PSA regarding tumblrâs latest Censorship Nightmare
For those of you who havenât seen this announcement, tumblr recently made some changes to the iOS version of the app, purportedly to comply with Appleâs content guidelines. These changes took effect on Dec 21, starting in version 22.5.1 of the iOS app. As some of you may recall, Appleâs strict guidelines were the driving force for the infamous Great Purge of 2018, which coincidentally also happened around this time of year, but it seems banning all of the female-presenting nipples wasnât good enough for Apple.
Below is a summary of the important changes. Note that these changes technically ONLY affect those using the iOS app. If youâre accessing tumblr through a different app or operating system (Google Chrome, Android app, etc) it wonât affect you directly but it will affect your followers who use iOS so you should definitely be aware of it.
The list of banned tags has been expanded. As before, thereâs no way to know which words or phrases have been banned until you try searching for them, in which case youâll either get no search results or the following message: âThis content has been hidden because of potentially suggestive or explicit content.â You may think this doesnât concern you if you donât post explicit material, but do not make the mistake of expecting the banned tags to be logical or reasonable. Iâve already encountered multiple completely innocuous posts (random fandom gifsets) that seem to be hidden on iOS for no discernible reason.
Blogs that have been flagged as explicit can no longer be viewed. Previously, flagged blogs just had their posts hidden from searches, but if you knew the username you could still visit it after clicking through a warning about sensitive content. Now you canât access it at all.
Likes and reblogs from blogs that have been flagged will no longer show up in your notes. This one wonât affect most peopleâs user experience as much as the others, but it does mean you may be missing notes. Itâs unclear if likes and reblogs from flagged blogs will still count towards the overall note total (and only be missing from the activity feed and note viewer) but I suspect thatâs the case.
THE BIG ONE: ANY POST TAGGED WITH A BANNED TAG WILL NO LONGER SHOW UP ON YOUR DASHBOARD. Previously, if you tagged a post with a banned word or phrase (even if the words were used inside another tag), that post would not show up in searches, but your followers would still be able to see it on their dashboard. Now those posts are hidden from your own followers as well. This includes both original posts and reblogs. And if that wasnât bad enough, hereâs the real kicker: even if you donât tag something with one of the banned words, if the OP used a banned tag, any reblogs of that post will not show up on anyoneâs dashboard (on the iOS app). The only saving grace here, and I hate to even call it that, is that the blocked posts are still visible if you visit a blog directly or if you have post notifications turned on.
As usual, tumblr was extremely unclear and evasive about all of this in their official announcement. Not surprising, of course, since if more people were aware of these new draconian tactics I canât imagine there wouldnât be more of an uproar about it. Tumblr claims that these changes are somewhat temporary and that they are currently working on something that will allow for a less restricted iOS experience, but they refuse to say what that something is and when it will be implemented. And letâs just say, considering their track record, Iâm not hopeful.
All of this is horrible and infuriating for many reasons, but the worst part is how insanely counterproductive it is to creating the âsafeâ environment tumblr (or more specifically Apple) supposedly wants.
Tags have always been used for both blog organization and filtering purposes. Tagging posts with triggers and content warnings is a common practice that gives users the ability to filter out content they may find upsetting or just donât donât want to see for whatever reason. By choosing to ban a bunch of unlisted âsensitive contentâ tags, all theyâre doing is encouraging people who want to share that kind of content to come up with alternative less well-known tags or simply not tag that content at all anymore if they want it to show up on their followerâs dashboards, thereby making it more likely for someone to encounter it when they didnât want to.
So really, with all of the alleged concern for safety and âprotecting the children,â all theyâve done is make tumblr less safe for everyone. Typical.
