You Saw Nothing, Human

Not reblogging anymore because staff FUBAR'd the site. Still on internal messenger though; open to conversation if we've interacted positively already (don't be that dude who acts like this is a dating site to say hi and nothing else with zero previous contact). Asks have been disabled due to GoFundMe spam, good job.

[theamazingsallyhogan]

Pitching Pillowfort

WHY MAKE PILLOWFORT YOUR PLAN B?

Mainly because pillowfort.io looks like this:

Tumblr-like interface.

User-funded, with plans for free basic membership once it’s out of Beta (additional funding to come from opt-in ads and premium accounts).

Because it’s user-funded, there’s no pressure to do what advertisers want.

And more pressure to ensure user-satisfaction.

Chronological order - no “popular posts first!” nonsense

NSFW content permitted, with clear options to tag individual posts or whole blogs as NSFW. 

Plans for an app.

Inspired by livejournal, there are “communities” you can join based on shared interests. Much more organized than just “following a tag.”

You can decide to have different posts visible to different groups - some posts visible to everyone, others just to mutuals. Considerable power over your posts in general, actually.

Nested/Threaded comments - you can have a conversation on a post without spamming all your followers!

In the works since 2016, Pillowfort went live in 2017. It’s still in Beta. Recent events have generated more interest (and revenue), but they can’t mimic tumblr’s servers overnight - there’ll be slowdowns, planned outages, and a waiting period after sign-up before people can post. That should improve as they have time to adjust. And it’s good that staff responsibly take things down for security maintenance.

Currently there’s a $5 charge for a lifetime membership.  Once it’s out of Beta there will be free memberships available, but not yet.  The money goes directly into funding the platform - no advertisers, remember?

While similar business plans worked, this has unique new variables. 

Sure, there are plans for an app… but there’s no app yet.

An “io” domain isn’t ideal for a site like this (the staff plans to move).

No ball pit.

If someone deletes their original posts, every reblog will be deleted too. If they edit their original post, the changes appear on every reblog (it may sound like a “pro” when you’re the one doing it, but it’s very much a “con” that someone can change a post you reblogged after you reblogged it, or delete an entire conversation if they don’t like what other people say. Hopefully staff can be reasoned with on this one)

Overall I’d argue that the pros outweigh the cons enough to make this the best tumblr-alternative - there are cons, but this still seems the best option right now.

If you’re interested, check out Pillowfort’s demo account , search through some tags, Browse The Communities - and maybe get a membership ($5 for each one - you can get more for friends).  

Just remember that tumblr’s collapse is sending way more users there than its seen in the past.  They’re upscaling as fast as possible, but they didn’t expect tumblr to start throwing users at them.

[prokopetz]

Honestly, the whole Tumblr flagging debacle reminds me of nothing so much as the official White Wolf forums back in the 1990s, whose automatic profanity filters were so overzealous that they ended up censoring terminology from some of their own games.

(For the uninitiated, the starkest example was probably the filter that automatically converted “ass” to “butt”, including when the string A-S-S appeared as part of another word. The trouble is that White Wolf’s most popular game, Vampire: The Masquerade, included in its lore a prominent vampire clan called the Assamites, who stock-in-trade was assassination. Under the forum’s profanity filter, players were reduced to referring to them as the Buttamites, and their missions as – you guessed it – buttbuttinations.)

[zoi-no-miko]

BUTTBUTTINATIONS.

[freedom-of-fanfic]

I know every time it happens it damages our community and community members. But antis do realise that they won’t... stop us existing? We’ve been purged off sites before. We’ll go somewhere else. We’ll make our own if we have to.

the fact that it’s extremely difficult - maybe impossible - to make fandom stop existing and stop being creative in non-standard (i.e. transgressive) ways isn’t a bug - it’s a feature. fandom policers don’t benefit from culture war they can actually win. 

[dynamicsymmetry]

Anyone interested in this part of the anti worldview and how it connects to conservative Christianity really should take a look at some of the stuff blogger Fred Clark has written about white American evangelicals and the culture wars, and the desperate yearning they have to feel persecuted (while not actually facing any threat of physical danger). The culture war exists because they need it to; because their entire identity is based around being culture warriors. With no war to fight, that identity goes away, and there’s no way to feel strong or brave anymore:

This waiting for war to provide meaning, I think, is what drives so much of the culture-war passion in America. It’s the desire — the need — to have something larger than ourselves will force the possible to become actual. This is why Todd Starnes’ flagrant fabrications and all the rest of the religious-right’s persecution complex is so appealing. It’s a fantasy in which we get to feel like heroes bravely facing the dangers of war, all without ever having to actually face real danger. It allows us to feel alive without also having to fear getting killed.

