Its OK to repost art: the case for art-reposting.

[Corrupted Unicorn]

I think my biggest issue with reposting is if there was some sort of identity theft or claiming you did the art instead of the original artist (that's no good!  )

With that said, I did find my art reposted once or twice, as part of blog articles dedicated to fanart and as an illustration to accompany a "Do you like THIS ship or THAT ship??" in one of those groups... from that one fandom-oriented platform... I do not remember the name of    Both were pleasant surprises to be honest.

[wofee]

While I can agree on the thought that reposting art could help archiving it and spread it more than likes and reblog/retweet, I really can't blame the artists for not liking that at all. Especially artist who earn money and live from their art. Also as said some times above, let's not be naive on how reposts are used : uncredited fanarts or original art posted on pinterest or tumblr, reposted art used to get more likes, or even better, impersonnation. These are not really good-willing methods to share art in all respect of the original artist ; Hence why artists are very careful and distrustful about that sharing technique, and I don't really like the kind of individualist approach of "they shouldn't post it online then !" because it is completely understandable for artists to want their art credited, liked and shared in the means of the social media tools they're using. They are posting their art in platforms where you can reblog/repost, share a link in the click of a button, or even just like, it's not like there are absolutely no other ways to share it. 

Not caring or even willing to get your art reposted asks a big deconstruction of what social medias want from you and also from all the views about copyrights, and I agree strongly on the AI debate parallel on that. But too many uncontrolable factors enter in that debate : yes, maybe caring less about copyright would be a more anticapitalist view of the world, but in the final, you WILL lose money. Yes, going away from all these social medias and their tools that contribute to the use of a few ways to use the internet would be great from artists, but they will lose money and important visibility. So, in my opinion, blaming artists for not trusting art repost, and for using plenty of ""ugly"" watermarks, is not going to the right target. (yes the target is capitalism)

[JINSBEK]

in theory i don't think reposting art needs to be a big deal, but in actuality a lot of people have staked their livelihoods on their social media accounts - regardless of whether that's a good idea, they have done it - and it is a big deal to them.

This is the important part. Very few people would care about (attributed) digital reproduction if they were living like Scrooge McDuck already. And this goes for workflow automation (LLM generative art) as a whole. Artists are naturally high-strung with few exceptions, and hurting an artist’s sense of security by hinting to them that they’re going to have a hard time finding a job doing art, well. It’s not pretty.

They’re already “eating” each other out there, with-or-without “reposting”, which is pretty… interesting. Many young digital artists tend to be in competition-mode with each other. Tensions are already high for a high-strung group of people (nevermind the emotional immaturity and thus extreme reactivity/volatility that comes with being literally, immature, compared to a typical 40-year-old) and add in the “loss” of “numbers go up” and it’s… again, not pretty.

As for myself, I don’t really care about my art being non-commercially reposted. Signatures exist for a reason. And by the way, artists can be discovered through reposts, if they put their signature and website on the image. People used to do this far more frequently before the rise of social media platforms. I guess cultural memory is just that short nowadays.

One of my favourite patron-supported artists is a guy who posts his name thrice on all his pieces and, honestly. It goes hard as fuck. I appreciate the aesthetic (his execution of the triple-branding is actually very good. I almost want to do it myself.)

What a lot of young digital artists today don’t seem to understand, is that there’s a world for art outside of Twitter and Tumblr. And even DeviantArt and ArtStation. It seems like many of these young people forget that arts publishing and spaces exist where art got its start—in the physical world. There are these things called art fairs and conventions. Maybe instead of screaming into the void about how your art is being reposted in the void, go outside and start exhibiting your art. Don’t want to step outside, because you want to work in video games and there are no studios in your locality? Then go into online game development spaces. Don’t pray for a recruiter to offer you a job, go to them. Make friends with game developers, and they’ll probably tell you of job opportunities they know of. Everyone wants to “go viral” instead of doing the actual work of social networking, which these big SNS platforms are actually pretty shitty at.

I may seem callous, and I probably am. But I really couldn’t care about what other artists are doing professionally, or uh, non-professionally, because I don’t see them as competition. I don’t see the typical resharer as competition, either. I really, don’t care.

[VioletHeaven]

Reposting is platform-agnostic sharing. If you're ok with people smashing that Share/Reblog button, you must be OK with people reposting your art, because they are the same thing.

Share/Reblog buttons are a platform-approved systematization of a folk practice. If you only allow people to share your work through the systematized means, you're helping web silos maintain themselves. Gross. Don't do that.

