An Open Letter to Tumblr about the Adult Content Ban and How it is Hurting Your Users:

Recently, Tumblr was removed from the Apple app store due to an incident involving child pornography. This incident is incredibly unfortunate, but it doesn’t stand alone. Tumblr was also removed from the app store due to the large influx of porn bots and pornographic spam, users claiming to be proud to be pedophiles, blatant Nazism, racists who are not deleted for sending hate and harassing users, and more. I myself reported someone for harassing me, but because I had blocked the person and couldn’t access the messages where they harassed me, they were still able to send me anonymous asks. Your support staff, with back doors to the website (presumably), claimed they could not access the messages, and I was left SOL. Many features on this website do nothing to actually protect your users from harassment, racism, homophobia, transphobia, Nazis, pedophiles, predators, porn bots, and more. 

You claim in your statement to us that you “have been working on these problems for a long time”. This is blatantly untrue. Please do not lie to us and patronize us. We’ve been here. We’ve seen you do nothing over, and over, and over again. 

We complained to you for months and months about the rampant porn bots, and you did nothing except add a report button on mobile which only reported sensitive content or spam at best. You could have addressed this problem with an effective algorithm, but you did not. We complained to you about being harassed and sent hate speech for being LGBT+, and you did nothing. We complained to you about blogs being randomly deleted, and sometimes you’ve restored them, other times you have not. We complained to you that there were people proudly claiming to be “Minor Attracted Persons”, or pedophiles, and you did nothing. We complained to you about people proudly claiming to be white supremacists, and you did nothing. All of these things are “against the community guidelines”, and yet over and over, you have not found effective ways to handle these problems or suppress the feeling of welcome that these users claim to get here. You have had a long time to work on these problems, but you haven’t addressed them. To say you have is untrue. 

 Multiple other social networking websites, such as Wordpress, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and others have effectively dealt with rampant pornography, racism, pedophilia, and other problems without causing massive issues for their users who are not misusing the platform. They are continuing to find new, effective ways to deal with these issues without causing problems for their userbase as a whole.  There is no reason that you are unable to do this effectively other than that you wanted to do it quickly. You have once again chosen your stock holders over your users. And we have had enough. 

You have already started to ban “Adult” content with a new algorithm. Here are screenshots of just a fraction of the posts you have flagged as containing adult content:

Your new system of simply tackling everything at once is not working. At all. And each of these screenshots is proof of your utter incompetence. None of these posts contain pornographic acts, “female nipples”, or any community violation of any kind. 

We, the users, have been asking you for months to deal with these problems - particularly, the porn bots and bots that spam. In order to block a bot from a side blog, I have to do it manually, even though they are in my side blog’s feed. This is a huge issue for mobile - only users. They keep cropping up in droves, taking over our posts and tricking google into making it look like a legitimate blog linked to a pornographic website. We have complained to you for months and months now, and your solution to simply “ban all adult content” is ineffective. I agree that children should not be able to access pornography - but this is not how you tackle a porn bot problem. Your system is utterly useless, allows for racists, pedophiles, porn bots, and Nazis to remain untouched. It also harms sex workers and real people who may use this website for some forms of adult content responsibly. Moreover, as seen above, it harms plenty of users who have in no way violated your terms of service.

 If you keep this up, you threaten your website and company as a whole. Many of us are backing up our blogs and planning places to go to. 

You already have a content filter for “sensitive” content (content inappropriate for younger viewers). You could have improved this, instead of attacking your entire user base. It seems to be a very lazy “solution”, if you could call it one at all, and one that harms your entire userbase.

If you are going to keep this filter in place and make Tumblr, a website that has never been known for being family friendly and has never claimed to be, you are going to lose millions of your users. We are already planning our exodus. It isn’t hard to follow. Censor us, and we will go somewhere else. That is not a threat. It is a promise. 

Sincerely, 

The users of your website. 

@staff @support

They flagged this post immediately and I’ve submitted it for review… this is… quite a week.

If you believe these words, reblog it, please. I want this to be right in their face because I couldn’t email them directly. 

j

their website is wearethorn.org

WE CAN NOW

saw this in r/tumblr and was like OH HOLY SHIT IT’S ME.

🍓Six new bumbags are ready to buy on my etsy! 🍓 Link in profile or http://etsy.me/1tj0V1d

Kenyan adverts have always been on some next level shit 😂

This is SOOO EXTRA OH LAWD!! Nilikua nafunga macho advert za condom zikianza ndo mathe adhani mimi ni mtoi mpoa lool

I know right! Same 😄 Saa hizo unapeep from the gaps in your hands ukicheka

Lmao… shughuli ilikua kujitoa Sito unajipeleka kitchen… 😂😂😂

Trust ads,making family bonding time as awkward as it can be

Damn!!!… Welp, whatever it takes to get the message out. Props up!

