Topic: Sex Toy Advertisers (Category)

Look, I'm not an enthusiast in tagging specificity but can we please start now to use (Brand) as a category?

EG: Bad_Dragon_(Brand), Lovense_(Brand), HoneyPlayBox_(Brand)?

Rationale for this is basically to clarify that they are commercial, company-funded advertisements. Paid-for Disclosures are part of the legal framework in the US, that needs to be up-front and center to begin with in Animations in particular, but it's noteworthy that comics don't have this standard either. I'm not expecting us as a community to suddenly grow a sense of consumer ethics here, but there are law requirements artists should be starting to learn.

If these brands are going to invade our spaces, then we need to start demanding clarity and chasing them into the rigid legal structures of advertising law, period dot. This is enough of a problem now that two outside sex toy companies (read as: not even started or owned by furry fandom community members) are now muscling in and purchasing advertisement directly from "content creators". This circumvents adblocking and other forms of customized web experience, and I think personally it doesn't belong. But, allowing for it means appropriate tag hygiene, and this is going to become more of a problem if we don't all get nuked off the internet.

To reflect this increasingly evident change in the fandom's content creation community, I'm asking E621's community to consider the idea of a Brand Category distinct in the meta and listed above other categories; such as how "Disney" and other copyright holder companies are often given such special privileges. I also think copyright/trademark/etc holding brands like Disney, Pixar, Nintendo, etc should be clarified in this manner. Separate the brand from the rest of fandom identity at this level for clarity and to help drive home the point that artists are being paid for a service by larger company entities and not private individuals.

That's the thought I have personally, I hope the discussion is respectful here. We are increasingly allowing advertisements to dictate the terms of actual artwork itself now, and I think that means we need to mature our thinking about that relationship.

Thanks for your consideration.

[Jan 4, 2025] Update 1: My husband pointed out that E621 has a conflict of interest policy about hosting advertisements for other sex toy companies. I think this conversation is important for Bad Dragon as well? It's interesting as a consideration. https://e621.net/help/advertising

I agree but perhaps even just a simple "advertisement_(brand)" tag would be better as it would help blacklist them all.
The existing "advertisement" tag includes furry artists and their patreons etc which feels like an entirely different level of advertisement. I'm sure many people have different feelings towards actual artists advertising their own work vs brand integration.

I'm in complete agreement here.

zoop said:
The existing "advertisement" tag includes furry artists and their patreons etc which feels like an entirely different level of advertisement. I'm sure many people have different feelings towards actual artists advertising their own work vs brand integration.

It includes fictional advertisements as well, like these:

post #3960785 post #5855979

I agree that it ought to be split up.

what's the point? we already have the copyright category which already functions to denote brands.

zoop said:
I agree but perhaps even just a simple "advertisement_(brand)" tag would be better as it would help blacklist them all.
The existing "advertisement" tag includes furry artists and their patreons etc which feels like an entirely different level of advertisement. I'm sure many people have different feelings towards actual artists advertising their own work vs brand integration.

promotional_material already exists. we could probably alias a few more tags to it, like advertisement_(meta) or sponsored, but in concept, this tag already exists.

dba_afish said:
what's the point? we already have the copyright category which already functions to denote brands.

promotional_material already exists. we could probably alias a few more tags to it, like advertisement_(meta) or sponsored, but in concept, this tag already exists.

That promotional_material tag includes artist patreon/kofi/etc, I think it's worth separating these two categories.

One of the examples for promotional_material doesn't even have the links to the artist's crowdsource/donation/paysites present in the video itself, and only lists that in the description -- so that example isn't following the "Tag What You See" rule, as far as I understand it. If it's a Meta Tag, it also would get pushed to the bottom which defeats the purpose of what I'm suggesting.

We don't have to validate it with like 'legal requirements' but that's (in my eyes) a strong reason to consider the priority of denoting content as paid advertisements by brands, and perhaps even consider another tag for crowdsourced artists who are promoting their content and funding/payment platforms.

I would like to see ads from corporate brands, ads from individual artists and non-corporate artist collectives, and fictional ads to be separated and given their own tags; with an emphasis on corporate ads being put up at the top so users can quickly discern what the content is.

Right now with fictional content being lumped in with real ads, it's a bit of a clusterfuck.

posssauce said:
I would like to see ads from corporate brands, ads from individual artists and non-corporate artist collectives, and fictional ads to be separated and given their own tags; with an emphasis on corporate ads being put up at the top so users can quickly discern what the content is.