Spoiler

You may have noticed an elephant in the room missing: Credit. I generally think crediting is good and you should do it. I also recognize bibliography is work, and don't begrudge people who don't.

BTW: people sign their work to remove the work of crediting for future reposters. Signing your work is so people can repost without needing to credit you - the credit is baked into the art!

Have you seen art like this?

Why do you sign your work if you don't allow reposting, and you put the big "donut repost" on the art as well! Whats the point, to add as many ugly watermarks as possible? Christ almighty. I block every artist who does this tedious shit, I fucking hate it.

[close]

...Wow. That's actually really ugly. I've seen similar, but with semi transparent watermarks, and it's not as bad but it definitely detracts from the piece. I honestly prefer signatures that are part of the piece, like in old paintings or graffiti. Also, web-silos... yeah, I agree. Information and art should be freely spread, not limited to a certain platform (especially one that is corporate run and subject to the failings of such corporation...)

That is very different from taking that webcomic ("the literal art in question"), and reposting it to another platform. You could argue that this, too, is a labor of love -- wanting for it to last forever, to archive it. However, this does do measurable harm to the creator. All interactions gained from that repost -- something of which artists have a precious few -- are ones that could have gone to the creator, but didn't. If done without credit, people who could have found an artist they connect to are left in the dark. If the creator is making money off their creations, that's potential money gone down the drain.

Attribution, I suppose, is the important factor to me. This lines up with my own policies for reposting my art -- it's fine, if it's on a website that I'm not on and I'm credited clearly. But I still frown upon people posting art with credit if it's against the creator's explicit wishes, because I feel like it's an active action. Interpreting art is a part of enjoying art, but you can enjoy art without reposting it. Reposting art isn't a natural part of the process of experiencing art.

All of this, of course, comes with caveats that I've mentioned before, that I care significantly less when it's a corporation this is being done to vs an indie artist, which is why I used a webcomic for my example.

I hope all of that makes sense!

I disagree. If you enjoy an art piece, you should repost it, and where convenient, attribute the original artist. It can generate interesting discussion outside of the artists main circle of followers, likers, and retweeters. I've even shown pieces of my fiancé's art to my colleagues (who live across the whole ocean!) and then told him what they think about it. Sharing art through reposting can be really important for other people who your art would normally never reach. I mean, I regularly share art which I think is interesting or meaningful, and half the time I have no idea who the original artist is, but it means something to me, so I'll happily share it.

At it's basis it is the same, but I think the reason that most artists are against it is because when other people repost it, then the number doesn't go up on their end but will for the other person. If the account is big enough then the number will go up thrice as high as for the other person as it would for them and if the account didn't credit them they get none of said repost's power. For a lot of people who are or are trying to make social media/internet artist a job, the number going up for them and them alone means life or death.

I agree with your thoughts though. There are so many pictures from the 2000s that I only was able to find from reposts and imageboards like Derpibooru, Danbooru, Zerochan, etc (which btw, the imageboards I feel do image reposting the best as getting the highest quality copy, sorting everything, and making sure the source is found is priority). There was one piece from an artist I found from a WINAMP SKIN that I would not have seen otherwise as all of their stuff was exclusively posted to a niche art website in the 1990s that is completely unarchived by the Wayback Machine. Even though they put their real name on the art and was given a link, there is absolutely nothing of it left (or even any records of the person for that matter). The only work that survived was that Winamp skin and that was, even then, only by chance. That Winamp skin was made by someone who wasn't the artist (though they did ask for permission before making it according to them). Artists like Eric Schwartz had their work traded on floppies in the 90s and despite there having been hundreds of other artists at the time making furry animations for the Amiga, his are the only ones that survived into the future because they were shared around so much and because there were so many copies of it (that and he generally stuck around for a while in the 2000s and 2010s so if someone looked up the name they would be able to find him or something relating to him to go from there but still).

That being said, I don't know if it is necessarily a one-size-fits-all thing. Like I said at the beginning, people who make internet artist their job need the number on their stuff alone, hence why they enforce the art to not be reposted. For those, it surviving on would be less of a priority to the immediate income that would come from it. We could probably argue how valid that is and being a social media influencer is till the cows come home, but the point I am trying to get at is for some people, reposting would be detrimental not just to ego but to their livelyhoods. Regardless of thoughts on capitalism and defining yourself by the numbers big corpos enforce, it is something that affects people's income and I feel like those thoughts shouldn't entirely be discarded.

