As many of you know, in my day job I’m a journalist, and one of my colleagues is covering the tumblr changes and wants to talk to anyone who has been affected, creatively or financially, by the new policy, so that we can get your story out there. If that’s you, PM me or email her at kaitlyn.tiffany@vox.com.
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
Here’s the problem with this, and it is a problem
This is aimed at most NSFW instead of the actual problem which is the bots, pedophilia and other mental/political issues that could be dealt with.
Trying to remove most positive and other wise ok NSFW because YOU lacked the ability and time frame to remove bots and viruses from YOUR platform is YOUR problem and lead to it being our problem and now YOU are punishing the people on here for it.
And the “no shortage of adult sites” statement is absolutely abhorrent that you view it that way. Some people don’t wanna go to those sites. Some people don’t like videos. Some people may want to explore privately or express themselves in ways that they don;’t want to do fully and publicly.
Certain tags and things i can understand removing but reducing it to just talking about sex positivity …isn’t positive. You are TAKING away peoples right to freely express themselves.
Ya know what i also remember from years ago when you yahoos took over the site? There was a big outcry about the possibly blocking of NSFW content, i laughed honestly because some of it was over dramatic.
The weren’t wrong. You are.
Don;t punish people because you and your company didn’t handle and issue that the people on this damn site pointed out for months on end and you didn’t do a damn thing about it.
Let’s save our children and the future generation! It’s already too late but we can still make lifestyle changes! Let’s save the planet! Let’s save the forests! Let’s save mankind! Let’s save the animals!
I can’t stress enough how hard I’m trying to finish my civil engineering and earn my place in the urban planning and green building industry. We can all help in many ways we can as simple as following what this nice woman tweeted.
Hiding information from your readers on purpose will help you create tension in your novel. I know this doesn’t work for every novel, but if you’re writing something with elements of suspense and mystery, hiding details and revealing them later will improve your story. This also helps add dimensions to your characters and explore their motivations on a deeper level.
Here are a few things to hide about your characters to create tension:
Whether or not your protagonist is lying
Even good characters lie, especially if they feel like it will protect other people in the long run. There are ways to hint that your character is hiding the truth without actually revealing what the truth is. If your protagonist gets nervous or changes the subject when they’re asked about a specific detail, this will help show your readers that something isn’t quite right. If your character’s deception is hidden and then revealed at the right time, you’ll be able to add exciting tension and shock value to your story.
Who the real villain is
Some of the best tension is created when we’re uncertain about who the real villain is. In mystery/crime novels, for example, there’s often evidence that points to one person who ends up not really being the one we need to worry about. If you hide this information from your readers, you keep them guessing throughout the course of your novel and this will aid in creating suspense.
The truth about their past
When you hide your character’s past from your readers, you have the ability to use it as an explanation for something important later on. For example, if you character has these mysterious powers they can’t explain, you can use their parents and back story in order to reveal later on why it’s happening. Revealing past details slowly over the course of your novel helps build the mystery.
What their secondary goals are
Sometimes characters will have goals no one else knows about but them OR they will have a false goal that their using to cover up their real goal. For example, a character might say they’re rescuing another character because they want to help, but it really might be all about finding some hidden treasure along the way. There are many reasons why a character might want to hide their goals. Explore character motivations on a deeper level and you’ll be able to realistically include this type of deception in your story.
PETA: They’d rather spend their money on publicity campaigns than on the animals in their care. PETA killed 73.8% of the animals in their care in 2015 (x)
FCKH8: Is a for-profit company that exploits oppressed groups for money. They’re also wildly uninformed, and spread misogyny, cissexism and bi/panphobia, as well as stealing their posts/designs (x)
Autism Speaks: They spend most of their money on researching a way to eliminate autism, heighten the stigma against autism and don’t have a single autistic person on their board (x)
Please support other, better charities, and feel free to add any others you can think of to this.
Susan G. Komen for the Cure: CEO makes insane amounts of money, they deny a lot of requests for wigs/help with treatment/etc., and have attempted to sue other charities that use the color pink as part of their anti-breast cancer campaign. ( xxx )
The Salvation Army: They promote the hatred of LGBT+ people, work with fundamentalist Christian groups to support conservative politics and rip off and exploit workers. ( xxx )
Wounded Warrior: They take money that should be spent on veterans and blow it on huge opulent parties for the company bigwigs. 26 million in 2014 alone wasted! ( xxx )
^ Important reminder to NOT waste any money donating to these groups
Reblogging because of the added info about Wounded Warrior.
A good way to know if a nonprofit you’re donating to is allocating their money in the right way is to check out their Charity Navigator rating: http://www.charitynavigator.org
Signal boosting, the bell ringers are out in force, and this info is too important.
Discount Deity of Death 