Right now with fictional content being lumped in with real ads, it's a bit of a clusterfuck.

I think minimum, this is the change that has to be made. "Fictional_Advertisement", "Brand_Advertisement", "Artist_Advertisement" might be a path forward, I think the category should be on top of the tag hierarchy so if someone is glancing, the see that right away. A text disclosure mandate could work here too, I suppose.

A new tag category isn't happening, especially not for this
The last category that was added was an absolute mess and took days to actually iron out and get working properly, and nothing about this warrants a whole new category

Blacklist the company tags if you don't want to see posts including their content

It is also in no way beneficial to the site to try to clamp down on brands doing some kind of advertising in posts, chances are those brands didn't pay to be on this site, they paid for twitter and just happened to end up here
Turning away those posts or forcing extra things just raises a barrier for no good reason

Splitting tags into more narrow definitions that would be more useful for blacklisting would definitely be beneficial, though

runawaydanish said:
so that example isn't following the "Tag What You See" rule, as far as I understand it.

TWYS does not apply strictly outside of the general category tags (it applies loosely within species & character, but otherwise TWYS basically doesn't exist outside of general tags)

runawaydanish said:
[Jan 4, 2025] Update 1: My husband pointed out that E621 has a conflict of interest policy about hosting advertisements for other sex toy companies. I think this conversation is important for Bad Dragon as well? It's interesting as a consideration. https://e621.net/help/advertising

It was specifically rejected internally while I was staff to delete posts advertising other sex toy companies because they are not paid advertisements within the site, so nothing there applies here

donovan_dmc said:
A new tag category isn't happening, especially not for this
The last category that was added was an absolute mess and took days to actually iron out and get working properly, and nothing about this warrants a whole new category

Blacklist the company tags if you don't want to see posts including their content

It is also in no way beneficial to the site to try to clamp down on brands doing some kind of advertising in posts, chances are those brands didn't pay to be on this site, they paid for twitter and just happened to end up here
Turning away those posts or forcing extra things just raises a barrier for no good reason

Splitting tags into more narrow definitions that would be more useful for blacklisting would definitely be beneficial, though

TWYS does not apply strictly outside of the general category tags (it applies loosely within species & character, but otherwise TWYS basically doesn't exist outside of general tags)

It was specifically rejected internally while I was staff to delete posts advertising other sex toy companies because they are not paid advertisements within the site, so nothing there applies here

I definitely only am bothering to mention the point about conflict of interest because I don't know the law here, so I assume BD and E6 staff had a conversation with a lawyer or someone more familiar with the requirements from orgs like FCC/FTC/ so-on and so forth. Me personally, it's the exact type of grey zone or gap in my understanding that makes me think there might be a legal question worth asking. I ain't holding any bags here, but I like this website enough to at least wonder aloud about that.

runawaydanish said:
I definitely only am bothering to mention the point about conflict of interest because I don't know the law here, so I assume BD and E6 staff had a conversation with a lawyer or someone more familiar with the requirements from orgs like FCC/FTC/ so-on and so forth. Me personally, it's the exact type of grey zone or gap in my understanding that makes me think there might be a legal question worth asking. I ain't holding any bags here, but I like this website enough to at least wonder aloud about that.

It isn't a legal requirement, there's no lawyers involved
Why would one sex toy company advertise another? They made the choice to not advertise their competition

runawaydanish said:
That promotional_material tag includes artist patreon/kofi/etc, I think it's worth separating these two categories.

the first sentence says that promotional_material is content that "mainly" serves to promote an external product, service, or event. a user just having their links/handles on the page or in the post description does not count for this tag.

runawaydanish said:
"Brand_Advertisement"

how would you even define brand_adverisment? "brand" is a pretty vague term, and very few things on here are actually advertising an entire "brand", rather they advertise a few products or services that a company offers.

---

also, unrelated to this part of the topic, it's kinda odd that you started off mentioning Bad Dragon as your first example in the OP. Bad Dragon dosn't even do brand integrations, as far as I'm aware, everything on here related to Bad Dragon is either official character portraits or grassroots.

dba_afish said:
the first sentence says that promotional_material is content that "mainly" serves to promote an external product, service, or event. a user just having their links/handles on the page or in the post description does not count for this tag.

how would you even define brand_adverisment? "brand" is a pretty vague term, and very few things on here are actually advertising an entire "brand", rather they advertise a few products or services that a company offers.

sponsored maybe?

pleaseletmein said:
sponsored maybe?

