I love how I receive notifications that I “have posts that contain adult content which violate our Community Guidelines” over posts that are absent sexual content or nudity, yet I continue to be reblogged by porn bots daily.
The move by tumblr to remove all “adult content” is not just a mere exercise is censorship, but an act which will effectively destroy numerous otherwise marginalized communities that have found a safe space on tumblr to express themselves and link with other like-minded people. Sexual expression has for many (including numerous LGBTQ+ groups) been impossible on other platforms, whether for the issues of anonymity, discrimination, or the lack of two-way communication possibilities. In turn, tumblr has been well-known as a safe space for communication and exchange, from artists in the field of erotic art to sex-positive feminists fighting against the taboo topics, to those exploring their sexual and romantic identity. This is why suggesting that there are plenty of other online places with adult content means reducing all these communities to something many of them strive to distinguish themselves from. It is an act of blatant discrimination and an insult. And it is shamelessly packed under the heading of “a more positive tumblr”.
Whether their current flagging system works or not is beside the point. The failing app can be fixed. The censorship of sexual expression cannot.
Whether your tumblr has any such content or not, or whether we ever visit any such content is also beside the point. This is a political problem, which should concern us all.
And let’s all remember that this wasn’t the result of a series of stupid but well-meaning deliberations by the Tumblr staff on how to create a site with an environment whose content was safe for all users. There should be no confusion as to what’s driving Tumblr’s decision on the matter: A panicked reaction to losing money.
Tumblr’s inept moderation of truly harmful content finally got them removed from the iOS App Store. That’s all this is about.
Rather than fix the problem that allowed blogs violating the ToS to slip under the radar for years, they hastily changed the community guidelines and incompetently implemented systems for its enforcement that have resulted in thousands of Safe for Work blogs being banned, while producing a litany of hysterical false-positives for explicit content. Tumblr didn’t even moderate the content of its advertisers, with the most frequent displayed to me being a mobile game whose ad content exclusively featured sexual servitude, humiliation, and violence toward women.
This is just another example in a long list of corporate entities not giving a fuck about the shit they host until it threatens their bottom line.
