Jimmy  Darts

SB Mowing

Pattie Gonia

Little Miss Flint

Kalina Silverman / @makebigtalk on Instagram

The Dogist

Samuel Weidenhofer

Patriotic Kenny Foundation

Peter Bond

That Good News Girl

Ben Saunders - Flawless Cleaning

Flavor Flav

Ask Uncle Jack

Amy Jandrisevits

FowlMouthFarmer

Tess Bohne

Latonja and Taylor Richardson

Officer Richard Craig

John Wolfe

Khloe

<div>Hey there Fuzzies!
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<div>Recently, there has been a lot of conversation about censorship of the internet and third parties forcing sites to make changes to their content allowances or face financial penalties. We are sad to say that Fur Affinity has not been immune to this pressure. While we used to be able to use third-party advertisers to help fund the site, they are now bringing in less than $150 USD a month. For reference, the cost to keep Fur Affinity running is over $25,000 USD per month (there’s a breakdown further into the post, for those curious)!
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<div>Over the past couple of years we have been working with our third-party advertisers to meet their demands on content moderation. <strong>This has not resulted in any changes to our policies</strong>, but we <strong>have</strong> had to shift more staff focus to rating change tickets (which unfortunately slows down our response times in other categories). Some users may have noticed they received multiple ratings change notifications in a short span of time. This is a result of more submissions in violation of General rating guidelines being reported to us combined with more staff focusing on that specific area. And just to be clear: Content that does not break our rules has no action taken against it, even if it is reported.
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<div>This effort has cost us in resources and time in the hopes of having this source of funding restored completely. Despite jumping through every hoop presented to us, we have had our income severely restricted with one demand to remove the restriction: remove all of what <strong>they</strong> consider to be “adult content”, <strong>which we refuse to do</strong>.
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<div>To reiterate: <strong>We will not be removing adult content from Fur Affinity.</strong>
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<div>What the third-party advertisers consider adult isn’t even always <strong>actual</strong> adult content. For further context here’s a snippet from our Fur Affinity Advertising Manager, Jamesalesto:
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<div>"Howdy!
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<div>What makes this situation frustrating is that the bar for what advertisers consider “adult content” is very very low. For example they consider plus size characters, two characters hugging, and “barbie doll nudity” to be adult content, despite these being normal everyday things that are not adult at all. This is why you may see other sites with restrictions on how characters can’t be posed or dressed “too provocatively.”
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<div>We receive a daily list of items that they have flagged as violations and have to sort through them. If they’re legitimate violations, we re-rate them. If they aren’t, we don’t touch them. Submissions that are not violations of our policies are still held against us.
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<div>We have had many email conversations, Zoom calls, and even an in-person meeting with representatives to help resolve this to no avail.
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<div>Given this uphill (and frankly annoying) struggle, if properly funded we would like to aim towards removing third-party advertising entirely, and instead focus on our in-house community advertisers. They are the heart and soul of the fandom, and they deserve to have the eyes of our active users."
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<div>And here with a follow up is Fur Affinity’s Site Owner Sciggles
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<div>"With more and more sites restricting the content they allow, we believe it’s important to maintain our current site standings to protect the artistic freedom of our talented community. However, this comes with a hefty burden of now needing other ways to fund the site. Third-party advertisers aren’t entirely off the table at the moment, but as the funding from them has been significantly lowered, they cannot be relied upon as heavily as they were before. They want us to play by their rules; we have high traffic that they would love to get ads in front of. But we know that censoring Fur Affinity to meet their standards for unrestricted funding isn’t healthy for the site or the community.
