Before this goes any further, I would like to give my sincerest apologies to the following users: ratkingpoe, Himbonotes, cassieoh, haid3018, and the last user which was accidentally deleted and not banned so I do not have their username. Yesterday’s deletion of your images was a knee-jerk reaction, and it was unjustified on my part. While I can restore that part of the database, unfortunately the software that we use for image hosting does not have an “undelete” feature. As such, I ruined the hard work that you put into logging your works onto Squidge Image Hosting. And no amount of apologies is going to do anything to restore those images that you had hosted on Images. Nor is it going to restore the weblinks that you obviously need to now replace on countless websites.
I wish I could go back in time and reverse my decision. But I cannot.
By way of explanation for what happened, we have been advised about hotlinking of our services to things that can cause our non-profit status to come into question. Specifically people using Patreon, Ko-Fi, and the like to paywall items that were located on a Squidge.org property. And so over the years, we have taken action by having these accounts removed. In all, we’re talking about 20 different accounts over our 34 year history. On Sunday, September 13th, when running an audit for Patreon images, we came across the above five users with Patreon within their images, from filenames to Patreon usernames and the like. This, at the time, seemed like an immediate Terms of Service violation. And because of this, I went with my gut and deleted all images in these people’s accounts and then banned them – except for the one person who was accidentally deleted instead of banned.
Again, this is my fault. My knee-jerk reaction was wrong.
Today was…something. I tried to make better clarification for the Images Terms of Service, as well as the consent screen (which, multiple versions are now floating out on the Internet; I should delete them once this is posted), but that just opened MORE cans of worms. So, in an effort to take a look at this situation from another point of view, I realized that everything could have been avoided by just modifying Image Hosting’s web configuration file. And that part has been done. Our configuration for Images webhosting now has directives that will block any hotlinking to either Patreon.com, and Ko-Fi.com. Further, we have contacted Patreon’s support and have asked them to institute a blacklist of the Images URL (https://images.squidge.org) from being used anywhere on their service. We have yet to hear back from them on this, but even this is overkill since we have made it so you cannot hotlink on either website. It’s a safeguard, however.
This whole thing could have been handled better. I should have handled things better. But I did not. And in doing so, I have tarnished Squidge’s 34 year reputation with you, our users. I can not do anything except say that I apologize and will strive to do better in the future. I know that an apology is not enough, as there are still people calling for my head on various social media accounts, as is their right. But I do sincerely apologize.
If you have questions, please ask.
edit 09/15/26 06:40 Pacific: I have been asked what safeguards are in place so that this will not happen again, so adding that here. My actions have tarnished the reputation that Squidge has built over the last 34 years of existence; it is not something that is going to leave my mind, nor soul for a long time to come. Because of that, I can guarantee that there will be safeguards in place should things like this happen in the future with the only exception being images of child abuse/child sexual assault or necrophilic/snuff/murder media that has always been against the Terms of Service (and is quite illegal). Said safeguards are as follows:
- Once a situation has been identified, investigate and gather evidence.
- Contact the person in question and give them a 72 hour window of time to respond.
- If the person responds, we resolve the situation or not.
- If resolved, we both go about our day with the understanding things are resolved.
- If the person does NOT respond after 72 hours, the account and its images can be deleted.
i don’t think it’s necessarily people’s right to “call for your head” on social media. i know you did wrong but that doesn’t warrant people losing their minds that an indie service being provided mostly thanklessly had broken trust with users out of fear and desperation. just an fyi less to you walter but more to anyone who might read this comment. sending all my support
As someone who uses squidge to host images for ao3 and other fandom things: I personally feel like if my account were mistakenly deleted, I could email Walter and ask about the situation to clear it up. I trust him to communicate with us as human beings. That’s why I’m glad Squidge’s services exists, because it’s a small service made by humans for a small community. And I REALLY hope that we would all try to communicate one-on-one first before going scorched earth because of human error!
I feel badly for any creator who might not have access to their own work because you were thoughtless. Some of the art I’ve made over the years I made on computers that have since died or from times before I had backup for all my finished projects. Knowing one of those people you apologized to and that she never hotlinked to Patreon from squidge but instead let Patreon host her Patreon images only makes it clear that any artist’s work is at risk if you go off again.
I can safely say that no, knee-jerk reactions will not happen again. That said, now that Patreon and Ko-Fi hosts are blocked from hotlinking means that there’s no need for auditing for Patreon/Ko-Fi hotlinking.
