@staff Not exactly the “welcome back to the app store” you were expecting huh

its what they deserve

Tumblr Inquisition

When did freedom of expression suddenly become an online crime? When did an attack on a specific subset of any group ever work to the benefit of any institution?

In this bloggers humble opinion, Tumblr’s December 17th forced genocide of Adult Content blogs is just another example of how our society is slipping backwards in its level of tolerance towards anything that is different, preferring to have this type of content hidden away, and marked with a scarlet letter of intolerance and shame.

Are there issues revolving around certain types of blogs Yes. Child pornography and other unacceptably content is abhorrent to all. Is Tumblr going after those specific types of blogs? No. Are they setting up a system that blocks minors from accessing adult content blogs? No. They are preferring to follow a simplistic “nuke it all” approach rather than address the overall problem. Taking a M.A.D (mutually assured destruction) approach, can only end in one way, for without adult content, Tumblr will die off.

So my friends and followers(93k amazing individuals), I challenge you to reblog this note, and challenge Tumblr’s decision. Perhaps, if enough of us stand up and protest some good will come of it. Resist, and fight the good, and honourable, fight.

Open Letter To Tumblr.

Dear Jeff,

Dear Tumblr @staff ,

I’ve read your new guidelines with great interest and care and I must say you’ve missed a huge opportunity to become a leader in Internet community safety.

Let me explain:

First of all, as an adult and a parent I wholeheartedly applaud your efforts in making Tumblr a place where minors can explore the Internet in a safe environment. You have my full support in banning any and all form of child pornography! So in all sincerity kudos to you for taking this step.

Having said that, as a parent, I know all too well how forbidding a certain toy/food/activity to my offspring will turn it into a forbidden fruit. Coming down on my kids like a maddening fury yelling they’re not allowed to do drugs for example is by no means a guarantee they won’t end up with a needle in their arm. Harsh, I know, yet a reality nonetheless.

The same applies to sexuality in all it shapes and forms. Taking all adult content away form Tumblr will only push all these curious youngsters to go and explore elsewhere and we all know the Internet showcases fucked up stuff!

Also, trust me when I say my young teenage offspring has quite the sexual imagination already.

Turning sex and/or nudity into a taboo is not helping my offspring. Talking to them however is, answering any and all questions they have is.

Secondly, I’m a proud member of the BDSM community here on Tumblr, have been for over 2 years.

In my time on here I’ve seen and discovered this community is very protective of itself; abusers and/or wannabes are called out, numerous child pornography blogs have been reported.

There’s a whole community online of people, both Dominants and submissives alike, with up to 40 years of experience that share their knowledge, that take new people under their wing, that openly demonstrate the difference between porn BDSM and real life relationships.

New, curious people - when of legal age - were all welcomed with open arms by all of us. An insane amount of questions have been answered, advice and guidance have been offered freely to anyone who genuinely wanted to explore the BDSM world.

Now, now you’re pushing all these new aspiring dominants/submissives into uncharted territory! Safe, Sane and Consensual has been thrown out of the window for the BDSM community.

What I wanted, hell what every single one of my followers wanted, was to get rid of the porn bots! What we wanted was to get rid of the child pornography.

What we wanted was a safe environment for all of us.

What we’re left with is a whole lot of the opposite. Making Tumblr Safe Again has made the whole Internet an even more unsafer place.

What you could, and should have done, is reach out to the blogs with the largest follower base, made an open invitation to any and all smaller blogs who wanted to help you make Tumblr a safer place. Yes, we should have been vetted amidst this process. No, no one would have objected.

I’m beyond disappointed Tumblr. What started as an no doubt good and spot on idea has left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Sincerely,

Dirty

Here here x

I’ve been in this community since 2012 and I find this decision deeply saddening. This is the one, singular place where I felt completely comfortable expressing my sexual identity and I’ve met some wonderful people both on the platform and in person through having this blog.

With this decision, you’re carving the heart out of a huge section of your community who have been here, in many cases such as my own, for MANY years.

I, and many others I’m sure, will not be staying here after the 17th.

Like wise, been here since 2012 and carved out an amazing community. My heart and soul has been ripped apart.