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<div>For the sake of transparency, these are the monthly costs (in USD) for the site (note—the funds are specific but we will not be saying who we contract and host with for their privacy and protection, they are good beans):
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<div>Contracted staff/coders: <strong>*</strong>$15k
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<div>Loans: <strong>**</strong>$6,258
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<div>Hosting: $6,000
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<div>Cloudflare $260
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<div>Accounting: $235
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<div>Email services: $124
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<div>Extra: <strong>***</strong>??? Varies
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<div><strong>*</strong> The majority of our staff are volunteers. This number is split in different ways between 7 individuals that dedicate their days to the harder parts of managing Fur Affinity, such as: managing code, handling advertising, urgent emails and meetings, legal obligations and reports, and so many more high-level management tasks. More than Trouble Tickets and not being paid nearly their worth for the work they do and still very much volunteer for the rest of their time. These roles are vital to keeping FA online and are more than what one person would be able to handle on their own.
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<div><strong>**</strong> This is based off of a percentage of sales on Paypal. We were forced to take out a loan when a third-party initially pulled out in June 2025 and hoped we would be able to resolve and bounce back from the issue to not need to ask for community help at the time. Trust me that I wish we had not gone that route...
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<div><strong>***</strong> This does not include any emergency funds needed or refilling retainers with our lawyers. Those are difficult to calculate in a monthly breakdown as they are more of an “as-needed” expense. It is usually $5k at a time when we are due to refill the retainer. Unfortunately we’ve needed to refill it often as we’ve needed help bringing FA into compliance with the ever-changing modern day regulations and legal standards. As for “emergency” funds, we would ideally like $20-30k set aside. “Emergency” in this case would basically be anything related to physical hardware issues.
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<div>We are <strong>3 months behind</strong> on some of these items and are grateful to our hosts for being understanding and willing to give us such grace. We had hoped to resolve these issues with third-party advertising to catch up but we now know that isn’t going to be a proper resolution for this. We must instead reach out to the community for assistance if we are to keep things going. This has been difficult to come to terms with and try to approach. We were hoping to make things work out without needing to request more from the community, and it is difficult to announce defeat when we want to be bringing you our best.
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<div>I can’t begin to tell you the countless hours, days, and months spent trying to work with third-party advertisers to ultimately be met with the door slammed in our faces for not caving to their standards or for pushing back against AI and cryptocurrencies (like Bitcoin). We hope by approaching things from a new angle with the support of the community, it will make things better overall for the site and all of you.
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<div>We have the crowdfunding set to increase overtime to hopefully cover up to 6 months of costs for FA but we are grateful for any amount we are able to bring in while we work to improve our systems for future funding."
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<div>If you'd like to read more info about this we have an announcement live on the site here:
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Support Fur Affinity’s Community Funding

