It was announced yesterday that Tumblr, under its new-ish ownership, is going to completely ban adult content (as arbitrarily decided by its poorly supported AI flagger-bot). The community has collectively lost its shit about this and most of those I know are planning to abandon the platform. Given the thirstiness of the circles I’ve socialized in on the site, that shouldn’t be that surprising, but, even though the ban shouldn’t directly impact my posting or even substantially change my browsing (it’s nice for porn, but that’s not been a thing I actively use it for that often), I feel obligated to join in the protest/abandonment of the platform that accompanies the action. For one thing, most of the people I know and have normally followed are fleeing or reducing their presence. For another, the injustice of their targeting of “female-presenting nipples” while still failing to actually address content related to nazism/white nationalism is as intolerable an act of censorship as it is a lazy one. Beyond that, the freedom to express and expose our most vulnerable selves was what made Tumblr special. Sure, fully adult content wasn’t necessarily required, but the general sex positivity of it was frankly vital to my growing comfort with my sexuality. Considering the extent to which I still struggle with that at times, I can’t help but loathe this active destruction of what was a safe and optimistic sort of space for developing that comfort and for each of us to find our own weird subset of those we consider “our people.”
I’ve been resistant to diversifying into other social media formats, as I don’t really want to interact with a lot more of it than I have to, but I think I’ll have to be joining the bandwagon here, backing up my blog’s content, and jumping ship for someplace else.
It’s been a weird, hilarious, beautiful 7 years since I started here in September of 2011. I’ve met so many great people through this site, many of whom I’ve become friends with offline, as well. Enough that I’m reluctant to surrender it, even knowing that the statement should be made, however small and insignificant it may be, that this latest act of censorship by Tumblr’s leadership is utterly unacceptable. May their stock crash in value and their CEO lose all credibility as a business leader.
[written 12/16/2018]
I wanted to give the above a little time to simmer to see if that remained how I felt and what the apparent action of the community would be. I’ve launched several other social media accounts under this name, including a Wordpress migration of this blog as it is today. For now I’ll just be going inactive here, deleting the app from my phone, etc., because there doesn’t seem to be a way to shutter my page without just deleting it all. Their model for monetizing Tumblr is traffic-based for ad revenue, so absence should sufficiently make my point.
I’m sorry to see a less free internet, but I suspect I’ll find the best of you in other, more open venues.
3926 posts, 3138 followers, 7 years and 3 months of variously lurking, chatting, thirsting, laughing, crying, and raging our way through our history of personal, cultural, and political triumphs and travails.
Tumblr hasn’t been what it was when I started for a long time, so this is just the most substantial and most seemingly final of many goodbyes, but still it’s a sad moment. I’ve drastically expanded my social circles here, and I’m sure part of me will miss it for a long time.
Thank you all for making this a fun, welcoming space for so long. Farewell, denizens of Tumblr, fabulous deviants that you are.
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