Don’t support the “Lynn and the Spirits of Inao” Kickstarter project

Hi all, breaking from my usual content for a bit, but it’s for a good cause.

Some of you may have heard of this Kickstarter Project for a game called “Lynn and the Spirits of Inao”. The game has gorgeous art style which I think would make it successful among the crowd of this website, but I have to urge you to not support the project as it seems to be the fruit of really shady practices. To go into detail : the project creator seems to have exploited unpaid interns to do the whole job, having them work in shitty conditions in his apartment, without any plans of crediting or rewarding them at all, and by threatening them to give them bad internship reviews should they bail out on the project. This includes students from my school (which is why I heard of this story in the first place).

I’m posting this here because right now the story is circulating in the French-speaking communities but has yet to reach the English-speaking spheres. So if you read this, for the sake of protecting the rights of young artists, interns and other young job-seekers, please try to get the word out about these abject practices. And if you supported this project, I Humbly urge you to consider canceling your pledge.

Don’t hesitate to contact me in a private message if you want more information on the matter, and I’ll try my best to answer your questions or at least direct you towards people who are more directly concerned by the whole affair.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, sorry for the long post, and have a good rest of your day.

The Kickstarter page

A Facebook post in French that goes into more detail

SIGNAL BOOST NEEDED !!! 

A French studio has no employee and rely only on unpaid interns since several years and it’s totally illegal in France.

The story above is entierely true ! At least 3 peoples in my school have done internship there at different time and they all say the same thing !! 

The guy who rules the studio told this morning to the interns still working at his home to not come for a week and he have deleted his studio facebook page.

 I think he his running away because the students are planning to press charges against him so don’t let him running away with your money !!

I explained the thing a little in detail in a comment on a KickStarter (because I’m far from being tumblr famous). I’m put this here.

Thanks to many French people relaying the information on social medias, well-known French video games website are making articles about it so I think it’s okay… But ! 

There is more than 800 americans and about 450 peoples from others country backing this fake project ! !!! I don’t think this affair already reached english websites so share this and let them kown !!!

I’m A Man, And I’ve Spent My Life Ashamed Of My Body

It shouldn’t be extraordinary for men to talk about having body image issues.

(GIF Credit: DENNIE BRIGHT/THE HUFFINGTON POST)

Don’t invite me anywhere last minute I enjoy doing nothing so I need to know ahead of time if my plan to do nothing needs to be changed

This is legit and people don’t realize it.

“hey what are you doing?” “nothing”  “oh great! so you are avaliab-” “no you don’t understand. I’m doing nothing.” 

🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌

CLIFF NOTES: Vote Greens #1. Then preference Labor before Liberal to keep Abbott out.

This wonderful comic is by Patrick Alexander, from Chicken Nation.

for “abbott”, read “whomsoever has supped from the intoxicating yet poisoned chalice of liberal leadership”

I will post this every election.

Dear artists...

No, I’m not going to link back to your page. I edited out your ugly signature too. I paid for the art. It is mine.

Don’t worry, this does not mean I take credit for drawing it. When people ask if I drew it, I say “Nope.” When people ask who did, I say, “Sorry, I don’t remember.”

Just because I bought your art does not mean our profiles have to be linked forever. It’s the same if I buy an apple from the grocer. I don’t have to keep the sticker on it or tell people where it came from. I’m not a walking advertisement for your shop.

If you want credit so badly, then I should get a cut of your future profits for my part in the advertising.

I know I’m probably going to get the wrath of whiny, entitled artists for this, but I don’t care. I won’t be making a shrine around their art dedicated to them. I paid for a service, and now we should go our our separate ways!

alright so there’s a lot of fucked up parts in this post but?? right off the bat?? “I edited out your ugly signature too”??? I’m sorry but that’s really stupid?

if you bought a physical, painted-on-canvas drawing, would you still go through the trouble of trying to edit out the signature there too? Because literally the only difference between that scenario and this one is that the canvas can be physically held and displayed, where the digital painting stays in a digital venue.

Do not be a dick to artists. Fucking don’t edit out their signatures, credit them where they are due. Don’t be like the asshole OP. If you commission an artist, respect them enough to credit them.

Dear people who think like OP;

Please do not ever fucking commission me. My signature is an A, but I don’t care if an artist’s signature is a giant fucking watermark half as big as the piece. If you cut out their signature, you cut out their effort. Do you have to make a little URL tag that links back to my page or DA or tumblr or whatever? No. Would it be nice? Yeah. Is it a good habit to do anyway? Yeah.

But unless you’re paying me USD and we’ve made it part of the agreement that my signature will NOT be on the art- leave the fucking signature on the art. You purchased art that has the signature. Once you alter it, you’re violating our purchase agreement. The artist produced that art for your agreed upon purchase price with the understanding that what they were sending- signature fucking included- would remain on the piece.

