hey what do you think of the tumblr's recent bans of transfem & Black people from perspective of sensorship?
So, for starters, I didn't know anything about these recent events cuz I'm an idiot 😅
But hey screw it, I'm here for a good time, not an accurate time:
This is a surprisingly complicated issue, and it's closer to actual illegal censorship than you might suspect.
That's because in the US companies are NOT allowed to OFFICIALLY discriminate based on gender, sexual orientation, or race. But you can probably already see the problem: as long as your don't have an official rule that explicitly targets a protect groups, it's incredibly hard to prove discrimination. Because there's two distinct possibilities:
Historically, this sort of selective enforcement has been a convenient workaround that allows companies to continue de-facto discriminating against protected groups they don't want around.
However, it's probably much more common for this sort of thing to happen due to unconscious biases.
In other words, people will see a photo of a transgender woman, and they legitimately, sincerely, will think it is overly sexual and breaks the rules - even if a similar photo of a cis woman would raise no alarms.
Now, there are many potential solutions that companies can take to combat this:
More transparency for moderation decisions - like, I don't know, maybe explaining who the fuck is doing the moderating and how? I mean however stupid Reddit might be with moderation, you have to admit that it lets you see exactly who is doing the moderating and you can contact them directly. Nothing like that exists here.
More diverse people doing the moderating
Training to explain what to watch out for, so that people can more easily notice when they might be experiencing unconscious bias
Having a neutral, outside organization that can provide some oversight is probably the gold-standard, in my opinion. They could audit practices and look at samples of who have been removed and why.
This is going to shock you, but Tumblr is just not going to want to do any of those things on their own. They assume that they can do whatever they want and people will just put up with it.
Interesting theory on their part, considering how unsuccessful this site is doing overall. Interesting theory considering how crucial queer people and a variety of minority groups are to propping up this failing site. Imagine what the site's gonna be like once they leave:
Users can apply their own pressure to the company in hopes of changing policies, but I'm not very optimistic about that. After all, Tumblr has been banning vast swaths of people with little explanation for years and years, and stunningly the site has been having less and less users. WHO COULD HAVE GUESSED THAT!?
My guess is that the swarm of feral weasels responsible for running Tumblr will postpone any sort of changes until this site has lost enough users to be past the point of no return. It's a shame, but hey, if they want to destroy their company, capitalism gives them that right I guess?
Sorry, that was a bit of a long rant over something I know little about lol
