What exactly is an "Abuse or Exploit of the System"?

An Abuse of the System is an action which uses or otherwise takes advantage of a feature which we offer here on deviantART in a manner which is inappropriate or otherwise not originally intended.

What follows below is a brief listing of some of the most common abuses and exploits, you may find others with their own FAQ listing.

Abuse of the Favorites System

• It is considered an exploit of the system for an individual to use alternate accounts to manipulate the system in favor of their own work. Deviants who are caught utilizing multiple accounts in order to cheat their way into a higher Popular ranking will find themselves banned and their gallery purged as punishment of this betrayal of trust.

• It is also considered an exploit of the system to deliberately orchestrate a large group of users with the express purpose of placing a specific deviation into a higher Popular ranking. Those who participate in this sort of Popular ranking manipulation may be punished by administrative action.

• It is considered an exploit of the system to create a [link] which will cause the automatic and involuntary addition of a Deviation or Scrap to the Favorites Listing of any deviantART User who clicks it. Those creating these links may receive administrative action without prior warning.

Abuse of the 'Friends' or DeviantWATCH System

• It is considered an exploit of the system to create a [link] which will cause the automatic and involuntary addition of a deviantART user account to the deviantWATCH (or 'Friends') Listing of any other deviantART User who clicks it. Those creating these links may receive administrative action without prior warning.

Abuse of the TODAY page

• It is considered an exploit of the system to deliberately flood a journal with the intention of forcing it onto the TODAY page by artificially driving up the number of comments associated with it.