The Perfect ART Website

[Poo]

today i was thinking about how much it sucks to post art online when it used to be such a fun experience. while art itself is still very fun to me, sharing it online has become such a hassle and interaction/viewers is basically next to nothing.

there's a ton of places where you can post art, but only a few of them will actually work for receiving any kind of views/interaction and even then they might not be Good views/interaction... all of the platforms where i have found success are becoming unusable by way of just the Nature of the site or usability of the site.

for example, twitter is really going down the shitter. it has been for years now but with recent developments and the way alt-right stuff is being actively promoted on there it makes me want to get away from it. instagram sucks because it's very unenjoyable to use, roasts image quality and it's full of 10 year olds.

like... WTF happened? once dA rolled out eclipse and that fiasco that happened last year people pretty much abandoned it. with one of the largest art platforms out of the game, people just sort of defaulted to posting art on twitter/ig. there's a lot of people who share to tiktok which is like.. How....

with dA falling on its face it feels like there's been a million and one art sites pop up that will be around for a few months before fizzling out and dying for whatever reason. so i'm just Thinking... what are some Key Elements that you think would make an art site good? are there any art platforms that fulfill these needs?

[miles]

there's a lot of people who share to tiktok which is like.. How....

WHAT.... NO WAY.... like on a video? whyy

with dA falling on its face it feels like there's been a million and one art sites pop up that will be around for a few months before fizzling out and dying for whatever reason. so i'm just Thinking... what are some Key Elements that you think would make an art site good? are there any art platforms that fulfill these needs?

I think out of any feature a website can have, the biggest thing that matters is just making people remember the website exists and being lucky enough that people actually decide to use it. There's probably some fucking incredible robust art website out there with all the kind of gallery organization I would want, but no one uses it.

Actually, something I just thought about that would make alt-websites better at growing would be some kind of built in cross-platform piracy. Like a few months ago on mastodon people were talking about "Nitter" as a way to view tweets without having to go to actual twitter, but it was literally just for either viewing a single linked tweet/thread or for scrolling through one persons profile. The way people were talking about it I thought it was going to be a fedi crossover thing that would make a dummy account that you could follow on mastodon that would cross-post people's stuff from twitter. It could have been how Twidere worked before twitter started shitting their pants re:their api, but not needing a specific android app for it.

So basically something kind of like that, but probably not as far as "you can straight up follow twitter users from our website". My initial thought was having an easy way to crosspost to/from this hypothetical new site that's more well-thought-out than the usual *Share* button that's been on every website for the last million years that no one uses because it always inserts some random text that makes the post look like bot generated spam. (at least that's my experience with it)

I think the problem is this general repeating timeline:

1. People want an alternative to twitter
2. "You should try Website X"
3. Eight people switch to Website X and make their 1st post
4. They reach the end of their timelines/search results for their interests within 2 minutes because the site does not have 30 million users yet
5. They go back to twitter to fulfill the social media scrolling urge
6. Three of those original 8 people remember to go to Website X again, and see even fewer posts since they already caught up with the entire history of their favorite tags/users
7. Eventually, most or all of them don't bother using Website X anymore; twitter isn't bad enough for most people to convince them to not use it

I think this cycle is breaking down as twitter is getting so outrageously bad. There's actually a consistent userbase on mastodon and even cohost. Unfortunately these sites are just chronological social media timelines, not art galleries.

[Poo]

WHAT.... NO WAY.... like on a video? whyy

yup.. they will post their process or sometimes just their art in the slideshow function that tktk has. idk how well it works in terms of engagement

youre soooo right about having something cross-platform. the only reason why i've stayed on twitter was because that's just where everyone is... if there was some way to achieve that then it would be so awesome.

and i think even if they are primarily social medias it could work if there was some kind of function for artists. like old twitter used to be somewhat usable if you were an artist, even facebook worked at one point for that type of thing but that was eons ago... there is a good middle ground somewhere

[miles]

youre soooo right about having something cross-platform. the only reason why i've stayed on twitter was because that's just where everyone is... if there was some way to achieve that then it would be so awesome.

I recently saw people on mastodon talking about an instance called bird.makeup that makes fake Bot users that represent a Twitter account, and mirrors their tweets to the instance. Here's a random account I found: https://bird.makeup/users/csmfht

You can't view the posts that have been mirrored on the bird.makeup website, but on my instance's account viewer this is what it looks like.

This is what I thought Nitter was supposed to be; a mirror of a Twitter account that can be followed on fedi. But with more indication that it isn't actually being monitored by the twitter account owner.


