The reality is that you craft your career, you build your career, you do what you can in order to generate the opportunities that you want to have, and if you’re hinging all of that on your sexual orientation, or your identity as a gay man, then you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Actors should be able to explore and examine all different kinds of sexuality, you know?
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.
Yes, the world has its problems with porn, pedophilia, sex trafficking. Twas ever thus. If Tumblr is naive enough to think that wiping its system of every nipple, breast, arse or penis is going to address the problem, I would argue it will exacerbate it.
Why can’t a species – that cracked the code of life, cured incurable diseases, discovered how to harness natural energy for the benefit of mankind and walked on the friggin’ MOON – be a little more sophisticated when it comes to the human body?
Education, NOT ERADICATION, is what is needed in a time when social media has opened up our world to new worlds never before so easily accessible. Yes, greater accessibility means the potential for greater abuse (the bad stuff which we invariably focus all our energy upon) but also for greater good.
The human body is something to be celebrated and positive reinforcement of its beauty and complexity in all its forms may be harder but is inevitably so much more satisfying.
Think outside the box. Don’t set it on fire. Burning things to the ground is for Nazis.
True, but on the other hand, @staff clearly has no problem with Nazis. That’s all completely searchable still. So I’m not sure that argument will work with them.
And for the record, I’m really, REALLY going to miss your blog. It was tasteful, erotic, fanciful, and always hinted at stories behind the images. It disgusts me to think that @staff lumps your blog in with the unartistic pornbots.
Weak Trope: Having a character’s driving motivation be REVENGE up until the last second when they pull the “revenge won’t bring my wife/sister/town/three-eared dog back” and leave the bastard they’ve been hunting down alive.
Strong Trope: Hello! My Name! Is Inigo Montoya! You Killed My Father! Prepare! TO! DIE! *corners count rugen* Beg for your life *slashes cheek* Offer me anything I want in the world! *slashes other cheek* I WANT MY FATHER BACK, YOU SON OF A BITCH. *stabs count rugen to death*
Hey guys. I wanna thank you all for enjoying my little text post. It means a lot to me that something so silly resonated with so many of you.
But it’s November 16th, 2018, about 10 pm, and I just learned that William Goldman has died. Goldman was the author of The Princess Bride, which I’m paraphrasing in the Strong Trope up there. He wrote the book and the screenplay to what is one of the most amazing films ever, and one of the most hilarious, loving parodies/pastiches of historical fantasies.
If you’ve never seen The Princess Bride, I highly recommend it. Show it to your whole family. Show your pets. Revel in the swordfights, giants, monsters, games of wit, death, and true love. Join the rest of us in incessantly quoting one of the most quotable movies ever. The book is a little different from the movie, but the core themes and charm are the same.
Thank you, William Goldman, for creating such a lasting, charming legacy with The Princess Bride, an incredible, wholesome story that transcends generations. Rest in peace.
Ato's Fandom Blog 