An emptier, more judgmental 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–except for you perverts. 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–just not you degenerates.
Over the past several months, and inspired by our storied past, we’ve given serious thought to who we want to be to our non-pervert community moving forward and have been hard at work devising a way to cull our user base of perverts for a better Tumblr. We’ve realized that in order to continue to fulfill our promise and place in culture, which most users don’t give a fuck about because they’re just perverts, we must change. Some of that change began with making it harder for evil to fester. Today, we’re a step too far by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions because come ON… we’re not total prudes, ya fucking pervs).
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. Yeah, I know. We’re fucking awesome. Pat us on the back, you pervs.
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–just not if it’s perverted or includes weird stuff like dicks and vaginas. 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 between prudish and conservative.
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, unless that community is made up of you sick, disgusting, nipple-loving perverts. 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, even though we have all the tools in place for people who don’t want to see that perverts stuff to just not see it and could work on that instead of turning away a significant portion of our userbase.
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 go somewhere else you fucking pervs. Go to Newgrounds. See if we care. Wait. How many of you were perverts, anyways? Wait–
So what’s next?
Starting December 17, 2018, we will begin culling the perverts. 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 because there are just SO. MANY. PERVERTS.
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. After all, it takes time to figure out which nipples are okay and which nipples aren’t okay, and that is certainly a quandary that our pure, moral algorithm isn’t quite nuanced enough to handle yet.
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 perverts, 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, except for you goddamned perverts. We won’t always get this right, especially in the beginning, but we are determined to make your experience a positive one unless you’re a pervert, in which case, GET THE FUCK OUT.
Jeff D’Onofrio
Former CFO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media and Zagat, two perfectly non-perverted companies