This post is so true. Tumblr was once an everyday routine for me, but now I'm too disgusted by what it has now become to rarely think of logging back on.
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.
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
youtube is pulling this bullshit again
praying for the firefox gods to save me once more...
what do you mean elon musk did a nazi salute on live tv at the united states presidential inauguration twice and is now erasing the evidence off the internet by replacing the footage with the crowd cheering instead?
would be a shame if people reblogged this, wouldn’t it?
Wish (2023) dir. Fawn Veerasunthorn, Chris Buck
hey do you think the overworked creatives about to go on strike are trying to tell us something
article sources under the cut
Mattson, Kelcie. "How Disney Almost Killed 'Nimona.'" Collider, January 2 2024.
Earl, William. "Shelving Batgirl Was the Right Decision, Says New DC Studios Head Peter Safran: 'It Would Have Hurt DC.'" Variety, January 31 2023
Couch, Aaron. "Warner Bros. Reverses Course on 'Coyote vs. Acme' After Filmmakers Rebel." The Hollywood Reporter, November 13 2023.
Ridgely, Charlie. "Scoob! Sequel Director Revealed Film Was 'Very Close' to Completion Before HBO Max Cancellation." comicbook.com, August 2 2022.
Clark, Travis. "Staffers at the animation studio Blue Sky say it's 'heartbreaking' that Disney canceled its final movie, 'Nimona.'" Business Insider, February 18, 2021.
Harrison, Mark. "Why was the Batgirl movie cancelled?" Yahoo! Entertainment, January 31 2024.
Amidi, Amid. "Warner Bros. Shelves Fully-Completed 'Coyote Vs. Acme' For Tax Write-Off." Cartoon Brew, November 9 2023.
Lee, Alex. "Why Netflix keeps cancelling your favourite shows after two seasons." Wired UK, September 28 2020.
Tyrrell, Gary. "We All Knew It Was Coming." fleen.com, February 10 2021.
"Warner Bros. Reverses Course on ‘Coyote vs. Acme’ After Filmmakers Rebel." see: 3.
Bergeson, Samantha. "Warner Bros. Will Let 'Coyote Vs. Acme' Filmmakers Shop Movie to Other Distributors." IndieWire, November 13 2023.
Strapagiel, Lauren. "Disney's First Feature Animated Movie With Queer Leads May Never Be Released." BuzzfeedNews, February 24 2021.
"We All Knew It Was Coming." see: 9
@/scottderrickson. "I think it’s absolute bullshit that a studio can and does shelve the creative work of hundreds of people for a fucking tax break." Twitter, 10 Nov. 2023, 4:52 p.m..
Full entry (with footnotes) here. Patreon here. Art notes behind the cut.
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As someone who has cousins and grandparents in Puerto Rico, seeing someone FINALLY take notice of the atrocities and SAY something is tear jerking to me. My Abuela literally built her own house from recycled wood and materials because the wage she earned from 3 different jobs couldn’t cover the rent costs for a Single bedroom apartment. Just because tourists think Puerto Rico is a “thriving island” doesn’t mean that they truly explored Puerto Rico. They only seen America’s Puerto Rico. They take photos of the mountains, not seeing the metal and wood houses hanging from the cliffs. They eat the food of “Puerto Rico”, not seeing the tired mother sweating behind the grill with her children waiting tables, praying for a tip. They dance to the music, not seeing bloody fingers worn from playing, or the tired strain in the musician’s voice. And now the wage is going even further down, making us, once Proud people who built our homes from the ground up, beg for every airplane to come just so we can eat. Spread the word, of this injustice, of this inhumane act, and pray for a change. Because we are.
me when some Puerto Rican/U.S. citizens think it’s a privilege that they don’t need a passport to travel to their country