This persecution fantasy flatters us in much the same way as those Hitchcock thrillers tempt us to flatter ourselves. Ah, yes, we may seem like merely ordinary people — indistinct from anyone else — but these fantasies reassure us that we’re special. Some day, you’ll see, we will be flung into an unexpected adventure and emerge triumphant against the odds.

“Pedos” = “Satanic Baby Killers”. It’s the same exact construction, the same principle. The overwhelmingly villainous, threatening enemy to always fight and never triumph over. 

If we didn’t exist, antis would have to invent us. 

[riggedforsuccess]

FHFHFJDJSKA PEOPLE BEING PURGED BECAUSE THEY DREW CHILD PORN ISNT A SATANIC PANIC YOU FREAKS

[alexandra-erin]

I mean, when people are being called “pedophiles” for shipping teenage cartoon characters with each other, when having opinions on the fictional relationship arcs of fictitious people in fiction is being treated the same as sexual predation on actual children, I think it’s fair to call it a moral panic.

[biscuitsnsmores]

Can anyone put into context what ‘antis’ are? 

I mean I don’t really involve myself with fandoms anymore….but when I was; underage nsfw things in fandoms was a squick for me personally and I find it kinda messed up that people are using ‘its fiction!’ as a rally cry to defend it.

Maybe i’m reading this wrong, but some context would help.

[freedom-of-fanfic]

First: I have no problem with people finding fiction of any kind personally squicky, and I think that fictional content with things that are likely to be squicky for some people should be tagged/warned for so that people who don’t want to see it can avoid it and so it’s clear on what’s objectionable about it.

I also dont have a problem with people expressing that they think a thing is morally wrong and shouldn’t be engaged with in any way, as long as they are honest about it and describe the thing they object to honestly.

What I object to is forcing or coercing other people to also find a fictional subject/ship/trope squicky and/or never engage with it again (except to condemn it as absolutely untouchable terrible).

The people who are being called ‘antis’ in this context are people who attempt to force or coerce others to treat their personal squicks as untouchable by harassment, assault, threats, misrepresentation, and outright lies. And in the context of the OP post: ‘anti’ communities as a groupthink pasture populated by likeminded people who dogpile those who disagree.

I hope this helps.

[sl-walker]

I mean, when people are being called “pedophiles” for shipping teenage cartoon characters with each other, when having opinions on the fictional relationship arcs of fictitious people in fiction is being treated the same as sexual predation on actual children, I think it’s fair to call it a moral panic.

[lynati]

Also, a lot of the people involved are getting shit for shipping same-sex ADULT characters, or adult characters engaged in non-vanilla sex. As much as antis pivot to talking about works involving younger-than-18-year-old characters when the topic comes up, a lot of what they take issue with *aren’t that*. But they know if they shriek “pedophilia!” when talking about it, then anyone trying to defend any of the rest of the content looks like they’re defending *that*.

[napstamuse]

Prepare yourselves

[browsedankmemes]

[gunpla]

heads up to my underage followers

don’t join mastodon. the lax nature of regulations makes it an extremely popular platform for maps and pedophiles.

[gunpla]

there are always alternatives to tumblr but mastodon is Not a trustworthy or good one

[anarchopuppy]

This is based on a drastic misunderstanding of what Mastodon is. It’s not a social media site like tumblr - it’s open-source code that allows anyone to create a social media site, which can then interact with other sites using that code. To say Mastodon has “lax regulations” is really misleading, because Mastodon itself has no regulations, it only has tools for moderators to regulate their own instances

Mastodon “allows” pedophiles in the same way that email “allows” identity theft scams. No, “email” doesn’t put a stop to identity theft, but “email” is just a set of protocols for sending messages - it’d be absurd to expect it to

Most Mastodon instances (including mastodon.social, the largest and oldest) do more to keep pedophiles off their platform than tumblr ever has, by having strict rules against it, banning any instances that don’t have strict rules against it, and actively moderating to enforce those rules. At that point it’s as if the pedophiles are on a different website entirely - because they literally are on a different domain

As someone who actually uses it, I can confirm that I’ve never had or even heard of a run-in with pedophiles. Admins know the instances that allow it and quickly block and spread the word about any new ones that pop up. Again, it’s been more of an issue for me on tumblr than it’s ever been on masto

Please reblog this. People love spreading this rumor without knowing what they’re talking about, and it’s driving people away from non-corporate, community-controlled, secure open-source social media. And that’s a real big shame

[nyanymous-deactivated20190713]

this is like telling people not to join discord because there are pedophiles there too.

