What Has dA Become?

It's 1 in the morning and I'm tired as hell, but I REALLY wanted to get this picture finished. 

Alright, as a lot of you have seen, dA has made quite a bit of drastic changes over the course of three months.

The kickstarter was the change of the overall logo (which, by the way, is actually stolen from a Russian website called Platzkart [platzkart.ru/]). Not only did it confuse a lot of members with the appearance of the Z (for Zeviantart?), but it took away the whole authentic feel to the entire site. If you were to look back on Deviantart's logo history, you would see that it remained pretty consistent. Plus, people would take one glance at it and automatically know what the site was. Today, it just doesn't feel right. 

Moving on to the most recent change that made just about every member I've seen snap: The removal of webcams. dA claims that the widget has lost its initial value and those who want to keep that feature were to purchase the Premium Membership. Before the lot of you get on your high horses, I've seen the pros and the cons to this. The Pros include that dA is trying to be progressive, taking away this function allows the site to earn even more money through its users' premium purchases, it takes away some sexual-themed/suggestive content away from the profile pages of users, and it condenses any extremely long profiles (you know, the ones that you REALLY have to scroll down through). The cons include that nobody AT ALL was expecting this, it really impacted negatively to both Premium members and Free-Use members, it lowered the site's reputation for making this choice a reason for an easy cash-grab, it creates an image of "the rich and the poor", and the lack of reaction from dA after a good majority of user outbursts helps confirm these cons, which makes people even angrier. 

Third and finally, news has surfaced recently that people could actually get suspended from having inappropriate content in their Sta.sh. Whatever happened to privacy?

Many times, dA would ask for feedback from its users whenever there were site changes. A lot of the time, the comments seem to go unread and the only positive feedback the staff pay attention to are usually the bug reports. What about us Beta Testers? Our job is to basically inform dA of any bugs or to test out something in particular (like the new site format before it became official). We basically test out new things that are on the way, but are left out of any decision making that could particularly impact the community like the new dA logo and the removal of Webcams. The more I've though about this, the more soupy my brain became. So I went back to look at the terms and conditions and I came to realize why a good majority of users seem to be entirely ignored by the staff:

This Service is provided by DeviantArt on an "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" basis and DeviantArt reserves the right to modify, suspend or discontinue the Service, in its sole discretion, at any time and without notice. You agree that DeviantArt is and will not be liable to you for any modification, suspension or discontinuance of the Service.

Translation: You will roll with whatever changes come to dA, no matter how much you dislike it or not. 

This was stated in the very beginning of our agreement to becoming a member of Deviantart and we AGREED to that. We AGREED to not whine, complain, or rant about any changes because if we did, it would automatically be ignored. That's why we all feel like we haven't been heard by the staff. The evidence is right there in the Terms and Services, the very thing we didn't bother to read and instead checked off hastily so that we could get on with it and set up our accounts. 

My personal opinion: The way things have been made out to be as of late, it almost feel like this website has become a dysfunctional hierarchy. We have the staff, volunteers, the senior members, premiums till hell freezes over, premiums, and the free-users. Basically, it's just the staff and volunteers that make all the decision-making and such while the others are just plain users, though some are more respected than others. But there is one thing that I really want to get out not just for me, but for the sake of other fellow deviants as well:

We have the right to freedom of speech and we deserve to have our voices heard. After all, that is what helped shaped dA's community in the first place. Bring back the community-feel and stop trying to divide this site. Please for once, just LISTEN to what we as members have to say! You have more than enough volunteers and staff members to help run the community. Focus on the people and not just the formatting of the website!

End of my part. It's now 1:30am and I'm very tired. Thank you for bearing with me on this and I'm sorry that this description appears to be such a huge wall of text to some.