This is the important part. Very few people would care about (attributed) digital reproduction if they were living like Scrooge McDuck already. And this goes for workflow automation (LLM generative art) as a whole. Artists are naturally high-strung with few exceptions, and hurting an artist’s sense of security by hinting to them that they’re going to have a hard time finding a job doing art, well. It’s not pretty.

They’re already “eating” each other out there, with-or-without “reposting”, which is pretty… interesting. Many young digital artists tend to be in competition-mode with each other. Tensions are already high for a high-strung group of people (nevermind the emotional immaturity and thus extreme reactivity/volatility that comes with being literally, immature, compared to a typical 40-year-old) and add in the “loss” of “numbers go up” and it’s… again, not pretty.

As for myself, I don’t really care about my art being non-commercially reposted. Signatures exist for a reason. And by the way, artists can be discovered through reposts, if they put their signature and website on the image. People used to do this far more frequently before the rise of social media platforms. I guess cultural memory is just that short nowadays.

One of my favourite patron-supported artists is a guy who posts his name thrice on all his pieces and, honestly. It goes hard as fuck. I appreciate the aesthetic (his execution of the triple-branding is actually very good. I almost want to do it myself.)

What a lot of young digital artists today don’t seem to understand, is that there’s a world for art outside of Twitter and Tumblr. And even DeviantArt and ArtStation. It seems like many of these young people forget that arts publishing and spaces exist where art got its start—in the physical world. There are these things called art fairs and conventions. Maybe instead of screaming into the void about how your art is being reposted in the void, go outside and start exhibiting your art. Don’t want to step outside, because you want to work in video games and there are no studios in your locality? Then go into online game development spaces. Don’t pray for a recruiter to offer you a job, go to them. Make friends with game developers, and they’ll probably tell you of job opportunities they know of. Everyone wants to “go viral” instead of doing the actual work of social networking, which these big SNS platforms are actually pretty shitty at.

I may seem callous, and I probably am. But I really couldn’t care about what other artists are doing professionally, or uh, non-professionally, because I don’t see them as competition. I don’t see the typical resharer as competition, either. I really, don’t care.

...Honestly, I come from a more mixed perspective. While I don't agree with people completely impersonating an artist (I think that's pretty scummy, honestly. Identity theft is never good.), the greatest potential of the internet is this potential to share things with other people, be that books, thoughts, opinions, and yes, art. I remember one comic where the artist actually encouraged active reposting, because they wanted to reach the widest audience they could, even if it meant a few people wouldn't attribute them to it, or might even just claim it was theirs.

For me, I think that the most important part of art is to make something that means something to you, or someone you care about. Or even art that might mean something to a wide audience! Like a video game! But the point is, the art conveys meaning, rather than intrinsic monetary value or likes/retweets/reblogs/ad views/whatever. While I do see AI as a partial threat to the livelihood of real artists, if you're used to making art in the real world, like graffiti, or paintings, or photography, you kinda gotta be used to people sharing it online without your permission. I have a nice painting which I've shared several times online and the original artist would probably be happy that so many people like it, rather than worrying about likes being stolen from them (I have no idea who the original artist is).

Offline, people even just sell art secondhand without the original artist ever getting a kickback! I think the problem online is that it's so easy to see someone else "taking" your art, and then getting more attention, or whatever, whereas you'd probably never know if someone bought and then resold your art in physical space. It becomes this war over almost meaningless online attention, when in reality, you'd probably get far more meaningful interactions than just a like and a retweet if you just set up at an art expo.

Personally, I usually always make art for myself. My most recent piece is... a painting of a memory of my first time seeing fall leaves in Minneapolis. Seriously. It's just red, orange, yellow, white, some pink on a canvas. If someone stole it and I saw it reposted ad infinitum on the internet, or if I sold a physical copy then saw a million copies reprinted all over the place... I mean, I'd be surprised, that painting only really means something to me and Jinsbek, but I'd actually be happy that it probably meant someone to someone else enough that they wanted to share it!

...I guess I'm a bit insensitive to the struggle of online artists. I probably am. But like my partner, I really don't see fellow artists, or reposters, as competition for attention or money. ...And if I wanted to make money off my art, I'd take my partners' advice and go sell it at an expo, rather than trying to generate clicks and Patreon subscriptions and plastering my public art in ugly watermarks that nobody (much less myself!) likes.