[jenniferrpovey]

Plus, mastodon.social also absolutely bans Nazis.

[adulthoodisokay]

Opinion: The Internet Is Getting Small And Boring. Long Live Tumblr.

Tumblr has been a safe harbor of delightful, weird, and deeply human stuff, free of the algorithms that have made social media dull and conformist.

This internet feels small, and it’s shrinking every day as its algorithms make everything feel increasingly the same. Amid all this, Tumblr has been a safe harbor of delightful, weird, and deeply human stuff, presented using the radical system known as reverse chronological order. This shouldn’t be rocket science, and yet here we are: Somehow, Tumblr is the only social media platform I use that just shows me the posts from people I follow, in order of when they were posted. The further I scroll, the older posts get. And that’s beautiful. Algorithms don’t try to anticipate what I want to see, and neither is my feed determined by the whims of a random group of people who can up- or downvote things into oblivion.

hey guys, i wrote some words about tumblr.

[buzzfeed]

Hey there, followers. We’ve gotten a lot of messages over the last few days about Tumblr’s updated Terms of Service. I wrote my personal thoughts in the opinion piece above.

[jadeoceans]

So well thought out and well worded. Bless this post.

[adulthoodisokay]

thank you so much. i really appreciate the kind words.

[urulokid]

cates heres your porg gif i am sure you want

[adulthoodisokay]

carrie……………thank you

[siliquasquama]

[ballroomnotoriety]

the thing about tumblr that i think i’ll miss the most if it goes down is the like…quiet companionship on this site.  i’m not talking about like knowing there are other people here who have the same views you do, or who don’t judge you for being honest and expressing yourself, though those are all good.  i mean like…the mutuals you’ve had for years who you don’t talk to but you know.  you might not know them well but it makes you happy when they post a cute selfie, or talk about something good that happened at their job.  familiar names.  little friendships.  little connections in the vast sea of the internet, where you have to choose between total anonymity or sharing everything.  we built communities in this hellscape and i don’t want to say goodbye to my neighbors just yet.

[thezomblr-blog1]

🚫 THIS BLOG IS TAKING PART IN THE ANTI-CENSORSHIP PROTEST ON DECEMBER 17th 🚫

The owner of this Blog will be making as much noise at Tumblr Staff about how horrible this ban in on other sites such as Twitter or Facebook. 

The owner of this blog will be logging out of all accounts for the entirety of the 17th. Will Not run a queue. Will not even check the dash. Or give the money hungry executives a single page view to squeeze ad revenue out of

The owner of this blog believes in an ACTUAL positive, better, safer Tumblr and well be doing their part to fight for it by logging out on the 17th of December. 

[christianstepmoms]

If they’re really scanning pornography based on fleshtones furries will inevitably survive the Horny Purge like roaches in a Nuclear Clamity

[coulromancy]

you know who else will?

The Clowns .

[christianstepmoms]

This is absolutely the most chilling response on my post.

[lauralot89]

Once, I encountered the funny story of an AI image descriptor with a sheep obsession. It had been trained on pictures of fields of sheep. Therefore, it tagged anything in a field as 'sheep', including an empty field, because they work on statistical probability. Therefore, it thinks "ah, a field! there's probably a sheep here." (It's a bit more complicated but basically that.) It also couldn't recognise sheep in places that weren't fields, such as petrol stations or barns. [cont]

Now, the alarming aspect of this story is that the very same technology is probably what tumblr is using to identify porn. Now, if it can’t tell that an empty field is not, in fact, full of sheep, what hope do we have that it can’t tell an empty room isn’t full of writing human forms engaged in passionate coitus?

this really does sound like an episode of black mirror

[architeuthism]

But wait, it’s even weirder than that!

[retroactivebakeries]

This is gonna produce some absolutely baffling pornography.

[crazy-pages]

…. oh my fucking god they actually are using open source software. They’re using a fucking one-layer unidirectional bicategory tag-trained neural network. This will never work. Literally, it will never work. There’s just not enough algorithmic complexity to do what they’re asking of it. I bet you I could prove on a mathematical level that this joke of a neural net fundamentally lacks the abstraction necessary to do its job.

This will never get better. Their algorithm will never stop fucking up, it will never actually flag porn reliably and it will always require a massive quantity of human hours to deal with the deluge of mistagged pictures. This isn’t just a case of an insufficiently trained algorithm, it’s just … this is the most basic neural network you can make. It probably hasa a lot of neurons and has loads of training data but like … you can’t just brute force this kind of stuff. One layer of neurons is just Not Enough.

