Japanese content creator platform Fantia, operated by comic publisher Toranoana, has announced that it will temporarily revert its recently established censorship guidelines when it comes to 2D (non-live action) adult content. This decision follows a wave of backlash from the community, especially from creators, some of whom faced the daunting task of updating the mosaic censorship on dozens or even hundreds of their past works.
As Fantia explains in its recent X post, the platform is currently in discussions with relevant authorities regarding future policies and publishing criteria for 2D content. This means that the “stricter” guidelines, which were announced on May 25, have been reverted, while the old ones are back in effect until the platform administrator settles on a new set of mosaic and censorship rules. According to the post, the new standards and their effective date will be announced soon.
For context, what made the May 25 guidelines so problematic was the fact that they were established retroactively, meaning that they didn’t only affect newly published content, but even the content that was put out before the effective date. So, creators on Fantia would have to manually correct or delete all of their previous works deemed problematic under the new policy. Those who failed to comply and continued to commit similar offenses would have their accounts suspended or taken down, and in extreme cases, the platform even warned it would file a report to the police or other relevant authorities.
Considering that there are creators who have years’ worth of content that needs to be manually reviewed and possibly revised to comply with the new regulations (Fantia has been operating for over a decade at the time of writing), it makes sense that users’ response to the change in policy was far from positive.
According to the platform, the reason for implementing the initial guideline changes was due to “extremely strict feedback from various relevant organizations,” citing multiple cases of crackdowns and convictions related to inadequate mosaic censorship. The revised guidelines required for all artists and creators to apply “stricter” censorship to their NSFW art (transparent mosaics, light blurring, or censorship that doesn’t fully cover the sensitive part of the image or video would be deemed inadequate for the platform).
While we don’t know yet what the “new guidelines” will exactly entail, it seems like the pressure from users and creators was enough to persuade Fantia to return to its original guidelines for the time being.
On the other hand, many creators who had already spent a lot of time revising and adapting their works to comply with the stricter censorship policy, only for it to revert to what it originally was, have expressed disappointment and frustration with the platform’s “careless” handling of the situation.
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