<div>Hi there! I'm Sky. And I could use your help.
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<div>I'm a 30-year-old non-binary person with OCD and severe anxiety living in Colorado. I'm struggling to make ends meet and get my lifelong career dreams back on track. My dream is to someday be an Embedded Hardware Designer or Project Lead for a team specializing in Virtual or Extended Reality devices. I'm looking to raise just enough money to cover moving costs and help make sure I can re home or board my elderly dog Rai safely, with the grooming and veterinary care he'd need for me to qualify to do so.
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<div>I love novel interfaces and hardware and am passionate about interesting and cool ways to turn Sci-Fi concepts into reality safely, but I've struggled since graduating college in 2020 to find a stable entry point into my career field for both economic and personal reasons.
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<div>On the personal side, I was diagnosed with OCD and chronic anxiety that were exacerbated by a series of traumatic and stressful events in my youth, including fiscal and housing insecurities, emotional fallout from chronic and debilitating parental and familial health problems, and the deaths of several family members. Working to overcome or at least co-exist with my disability and trauma has been incredibly challenging, to say the least.
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<div>On the economic side, I was unable to land a career internship after graduating college with a Bachelor's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. I graduated during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, when entry-level positions were scarce or adversely affected by hiring freezes. To make do, I instead picked up a full-time job for Amazon in a warehouse logistics support role, a role completely outside of my career field, that I had intended to only be temporary but wound up lasting a long and grueling four whole years (2020-2024).
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<div>I eventually had to step away from Amazon in 2024 when the promotion I had taken turned out to be an incredibly bad fit for me. I did not realize it at the time, but I had at some point developed severe amaxophobia as an extension of my anxiety disorder, and my new role required driving upwards of 6-8 hours every day as part of the basic workflow.
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<div>The strain from this job and other stressors at home caused my disability symptoms to worsen to the point where I was unable to perform basic day-to-day functions, self-care, or even leave my home to seek medical help, intervention, or mental health treatment. I have been effectively unemployed ever since.
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<div>I've spent the last year and a half with supportive and caring friends who helped me slowly work towards rebuilding my mental and emotional state to the point where I finally feel both confident and capable enough to work full-time again.
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<div>I've finally managed to land a job offer after all these months, but to work it full-time, I need to move across the state of Colorado to a home share a few minutes away from my work site since I don't currently own or feel I am capable of operating an automotive vehicle safely, nor do I currently have an active driver's license. I also have a pet Chinchilla named Buddy who is approved to room with me in my new home and an ailing elderly Bordie Collie named Rai who has been living with me for some time, but who I'll need to have re-homed or boarded since my lease doesn't accept dogs and I'll need to go through basic veterinary care and screenings to qualify for having him boarded or sheltered.
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<div>I'm putting out this GoFundMe to raise enough money to cover basic moving, rent, food, everyday survival, and veterinary expenses in this short-term period so that I can transition into my new job and, eventually, start working towards an out-of-college internship, returnship, apprenticeship, or Master's degree certification extension and career re-entry program for my career field.
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<div>I'm estimating right now that I'll need roughly $1000 to cover my first month's rent and deposit, up to $1000 for moving and transit costs involved in going from Parker, Colorado to Colorado Springs, up to $500 for one month's worth of grocery, food, and transit costs, and anywhere from $1000 - $2500 for costs related to pet sheltering, veterinary care, and boarding. And that might be a modest estimate at best: with costs rising rapidly each day, I'm not sure if the costs I see today will reflect accurately tomorrow.
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<div><strong>Once I've been in and working for a few weeks/months, things will start to get better for me, but right now I'm very VERY low on funds due to how long I've been out of work while trying to piece my mental and emotional state back together, and am asking for any and all help that one could spare to help me get to the point where I can start taking care of myself again full-time.</strong>
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<div>Becoming an Embedded Hardware Designer, especially for what I want to focus on, is a long and difficult journey with not a lot of straightforward guarantees, but it's what I'm passionate about and what I want to contribute to the world. I want to make cool and interesting things that people can enjoy using. Things that help them connect with others and share and communicate in ways they never have before.
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<div>But I know that to do so, I'll have to spend a lot of time, energy, and resources digging in, bettering myself, and proving my worth and value to both myself and others, and I think I'm at the point where I can say with absolute confidence that I'm both ready and able to do so, provided I can find just enough outside support to get finally started.
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<div>So please, if you resonate at all with my story or are willing to help in any way, please donate. Anything and everything helps, no matter how big or small. A little bit now will mean a world of difference for me in the future, and I am the type of person who always tries to give back when given to.
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<div>When I get back on my feet, and I will say when and not if, I promise to do the same for as many people in situations similar to mine as I can, but right now I could definitely use the help and goodwill of friends and strangers alike as I take these first steps towards career and workforce re-entry, and finally making something good and worthwhile of my long and difficult life.
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<div>Thanks so, so much for your time and consideration, and I hope you have a wonderful day simply for having read this far, donation or not.
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<div>-Sky Preston Alsever
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Help Sky Transition to a New Career and Life

<div>Hi all, Artemis here.
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<div>Our resident pinkfluff, ray of sunshine, and all around great artist and person, Hally, was recently rushed to the ER.   She's in surgery for a gallbladder issue.  She should be fine, to the best of my knowledge, but her medical costs are going to be painful.
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<div>We're looking to raise as much as we can to help support her--please, every little bit helps.
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Help Hally's Surgery Expenses

Zach Seligson

Zach Seligson

Zach Seligson

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