If they knew that you were going to use their art independently without any sort of remaining credit like that, then the price very well may have been different or they might not have agreed to do the art at all.

Damn, OP Edgy McEdgerson is really proud of being a dickhead. No one’s saying you’re linked forever, and no, “I didn’t draw it and don’t remember who did” doesn’t absolve you, you chucklefuck.

SIGNAL BOOOST

…Although, as an artist, I have seen some completely horrible signatures on tumblr posts. Sometimes they’re so obnoxious that I hide the comments on a post and tag with something like “Artist’s comment/source in the original post.” Not because I hate artists, but because I acknowledge that artists aren’t always the best when it comes to brevity. 

When I show my stuff here on Tumblr, I keep whatever DA link came with the automatic sharing of the post. I include a comment about the work if I feel it needs actual context, but otherwise I just have the link to the original post on DA and to my profile on DA. That’s it. I don’t link Facebook, Twitter, Etsy, Flickr, Instagram, and whatever other god forsaken social media people can easily find me on. 

My advice to artists? If you want people to know your social media connections and other display sites for your art, keep a list of links available on your Tumblr and other websites. If the idea of someone removing all your links from your comment really bothers you so much, maybe you should do your fans a favor and keep the spam in your comment to a minimum. Have a contact list on your sites and keep it at that. And if you still want those links in your comment on your work, just link to “contact” and link that list of sites. 

At the risk of stretching your dash. Let me tell a small story. the story is:

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST.

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST.

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST. 

CHANCES ARE THEY ARE GOING TO WORK VERY HARD ON YOUR PIECE  

THEY MIGHT EVEN BE ANXIOUS BECAUSE THEY MIGHT TAKE A LITTLE LONGER THAN EXPECTED 

SOMETIMES THEY LOSE STEAM HALF WAY BECAUSE LIFE THROWS OBSTACLES IN THE WAY. 

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST, THEY WILL HAVE SPENT TIME AND EFFORT ON YOUR PIECE. THEY MIGHT HAVE GONE THOUGH SOME TURMOIL IN THE PROCESS OF MAKING IT. BUT IN THE END YOU WILL HAVE WHAT YOU PAID FOR. 

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST AND YOU ARE HAPPY WITH THEIR WORK AND WHAT THEY PROVIDED, THE ARTIST WILL BE VERY HAPPY AND PROUD. THEY WORKED VERY HARD ON IT! THEY PROBABLY WON’T MIND IF YOU SHOW IT TO OTHER PEOPLE, IT WOULD HELP THE ARTIST A LOT! (BUT IT’S OKAY IF YOU DECIDE TO KEEP IT TO YOURSELF TOO….)

BUT IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST… 

AND YOU SEE THE ONE SECTION THAT TIES SAID ARTIST TO THE PRODUCT THEY WORKED SO HARD ON….. 

….AND DECIDE TO TAKE IT OFF 

YOU HURT THE ARTIST EMOTIONALLY…..

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST AND EDIT THEIR NAME OFF THE PIECE….

YOU ARE SAYING “FUCK YOU ARTIST, I COULD HONESTLY CARE LESS ABOUT HOW MUCH TIME AND EFFORT YOU PUT INTO THIS. I PAID FOR IT SO OBVIOUSLY I DESERVE TO TAKE THE CREDIT FOR SOMETHING I HAD NO HAND IN BESIDES PAYING FOR IT TO BE CREATED.”

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST, DELETE THEIR SIGNATURE, AND SHOW IT OFF, YOUR FRIENDS WILL ENJOY IT AND SHOW IT TO OTHER FRIENDS. THOSE FRIENDS MIGHT WANT TO BUY SOMETHING SIMILAR! BUT THE ARTIST ISN’T GETTING CREDIT FOR IT BECAUSE YOU ESSENTIALLY TOOK THEIR WORK AND CLAIMED THE WORK, EFFORT, AND SKILL FOR YOURSELF, ALL BECAUSE YOU PAID FOR IT. (SOUNDS CRAPPY RIGHT?)

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST

CHANCES ARE PEOPLE DON’T KNOW WHO THEY ARE. CHANCES ARE THEY TOOK THE COMMISSION TO PAY SOME BILLS AND REALLY NEEDED THE MONEY.

IF YOU COMMISSION AN ARTIST AND DELETE THEIR SIGNATURE….

chances are you are not the first one to do that.

If I make you a picture, it’s yours to do with as you want. But if you actively erase my responsibility for it, I will probably not feel comfortable working with you again.

Snezhana Soosh is a 37-year-old artist from the Ukraine. She recently began posting some heartwarming illustrations of a father and his daughter on instagram. The images are sadly not from experience as her own father was not part of her life. She hopes they’ll inspire young men, like her own son, to be present in their daughter’s lives when they have a family of their own. There are currently 14 paintings in the series, but hopefully she will add more. I absolutely love this! (Source)

Best show of the season