MiaZilla is a Fangirl

Likes teh pretty. Spends to much time in front of the computer. Fangirl. Atheist. Knitter. Doodle-er. Swede. Aromantic Asexual. She/her.

[cheaphalloweencostume]

oh good to know the tumblr staff team has gone completely insane

[cheaphalloweencostume]

sir im gonna need to see your male nipple license

[baece]

sir that is my emotional support female nipple

[hustlerose]

remember awhile ago when staff said they were gonna fix the bot problem and their solution was to automatically flag random posts? remember how instead of flagging post it just flagged selfies and pictures of dogs? remember before that when lgbt tags were mass flagged as nsfw? yeah sure i really trust the people responsible for all that shit with removing all adult content from this website and maintaining that rule.

[margbarcis]

i lost a mutual for saying that if you believe this will actually work you’re dumb. but like.. i’m right. it won’t work at all.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Tumblr bans all adult content, such as "female-presenting nipples"

Rob Beschizza:

Tumblr, the mainstream web’s last redoubt for niche smut, is going to clean house. The social blogging platform is banning all adult material on December 17.

Banned content includes photos, videos, and GIFs of human genitalia, female-presenting nipples, and any media involving sex acts, including illustrations. The exceptions include nude classical statues and political protests that feature nudity. The new guidelines exclude text, so erotica remains permitted. Illustrations and art that feature nudity are still okay — so long as sex acts aren’t depicted — and so are breast-feeding and after birth photos. “Users have a chance to appeal flagged content”

The policy change takes effect on December 17th. From then on, any explicit posts will be flagged and deleted by algorithms. For now, Tumblr is emailing users who have posted adult content flagged by algorithms and notifying that their content will soon be hidden from view. Posts with porn content will be set to private, which will prevent them from being reblogged or shared elsewhere in the Tumblr community.

Even the cold dead embrace of a Yahoo! acquision could not end Tumblr, such was the power of fandom gathered there. But Yahoo never knew what it owned in Tumblr and was indifferent to its continued existence. The management of new Yahoo owner Verizon, however, has a pulse. It knows what Tumblr is and it hates it. It will hack it down until a perfectly clean advertising- and appstore-friendly traffic center remains.

That phrase Tumblr uses, “female-presenting nipples”, is darkly comic given the context of its ultra-woke audience. They didn’t give even the slightest thought to what people other than lawyers and appstore gatekeepers might think of it. In that sense, it seems to have a knowing reactionary air about it. It’s a “go fuck yourself” so perfectly aimed at Tumblr users it’s almost impossible to believe it isn’t intentional.

https://boingboing.net/2018/12/03/tumblr-bans-all-adult-content.html

[anniefelis]

This affects artists too, and not just the ones who intentionally draw smut. People’s figure drawing studies aren’t going to be allowed on the site, and drawing resources that include nude photos/tutorials are going away. That shit isn’t even porn and it’s going to get banned.

[elknight20]

This affects so many trans folks (my posts have been flagged, as well) and sex workers, my god.

WTF.

[wilwheaton]

Hi @staff

You know who is really into your new policy? You know who is showing up in my notes to defend you? Nazis. Shitty little white boy Nazis who are thrilled that you’re running off and alienating enormous swaths of your users. 

So you’re really doing a great job, and you can feel really proud of your employer’s decisions. If you’re lucky, you’re going to make Tumblr as awesome for Nazis and their supporters as Twitter! GREAT WORK, TEAM!

[theliberalstookmydrills]

[hrefnatheravenqueen]

FUCKING THIS POST ITSELF IS FLAGGED, I’M DYING! @staff YOUR BS IS KILLING ITSELF!!!!

[dreamofhircine]

Vine actually used to have a pretty sizeable porn-watching demographic. It was a good way to share small clips to sell, but Apple pressured them to gut it all and declare a no-’adult’-content policy or be tossed out of the app store and it caved to them

Vine no longer exists today

I’m not saying that the two are related, or that the issues with Vine were purely because they lose a big chunk of userbase, surely they could have made up for that with whatever twinks did on it, but it’s important to note that Apple has a history of forcing these kinds of changes on apps & sites because Apple is run by three Amish men and a lost Mennonite

[actupny]

This is fine.

