some_ kind of pixel dimension size cap is beneficial in the vast majority of cases. I’ve seen people upload fuzzy photos with that low-light noise you get especially in older/cheaper digital (including phone) cameras at full resolution. At that point FA didn’t even have fit-to-window code, so it made the submission page pretty obnoxious to load and navigate.

I’ve also seen huge canvases with low-detail, flat-color characters, and high-resolution scans of full pages of paper with a character taking up at most 1/9 of the space.

All of those are undeniable wastes of pixels. There isn’t sufficient detail to motivate those image dimensions. So what if they’re saved with high compression - at appropriate size and with appropriate cropping they’d still take up less space.

I believe that having a pixel dimension cap leads to more people pausing to think about whether they actually need that high resolution. And honestly? The portion of artists whose work has the detail to motivate those really high resolutions is not _that_ big.

I don’t think it benefits viewers at all to let people upload a file like 10k pixels wide (that needs to be viewed at or close to that size) and more than a single screen space tall - horizontal scrolling is a pain in the ass at the best of times and when paired with vertical scrolling it’s just ludicrously user unfriendly.

I’m not saying anything as to what the final limitations should be, but I do think that making it a complete free-for-all wouldn’t be a good idea.


----------



## DragonSkyRunner (Nov 29, 2022)

That sounds like a "Website doesn't format images on the post page properly" problem, not a problem with the image itself. It's standard practice on, basically any other art or image hosting website _ever_ to, in some capacity, have the image that loads in be formatted to fit the screen nicely, with the option to click the image to see the full resolution/size version of it, if applicable.
The website shouldn't be dictating the technical intent of the image, short of where it actually matters to operating cost to the website (the aforementioned upload size limit). If someone wants to post a full rez point-and-shoot camera photo, they shouldn't have to shrink the resolution down because some people doesn't like having to deal with large resolutions. And if other people don't know how to format their images properly, that's on them, not the website to dictate such things (outside of again, if it's a resource hog due to poor formatting).
Shouldn't have to make restrictions for _everyone_ _else_ because of those who don't understand how to make/format images properly.


----------



## Deleted member 162282 (Nov 29, 2022)

At the end of the day, it's only $0.16 per day, for what I believe is the highest traffic furry site out there? I'm just gonna pay it, so all my nasty art can scar people in high resolution. I get it, people are gonna hate this opinion, but I am always happy to pay a little for sites I enjoy.


----------



## drages (Dec 6, 2022)

fox_whisper85 said:


> Okay, that's fair, then I'll feel better about signing up for FA+


Paypal knows that Patreon uses it also at start and now they got huge banning/limiting content because of the pressure. They are just waiting the right time to ask FA to delete everything they don't want. This is how paypal kills many adult platforms. Paypal is just a timed bomb..


----------



## fox_whisper85 (Dec 6, 2022)

drages said:


> Paypal knows that Patreon uses it also at start and now they got huge banning/limiting content because of the pressure. They are just waiting the right time to ask FA to delete everything they don't want. This is how paypal kills many adult platforms. Paypal is just a timed bomb..



Gee, thanks, I hate it.


----------



## JendaLinda (Dec 11, 2022)

I don't see a reason why FA+ users should be limited in image resolution. I agree with the file size limit. It should be up to the user to manage the peovided data budget. I could easily fit 10000x10000 pixel art into the file size limit.
So my suggestion is to remove image resolution restrictions for FA+ users, keepúing some reasonable file size limit. That may also convince more users to get FA+.


----------



## fox_whisper85 (Dec 11, 2022)

JendaLinda said:


> I don't see a reason why FA+ users should be limited in image resolution. I agree with the file size limit. It should be up to the user to manage the peovided data budget. I could easily fit 10000x10000 pixel art into the file size limit.
> So my suggestion is to remove image resolution restrictions for FA+ users, keepúing some reasonable file size limit. That may also convince more users to get FA+.



Also my grievances for PayPal pulling a douche move and banning accounts. Even if they "agreed" to not do it for FA, they still most likely will.


----------



## Frank Gulotta (Dec 11, 2022)




----------



## fox_whisper85 (Dec 11, 2022)

Frank Gulotta said:


>




Yeah pretty much.


----------



## JendaLinda (Dec 12, 2022)

fox_whisper85 said:


> Also my grievances for PayPal pulling a douche move and banning accounts. Even if they "agreed" to not do it for FA, they still most likely will.


Alright, if this is the concern, what solution would you suggest?

As I understand, the situation about upoloads was unsustainable. Some changes are necessary. However, high resolution images have legitimate use cases, so those should be allowed in some form.



quoting_mungo said:


> I’ve also seen huge canvases with low-detail, flat-color characters, and high-resolution scans of full pages of paper with a character taking up at most 1/9 of the space.
> 
> All of those are undeniable wastes of pixels. There isn’t sufficient detail to motivate those image dimensions. So what if they’re saved with high compression - at appropriate size and with appropriate cropping they’d still take up less space.


About the waste of pixels in hires, low detail images. Image compression in principe takes advantage of repeating information, so large areas of flat colors will actually result in relatively small file size.