[Bede]

I mean, I regularly share art which I think is interesting or meaningful, and half the time I have no idea who the original artist is

And that's exactly the issue. Half the time, you don't know who the artist who made that piece of art. By sharing that art, you are not supporting the artist that created that piece you connected with. You're not showing them that their art means something to you, you're not encouraging them to keep creating. In fact, there's a high chance (with the way that online artist culture is) that you are supporting something the creator of the art that you love would actively dislike.

Maybe we're just very different people, but I just can't imagine not feeling sad at that idea.

I've even shown pieces of my fiancé's art to my colleagues (who live across the whole ocean!) and then told him what they think about it.

What you are describing here, in my opinion, is very different from reposting. Showing the art of somebody that you know personally to other people, and then telling the artist what those other people thought, is a good thing. Great even! You know the original artist, so you can answer the question of attribution if asked. It's in a group of a limited amount of people, so it's not as if there's a chance you showing the art to them will draw attention away from the original artist. And then, to top it all off, you're able to relay their reactions to the original artist, thereby giving them the positive comments other people granted the art, instead of keeping it in a place they may not ever see.

[JINSBEK]

And that's exactly the issue. Half the time, you don't know who the artist who made that piece of art. By sharing that art, you are not supporting the artist that created that piece you connected with. You're not showing them that their art means something to you, you're not encouraging them to keep creating. In fact, there's a high chance (with the way that online artist culture is) that you are supporting something the creator of the art that you love would actively dislike.

Maybe we're just very different people, but I just can't imagine not feeling sad at that idea.

This is interesting to me. So by this logic, my fiancee should not show me older Metalheart, fractal, Frutiger Metro, and other digital art that she has stumbled on, and can find no attribution to. She should not email me these things, she should not post them in our personal Discord, she should not even mention that she saw something cool. Because she hasn't tracked down the artist and made their number go up and/or personally emailed them or QRT'd or what have you.

I should also not share with her older, unknown digital art I've found, and discuss the merits of it with her. Is this correct?

Also... What if the art she wants to share with me is bad and neither of us like it? And our discussion of it is wholly what's wrong with it? Not that we've ever had a conversation like this... At least, not about an unknown piece of digital art. (Credited video games are another matter.) Because nothing in our conversation boosts the artist, should it not be held, ever? Or is that permissible only in private, never in public, because it would make the artist feel bad and not encourage their chances of landing a surprise recruiter email?

[Bede]

This is interesting to me. So by this logic, my fiancee should not show me older Metalheart, fractal, Frutiger Metro, and other digital art that she has stumbled on, and can find no attribution to. She should not email me these things, she should not post them in our personal Discord, she should not even mention that she saw something cool. Because she hasn't tracked down the artist and made their number go up and/or personally emailed them or QRT'd or what have you.

I should also not share with her older, unknown digital art I've found, and discuss the merits of it with her. Is this correct?

Also... What if the art she wants to share with me is bad and neither of us like it? And our discussion of it is wholly what's wrong with it? Not that we've ever had a conversation like this... At least, not about an unknown piece of digital art. (Credited video games are another matter.) Because nothing in our conversation boosts the artist, should it not be held, ever? Or is that permissible only in private, never in public, because it would make the artist feel bad and not encourage their chances of landing a surprise recruiter email?

I don't understand what you mean by "by this logic", exactly, as, from my point of view, what you're describing is a whole new topic.

Also, maybe this is just my mental disability speaking, but I can't tell if you're trying to be condescending and imply I'm stupid with your tone. I showed multiple people the message to make sure it wasn't me misinterpreting it, and they all were in agreement that this was the tone being used. I'm still not sure, because tone can come off badly over text, but if you are trying to imply I'm dumb and my opinion is dumb, I don't really appreciate it, especially considering in the message you're replying to, I made an active effort to be polite. Anyway, if you want to say I'm an idiot, just say it. The way you spoke reminded me of my high school meangirl bullies who would ask something in a certain tone, then laugh at me when I answered seriously because I was too disabled to understand what they "really" meant, which I doubt is what you want. (Not intended as a dig, just an attempt at leveling with you about why I am so upset by this tone.)

To address the actual message itself: "repost", in my opinion, implies reposting something publicly, like to your Twitters or such. Showing art to others personally, such as through email or Discord, is a different topic altogether for me, which is what you're describing in your message. I think everything you describe is fine. In fact, I often encourage others who leave hateful comments on another person's work to shittalk the work to their friends, as an alternative.

[JINSBEK]

@Bede I had no intention of being condescending at all. If I thought your post was asinine I would've outright said it was asinine, instead of saying it was "interesting to me" and attempting to apply your logic to the given situations I explained above.

