Fandom Research Geek

galadrieljones:

thevikingwoman:

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

So

Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr

From the community guidelines:

Don’t upload images, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples —this includes content that is so photorealistic that it could be mistaken for featuring real-life humans (nice try, though). Certain types of artistic, educational, newsworthy, or political content featuring nudity are fine. Don’t upload any content, including images, videos, GIFs, or illustrations, that depicts sex acts. For more information about what this guideline prohibits and how to appeal decisions about adult content, check out our help desk.

Ok, no more porn gifs. 

Female presenting nipples? Female presenting nipples?? Fuck that shit. Fuck sexualization of female nipples. It can burn in hell. 

That said, what does this mean? What is ‘illustrations’ ? does that mean smutty fan drawings are no longer allowed? Where does this leave content that is already uploaded? Where does that leave the artists who primarily draw nsfw commissions? (like nsfwfrosch and lauren-draws-xxx and others?). Will hentai foundry be the place for nsfw fan arts? I guess a lot of people will not be comfortable there.

What does this mean for fanfic? which is also ‘adult content’, but not mentioned above. 

In addition, it states that ‘educational, artistic, newsworthy and political’ content is alright, but they are using auto detection. Well, that is going to make a lot of people upset, because it will be a shitshow. Nothing that depicts sex act. What about educational content that features sex acts?

They also mention Michelangelo’s David - what is the difference of a naked data and a nude figure drawing I did yesterday? ( I didn’t, but you get the point). You’re going to have to answer ‘what is art’ - good luck with that. 

They don’t want porn. That is what they don’t want. And its sad - honestly I enjoy those tasteful, sensual gifs that show up now and then, its not like going to pornhub. I don’t want xxbigjugsxx to comment on my posts with a video link, but I am not sure this is the solution. 

Lastly - THANK YOU ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN. That will always be there, uncensored. 

An app with a 17+ rating can no longer platform “adult content.”

Cool. As a fucking adult, I find this whole thing to be dumb, offensive, and  sexist/homophobic. Female nipples? How dare. Tasteful and productive exploration of sexuality through art and photographs? HOW DARE. Tumblr has a porn problem and has decided, I guess, to punish the artistic integrity of its users. 

You can catch all my fiction on Ao3 from now on. I’ll still be here, of course, until the floods come. But I’d organize a mass exodus if I had the time. Meanwhile, perhaps we should all flood this bitch with beautiful photography and art of naked women. Let us all be deactivated at once for daring to embrace sexuality that is real. That might make the news. 

Or maybe Pornhub can sponsor us now. I feel they’re doing just fine (unlike this hellsite). If I were pornhub, I’d create a social media site for fans to come and share their adult content, sexual and not. Anyway, welcome to the new Purtanical Tumblr everyone!

(via galadrieljones)