Cropping scanned images is of course a good practice, that's no doubt.


----------



## fox_whisper85 (Dec 12, 2022)

JendaLinda said:


> Alright, if this is the concern, what solution would you suggest?
> 
> As I understand, the situation about upoloads was unsustainable. Some changes are necessary. However, high resolution images have legitimate use cases, so those should be allowed in some form.
> 
> ...



That's not the issue I was talking about, I'm talking about PayPal revoking Patreon users' accounts, banning payment methods, etc because of NSFW/furry artwork. How do we know they won't pull a similar dick move?   And then there's the issues of images getting compressed unnecessarily upon upload and the cramped UI design that had to be fixed by  CSS script commands that was "by design" otherwise.


----------



## TyraWadman (Dec 12, 2022)

fox_whisper85 said:


> That's not the issue I was talking about, I'm talking about PayPal revoking Patreon users' accounts, banning payment methods, etc because of NSFW/furry artwork. How do we know they won't pull a similar dick move?



That's because in Paypals TOS it states it doesn't support transactions for NSFW content. 
A lot of people don't read the fine print, it was never a secret.


----------



## JendaLinda (Dec 13, 2022)

fox_whisper85 said:


> That's not the issue I was talking about, I'm talking about PayPal revoking Patreon users' accounts, banning payment methods, etc because of NSFW/furry artwork. How do we know they won't pull a similar dick move?   And then there's the issues of images getting compressed unnecessarily upon upload and the cramped UI design that had to be fixed by  CSS script commands that was "by design" otherwise.


Both issues are related, so I wrote it in a single post. The "Update submission file" workaround was overused. It completely makes sense to create two tiers for uploads. It also makes sense to keep unlimited image resolution for paying users.

Speaking of Paypal, if it can't be trusted, are there any other payment methods available that work internationally? I don't remember, I have FA+ active at the moment.


----------



## fox_whisper85 (Dec 13, 2022)

TyraWadman said:


> That's because in Paypals TOS it states it doesn't support transactions for NSFW content.
> A lot of people don't read the fine print, it was never a secret.



You didn't answer the question. How in the ever loving hell is this "safe" to use for FA+? And yet the staff insists using FA+ with PayPal is safe, on a site, with NSFW/adult artwork. Yeah, that makes me feel so much better.


----------



## TyraWadman (Dec 13, 2022)

fox_whisper85 said:


> You didn't answer the question. How in the ever loving hell is this "safe" to use for FA+? And yet the staff insists using FA+ with PayPal is safe, on a site, with NSFW/adult artwork. Yeah, that makes me feel so much better.


Because it's a donation to help keep the site running, you aren't putting down money to a nsfw commission. Shinies are even acceptable and it mentions in the actual announcement that they consulted PayPal directly.

Look through the older announcement journals.

Most people who lose their PayPal accounts are knowingly trying to cheat their system and take payment for nsfw or accept payment in the form of donations to avoid the tax. That will result in getting your account banned.


----------



## fox_whisper85 (Dec 13, 2022)

TyraWadman said:


> Because it's a donation to help keep the site running, you aren't putting down money to a nsfw commission. Shinies are even acceptable and it mentions in the actual announcement that they consulted PayPal directly.
> 
> Look through the older announcement journals.
> 
> Most people who lose their PayPal accounts are knowingly trying to cheat their system and take payment for nsfw or accept payment in the form of donations to avoid the tax. That will result in getting your account banned.



I'm not opposed to helping to support the site, I just can't trust PayPal to not pull a dick move because some hidden policy or something.


----------



## CreachureComforts (Dec 13, 2022)

fox_whisper85 said:


> I'm not opposed to helping to support the site, I just can't trust PayPal to not pull a dick move because some hidden policy or something.


Okay, but do you have a payment alternative in mind who does the job better and/or is less biased against sites like FA?


----------



## fox_whisper85 (Dec 13, 2022)

CreachureComforts said:


> Okay, but do you have a payment alternative in mind who does the job better and/or is less biased against sites like FA?



No, I don't. can't blame me for being hesitant, can you?  Sheesh, excuse me for being hesitant.


----------



## Twopaw Tarnished-Silver (Dec 15, 2022)

quoting_mungo said:


> I’ve also seen huge canvases with low-detail, flat-color characters, and high-resolution scans of full pages of paper with a character taking up at most 1/9 of the space.



I clearly remember a_ lot_ of posts on the old Velan Central Library were along those lines; more or less exceptionally simple, poorly-scanned line drawings with their sole strength a solid scene or narrative between drawings, not unalike Rob Liefeld's work at a lower resolution, worse at attention to detail and quality of or skill at scanning. Many of them were drawn on what looked like three-ring lined notepaper or sheets of lime-hue division graph paper, not a few were photographed with what I assume was a digital camera of the era.

While that genera of extremely poor quality scans and draughtwork aren't anywhere near as common on FurAffinity in the last ten years' breadth of posted drawings that I've seen in searches, if you have particular niche interests and use syntax to that end with FA's native search engine you will find a lot of drawings that are not, shall we say, high-fidelity.

-2Paw.


----------