This is a terrible time to gut this community. With the shining of the main stream light onto bdsm as a whole. There is a wide variety of dangers that this community truly helped. You have more novice people joining the kink folds, many who are unsure of who they can talk to to learn and develop. You have the plague of fake doms and subs moving in and faking the dynamic for the freedom and kinks, but they have a minimal understanding of the actual culture or traps. People come here to learn and find mentors, to connect and expand their kinks. The misunderstanding of this lifestyle by vanilla people leaves people with more extreme kinks vulnerable. And now more then ever a safe place for people to come anonymously and to learn and grow safely is so important. And tumblr decided to gut it.

For everyone’s information:

The plan for the 17th, when the adult content ban comes in, is to protest.

To do that, we are making as much noise either side of the 17th as possible, and using the site as normal.

On the 17th, dead silence.

People are saying log off but what they really mean is don’t open the site or the app.

But, on the 17th make as much noise as possible on every other platform. Tweet about it and post on facebook and instagram and everywhere else.

What this does is causes a massive dip in ad revenue for one single day. That does not make staff think ‘oh everyone’s gone let’s shut down.’ What it actually makes them think is 'oh shit people aren’t happy and if people don’t keep using our site we’re out of money and out of jobs.’

A boycott reminds a company that the users (consumers) have the power to make their site (business) worthless with one single coordinated decision.

If you want to join in, here’s what to do:

Remember: the execs don’t care about anything but money. Shutting down the site means there’s $0 further income from it. That’s their last possible course of action. If we make it clear we’re not happy, they’ll have to do something or we can do more and more until it becomes too expensive.

Protests take commitment. They’re a defiant action against a business that is doing something wrong. They will try to scare you into not participating, because they’re scared. We hold all the power here, sometimes the execs just need to be reminded of that.

Censored on tumblr

What all ask boxes look like for me (submission boxes look exactly the same):

Left: what happens when I try to open dms (New Message does nothing); I can’t even read them. Right: when I try to go to someone’s dms from their blog.

Neither new things I post nor old things I post show up in the tags they’re in, even if they were before.

I can type things into replies, but it won’t actually post them.

Since it doesn’t seem this one has been encountered by many people yet, maybe reblog this so people know about it. I’m probably getting deleted though

Tumblr is shadowbanning people and they aren’t even trying to be subtle about it.

Please spread the word.

I’m glad this is spreading but simultaneously it makes it sound like the shadowban is much less severe than it is because I didn’t realize, and this shadowban is so severe I can’t even add on / tell anyone that.

All my likes, reblogs, and replies are hidden from the notes of EVERY post.

When I like or rb things it doesn’t show notes in someone’s activity / dash, except long-time followers (not sure about the exact cutoff/conditions).

If I reblogged and added something to this from a non-follower they wouldn’t even know. Check and see: my rb’s don’t even show up in the notes. So people couldn’t even find out I added something on by checking the notes either:

Not to mention: I’m hidden from all searches, can’t be @’d, past @’s of me are hidden from my notes, I don’t get notified when people reply to a post I replied to, my @’s don’t give notes, and every search on my blog is blanked. I can’t even ask/submit to myself even with anons, and lots more.

Oh, yeah, and: MY BLOG ISN’T EVEN MARKED NSFW. Every flagged post I’ve found was restored. But every flagged post you contest brings attention to you that risks you just getting shadowbanned randomly.

THIS is the version that should get spread around…

This has nothing to do with NSFW and I have no idea what it is to do with. It happened to my old blog, no messages, no asks, not being alerted to being tagged in things, not alerting people that I tag. So on, so forth. It’s all bullshit and I legit think it happens at random.

Say em while you can!

has this been done yet

Tumblr when they were removed by Apple from the App Store:

Tumblr “working as quickly as possible to resolve the issue”:

Tumblr on December 18th looking for 60% of their users:

Underrated post

Tumblr is finally becoming the asexual cafe

A better, more positive Tumblr

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

What do you have to say about net neutrality now? Yes, I have an iPhone, doesn’t mean that I agree with Apple’s short sighted and puritanical view on sex in its many different formats. The claim was child pornography found on Tumblr. Fine! I certainly disagree with that. Eliminate that shit. But to completely self censor? Tumblr, you’re being a toadie, and to be frank, your audience is going to drop by about %85. You might want to reconsider this move to chop your head off.

As it is now, so will it ever be.