The admin of the instance does not heed removal requests from the twitter account owner, saying this:

Twitter sells data to anyone who wants them. You don’t own your tweets. People should delete their Twitter account if they are not comfortable with that

I have some thoughts about this, but one thing I've seen is people using this as an excuse to never use mastodon. Some people do not appreciate this app rehosting their content without their knowledge. I think at one point I would have agreed that it's wrong, but after my experiences with lost internet media I feel like any (non-exploitative) attempt to mirror public content is good. There are already thousands of scrapers grabbing everything to get clicks from google searches anyway, it is literally unavoidable (thinking about those hundreds of tumblr-post mirror sites that exist for who knows what reason)

Since people have a problem with this, I think a website that uses this cross-platform idea will have to do it in a different way that is way more obvious that the user isn't actually on-site. Like if you click on their username/icon it takes you directly to their twitter account instead of having a dummy-bot account on the site, and also make it visually obvious that it's a post from a different site. Maybe take away the ability to reblog/retweet as well?

But yeah either way lol if you want to use mastodon you can follow twitter accounts from it through bird.makeup (the OP will not see if you comment/RT obviously though)

I am wondering what was better about twitter in the past for artists? It feels like it's mostly the same from when I started in like 2016 feature-wise, just a worse culture mostly

*edit: i just followed an account using bird.makeup and they have this as the bio now:

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[worm]

they all have such unusable uis its no longer fun to browse around on deviantart because it looks like shit and also if you arent logged in it will constantly beg you to register an account. tumblr does this too. i cant just fucking look at someones blog anymore because when i scroll past a certain point it will prevent me from looking any further unless i log in or register. i dont know why everything is like this now like really hostile towards lurkers for no reason.

[worm]

people have tried so many times to make a new art website and the problem is 90% of artists are retards these days and will demand they not let people upload diaper fetish tiny toons until the webmaster eventually caves in and it becomes yet another sterile ""content" "platform"" for mediocre creatively bankrupt artists to post the 78th semi realism cottage core mushroom frog woman picture in a row to their "portfolio" . why is everyone with the skills and funds to start a new website some spineless doormat twitter teen who just lets the majority guilt them into doing whatever they want no matter what.

[worm]

i want a website that sprays asbestos powder out of the computer of anyone who uses the word "content" to describe their work anyone who calls the website a "platform"

[miles]

people have tried so many times to make a new art website and the problem is 90% of artists are retards these days and will demand they not let people upload diaper fetish tiny toons until the webmaster eventually caves in and it becomes yet another sterile ""content" "platform"" for mediocre creatively bankrupt artists to post the 78th semi realism cottage core mushroom frog woman picture in a row to their "portfolio" . why is everyone with the skills and funds to start a new website some spineless doormat twitter teen who just lets the majority guilt them into doing whatever they want no matter what.

I am curious about this, I know a lot of websites ban arbitrarily "morally wrong" content (by arbitrary I mean like they'll ban something random like necrophilia but not extreme gore). Trying to think of a userbase trying to change the site's content policy, I think I'm only familiar with Buzzly (which ended up differently, but was still handled in a brain dead baby way). I'm interested in hearing about other sites going through that and how it was handled if you know any offhand.

Unrelated, but I checked out inkblot and holy fuck that website is TERRIBLE to use. Just clicking on stuff and using the site feels like fucking awful. It's running some kind of webapp-html-processor framework that I have NEVER seen before and it runs like ASS... The css is really sloppy and inconsistent it's really a nightmare to look at and interact with.. I was seeing people recommending this site a lot and it feels like beef brain

image.png (20.17 KiB) Viewed 5045 times

I tried clicking on a picture and it says to me Login Now Login your account now! Useless as an art gallery, hostile to lurkers for no reason like you mentioned

[worm]

I am curious about this, I know a lot of websites ban arbitrarily "morally wrong" content (by arbitrary I mean like they'll ban something random like necrophilia but not extreme gore). Trying to think of a userbase trying to change the site's content policy, I think I'm only familiar with Buzzly (which ended up differently, but was still handled in a brain dead baby way). I'm interested in hearing about other sites going through that and how it was handled if you know any offhand.

those stupid "apps" with twitter accounts like uhh fuckin artfight where they made a stupid post about how they will ban you for things you did offsite. people have also been making like government petitions to get inkbunny 2 ban cub art for years lol its so funny

[worm]

artfight isnt an "app" but im sure inkblot and similar have been yelled at by twitter users to ban feral porn in fact i remember seeing replies telling them to ban furry art because it makes their portfolio look unprofessional

[devils]

Sheezy.Art is alright so far for me (surprisingly). I think the only setback is the community, but that really can't be helped since unfortunately a lot of artists online are very social-media brained/chronically online. Their rules on NSFW content make me feel insane, I kinda wish they'd ban every kind of porn because posting even slightly suggestive art there feels like walking on eggshells.

Buzzly is very badly optimized, but it does its job as well. I guess.

[Steakinthedaylight]

I literally just want a place to post ALL my art, that isn't only my personal website. There's always some sort of ban on something, usually human lolishota... and I just noticed there's a lot of art galleries for furries specifically. Which is probably the reason for my last point, hmm...

I'd like a website that is good to use for both the viewer and the artist. E621 is good for finding new art but has many problems when it comes to viewer-artist relationships, tagging for example. Then Inkbunny doesn't have that much of an issue there but it's much harder to get discovered.

I also think multi image uploads and a functioning blacklist are a must.