Sponsored is probably the right way to go about it. Sponsorship disclosures are pretty normal on youtube but I'm not one of the 'Influencer' types so my brain is swiss cheese on what terminology to use.

dba_afish said:
the first sentence says that promotional_material is content that "mainly" serves to promote an external product, service, or event. a user just having their links/handles on the page or in the post description does not count for this tag.

how would you even define brand_adverisment? "brand" is a pretty vague term, and very few things on here are actually advertising an entire "brand", rather they advertise a few products or services that a company offers.

---

also, unrelated to this part of the topic, it's kinda odd that you started off mentioning Bad Dragon as your first example in the OP. Bad Dragon dosn't even do brand integrations, as far as I'm aware, everything on here related to Bad Dragon is either official character portraits or grassroots.

Yeah BD doesn't, but they are a principle stakeholder on site operation, the relevance I think speaks for itself. If I was BD, I'd maybe want to consider what is out there with my iconography under official release vs fan releases. It's a conversation someone who is more business minded probably could have.

The purpose of this thread is for certain not to 'solve the problem', but rather to ask important questions. Do we want a repository for the culture of the furry fandom and immediate surrounds to have such ambiguity on who published what? Is it responsible, sensible, legal, etc. to continue about the way we have and just pretend that our cultural hub isn't becoming a repository for paid advertisements? Should artists who are getting these 'commissions' from larger companies be expected by us to follow good disclosure practices, or do we want to really let Washington DC come in and decide for us if it ever [insert your universal metaphysic]-forbid becomes a matter of regulatory concern?

E621 remains hosted in the US, it's easy to feel ride or die about legality and ethics if you have a wild west mentality but the west is closing, when will BD, an Arizonan Company, find itself in a precarious position somehow when E621's hosting in Nevada is subject to scrutiny? Is the time now to consider that we are being marketed to, turned into a consumer base, and by extension find ourselves subject to new rules that a consumer demography is expected to fall within for 'acceptable' marketing practices? Is this kind of ambiguous disclosure, hidden detailing, adblock circumvention through private artist collaboration with a company backer something we want to associate our community with?

I'm struggling to think of an example of such a directly creative medium with equivalent phenomena other than Youtube, but youtube has rules and regulatory requirements. Are we (mass noun) as a community going to become again targeted somehow by the law, are we (royal) okay with turning our self-expression channels into outside-interest content farms to push product?

Me personally, I think a rejection of advertiser insertion into my furry porn is not only important but a genuine inflection point we are sleepwalking as a community through. There is a distinction between BD and its competition, but the BD example in their own rules on advertisement suggests that a 'spirit of the law' interpretation could mean they are opening themselves up to their own problems. If freely advertising paid promotional content is the accepted practice, does BD deserve a cut for platforming the content? I'd be asking that question firmly if I was a business person, no questions asked, especially because the beneficiaries of the traffic are competition who aren't even from the community I support.

The idea of having policy and cultural boundaries in community spaces isn't alien, but in other domains of life in the US, we've seen advertisements inserted into our communities virtually everywhere (including advertisements on your freaking refrigerator).

Is this the future we want for the fandom and it's content?
If yes, do we just let it run amok and damn the consequences, or do we reign it in to make it disclosable with ease of reference?
If no, I think then our question is what those boundaries of tolerance are, and I don't have the answers, just open questions I'd like to see more people consider!

runawaydanish said:
(a lot)

I'm not really sure what your purpose is here, you seem to be arguing that BD and the government should be throwing a sissy fit that BD isn't profiting off of other companies being able to advertise on the platform through means of commissioning someone else to make a pice including their sponsored content, but.. isn't that literally how youtube sponsorships work? I don't see youtube throwing a fit over not being cut in on sponsorship deals, though I am sure they would love a cut of the pie
And hardly any disclosure is required, often just saying "this is sponsored" or having that text somewhere is plenty without going into any details or really needing to make it obvious

You also seem to be of the idea that all furry porn will somehow become advertising one day, though that's incredibly unlikely and considering most type of advertising is likely to be mostly unnoticable product placement rather than overt "buy this!!!!!!"

