During the past few days, Japanese artists have reportedly been receiving notifications from pixivFANBOX’s management about their work being suspended from the platform. The wave of suspensions appears to primarily target fiction depicting sexual and violent content, with the cause explicitly attributed to issues “raised by payment processors.” Some artists have even had work from several years ago suspended.
pixivFANBOX is a major Japanese subscription-based platform where content creators can set up their own fan communities and publish illustrations, manga, novels, and other content exclusively to supporters (in a similar fashion to platforms like Patreon.)
Around September 25, multiple creators reported via X that they’d received notices about their work being suspended from pixivFANBOX. The message typically reads: “Following a notice from our payment processor, we have taken measures to suspend the publication of posts that may contain expressions subject to the ‘Items Requiring Revision’ policy.”
Not to be confused with the platform’s “Prohibited Items,” (which enforce standard prohibitions against content such as CSAM, live-action or highly-realistic gore, bestiality, etc.), the “Items Requiring Revision” policy applies to non-live action/non-realistic content (such as illustrations, doujinshi, etc.) where pixivFANBOX decides on a case-by-case basis that certain revisions are needed to the content itself or meta data such as tags and descriptions.
Among the suspension notices shared by artists, some of the most often cited causes for suspension are tags like “hypnosis,” “brainwashing,” and “kidnapping” (in other words, terms related to non-con fiction), as well as violence and cruelty. Among them, one creator stated that their comic was suspended for “excessive violence” even though it does not include any bloodshed nor explicit gore. They speculate they might have been hit due to the comic’s meta data containing words like “organs” and “corpse.”
This sentiment was shared by others, as one illustrator advised fellow pixivFANBOX users: “The recent wave of FANBOX suspensions seems to be triggered by specific characters in the title or tags. In some cases, simply changing those parts and resubmitting for review gets the post approved, so it’s worth giving that a try.”
Given that pixivFANBOX is openly citing “issues raised by payment processors” as the cause of the suspensions, it’s likely that the platform is broadly screening for content third parties have defined as problematic (much like Steam started doing last year). This especially seems to be the case considering even posts from three to four years ago are being affected, meaning content that was deemed compliant with pixivFANBOX’s terms of use suddenly isn’t anymore.
pixivFANBOX is hardly the first Japanese platform to be hit by restrictions imposed by payment processors. This has been an ongoing issue for the past few years, with major sites like DLsite, Fantia, Melonbooks, Skeb, and even the online stores of game developers being faced with suspension of transactions for hosting legal adult content.
