vastderp:

I have a good deal of salt about Tumblr’s precious moral turn. Remember how i found out the hard way a couple weeks ago that tumblr’s scourge of pornbots are also permitted to upload real photographs of human children being abused as their header images?

like, tumblr didn’t even HAVE a report button on reblog chains until like two months ago and now that they do, its placement is not consistent between mobile and desktop. 

if you click the reblogger’s avatar on iOS, it brings up the report and block buttons.

If you click the reblogger’s avatar on a Mac, you open the pornbot’s blog and the header image might be a big dingdong or some titties, or it might be a small child being abused. Thanks, Tumblr!

none of this should have been possible in the first place. Yahoo failed completely to compile or maintain their database of known abuse material to filter it out. they didn’t do anything when users complained that the site was being overrun. they have ignored years of user complaints about their moderation, they’ve even threatened people with permabans for pointing out flaws in their basic fucking security. their negligence was bound to hit the news and get them kicked out of app stores, and now it has, and Yahoo can’t ignore the problem anymore. now they have to do something. (pshhhyeah right.)

so now Yahoo is going after what its broken system CAN catch: people drawing porny cartoons, and adult voluntary sex workers trying to pay down their student loans. Random people blogging about disabilities in posts that your Great Grandma could read in church and not burst into flames. DOGGO VIDEOS. 

Yahoo is making a huge production of kicking out lots and lots of users because all the activity makes them appear at a glance to be on top of this absolute clusterfuck, instead of suffocating underneath it.

this puts me in mind of a popular real-world city activity: rounding up all the visibly homeless people from the streets before a Superbowl or the Olympics or whatever and just dumping them in the next town over. 

This isn’t a cleanup. This is Yahoo’s $1.1 billion investment burning to ash before our very eyes. And, like, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer company, you know? such fond memories!

if something online (say, a blogging platform) is free, it means you’re the product. your personal info, your attention for hideous unblockable sponsor ads, your browsing and shopping habits. even your memes can be turned into money, or frankensteinned into fake viral marketing that might make us buy a goddamn product. we are what Yahoo paid all that money for. we are inventory.

so join me, fellow inventory, in a dry but hearty fuck-you chuckle at our leaky corporate overlords as they run around trying to piss out this enormous, magnificent cash fire. the finest song to hear is the wailing of a willfully blind asshole as he tells the world he never saw it coming.

chasingdunamis:

Having Tumblr in my 20s helped me learn so much more about sexuality
than I ever could have on my own. Game-changing. Learning to love my
body, seeing different bodies, bodies that looked like mine, bodies I
desired. No place else on the internet was as encouraging about it.

It was really special to grow alongside friends who were learning the same lessons as well.

moonglade-poetess:

So I’m going to try and keep my blog up for as long as the Tiddy Police will let me, but just in case…

I don’t use them often, but I suspect that’ll change soon.

Instagram @sylkthepoetess

Twitter @MoongladeSylk

If we’re mutuals/pals, feel free to ask for like, Facebook or Battletag or whatever, idk. I’ll probably update this with WordPress or Pillowfort once I actually make them.

Just to be safe, I just followed a ton of people on Twitter and IG, but there were some people that I’m fond of that I couldn’t find, so I’ma tag y’all here so you can follow me if you want ❤ No worries if you’d rather not!

@batmansymbol @dragon-woman @marshalmallow @nyxielchildofthemoon @stuckonhippy-hill @nudityandnerdery

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

nomadicism:

Sounds drastic. Especially for content creators who may still need Tumblr for commissions while they find an alternative.

If you can swing it, here’s why:

I suspect that the December 17th deadline is so that Verizon/Yahoo can clean house and make Tumblr appealing to investors. This is a Q4/Q1 fire sale kind of thing. It makes a certain amount of business sense to make this change. Human-lead content curation (e.g. separating the CP from the legit) is expensive and time-consuming. I doubt they have the money for it. They already sold off Flickr. As a long-time Flickr pro user, I’m not pleased by the change and increase in pro account price, but I get it.

Investors are looking for a user base. User base is a prime attraction for investment or buy-out for a social media platform or application (I speak from experience as a co-founder of Rhinobird.tv).

Every account that is cancelled will be one less account in Tumblr’s user base for their pitch. I assume that there are millions of accounts with some percentage simply being abandoned accounts that haven’t been used in years. So cancelling one’s account on the way out the door won’t really matter unless the number of cancelled accounts reaches several hundred thousand at least.

If you decide to leave and cancel, then I also recommend sending a polite message to Tumblr staff, or tweet to the account about why you are leaving.

Finally, using Twitter to voice your concerns and thoughts about this issue will increase its visibility. They ain’t gonna like that. Media outlets that cater to tech entrepreneurs, and Silicon Valley types are going to be all over this.

I never ask for reblogs, but I will this one time.

jheselbraum:

Like. I’m a firm believer that porn online shouldn’t be within kids reach (those “are you 18” checkboxes for life) but. Like. Ok first of all, just ban cp? It’s not hard? Cp is what got you into this mess just ban it. Second of all, you could increase the age of sign-up from 13 to 18. Third of all, you could do what deviantart does and just. Require birthdays at sign-up. If your blog is flagged as nsfw, you can’t interact with minors. You want to follow an nsfw blog? Prove you’re an adult. You’re an adult but don’t want to see nsfw content? Safe search (that actually works).

It’s not hard to make a functioning website, but staff doesn’t seem to want to do that.