jaspurr:

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.

I have read the actual update now and it did answer one of my questions (what the exceptions are) and from what I understand:

what is not allowed: photos, videos and gifs of genitalia and “female presenting nipples”, any visual depiction of sex (including art)

what is allowed: pictures of nipples in the case of breastfeeding, political protest, birth photos, and post mastectomy photos, and artistic nudity.

in other words: no sex allowed at all, real life “female presenting” breasts are only ok in medical or political contexts. you can draw nudity but you can’t draw sex, written erotica is untouched as far as I can tell.

this has already caused confusion over art being allowed or not

I am personally raising an eyebrow at “female presenting nipples” bit, especially when they also clarify that post mastectomy photos were allowed…. so are afab trans and nb nipples not allowed unless they have a mastectomy even tho they aren’t “presenting” as female? lmao. are trans women’s nipples only allowed until they get gender confirmation surgery? like I know damn well that they mean “afab tiddies aren’t allowed” but trying to make it more trans inclusive ironically feels like a slap in the face.

and I still wonder how the hell they are gonna enforce this policy change when they are already failing with the policies they have in place that are less work on their filters and moderators.

I need to know the specific steps they are taking to protect the queer community on tumblr. I need to know what steps they are taking so they aren’t purging innocent blogs and tags. I need to know what improvements they have made to their filters so innocent posts are not automatically flagged as sensitive.

the problem is I don’t think they have made any steps that would prevent this system from turning into a chaotic cluster fuck that disproportionately targets the queer community instead of the porn bots and cp, because that’s always what happens. and honestly this seems like the lazy “quick fix” to their problems instead of trying to make their existing system work.