[crazy-pages]

Also, just to make this clear, Tumblr lied. I mean, we already know this, but I mean they liiiieeeeed. All that stuff they promised about what would or would not be censored? That cannot be delivered on with a system this simple. Nude classical sculptures, political protests, male-presenting nipples (really Tumblr?), nude art outside the context of sex, all that? You cannot train a bicategory one-layer neural network to exclude those things. It cannot be done. Tumblr never intended for those things to actually be permitted, they were just lying. Because the system they have cannot actually do what they said it would and never will be able to.

Also, this kind of system is super vulnerable to counter-neural strategies. I bet you before the end of the month someone hooks up their own open source one layer bicategory neural network which puts an imperceptible (to humans) layer of patterned static over arbitrary images, and trains it by having it bot-post static-ed images to Tumblr and reinforcing based on whether the images are labeled nsfw or sfw. Seriously, within a month someone will have an input-output machine which can turn any image ‘sfw’ in Tumblr’s eyes.

This is genuinely pathetic. Like, I have real pity for whoever implemented this, because it’s clear Tumblr doesn’t actually have any engineers with any expertise with machine learning left at all and they foisted the job off on some poor bastard who has no idea what they’re doing and is going to get all kinds of flak for their (perfectly reasonable and predetermined) failure from management.

[janothar]

@crazy-pages, can you link me to the software? I’m curious about what stack they’re using, as a Data Scientist myself. When you say “open source software” I hope you’re no talking about Tensorflow or Pytorch or the like, because that’s fine…if their specific script and model are public, though…

[wetwareproblem]

It gets even worse. It will not require hundreds of man-hours to deal with the backlog.

Because the review team is another net, and I’d bet cash money it’s another copy of the same software.

That imperceptible static trick? I did basically that. Both copies got flagged by the initial censorbot.

One copy, the less justifiable one by tumblr’s stated rules, was approved. The other was not.

Someone pointed me to another blog - I forget the name - that posts the same picture every day, and was getting similar results. Inconsistency in both flags and reviews.

And that’s never going to get better either.

But the pornbots have learned to use non-sexual keywords and tag #sfw already, so there’s that.

[luninosity]

IT’S A BOOK COVER AND THEY ARE TWO SHIRTLESS MEN

…apparently that’s not okay. *deep sigh*

Maybe I should try sticking an owl in here? I hear that works?

[readythebabythrower]

tumblr after December 17th

[disasterbisexual-moved]

you laugh, but they actually wanted to implement a cursing filter 

[leprachaunsean]

[valtsv]

character in a fight scene: *restrains their opponent by pinning them against the wall by their wrists*

me:

[icantwritegood]

character in a fight scene: *pins their opponent down by straddling their waist and holding their wrists to the floor*

me:

[ladylike-foxes]

character in a fight scene: *lifting their disarmed opponent’s chin slightly with the business end of their weapon*

me:

[g3ncyho3]

character in fight scene: *pins down the opponent and leans in close to whisper in their ear*

me:

[koracs]

Tumblr, watching you toe the line with this post:

[fallout-4-reactions]

Reblog to show your support for NSFW Artists, who deserve better than having their art censored/removed because of a badly thoughtout idea

[elvhxns]

The Official “Log Off” Protest F.A.Q! 

The “Log Off” protest is in response to the recent NSFW ban announced by Tumblr. The ban flags all content the filtering system detects as NSFW, reducing visibility to the community. The system has proven time and time again that is inefficient, oftentimes flagging SFW material as NSFW. 

This SFW material includes art, memes and so on. This ban directly hurts the community and will not solve the actual problems at hand due to the poor flagging system. Because of this, the entire community will suffer.  

So to respond, I propose that every user on Tumblr logs off of Tumblr for 24 hours on December 17th at 12 am EST. 

Times are listed above depending on timezone! 

This post responds to some very common questions about the protest. So make sure to read it over! 

How to Export Your Blog: 

https://tumblr.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360005118894-Export-your-blog

Alternative Sites: 

Pillowfort

Mastodan 

Wordpress 

Twitter 

There is also an official Tumblr blog (ironic, huh?) and Twitter for the protest! It’s at: 

Twitter - https://twitter.com/logoffprotest

Tumblr - https://logoffprotest.tumblr.com/

There will be official updates on each account. Make sure to tag us in any posts, or use the hashtag #logoff2018 ! 

Thanks for your support guys. Let’s fight to make Tumblr better. Actually better.