An Open Letter to Tumblr about the Adult Content Ban and How it is Hurting Your Users:

feminismandmedia:

janes-gang:

all-da-fandoms:

thelogicalloganipus:

thelogicalloganipus:

thelogicalloganipus:

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:

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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. 

Sincerely, 

The users of your website. 

@staff @support

They flagged this post immediately and I’ve submitted it for review… this is… quite a week.

If you believe these words, reblog it, please. I want this to be right in their face because I couldn’t email them directly. 

I have further proof because fucking porn showed up on my dash board.

@staff 

PLEASE REBLOG. PLEASE DONT IGNORE THIS

Don’t forget in all of this, to tag @support. I remember reading awhile back that @staff is mainly for announcements. Support is the real place to go.

Mod Bethany

@support

getawaysleighmp4:

veronica-lodge:

ARE YOUR POSTS NOT SHOWING UP? THIS SHOULD FIX IT:

so as this post says, if you’r finding your blog is all jumbled, old posts popping up to the front, new posts not showing up at all, etc it is because of those posts being flagged and then unflagged. all you have to do is open them to edit and save them again and they’ll go back. 

i just wanted to make this separate post to add that once you do that all your new posts will go back to being visible at the top of your blog as they should be i just did it and now everything’s fine on my blog. 

PLEASE TRY THIS AND REBLOG THIS TOO

Have you joined pillowfort? Why or why not?

lavender-sprinkles:

I personally don’t have a Pillowfort account yet, but my partner does and she has let me look at her account fully to see what it is like. I’ve also viewed Pillowfort’s demo account which is linked to on their Kickstarter. I am waiting with anticipation when I can make my own account, but right now Pillowfort is in a closed beta which means the only people who have access to the site are ones who have been given special registration links. They were doing waves of free beta accounts a bit ago (which is how my partner got her account), but right now for every $5 you pledge to their Kickstarter you will receive a registration key if the Kickstarter gets fully funded (they are as of today 40% of the way to their $39,900 goal).

Here is why I’m excited for Pillowfort:

  • If you delete your original posts, every reblogged version will be deleted tooEdit your original post and the changes will appear on every reblog,
  • The ability to make posts visible to everyone, just followers, just mutuals, or just yourself.
  • A functional blacklist where you can blacklist a post body & tags or just tags.
  • A terms of service that explicitly states you hold all rights to your own intellectual property. It also states clearly that it forbids callout posts, doxxing, degradation, harassing, hate groups, spamming of tags with unrelated or offensive material, and slurs against minorities. If there is a user that is doing anything offensive or hateful, it is encouraged and mandated you don’t make posts about it and instead flag it and let the site moderators take care of it. This sort of system cuts down on “dashboard drama” and harassment that sites like Tumblr are known for. 
  • They have threaded comments which means discussions or praise no longer clog up your posts and your blog, keeping things much more organized and clean. We can also use tags for their ACTUAL purpose, tagging of posts for ease of search and organization instead of talking.
  • They have communities and a more connected user-based and user-led environment.
  • Posts in chronological order like they should be!
  • A staff that actually cares about the input of their members and is driven to listen and collaborate with their members to create a site that the users actually want instead of being led by a corporation that has their own agendas in mind.
  • A staff that wants to avoid corporate involvement, unwanted ads, and selling of user info to fund Pillowfort.
  • The future possibilities of what the staff can do with the site that we didn’t dream could be possible to have all in one place including accessibility and a functional mobile app.

So far, I’ve seen a lot of good things and I’ve been really impressed with how the staff is handling the site and how they have explained their plans for the future of Pillowfort.

If you say you really want a social media site that actually cares about their users, this is it. This is your chance to have what pretty much all of us want. This new blogging platform is all the best parts of Tumblr (and for those who miss Livejournal this is like a wedding between Tumblr and Livejournal) with all the parts we hate and loathe about the site scraped out of it.

If you like everything that you’ve read about Pillowfort.io, please pledge to their Kickstarter. Even $5 can help and it will get you a registration link to get on Pillowfort yourself if the Kickstarter gets fully funded.

If you can’t support Pillowfort monetarily, then please, please reblog, tweet, share, and spread it about everywhere you can. 

This is our chance to have a social media made with us in mind and it’s already starting out so well with 10,000 users in the closed beta. Let’s bring it to the next stage of its life!

Hello Everyone. Please help me.

bloodydamnit:

So, as some of you may know, I’ve been on here for a very long time. After losing my account of nearly 6 years to a security change, I had to start this one (BloodyDamnit) and build it from the ground up. I worked.. my fucking ass off. And now, it’s gone. A few hours ago, when trying to delete my side blogs, my entire account got deleted instead. Now, I have to do this all over again. 

