There has been a notification come through lately about the amount of what is deemed as inappropriate/NSFW models, on Makerworld, and that the moderators/controllers are going to have a crackdown on this.
This has been on many different posts a lively debate, along with use of AI, clickbait models etc. so hopefully without going over the same tired old ground, and dragging up old debates, I would like to “refresh” those debates and ask who actually is it that decides what is allowed and what is not allowed, who gets penalised for posting certain images, where others with similar images don’t?
Now, I have produced a few models based on the “ship girls” from Azur Lane. For those that don’t know this is a hugely popular gatcha game, featuring nubile young ladies, in various forms of dress, named after the warships of not only WW1, and WW2, but throughout history, that battle and quest their way in the game. So naturally, as the game itself features some images that are risqué, my models can be too. But does this mean that ANY model due to the nature of the game, not be allowed as it will be seen to as breaking the new rules set out by Makerworld??
Same with One Piece, now I play OPTC, and use some of the images from that game to create images. One of which been Nami. Now Nami is infamous for her bikini outfit, and windmill/tangerine tattoo (as well as a couple of other more noticeable things). But having a woman in a bikini model, could now be classed as NSFW, even though this is an iconic outfit for Nami. So would Nami be banned in the future, regardless of outfits, just in case the bikini one slipped through?? There are hundreds of examples throughout the anime world of this, but not only the risqué images, but of images depicting violence/blood/gore, all could fall under this banner - yet a lot of commercially available figurines depict worse that that found on Makerworld.
I recently created a union jack flag, fridge magnet, that said fly your flag - could this now be banned as it could be seen as offensive to other countries?? A bit extreme may be, but is it really??
Who is it that determines that a cartoon character showing a middle finger is OK, but a duck doing it isn’t?
I agree that there should be a crackdown on things posted on Makerworld (yet we still have printable ■■■ toys disguised as say pepper and salt pots). But there needs to be consistency and balance. We need to know before hand if our model is likely to be flagged up or not. We need examples of what is accepted and what isn’t. Because to be honest it is such a massive grey area, with so much controversy and debate surrounding it, I don’t think they will ever get it right.