I'd also say that like everyone else says, rather than trying to destroy what you don't like, protest with your wallet (your wallet being attention)
Blacklist the artists accepting sponsorships if it offends you so much, or once again blacklist the brand's copyright tag

It should also be noted that the majority of uploads are not by the artists themselves or even the brands, it's mostly a handfull of power users who aren't picking posts because they're advertising, they're uploading anything and everything by the artist
The only sex toy company I remember uploading their own advertisements got banned multiple times due to not tagging properly

Rejecting those posts isn't really hurting the artist or brand, it's just hurting the users which don't particularly care if a small portion of an image is an advertisement, they'll move on without a second thought
We have one of the most robust tagging systems, use it rather than trying to turn an industry on its head because a few artists like paying rent more than having perfect morals

On the other hand if we did reject sponsored content, where is the line? Does an artist's design being on a dakimakura count? We have plenty of dakimakura design posts, most of which are not a direct advertisement but often will indirectly advertise a place to buy it
What about other things like mousepads, fantasy characters which toys are modeled after, shirt designs, etc etc
When does advertising stop and self promotion begin? When it's paid for by a large company?

All of this also is in no way going to ruin furry art, I'm not sure where you're getting that from

runawaydanish said:
If freely advertising paid promotional content is the accepted practice, does BD deserve a cut for platforming the content?

what? no?

literally no platform does this. Google dosn't take a cut whenever JoeBlow_6T-foh does a segment on Nordcon p66 wireless VPN™©® or whatever, they only take a cut of the AdSense (and YouTube Red premium or whatever), and the same is true for every other platform.

the implied contact between content host and content provider is: "I host the content, you get a place to put your stuff. I get to put ads on the page so I don't go bankrupt, you get a website that dosn't stop existing in 2 months." e6 asking artists to give you a cut of their sponsorship money would be pretty much asking them to take all their stuff down.

I think its important that advertisements, especially sponsored advertisements are clearly disclosed in all cases. Having them clearly tagged goes a long way.

There are a lot of instances where advertisements sneak in to platforms and have power to manipulate a community and I just think it gets really gross.
Some art is fairly clear on if it was sponsored, but some of it is not, and its ambiguous if it was paid for, or if they artist was just a legitimate fan of the product.

I have started tagging content with the "sponsored" tag.
I lean towards playing it "safe" and tagging it as sponsored if the branding is right in your face and being depicted in a positive light.

There are plenty of examples where LOVENSE is big and bold in the corner of the entire animation and that makes it pretty clear its sponsored ad.

However, if the product just vaugley looks like a lovense product, and you'd have to know it to recognize it, I probably wouldn't assume it sponsored.

Here's an image tagged Lovense where you can identify the product if you are already familiar with it, but does not use any of the branding or specific wording. At the moment I don't believe this should be tagged advertisement or sponsored.
https://e621.net/posts/5879037

However, there are grey areas that are hard to tag. This piece has no metatext around promo codes or the product, but the LOVENSE logo is big and bold.
Is it an advertisement? Was it sponsored? I'm not sure. I tagged it as such because it has that quality to it and I feel its better safe than sorry, but I can only make a guess and discussion should be had around these grey areas.
https://e621.net/posts/5433809

zoop said:
However, there are grey areas that are hard to tag. This piece has no metatext around promo codes or the product, but the LOVENSE logo is big and bold.
Is it an advertisement? Was it sponsored? I'm not sure. I tagged it as such because it has that quality to it and I feel its better safe than sorry, but I can only make a guess and discussion should be had around these grey areas.
https://e621.net/posts/5433809

from the discussion at source, this might be fan art depicting a segment of sponsored stream. maybe?

zoop said:
I have started tagging content with the "sponsored" tag.
I lean towards playing it "safe" and tagging it as sponsored if the branding is right in your face and being depicted in a positive light.

I don't think that's a good tag since this site isn't sponsoring posts, and should be removed. That would be very confusing and potentially misleading, causing people to think this site is directly sponsoring posts. A sponsor is also something that the brand owners actively do, so even then, a person can go "Hey, I think <xyz> is pretty cool, go buy it!" which could be considered advertising, or simply having brand logos some people think counts as advertising, but it would not be sponsored since the brand owners didn't commission, sign off on, or aid in the creation of (i.e. sponsor) the work. This would be legally problematic, the site creating the impression of some works having been sponsored when they're not.

dba_afish said:
how would you even define brand_adverisment? "brand" is a pretty vague term, and very few things on here are actually advertising an entire "brand", rather they advertise a few products or services that a company offers.

Even then, "advertising" can be a pretty vague term itself. As it is, I've seen the advertisement tag applied pretty loosely to anything where the public doesn't see the full uncensored piece, regardless of any active advertising in the image. Creating extra tags to distinguish what's being "advertised" like this I feel would create more confusion and mess.