DeviantArt is a dead mall

[rynling]

The Tragic Downfall of the Internet’s Art Gallery
https://slate.com/technology/2024/05/deviantart-what-happened-ai-decline-lawsuit-stability.html

It’s not unlikely, as WyerframeZ surmised, that someone constructed a low-effort bot network that could hold up a self-perpetuating money-embezzlement scheme: Generate a bunch of free images and accounts, have them buy and boost one another in perpetuity, inflate metrics so that the “art” gets boosted by DeviantArt and reaches real humans, then watch the money pile up from DeviantArt revenue-sharing programs. Rinse, repeat.

This is an interesting article from May 2024 that meticulously documents what's been happening to DeviantArt since late 2022. It's really sad... and kind of spooky.

Comments

[lagertha_the_warrior]

I was on deviantart many years ago, and thought I'd join again recently. But it's turned into such a cesspool of a place, it's sad.

[rynling]

Oh for real. I'm still on DevArt out of simple inertia. It's not completely dead, but its algorithm is beyond cooked. To make matters worse, the constantly-updating UI pushes users away from engaging with (or even seeing) the art of people they follow in favor of shoving computer-generated images in everyone's faces. It's super cringe.

Cara.app is a decent alternative, like an actually-usable cross between Twitter and Tumblr. There's no real tagging system yet, so discovery is still a problem, but it works nicely as a low-stress portfolio platform.

[lagertha_the_warrior]

Thanks for the recommendation!