I might be finally leaving dA

 I've been on this site for a very long time and I have a lot of good memories related to it. I've made friends, I used to be active in groups, participated in contests (still own two ancient Deviantart t-shirts!), even had the opportunity to be commissioned by Deviantart on behalf of companies like Blizzard and SyFy.

It was disappointing to see the site declining over the years due to a number of bad decisions that repeatedly failed to take users' suggestions into account, but I still logged in every now and then for nostalgia's sake. After all, it was the community that made Deviantart enjoyable back in the day, not the site itself.

But Deviantart's latest update with regards to AIs and datasets https://t.co/U4qIyC2Cv6 might be the final straw for me. The fact that all our work is considered free to use by default and opting out is so tedious and difficult is not just a bad decision, but a calculated effort to take advantage of users. The opt-out form doesn't even seem to prevent work from being used in datasets, it looks like it just prevents usernames from being used as a keyword in prompts.

I'll look into alternatives, like archiving my work and re-submitting it if this dumpster fire subsides later, but knowing how Deviantart treats feedback from its users, i'll probably have to delete my account soon.

Here's some of my other social media if you want to follow me elsewhere:

Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/laurasava

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laura_sava_art

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LauraSavaArt

Personal facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laura.sava.37/

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/LauraSavaArt

(and my photo instagram :3 https://www.instagram.com/laura_sava_photos/)