What kind of safe guards are set in place that this (deleting data permanently without a warning and without any actual proof of wrongdoing) knee-jerk response doesn’t happen again for some other reason?
The buck stops with me as the head of Squidge.org. And while you may not believe me when I say that it won’t happen again, it won’t happen again. Not without further investigation and contact with the accountholders. But even then, our safeguard that prevents hotlinking on Ko-Fi and Patreon ALSO means it won’t even be a possibility.
Lex, a free service hosted by someone else should never be treated as your only backup. Mistakes happen. If you don’t want to lose your data, host it yourself or get your own backup drives- you’ll find that you will also lose data. As we are all human here (I hope) and prone to human error.
Don’t beat yourself up over this or take needless abuse for it, it’s really not that serious. Thank you for your transparency and continued tolerance.
I absolutely agree that multiple backups is ideal, but the accounts that were deleted were not uniformly even given notice so they could go and get at minimum screenshots of their stored images– all the links they used to end images in Ao3 collaborations are now dead links, and there is no easy and immediate way to fix that. Imagine having to comb through every collaboration as an artist after having invested your trust in an indie endeavor, all while being accused of breaking rules your didn’t break. People affected are rightfully frustrated.
I agree
tbh this is the fault of the people who were actually breaking the rules in the first place, if they didn’t do that then none of this would’ve happened, people need to calm down
There is precisely zero proof that anyone was actually breaking the rules, is the thing. At least one of the people affected by this is on the record that she never used Squidge to host anything she put on Patreon, and that she told Walter this, and that Walter told her that the fact that she HAD a Patreon where she posted art was cause enough to ban her, simply due to the appearance of the thing. And given that nowhere in this statement does Walter say that ANY of the people he banned/deleted were breaking the rules – I know he managed to make it sound like they were but the presence of the term Patreon or their Patreon usernames within file names doesn’t mean anything – I’m inclined to believe nobody else was, either.
Walter fucked up and crashed out and he caused harm as a result. It’s good that he’s apologizing and owning that, but people are allowed to be mad at him for it.
I wasn’t referring to anyone mentioned in the post J, they clearly didn’t break any rules if they’re being apologized to, I was talking about the people who got their accounts rightfully banned *before* this whole mess happened
Considering that this is effectively a one-person website that has recently boomed in popularity, a remarkable amount of patience has been shown to those breaking TOS. If it’s understood that one cannot do hotlinking from AO3, in order to preserve their 501c3 status, then why is it not also understood that the Squidge array of websites is in the same legal position?
The problem is not these sites, but rather how intellectual property is handled – and that is something that belongs in a court, not trashing some site owner on social media because the very valid and legitimate rules were (repeatedly!) ignored.
As to those that have lost their accounts due to an overflow of frustration with other users – it happens, the apology is earnest, please take this as a lesson to keep multiple back-ups so things can easily be re-uploaded if necessary (I’ve lost my stuff multiple times in other situations – the fault lies with the lack of forethought, not where things were laid). The internet is hardly known for its longevity, and given that this data was lost due to human interpretation rather than corporate flushing to maintain profits on their product, it’s a genuinely innocent mistake.
I think a back-end blocking of hotlinking is a good solution to all of this, and will likely reduce the administrative burden of going over /so/ much by hand. Also, kudos to you, Squidge, for going over everything by hand, that’s an immense amount of time and effort. Hopefully Patreon will agree to a reciprocal blacklist, but ideally you at least receive an answer from them.
It’s understood that one cannot do hotlinking from AO3 because AO3 does not host images.
Maintaining the OTW’s 501c3 status is indeed one of the reasons one is not allowed to do advertising on AO3; it’s a distant third to “Archive Of OUR Own, not archive of advertisers’ own” and “we like fandom better when it’s a gift economy”, but any one of the three would be enough on its own to explain why linking to one’s Patreon or Ko-fi is and will remain against AO3 TOS. If any of the three were common knowledge, anyway, which does not seem to be the case. No matter how much we wish it were or think it should be. Tumblr’s twice annual melee combat over whether AO3 should allow monetization does mean regularly scheduled bursts of people learning these things about AO3, but between Squidge being so much smaller and Squidge having image-hoating-specific concerns that AO3 doesn’t…
I did not hotlink any images that were paywalled on Patreon to my knowledge, I only hosted an image for a Patreon button on my website. My Patreon is also extremely inactive and I have made no money off it. If that is still in violation of the terms of service, I do sincerely apologise but I would have liked a heads up or an email so I could have resolved the issue or clarified. Extremely disappointed and frustrated by the lack of communication.