Banned content includes photos, videos, and GIFs of human
genitalia, female-presenting nipples, and any media involving sex acts,
including illustrations. The exceptions include nude classical statues
and political protests that feature nudity. The new guidelines exclude
text, so erotica remains permitted. Illustrations and art that feature
nudity are still okay — so long as sex acts aren’t depicted — and so are
breast-feeding and after birth photos.
“Users have a chance to appeal flagged content”
The policy change takes effect on December 17th. From then on, any
explicit posts will be flagged and deleted by algorithms. For now,
Tumblr is emailing users who have posted adult content flagged by
algorithms and notifying that their content will soon be hidden from
view. Posts with porn content will be set to private, which will prevent
them from being reblogged or shared elsewhere in the Tumblr community.
Even the cold dead embrace of a Yahoo! acquision could not end
Tumblr, such was the power of fandom gathered there. But Yahoo never
knew what it owned in Tumblr and was indifferent to its continued
existence. The management of new Yahoo owner Verizon, however, has a
pulse. It knows what Tumblr is and it hates it. It will hack it down
until a perfectly clean advertising- and appstore-friendly traffic
center remains.
That phrase Tumblr uses, “female-presenting nipples”, is darkly comic
given the context of its ultra-woke audience. They didn’t give even the
slightest thought to what people other than lawyers and appstore
gatekeepers might think of it. In that sense, it seems to have a knowing
reactionary air about it. It’s a “go fuck yourself” so perfectly aimed
at Tumblr users it’s almost impossible to believe it isn’t intentional.
This affects artists too, and not just the ones who intentionally draw smut. People’s figure drawing studies aren’t going to be allowed on the site, and drawing resources that include nude photos/tutorials are going away. That shit isn’t even porn and it’s going to get banned.
This affects so many trans folks (my posts have been flagged, as well) and sex workers, my god.
truly NOTHING is a funnier phenomenon than when you see an extremely bad take on tumblr, start laughing at it, and then think “oh wait, a lot of kids use tumblr, maybe it’s just some 14-year-old who is a little misguided” so you go to op’s blog and it turns out they’re 33
Yes, we have seen the news! We are planning to have the
site back up either tomorrow or Wednesday; we just have a couple last
security measures we want to put in place today, but we will be working on
it as quickly as possible and we will have a clearer ETA by tonight.
We will also try to come up with a way to lower the barrier to entry for new users, though we don’t want to drop the entry fee entirely because a) we feel that would be unfair to our users who have paid for their registration keys and b) we don’t think our servers could handle a massive influx of new users right now, so we’re going to try to allow as many new users as we can without capsizing the boat. We appreciate your patience and will have more details soon!
“lol the only people mad about the tumblr announcement just want porn lol”
Yeah, no.
Tumblr blocked the tag “chronic pain” in this mess for no reason
They’re flagging commonly used tags by queer people, sex educators, and artists who make their fucking LIVING on tumblr
They’re gonna take down genuine sex workers because they didn’t curb
the problem with spamming porn bots YEARS ago when tumblr users REPORTED
OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND *OVER* that it was a problem
Tumblr
IGNORED the bots, IGNORED the problems, and honestly treated it like
NOTHING until their app was taken off a store due to it.
They’re
fucking over a shit-ton of REAL PEOPLE who rely on tumblr for community
and/or income because they ignored users’ complaints about shitty porn
bots for YEARS until it had financial consequences
I can no longer even talk about chronic pain without the post being blocked from searches
I have drawn one or two nude pieces on my art tumblr which is 99% safe
for work but now I’m worried the blog will be taken down entirely
because Tumblr won’t bother differentiating between spam and REAL PEOPLE
just trying to live their goddamn lives
And god forbid I want to
talk about bisexuality or sex or kink in just… MY LIFE. As a
normal-ass human being who just wants to TALK ABOUT HUMAN THINGS
No, their solution to nuke a problem they’ve ignored for years is to take us all down at once
So maybe don’t laugh about “oh no not my pornz” because 1. plenty of
that ~porn~ is made by actual humans making their living and 2. WAY MORE
than “just porn” is being targeted
This along with Facebook
continuously upholding white supremacy by letting nazi shit fly by while
they ban people for speaking out against their oppressors and it’s
basically like we’re running out of truly free places to just… BE
Since its founding in 2007, Tumblr has always been a place for wide open, creative self-expression at the heart of community and culture. To borrow from our founder David Karp, we’re proud to have inspired a generation of artists, writers, creators, curators, and crusaders to redefine our culture and to help empower individuality.
