Uncategorized – Page 3

theyoungurizen:

theyoungurizen:

staff:

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

It seems i shall be leaving tumblr.

In addition, this is very silly.

Firstly, and most importantly, this is anti-sex. This move says that sex/sexuality/being sexual is bad. Tumblr has made it official that they do not want sex on their website. Tumblr is happy to have anything on their site, except gore, child pornography, criminal activity, ect; all of these things are considered to be (in broad strokes) bad. Added to this list is now sex, which can only really be interpreted as say sex is as bad as that other content ban on Tumblr.

Secondly, this move is going to have some harm to young LGBTQAI+ people. These effects will be limited, but real and damaging, to those who are vulnerable and still trying to come to terms with thier secuallity. Tumblr presents these young people with opportunity to view and explore queer pornographic content (in an attempt to help come to terms with their sexuallity) while it is easier to hide from, and work around restrictions placed by, authority figures (parents/guardians) who may be hostile LGBTQIA+ people. Cutting this content out of Tumblr will destroy a very good place of young queer expression.

Thirdly, this limits artistic expression. The difference between porn and art has always been difficult. Policing what is erotic art, what is pornography, what is nude photography is a tall order and one that can only go wrong. Already, things that aren’t porn have been flagged on my blog, while things that are have gone untouched. Algorithms learn through failure, however I don’t want to be one of the guinea pigs it learns on, trying to figure out how to ban the porn I like. This can only lead to wrongful takedowns and problem after problem for those whose blogs straddle the porn/art line that will be so arbitrarily drawn.

Fourthly, a double standard has been applied with regards to the gender of nipplies. It seems so obvious, and yet a purportedly progressive website like Tumblr has gone a tripped over an obvious catch of censorship. Women’s nipples are considered obscene, for no useful reason reason, and Tumblr seems fine to enforce this narative. It is sexist, it places gender queer people in an annoying spot, and it will be hard to police what is a female nipple, and what isn’t.

And number five, who asked for this? NSFW and pornographic content can already be filtered out if a user so wishes. If those filters aren’t working and content that is unwanted is still coming through: it shows that the filter won’t work when implemented against all pornography, that the problem isn’t that their is pornography on Tumblr but that user’s ability to regulate their feed isn’t working and that the solution of banning this content is disproportionate.

Tumblr has every right to do this. It is their platform, they can decide to allow or not to allow whatever they want. However, we as consumers to choose not to use a product if it no longer supplies our demands. It honestly feels like a betrayal and I don’t think that it is good, necessary or desired by the majority.

I have personally loved Tumblr for its mix of content. From the funny to the sexy, from fetishistic to political, from dickpics to portraits, all have been present and welcome here. It has always been a delight to me being able to scroll down my feed and see hot women and men having unique, extraordinary sex and then have that imediantly followed by a meme from #Auspol. If that isn’t here any longer, I hardly see why I need to be.