[olderthannetfic]

Yes, You Should be Afraid

The sky isn’t falling, Tumblr isn’t deleting all the dirty fan art on purpose, and fandom isn’t going to leave Tumblr tomorrow.

However…

Once a site starts using bots to delete content willy-nilly, it has a serious problem and is not a safe home for fandom. In this case, the aim was to get rid of child pornography. (Actual child pornography.) The problem was already so out of control that they hit a bunch of innocent blogs by accident.

If this happened once, it’s going to happen again. It’s going to keep happening until Tumblr’s limited staff is so overstretched that they stop even a vague pretense of caring about false positives and accidental deletions of other content.

I’ve already seen several posts going around telling people to “calm down” and assuring us that Tumblr isn’t out to get us. Tumblr is not out to get us, but they’re not out to help fandom either, and you should definitely not calm down.

Make your other accounts now.

Have somewhere to go when Tumblr finishes imploding.

[harpergetsfannish]

Two bits of advice:

-back up your stuff. make copies of your important text posts. save your media elsewhere. tumblr has a built in backup tool. use that.

-let your friends know where else to find you. fannish exodus works best when we end up the same places. (may I suggest dreamwidth?)

[etherviolet]

Last I heard dreamwidth was not a great option because it’s servers are in Russia. Many of us think of the internet as something that lives “in the cloud, up there somewhere” but much of it’s infrastructure is hosted in rooms full of servers around the world. The server’s physical locations are subject to the laws of those areas/countries.

[olderthannetfic]

That’s Livejournal, dude, not Dreamwidth.

Dreamwidth is a similar-looking site that started off as a code fork of LJ. It is run by a tiny team in the US and is explicitly fandom-friendly. They’ve already been attacked by having people tattle to paypal and get their paypal suspended. They had to find a (more expensive for them) credit card processor that wouldn’t hold them hostage, demanding they change their content policies.

From the ‘open expression’ part of their about us page:

“We believe in sustainability, not profiteering. We want to grow our business slowly and steadily, in a way that can support the community instead of exploiting it. We don’t own you or your content – we hope that you’ll empower us to be your hands and trust us to build a community that can last.

We will remain third-party-advertising-free. We believe it’s possible to run a sustainable hosted service without resorting to third-party advertising or third-party sponsorship – and we’re committed to showing you what we’re taking in, what we’re spending, and where the money’s going.”

The problem with Dreamwidth is that it looks old-fashioned and doesn’t have all of the features fandom likes: The image hosting is minimal, and there’s no reblogging.

What it’s great for is text discussion with threaded comments (for which we use reblogs here, but for which reblogs frankly suck).

The people and policies behind the site are all great.

[calime33]

As someone who’s moved with fandom from BBBoards and Yahoo groups to Livejournal to Dreamwidth and AO3 and Tumblr and most recently to Pillowfort - it seems to be par of the course for sites that are NOT fandom-made to sooner or later become unfriendly or less usable to fandom. Dreamwidth may be quiet, but it’s made by fen, and I will keep supporting it with my money and looking in now and then to see old friends. I will keep supporting AO3 that was born out of that same needs for the fandom to own the servers. I would suggest people not forget fanlore.org - it’s your fandom lore wiki, and you can create an user page for yourself to direct anyone how to find you in case one of your main non-fandom-maintained fannish-community sites goes boom (a lot of us did when LJ purges and Delicious blowout and other stuff like that happened, here’s mine with my fannish contact info - https://fanlore.org/wiki/User:Calime ). We will no doubt be ousted from many a wide world web pasture in the future like we were in the past, but fandom network is resilient and stays around. Also, please, don’t forget your history and keep supporting the sites and organisations that fandom has made for the fandom, like AO3 and OTW, or the ones that like-minded people have created to be fandom-friendly, like Dreamwidth.