Over the past several months, and inspired by our storied past, we’ve given serious thought to who we want to be to our community moving forward and have been hard at work laying the foundation for a better Tumblr. We’ve realized that in order to continue to fulfill our promise and place in culture, especially as it evolves, we must change. Some of that change began with fostering more constructive dialogue among our community members. Today, we’re taking another step by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions).
Let’s first be unequivocal about something that should not be confused with today’s policy change: posting anything that is harmful to minors, including child pornography, is abhorrent and has no place in our community. We’ve always had and always will have a zero tolerance policy for this type of content. To this end, we continuously invest in the enforcement of this policy, including industry-standard machine monitoring, a growing team of human moderators, and user tools that make it easy to report abuse. We also closely partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation, two invaluable organizations at the forefront of protecting our children from abuse, and through these partnerships we report violations of this policy to law enforcement authorities. We can never prevent all bad actors from attempting to abuse our platform, but we make it our highest priority to keep the community as safe as possible.
So what is changing?
Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr, and we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to reflect this policy change. We recognize Tumblr is also a place to speak freely about topics like art, sex positivity, your relationships, your sexuality, and your personal journey. We want to make sure that we continue to foster this type of diversity of expression in the community, so our new policy strives to strike a balance.
Why are we doing this?
It is our continued, humble aspiration that Tumblr be a safe place for creative expression, self-discovery, and a deep sense of community. As Tumblr continues to grow and evolve, and our understanding of our impact on our world becomes clearer, we have a responsibility to consider that impact across different age groups, demographics, cultures, and mindsets. We spent considerable time weighing the pros and cons of expression in the community that includes adult content. In doing so, it became clear that without this content we have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.
Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community.
So what’s next?
Starting December 17, 2018, we will begin enforcing this new policy. Community members with content that is no longer permitted on Tumblr will get a heads up from us in advance and steps they can take to appeal or preserve their content outside the community if they so choose. All changes won’t happen overnight as something of this complexity takes time.
Another thing, filtering this type of content versus say, a political protest with nudity or the statue of David, is not simple at scale. We’re relying on automated tools to identify adult content and humans to help train and keep our systems in check. We know there will be mistakes, but we’ve done our best to create and enforce a policy that acknowledges the breadth of expression we see in the community.
Most importantly, we’re going to be as transparent as possible with you about the decisions we’re making and resources available to you, including more detailed information, product enhancements, and more content moderators to interface directly with the community and content.
Like you, we love Tumblr and what it’s come to mean for millions of people around the world. Our actions are out of love and hope for our community. We won’t always get this right, especially in the beginning, but we are determined to make your experience a positive one.
Jeff D’Onofrio CEO
Okay well you can complacently drop the transparency thing because we know the only reason you decided to so this wasn’t to make a more welcoming website. After all people asked you to to solve the porn bot problem for years and you never did until now. And you only did so because your app got banned on the app store for being adult and that means you would lose money. This has nothing to do with who you want to be in your community and everything to do with your app begin banned. Don’t lie to us. Thank you.
Since its founding in 2007, Tumblr has always been a place for wide open, creative self-expression at the heart of community and culture. To borrow from our founder David Karp, we’re proud to have inspired a generation of artists, writers, creators, curators, and crusaders to redefine our culture and to help empower individuality.
Over the past several months, and inspired by our storied past, we’ve given serious thought to who we want to be to our community moving forward and have been hard at work laying the foundation for a better Tumblr. We’ve realized that in order to continue to fulfill our promise and place in culture, especially as it evolves, we must change. Some of that change began with fostering more constructive dialogue among our community members. Today, we’re taking another step by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions).
Let’s first be unequivocal about something that should not be confused with today’s policy change: posting anything that is harmful to minors, including child pornography, is abhorrent and has no place in our community. We’ve always had and always will have a zero tolerance policy for this type of content. To this end, we continuously invest in the enforcement of this policy, including industry-standard machine monitoring, a growing team of human moderators, and user tools that make it easy to report abuse. We also closely partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation, two invaluable organizations at the forefront of protecting our children from abuse, and through these partnerships we report violations of this policy to law enforcement authorities. We can never prevent all bad actors from attempting to abuse our platform, but we make it our highest priority to keep the community as safe as possible.