So, please. If you enjoy what I do, if you like my work, I literally beg of you to please get the word out. Reblog this so people know where to find me and why my paintings will link to a page that doesnt exist. 

I have created so many fucking friends on this platform and people that I genuinely care about. 

Tumblr has also been my livelihood. I am an artist, this is how I make money and now, I am terrified of what losing my other account can mean. 

Please, Please, Please help. 

Thank you so much in advance. Thank you for giving me a space, a platform, a fucking family over these years. I would be forever grateful. 

A better, more positive Tumblr

drawing-prompt-s:

therealgoldenzebra:

girlgirloveandreams:

kam13chomo:

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

Constructive Critisim: You’ve failed. Not only yourselves @staff but the whole community of tumblr. You say “freedom of expression” and yet take away that freedom from fanartists, positivity blogs, and others all in the name of making it a “safe place” for those who’re underage. You have done the complete opposite, you aren’t making it safer, you’ve made a war zone by your own hand on your own doorstep. Sadly, I will probably delete my blog, there’s no point to be in a place where “freedom” has chains.

I would have maybe gotten it if you had did an all round sweep of every tag there was. However only nuking one and completely ignoring the others (aggressive hate groups hiding behind “freedom of expression”) is not equitable in any way.

Unless you do something – You will not see me after December.

Tumblr should not ban fanart or even pictures simply because there are 2 women kissing! That’s what’s appening in my tumblr

Everyone, if you are a creator go to this website and sign up for their email course on how to grow & keep your fanbase and monetize your content. Currently lots of traffic so the website is a bit slow to load. Seriously, do it.

#SIGNAL BOOST!!!

Save The Blogs!

gallusrostromegalus:

shadow-spires:

Okay, folks. So. Tumblr’s jumped the shark in a big way, and I’m not even just talking about indiscriminately blocking all “adult” content on a platform that IS, in fact, primarily 18+.

Many blogs, like the wonderful @blackkatmagic , that are not especially NSFW have vanished.

(And I for one LIKE being able to go to curated porn blogs run by actual people and have a chance of finding stuff to my taste, it was one of the things that kept me on this hellsite, but that’s another issue entirely.)

I know lots of people are talking about migrating, but none of us are sure to where yet. Pillowfort seems to be an option, some people are talking about Twitter. But for now, it’s a mess, and even if we knew where we were going, it’s often a huge process, and a lot of us have stuff on tumblr that ONLY exists there.

One possible quick solution to save your blogs, both NSFW and personal, is to import it to WordPress. I found this solution through from frantic googling on how to save an entire blog, text posts an all. There are several apps for downloading all the pictures from a tumblr, (Plently for Windows, but only a few paid ones for mac, of which Tumbelog Picture Downloader is working for me so far) but this is the only solution I’ve seen so far that allows you to save EVERYTHING. I downloaded my NSFW blog in like 10 min. My regular blog, which is significantly larger, is in the process of importing, but I don’t anticipate any problems. I will, of course, update you if I have any.  

This tutorial I found worked really easily. http://quickguide (.) tumblr (.) com/post/39780378703/backing-up-your-tumblr-blog-to-wordpress

I put parenthesis around the .’s like we’re back in FF-Hell, just in case tumblr’s new thing about outgoing links kicks in. You know what to do. 

To break it down, just in case:

 Sign up for a WordPress.com account at wordpress (.) com/start

You’ll have to create an account, with your email, a username, and a password. They should send you a confirmation email immediately, check it, activate it, and you’re good to go.

On the site, it will ask you for a site name. That page asks you a bunch of other information too, but you only have to fill out the site name.

Then you have to give your site a URL. If you’re lucky, your tumblr URL is still available, if not you’ll have to come up with another one, sorry.

It will tell you if that option is still available for free.

Then it will ask you to pick a plan. Free is really good enough, I swear.

Now you’re set up! You can import your tumblr!

The only differences from the linked tutorial are that the Import button is now on the first level menu, not in tools.

Hit Import, then you have to follow the link for “other importers”  at the bottom, to find the option for Tumblr.

Then you’ll have to sign in with tumblr, using your normal tumblr credentials. You’ll be redirected there automatically.

You’ll have to allow WordPress permissions on your blog.

Then your blogs, including all your sideblogs, will show up in wordpress.

Hit import, wait a WHILE depending on the size of your blog, and you’re done!

ALSO!!

I made my NSFW blog private for now, since I don’t know WP’s policy on NSFW.