[othercat2]

Dreamwidth is the best option for conversation/text/meta. It’s fan run/designed and while as above sharing images and the like is extremely limited and you can’t reblog, it’s very fandom friendly, and it’s easier to control your blog and who sees what.

(If you don’t like not being able to reblog, you can bookmark posts at least to your “memories” or send them to other people and show them that way, so that’s a thing?)

[olderthannetfic]

The irony of my original post up there!

Consider the sky officially falling. Go make a DW. It’s free. When Pillowfort is back up, go look at that. But make a Dreamwidth now!

[itsallavengers]

Tumblr: if you’re horny on main, you WILL be eradicated

Ppl who came to tumblr trying to make a living out of sex work, ppl who express creative freedom thru nsfw art, people trying to become more comfortable w their sexuality etc: B-

Tumblr: E R A D I C A T E D 

[arkadykoshka]

From someone who’s survived MySpace, livejournal, deviantart, and fanfiction.nets’ content purges and bad policy updates, here’s some advice on how to get through tumblr’s recent bullshit:

- don’t knee jerk delete. I know it’s tempting to peace out immediately but hang on and do the other steps first. Out right ghosting and erasing everything is how fandoms die.

- archive everything on your blog you want to keep

- tell your followers how they can archive and keep your work too. A lot of fic and art were only saved from ff.net and lj because other people saved it first. If you’re cool with other people saving your work for them to personally keep, let them know this. You can absolutely discourage reposting but I really do highly recommend you allow people to personally save fic and art they like and are worried will disappear forever. Digital Dark Ages are a real thing.

- tell people where you’re jumping ship to. Give links. Keep that info up, even if you’ve left the site.

- go through who you follow and find out where else you can follow them. Save their work if they’ll allow it. It’s tedious as hell but if you want to keep up with people on here clicking on their page to check in is the best way to do it.

- support places like ao3. This is exactly why ao3 asks for donations a few times a year. They are a 100% anti-purging, judgement free, ad free non profit run by an elected board and protected by lawyers. Places like ao3 literally save fandom so please continue to support them and other similar archives. This is exactly why ao3 is so important.

[hashtagloveloses]

tumblr users: please ban the Nazis

tumblr: if you post a tiddy you’ll be deleted on sight

[pettydavis]

like notice how nowhere in that lil staff update did they mention getting rid of nazi or white supremacist content. they still get to keep theyre racist and neofascist userbase while appearing to do something useful

[showerthoughtsofficial]

You can probably tell which family member is coming upstairs by their step pattern but wouldn’t be able to pick out your own

[thismachineplaysme]

If my own footsteps were coming down the hall towards me I reckon I would have bigger problems on my hands…

[lyricalfatigue-deactivated20180]

Dear hearing aid providers: stop only advertising your hearing aids for old people - from a deaf 19 year old who’s used hearing aids since she was 7

[lyricalfatigue-deactivated20180]

Note: you don’t have to use hearing aids, or have any form of hearing loss to be able to reblog this

[ladynorbert]

Deaf people using hearing aids should be as normalized as people with vision loss wearing glasses.

[elierlick]

Facebook upholds white supremacy without flinching. (source)

[dreamofhircine]

disabling the in-blog search feature of every nsfw-flagged blog and mass-removing any ability to see the posts aside from having them reblogged to your dash or following the creator specifically doesn’t actually improve the site and it also doesn’t solve the underlying problem of child pornography on this site (many of these blogs are likely still intact, and following each other so they don’t need tags) but it does significantly harm any sex worker or nsfw artist or anyone that just happens to casually use this site and thought to flag themselves as explicit because they reblog a titty here and there by making this site functionally useless for them

there’s just not a big upswing on this, it’s just another poor implementation of a massive policy change by the staff that doesn’t actually target the specific problems facing the platform, and instead just harms the maximum number of users possible