So "repost" only applies to "public" online platforms. A private/afterdark Twitter account would not count, then? What's the difference between a sharing of a work of unknown provenance online on Twitter, versus printing it out physically and showing it to people? What about a Facebook account and the only people who can see your post are your IRL contacts? Is it OK if the post is visible only to the closest circle of your friends, or does it cross a line when Friends of Friends and your in-laws can see it?

I think, you're assuming that the "reposter" doesn't include some commentary on the Twitter post and isn't wishing to elicit some sort of active discussion about the work. That the person is simply lazily sharing the work to make their own "number go up". I think that's what makes it more "personal" to you, right?

But in the end of all scenarios, regardless of the quality of the discussion or not, no attribution can be found, and this artist may remain unknown (and unencouraged) even after the sharing. Why does the "personal" quality of the sharing (or lack thereof) make the unattributed sharing different, in the unreached artist's terms? If the primary concern is the unknown artist's psychological and/or professional wellbeing, why is it different?

What if you make a public online post asking if anyone knows who the artist is? Is it bad to share a piece of artwork in order to try to track the artist down, even if you have no idea what their feelings about reposting are?

[Bede]

@Bede I had no intention of being condescending at all. If I thought your post was asinine I would've outright said it was asinine, instead of saying it was "interesting to me" and attempting to apply your logic to the given situations I explained above.

So "repost" only applies to "public" online platforms. A private/afterdark Twitter account would not count, then? What's the difference between a sharing of a work of unknown provenance online on Twitter, versus printing it out physically and showing it to people? What about a Facebook account and the only people who can see your post are your IRL contacts? Is it OK if the post is visible only to the closest circle of your friends, or does it cross a line when Friends of Friends and your in-laws can see it?

I think, you're assuming that the "reposter" doesn't include some commentary on the Twitter post and isn't wishing to elicit some sort of active discussion about the work. That the person is simply lazily sharing the work to make their own "number go up". I think that's what makes it more "personal" to you, right?

But in the end of all scenarios, regardless of the quality of the discussion or not, no attribution can be found, and this artist may remain unknown (and unencouraged) even after the sharing. Why does the "personal" quality of the sharing (or lack thereof) make the unattributed sharing different, in the unreached artist's terms? If the primary concern is the unknown artist's psychological and/or professional wellbeing, why is it different?

What if you make a public online post asking if anyone knows who the artist is? Is it bad to share a piece of artwork in order to try to track the artist down, even if you have no idea what their feelings about reposting are?

Thank you for clarifying! Like I said, I'm bad with tone, so I appreciate it.

To answer your questions, I would not count a private Twitter account, or a Facebook account where only your IRLs can see it, though those are both toeing the line in my mind, which is interesting to me. Still, despite being closer to the line, I consider both alright.

Yes, your assumption is correct: when I picture "reposting", I picture the folks on Pinterest and the like who repost other people's art with no commentary and no credit. I think reposting art for the sake of invoking a discussion is, again, toeing the line in my mind. I think, if the purpose is to facilitate discussion, and you have searched for the artist but cannot find them (rather than just not wanting to search for them out of not wanting to put in the effort), I think the best practice is to tack on a quick disclaimer along the lines of, "This art is not mine, and I couldn't find the creator -- if you know the artist, please tell me in the comments!" As you can probably guess by that, I don't mind people reposting artwork when it is for the expressed purpose of finding the artist. The intent of the repost, and if the reposter put in / is putting in the effort to find the artist, matters to me, I suppose. (I'm sure the next logical question would be, "What about those who tried to find the original artist and couldn't, but didn't mention it in their caption?" To which my answer is, "I think they should, in that case, add a caption of, again, 'If anyone knows the artist, please tell me.' This ensures that, if it gets popular, it at least means there will be more people seeing it, so there's a higher likelihood somebody will know the artist. It also works to let the viewer know that this is not their art.)

To me, the difference between private vs public unattributed sharing is something I internally refer to "the Google rule". This rule only applies to reposts of unattributed art without an effort, in the caption, to encourage others to tell you if they know the original artist (for the reason listed above). If it gets popular enough, is your unattributed art able to show up on Google search? Within personal circles, there is no "popularity" aspect. But, if your repost becomes popular enough, you will start to become the one credited for the art, and, thus, lots of people will stop looking for the actual original artist, thinking they found it with you. (I've seen this phenomenon happen many, many times.) If it's in the top of Google search results, lots and lots of people will see it, much more than with personal circles, without the attribution.

