Comic Strips

If attribution can be given by linking to the original artist or otherwise annotating that the post did not have attribution and none could be found, that might be acceptable.

But this post is in reference to a prolific poster who is deliberately removing attribution they think is "ads" which includes the artists signatures, watermarks, and social media attributions. That user has been deliberately removing said attributions recently because they "want ad free art".

Pertains to this thread aimed at certain users posting webcomics after cropping or stripping out the artists signatures / credit from the post. The thread had 1,262 upvotes, so it’s gotten a fair amount of attention and seems to be important in the view of many users based on the comments, as upvotes don’t necessarily equate to approval.

One such offender of this behavior responded with this post calling attribution “advertisement”.

There was also another post mentioning the same issue by another user with 299 upvotes.

There seems to be confusion regarding attribution and signatures with advertising watermarks, whether intentional or not.

Attribution as in signatures, are put there in the same way any classical artist might sign a painting. They put their effort into making something that’s important to them, they deserve the credit for their creation. Typically as well, the signatures are unobtrusive as most artists don’t want to detract from their work. They deserve to be left on the post. Even better is if you link to the artists website where the post can be found, or at least to their social media post where you saw it since they get no clicks out of a rehosted image.

Advertising watermarks added by a platform simply because you rehosted an image on its servers and shared it from there serve no purpose and detract from the image. Same thing with social media users adding their handle to an image they didn’t create. These absolutely should be stripped or cropped out if the original unmarked image can’t be found, in my opinion. Additionally providing a link back to sites like Reddit where you saw a post or meme, unless the artist shared it there, is unnecessary, especially when it comes to shitty sites like x or Reddit. You don’t need to give credit to some random account that just shared a meme.

That’s probably what should happen.

At the very least, an attempt must be made. If it is not possible to find proper attribution, then a mod should decide if it stays up on a case by case basis.

Posting content stripped of attribution in the first place should be frowned upon in general. On the other hand, someone who sees the post may be able to help find attribution.

the etiquette is to find the original yourself, it's usually not that hard, just reverse image search it, or not post it. why would you feel so obligated to share a comic with no author that someone else made?

it's easy to be a shitty person without intending to. that's why we need to police our own actions and be conscious of the effect we have on others. when sharing the already stolen art we are perpetuating a problematic cycle. just because you didn't start it and many others are doing it, that doesn't make it less wrong.

sharing someone else's dumb joke is one of the lowest forms of interaction anyway. i have numerous friends that have devolved into that being the only way they communicate with others. i mostly just don't talk to them anymore. i really don't care about the reels they send me. no one should ever feel like they have some kind of right to post someone else's art.

i also generally hate the anti self promotion rules so many subteddits have. the ones that don't are objectively better that the ones that do. what would you rather see? one more shared content mill whith the same 50 posts over and over and exclusivity stolen art. or something like r/comics with like 10 artists that all use it as a common platform to share their work.

you may find the content that is currently popular there questionably horny, but that's more of a reddit demographic problem than an issue with letting artists self promote. in just arguing that i prefer a platform like that where you interact with the artists and new authors pop up and disappear regularly. you also get unique interactions like the artists quickly throwing together a comment reply as a bonus panel.

my point is that this place could be a better community than so much of reddit if we use it as a history book and learn from its victories and mistakes. it starts with policing ourselves and each other towards these goals. not reposting unatributed slop is one of those things we should not be doing if we want a good community.