Some realtalk. I don’t think what’s happening now will cause Tumblr to completely shut down. Have you seen MySpace? Nobody gives a shit about MySpace, and it’s still there. @staff could literally be the only ones on this site and they’ll keep it running cause they’re dumbasses like that.
Tumblr will be worthless though once they go through with their undeniably stupid plan. Its userbase will slowly die out as fewer and fewer people find any semblance of value to being here.
Some people are making the mistake of thinking this is just like any other past “scandal” for Tumblr. It’s not. This is value-destroying. Here’s why.
This action by Tumblr sets a precedent. Countless users have spent literal years creating content, posting content, sharing content. They followed Tumblr’s own fucking rules on what to do, like mark their blogs as NSFW.
Then Tumblr turned around and just banned all NSFW content. Out of nowhere. Cause they’re too goddamn stupid to do their jobs the right way.
Who’s going to trust Tumblr with their content after this clusterfuck? Why spend years of your life on a platform that’s signaled it’ll kill your blog and your posts so they can be lazy assholes?
If the site gets inundated with bestiality porn bots, are they going to ban everything with animals? Will we never see pictures of cats and dogs on here because there’s a chance it could be one of the porn bots? It sounds like a stupid and absurd premise, but remember, we’re dealing with stupid and absurd people that don’t care about doing the right thing. Only what’s easiest for them.
I’m not expecting Tumblr to learn its lesson from the backlash. That requires people that a) know what they’re doing, b) aren’t lazy as hell, and c) don’t have huge egos that make them double down on something even when it’s clearly wrong. But this will be the outcome. And Tumblr has only itself to blame.
im going to be lessening my presence on tumblr + focusing my time on other more stable platforms. if you enjoy my art/other content and want to continue to see it:
i’m probably mostly gonna be on twitter from now on!
i’m not staying aboard this sinking ship so… follow me @mutie_menace on twitter! if we’re mutuals, go ahead and post your twitter in the comments, my inbox, or pm me and i’ll follow you
if you wanna boost this so people in our mutual circle see it, that would be tight
Like. I’m a firm believer that porn online shouldn’t be within kids reach (those “are you 18” checkboxes for life) but. Like. Ok first of all, just ban cp? It’s not hard? Cp is what got you into this mess just ban it. Second of all, you could increase the age of sign-up from 13 to 18. Third of all, you could do what deviantart does and just. Require birthdays at sign-up. If your blog is flagged as nsfw, you can’t interact with minors. You want to follow an nsfw blog? Prove you’re an adult. You’re an adult but don’t want to see nsfw content? Safe search (that actually works).
It’s not hard to make a functioning website, but staff doesn’t seem to want to do that.
the whole “this is good for kids” thing doesn’t….really make sense. like if they wanted to protect minors then 1. making sure there was no CP on the site and 2. enforcing the explicit blog function correctly would be the top priority. The sex workers i know/have seen on this site make use of the explict blog function and repeatedly block/warn people under 18/21 not to interact with them or they’ll get blocked. the wording of the new rules is very obviously targeting sex workers and tumblr’s transphobic definition of women. This is just a heavy handed two sided slap to get back on the app store and hurt the sex workers that rely on this site even more. also i’m pretty sure removing nazi’s would fall under “protecting children” but…here we are!
salarta 