jaspurr:

you know if tumblr was a competent website, I wouldn’t mind their new “no nsfw allowed” policy. it’s a little irritating that they couch it in “we want to make sure everyone feels comfortable and welcome” when filtering existed for awhile, but ok. it’s their website.

except there’s a huge precedent of censoring queer content every time a social media website wants to censor nsfw content. youtube got in trouble for that years ago. it was a huge problem with tumblr’s safe mode.

speaking of tumblr safe mode, remember that a whole bunch of sfw posts were marked as nsfw or “sensitive” by tumblr algorithms? how about during the latest purge when a bunch of innocent blogs were deleted because of whatever algorithm they use? how about when tags like “chronic pain” were censored? how about the fact that people abuse the hell out of the report system to delete blogs that they don’t like off of tumblr, because tumblr doesn’t really verify reports and will delete any blog that gets enough of them?

I could keep going but my point is: tumblr is extremely incompetent when it comes to how it handles nsfw content. everyone who has been on here for more than a week would know this.

the announcement is so vaguely worded too. what are the “some exceptions” to their policy banning adult content and nudity? how can you talk about banning that but also talk about the importance of sex positivity, art, and self expression? is sex education allowed? can people talk about their sexuality? can survivors of sexual assault and rape talk about their experience? what if someone thinks that their discussion is too graphic and must be pornography? what if someone’s tasteful artistic nudes is someone else’s pornography?

maybe to y’all it should be “common sense”, but when I see that, all I can think about is how unless tumblr clearly defines their rules and spells them out for everyone, it’s open to abuse. hell, people already abuse the policies they have in place.

and when you combine that with a history of tumblr deleting blogs that don’t violate the tos, censoring tags that aren’t nsfw, marking innocent posts nsfw, and just… everything about tumblr’s shitty history of dealing with actual problems like porn bots, nsfw content popping up in recommended posts and the gif search, recently having nsfw ads….

if you don’t think you have to worry about this, you really should. even if you don’t post adult content at all, or you think that what you do post is one of the exceptions to tumblr’s new policy. sure this is gonna hit some blogs harder than others, but it’s gonna have an impact on everyone. well, except maybe the blogs that are actually causing harm. for some reason those blogs always seem to thrive no matter what tumblr does.