I appreciate these questions. They're making me think about my own philosophy, what scenarios count as a "gray area" for me, and what exactly makes me annoyed with reposted artwork without attribution. I never consciously realized that the intent of a repost, effort to credit the artist, and the scale of people viewing the unattributed art mattered to me as much as they do.

[JINSBEK]

Thank you, @Bede. I'm very happy to have this level of engaged, honest discussion with you. And your elaboration of your position in your in-depth response has made me realise something...

Most reposters being attributed art that they have not made are not professional artists.

Serious, professional artists do not attempt to impersonate other artists. When they share art that they haven't created, they make it clear that they haven't made it. In fact, many artists do not share others' art on their official social media, unless it is very clearly a colleague's post (e.g. game developers Retweeting another pixel artist's latest animation). I don't see Paul Massey pretending to be Ken Heidenreich or Trevor Henderson pretending to be Keith Thompson. It's unproductive to actually getting work. Anyone seriously pretending to be another artist is, very obviously, unserious, and any viewer who actually misattributes a reposted work to an unprofessional account (literally, why would you want to clog up the Advertising arm of your CV/Portfolio with shit that isn't yours?) isn't going to be a serious Collector, Patron, or Employer, either.

Most of the people who are caught up in this "reposting" nonsense aren't a serious part of the industry in any way. They are wholly irrelevant to me because I can't see them actually affecting the bottom lines of people who ARE making a serious effort to be their own small business owner. (For the sake of clarity, I'm defining this as someone who has set up an LLC as a small business, or is otherwise registered with the IRS as an independent contractor and is paying quarterly taxes. & international equivalents outside the US.) Pinterest isn't where I go to when I'm looking for a digital artist to hire or be hired. Neither is a public Facebook Group. (Creative professions like goldsmithing or knifemaking are different because it's practically impossible to take on a commission for something you can't physically create; you're not going to get far impersonating another blacksmith.) Anyone who seriously equates larger Retweets to improved commercial success (never mind the abysmal click-through/conversion rates) would be buying Retweets for their own products, not trying to create a Retweet wave with stolen art.

I suppose there might be someone setting up a Patreon using stolen art, but I don't see that being sustainable. At this point it's easier to have LLM generative art make your "originals" for you--they can't be tracked down to a living artist.

I'm also of the opinion that if the unknown artist's well-being really is the foremost and sole concern, then neither the affect nor the scale of the unattributed share matters at all. The reposter's intent to thoughtfully discuss a piece of work has no bearing on the artist who remains "unshilled". Regardless of what my fiancee says to me or to her colleagues or to her cat makes no difference to the artist, because nothing materially changes for them.

It's just nice for the cat.

If we acknowledge that we can "toe the line" because of the prosocial value in the quality of the discussion, then we have to acknowledge that the feelings of people who aren't the artist matter more--presumably because these people (or the cat) are benefiting from a cultural appreciation of the art. And raising the cultural level and artistic sensitivities of others is important... Presumably, because it makes more people sensitive to art, and that's important.

And I think that's OK.

...One more point. The reason I think the reason "reposting" might be such a "disease" now in certain spaces is that platforms like Twitter don't encourage artists to share their WIPs. On DeviantArt, it's culturally expected that you post some process pictures/videos of at least some of your works, so people can see that you actually made it; I would be more comfortable attempting to hire an artist based on their dA than on their Twitter and the very first professional video game I worked on hired our character designer this way, through dA. Later on, I was the Head of Artist Relations of a platform similar to deviantArt, explicitly commercially-oriented (less for hobbyists, more for actual fine artists and their collectors), and we instituted a verification process for artists applying to sell on our marketplace, for all media. Photography, digital media, traditional media. These encompassed people who had been making art for decades before I was a zygote, people who had started making art for a few years, people who were literally "just getting started" or were not professionals but felt confident enough in their skills to be able to sell some of their pieces, even if this would never be their primary source of income. Regardless of their experience level, they were all very serious and submitted to the verification process--which was public. Our collectors trusted they were buying pieces made by the actual artist, and they could hop in on the public verification space any time to ask questions themselves! Some of the most engaged verification discussions came from other artists simply talking to each other about their prospective creative processes: novice photographers who were already on our platform were asking the new-to-the-platform veteran photographers about their photos, and the veterans were giving advice! It was fascinating and I am proud to have facilitated such engaged, thoughtful discussions in the public eye.

Twitter has no space for that.

Twitter was never designed for art or artists.