I'll drop a bit of deviantArt history that you're unlikely to find in an article like this, but which probably contributed to dA's initial failure to sustain its place as the preeminent platform for sharing art online as social media rose to prominence: its banning of sexualized nudity in 2006, which lead to the exodus of adult/adult-adjacent artists - and, particularly, furries.
That was the stumble that gave room for other platforms to grab pieces of its then-current and future user-base. Anyone can tell you that a very large portion of the money changing hands online for art (adult and not) is actually changing paws, so dA missed out of having a slice of that, whether through advertising or facilitating transactions. Worse, its reputation was tarnished among adjacent subcultures.
There have also been regular ToS panics every 2 or 3 years, where someone's (mis)interpretation of the licensing rights dA claimed for being able to modify and distribute artwork (i.e., make thumbnails and send images in daily update emails) caused users to swear off the site for fear of having their work "stolen". Add to that, quite a backlash against the recent site redesign (and the ones before it).
That is all to say, this really has been a long time coming. My account is nearing the 2-decade mark, but I haven't logged on more than a couple dozen times in the last half of that. There's just almost nothing there you can't find more easily or comfortably elsewhere.
It may have been sometime in 2005, now that you mention it. Recall's a little fuzzy (it HAS been 18+ years)... I was going off a particular memory of sneaking access to it and a certain specific queer-focused art platform during the summer of '06.
- alternative culture is born or aglomerate around internet hub
- hub tries to monetize its audience, rightly so for sustainability of the platform. Server costs, management, moderation etc etc.
- it takes just a few years for hub to become a corporation full of clueless corpos who have no idea about the initial culture and core audience.
- hub is bleached beyond recognition because corpos are scared of anything that is slightly controversial - including the original culture hub was about.
- "That's not family friendly! We also need those ESG and DEI labels to attract investors! The advertisers won't approve their brand associated with this!”
The current term for this is "enshitification" right?
- hub dies, culture might disperse, corpos get their golden parachute and latches into the next big project.
It seems to be a very common story. Reddit, DA, you can think go a lot of examples. It WILL happen with big Mastodon and BlueSky instances.
If you think about it you gotta give credit for 4chan keeping a big chunk of its soul, rather you like the site contents and its users or not.
I'm not sure it's happened to Reddit so far? They've managed to avoid the desexualization that has destroyed other platforms, and now their size might mean they can ride it out.
In the same way that Playboy can get away with posting sneaky things and Meta can only shadowban them and doesn't dare terminate them: https://www.instagram.com/p/C3-nnn9RM82/ (NSFW)
1) ESG/DEI stuff wasn't even a whisper on the wind when this stuff went down. It was still very much DADT, Jack Thompson lawsuits, elected-Bush-twice America. In other words, the complaints were mostly coming from the center/right (and Joe Leiberman, if you still considered him a liberal).
2) 4chan was in the "advantageous" position of never being able to attract major advertisers in the first place. And while a good bit of the old culture is still extant, the post-Trayvon-murder/GG/Trump-meme-magic era did a number on its userbase's ability to focus on the lulz instead of descending into conservative (if not just straight-up Nazi) rhetoric (and not for laughs).
But, yeah, the rest of this tracks. It's basically inevitable unless the site admins get to a point where they're happy with the userbase size/culture/whatever and decide there's no need for any more changes. Examples: Craigslist, SA (to a degree), FA (despite controversies and the recent UI change, which users can mercifully opt out of). In fact, I would say that unnecessary or large-scale UI changes are good heuristic for determining when things are about to go downhill.
That was the stumble that gave room for other platforms to grab pieces of its then-current and future user-base. Anyone can tell you that a very large portion of the money changing hands online for art (adult and not) is actually changing paws, so dA missed out of having a slice of that, whether through advertising or facilitating transactions. Worse, its reputation was tarnished among adjacent subcultures.
There have also been regular ToS panics every 2 or 3 years, where someone's (mis)interpretation of the licensing rights dA claimed for being able to modify and distribute artwork (i.e., make thumbnails and send images in daily update emails) caused users to swear off the site for fear of having their work "stolen". Add to that, quite a backlash against the recent site redesign (and the ones before it).
That is all to say, this really has been a long time coming. My account is nearing the 2-decade mark, but I haven't logged on more than a couple dozen times in the last half of that. There's just almost nothing there you can't find more easily or comfortably elsewhere.