In a very stupid turn of events, Fantia has now announced they're going to completely reverse their initial regulation of all 2D art on the platform, which would have required heavy/total obscuring beyond the usual black bars/mosaics on nudity.
https://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/news/2606253n
The reason for their reversal is that they finally received "clarification" from the National Police Agency that their intended area of concerns was 3D/real pornography (so called "doujin AV") and not 2D illustrations.
Why they didn't seek this clarification before panicking their entire userbase, compelling people to either painstakingly go back over years of work to apply ugly black bars or else delete their entire body of work on the site, remains a mystery. I can't imagine there's a whole lot of artists rushing back to Fantia to use it.
I don't know whether to pin more blame to the NPA or Fantia here. I could easily imagine the police threatening to come down on them like a ton of bricks while being vague (as they usually are), frightening the execs into over-regulating. But at the same time, the fact that Fantia just folded like wet cardboard and didn't even push back a little bit at their entire business model (and their loyal userbase of many years) being held over a barrel out of nowhere speaks to their cowardice and shitty management.
As the saying goes, "the purpose of a system is what it does". And what's happened here is that the police can technically say they have clean hands, they just weren't clear enough at the start. But Fantia's probably going to take a financial hit over this, and in this economy there's a possibility they might go under because of it. Part of me wonders if this wasn't the intention all along.
こんにちは、私はひげさん。はじめまして!