So what is changing?
Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr, and we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to reflect this policy change. We recognize Tumblr is also a place to speak freely about topics like art, sex positivity, your relationships, your sexuality, and your personal journey. We want to make sure that we continue to foster this type of diversity of expression in the community, so our new policy strives to strike a balance.
Why are we doing this?
It is our continued, humble aspiration that Tumblr be a safe place for creative expression, self-discovery, and a deep sense of community. As Tumblr continues to grow and evolve, and our understanding of our impact on our world becomes clearer, we have a responsibility to consider that impact across different age groups, demographics, cultures, and mindsets. We spent considerable time weighing the pros and cons of expression in the community that includes adult content. In doing so, it became clear that without this content we have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.
Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community.
So what’s next?
Starting December 17, 2018, we will begin enforcing this new policy. Community members with content that is no longer permitted on Tumblr will get a heads up from us in advance and steps they can take to appeal or preserve their content outside the community if they so choose. All changes won’t happen overnight as something of this complexity takes time.
Another thing, filtering this type of content versus say, a political protest with nudity or the statue of David, is not simple at scale. We’re relying on automated tools to identify adult content and humans to help train and keep our systems in check. We know there will be mistakes, but we’ve done our best to create and enforce a policy that acknowledges the breadth of expression we see in the community.
Most importantly, we’re going to be as transparent as possible with you about the decisions we’re making and resources available to you, including more detailed information, product enhancements, and more content moderators to interface directly with the community and content.
Like you, we love Tumblr and what it’s come to mean for millions of people around the world. Our actions are out of love and hope for our community. We won’t always get this right, especially in the beginning, but we are determined to make your experience a positive one.
Jeff D’Onofrio CEO
Dear @staff and Jeff D’ Onofrio,
Y’all stupid as ass because nudity and basic consensual adult porn isnt the problem.
It’s:
-pedophilla
-nazis
-nsfw content that revolves around rape
-gore
-abuse glorifying
-and porn bots.
With a simple search on the tags, you can read what the post is about.
Carpet bombing Tumblr is going to do 3 things
-piss EVERYONE off
-make you loose a ton of users thus your money
-get a lot of public hate.
If you’re intentions are to actually shut down the website in order to make a new one, I thoroughly understand but you could possibly be a little more honest with that. However if your ideas to make Tumblr is safer and better place, get rid of the form bots and all the more problematic content.
Don’t be lazy and just carpet bomb everyone all because you all think that’s a smart idea.
As we are moving towards a period of more decentralized fandom, if you want to support the artists who are going to be hard-hit by this loss of platform/audience, here’s what you can do to help to help the art-side of fandom stay motivated enough to produce content:
credit artists
link to their current media/platforms to the best of your ability
with artist’s permission, share their credited work on whatever fandom platforms you end up moving to if it’s not a site that they have migrated to
help others keep track of where their favorite artists are now
if you’re using discord to look at art, remember to check out the actual link and maybe give feedback there, because telling your friend that you like the art they linked does nothing for keeping the artist arting
Erotic text is still currently allowed under tumblr’s new policy, but it might not be later, so keep these things in mind for fic authors too.
And just in general, it’s not just content creators that need support and security. Look around at the friends you’ve made here. Think about how you’ll keep in touch with them. Think about how you might reminisce and be sad if the “next tumblr” comes along and they felt too lost to have stayed in fandom long enough to meet you there. Be kind; show love. Everyone’s a little scared and sad now – creators, rebloggers, and lurkers. We’re all looking forward at December 17th with uncertainty and indecision, and that’s okay.
We’re not scared because we loved the blue background or the activity page design, we’re scared because of the people, friends, heroes, admirers, peers, validation, love, and happiness that we feel slipping away. And so long as we hold onto the bonds that matter most to us, this will all pass a lot less painfully than we fear.
If you’ve been meaning to get in touch with someone, but have been putting it off or feeling shy, now’s probably the time. If you wanted to make friends, note down someone’s accounts, form a discord or mailing-list with your buddies, now’s the time.
punkpixel 