This means that to access it, someone has to have an account and request access. But hey, part of our problem on this hellsite has been people going places they aren’t wanted, so I don’t personally see this as a bad thing. They can send a request from the landing site on your blog, you get an email, click a link in the email, and PRESTO, they have access.

To make it private, go to Settings > Reading > Site Visibility. Go back and check, it took me changing the setting twice for it to actually stick.

tl;dr, you can import your entire blog to wordpress in just a few steps. 

I’m going to tag the hell out of this, in no particular order. PLEASE reblog this and spread the word so people know it’s an option. If you’re having trouble, PM me, and I’m happy to help.

@gallusrostromegalus @kaciart @lena221bee @deadcatwithaflamethrower

@norcumi @deandraws @morn-art, @thebisexualmandalorian @kristsune @marloviandevil @punsbulletsandpointythings @protagonistically @cris-art @elfda @fish-ghost @godtierwonder @heartslogos @haekass @iesika @incogneat-oh @itispossibleihaveissues @jaegervega @jhaernyl @the-last-hair-bender @kleine-aster @latenightcornerstore @lectorel @medievalpoc @mgnemesi @me-ya-ri @myurbandream @peskylilcritter @cywscross ,@cheshiresense @varevare @victoriousscarf @whatsmeantobe @swpromptsandasks @gabriel4sam @stonefreeak @brighteyedbadwolf @pumpkin-lith @puzzleshipper @suzukiblu @myurbandream @lacefedora @jademerien

There are a whole bunch more, but that’s a start. Please reblog the hell out of this, so people are aware of this one simple option.

For people asking how to backup thier blog

Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th

gaslightgallows:

dduane:

About this…

If you’re someone affected by the platform’s definition of what they’re going to be banning, I strongly suggest you back up your Tumblr blog. RIGHT NOW. Info on how to do that is here.

I can’t think why my own Tumblr would be affected, but I’ll be backing things up too… because in situations like this one might expect the algorithm to get a little out of hand and make mistakes that one might or might not be able to recover from. (See this article.)

For safety’s sake – because I’d very much dislike losing the content I’ve shared with other people here – I’l be embodying my Tumblr content in a new WordPress blog over the coming days. I’ll share the address here when it’s ready, for those who might be interested.

But in the meantime, seriously: friends and cousins, back yourselves up.

Even if you run a SFW blog, back that puppy up asap.

Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th

amphiaria:

amphiaria:

this is the most sophisticated phishing e-mail I have ever received and if they had sized the logo correctly and actually proofread the fucking thing I probably would’ve clicked that button

actually please reblog this because someone else got it too. do not click on the links in this e-mail if you get one like it, just forward it to spoof@paypal.com and delete it

vivalajuwa:

formyummah:

It’s International Women’s Day. A day that celebrates women and fights the oppression against them. Muslim women face oppression from those in the West who do not understand their religion as well as those within the religion who do not act upon it’s teachings. So, to clear some things up – here are some of the rights women have in Islam:

  • The Muslim women receives (not gives) the bridal gift/dowry. The dowry is the women’s right and cannot be taken from her
  • Muslim women can own property and retain all ownership once married
  • Muslim women keep their last name after marriage
  • Any earnings the Muslim woman acquires during her life (investments, work, property) does not have to be used to support the household
  • The financial maintenance of a household is the man’s responsibility in Islam. Even if the Muslim women is richer than the man, she does not have to contribute. Therefore, his money is her money and her money is her money
  • A divorced Muslim woman has right to child support
  • Muslim women have the right to divorce
  • Muslim women have the right of satisfaction from their husband
  • Education is the right of a Muslim woman. Muslim women are encouraged to become whatever profession they desire in Islam (physicians, teachers, engineers, writers, artists, etc.). A true Islamic society will have women in all career fields
  • Muslim women are entitled to equal pay
  • The choice of WHO she may marry is solely her choice. A forced marriage is not valid under Islamic law
  • Muslim women mothers have 3 times the rights over their children than their father does
  • Muslim women had always had a spot in law making and politics when Islam first came. Culture corrupted that
  • Muslim women carried arms and fought in battles
  • In Islam, daughters are a blessing that provides immediate benefit spiritually to families – if they treat her correctly

Islam predates Europe in giving rights to women by around 1300 years. Islam came during a time of severe oppression to women and worked diligently to raise the status of women.

What My Religion Really Says About Women – Alaa Murabit TED Talk

Happy International Women’s Day

I wish I could just copy and paste this to fall out of my mouth every time someone asks me if my husband is forcing me to wear hijab.