its just occurred to me that i should probably say this
you are not safe from omori spoilers and if you would like to avoid such maybe unfollow me for the time being :)
also lobotomy corporation please go play that

Kaledo Art
Cosmic Funnies
Peter Solarz
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
DEAR READER
$LAYYYTER
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open

shark vs the universe
No title available
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
cherry valley forever
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
No title available
occasionally subtle
Not today Justin
styofa doing anything

tannertan36
Mike Driver
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

seen from United States

seen from T1

seen from Spain
seen from South Korea

seen from United Kingdom
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seen from T1

seen from Germany

seen from United States
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@nitori-gaming
its just occurred to me that i should probably say this
you are not safe from omori spoilers and if you would like to avoid such maybe unfollow me for the time being :)
also lobotomy corporation please go play that
2017
wow youre still living? somebody pinch me
would you elect me as tumblr ceo
absolutely we stan
absolutely not. die
im starting a campaign my leading point is i will be nice to the trans community and i will bring back the 2011 site design
i am so dedicated i will get top surgery and the amount of votes on this poll will determine the size of my newly voluptuous breasts
Can we have a separate poll to determine the amount of said breasts?
Size of Ralph's new boobs
Right boob
Left boob
i leave my fate in your hands
we need more right boob
I was expecting like number of breasts, not relative size 😮💨
number of wereralph boobs
2 (the standard for humans)
3
4
6
8
10
12
14
18
20 or more
1
0
A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:
We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally.
A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:
The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.
Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.
Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr.
Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.
When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.
Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:
Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.
Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.
Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.
We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.
We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.
We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.
— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.
This passes zero smell tests for corporate BS.
-No clear action plan for anti harassment tools beyond "prioritization"
-Alludes to a "real" reason for predstrogen's ban but doesn't elaborate
-Doesn't comment on the many of Matt's critics who were deleted en masse.
-No explanation of why there are still cisgender porn accounts everywhere.
-No actions to unban predstrogen, or the other affected trans woman users, not even a gesture that they can return. Nada.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you claim there are rumors and "misinformation", then prove it with evidence. If you support the trans community, then reverse the wrongful bans and deletions.
-This statement was authored by a trans user of Tumblr who's concerns have not been addressed.
This ☝🏻
I’m happy there are trans and queer staff at tumblr, but you cannot just say “we’re trans and think this is okay” and miraculously the issue goes away. You’re still a part of the problem.
Matt shouldn’t be the CEO if he’s going to act like a child and ban people for being mean to him. Actively threatening someone’s life is one thing, but banning someone for saying “I hope he gets run over by a car with hammers on it” (paraphrasing, I can’t remember what the original post was) is not the same as saying “I’m going to find you and run you over; I know where you live” with actual evidence of a real threat. And, frankly, you look like a little bitch for being that offended by something that was meant to express anger but with a little bit of silly. People get anon hate MUCH worse than that and those users still haven’t been banned 🤔
It’s interesting how tumblr is usually the place where we can say things you’d normally get banned for on TikTok and the like. We can talk about how we wanted the queen to die and say the same about Charles and Trump, etc, but the moment you criticize staff in this way, it’s no longer okay and results in a ban?
Why isn’t predstogren being reactivated?
What did she do to warrant a ban if it wasn’t the car with hammers thing?
Why on earth did this all start out over a comparison picture of herself before and after starting HRT?
You cannot say “we’re sowwy 🥺” and then continue to do nothing to make it better. If you want to support the trans community that you’re a part of, then BE SUPPORTIVE. Do something about the terfs on this website. Maybe do a mass ban of them instead of the trans people on this site, especially because the terfs are the ones actively preaching hate and violence against people just living their lives as who they are and what makes them happy.
A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:
We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally.
A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:
The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.
Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.
Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr.
Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.
When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.
Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:
Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.
Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.
Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.
We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.
We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.
We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.
— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.
”The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.”
So then she was deleted for being transgender.
Everyone, you cannot settle for this pathetic placation from tumblr staff until they can finally admit that Rita should not have been deleted at all.
Until they address how long this has been happening to trans and poc tumblr users, until they address how many trans and poc blogs were wrongfully deleted for protesting Matt and the moderation, until they address the ghoulish stalkery behavior of Matt instead of kissing up to him in that last sentence, this apology is empty.
A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:
We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally.
A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:
The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.
Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.
Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr.
Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.
When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.
Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:
Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.
Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.
Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.
We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.
We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.
We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.
— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.
Fix it then.
Matt went on a ban spree, nuking a lot of accounts that criticized him. But hey, even if he doesn't speak for you he can still silence critics for you?
Reinstate the trans women you banned unfairly. You know they faced anti-trans harassment campaigns. You can say anything you fucking want, until you act on it your words don't mean shit.
A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:
We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally.
A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:
The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.
Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.
Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr.
Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.
When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.
Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:
Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.
Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.
Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.
We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.
We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.
We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.
— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.
A small problem here is that you clearly did ban people, at least ostensibly, over such posts as their transition timelines. As well as disproportionately targeting-
I want to stop here and say that by "you" I mean Tumblr staff as a whole. You, the writers and/or editors of this post, may well not be the ones under direct scrutiny, but your team as a whole bears the blame, both for not stopping this and for taking so long to even issue an official statement.
-trans folks' posts with 'community guideline' violations, despite the thriving cisgender porn scene on this website, with bots and regular users alike posting reams of sex clips, daily, without ever seeing the sort of scrutiny their transgender counterparts see over even so little as clothed, safe-for-work photographs.
I'm very happy that y'all have actually decided to finally make a statement at all, and those goals you've set out at the end look to be quite reasonable (insofar as I can tell, at least). What I'm less happy about is how you're still trying to dodge responsibility for the horrendous abuses of power members of your staff team enacted upon users they didn't like - most especially Matt, whose startlingly immature recent behaviour is legitimate grounds for a Data Protections lawsuit against the company.
I understand y'all are in a tough position, and I'm not here to denigrate the fact that you're faced with the impossible task of representing a perceived monolith, whilst also trying to represent a user demographic, whilst also trying to save face over your current CEO's ridiculous antics. All I want to express is the inherent frustration in reading the official Staff response to the mods-v-trans situation, and finding it so artfully ambivalent as to divest everyone directly involved of any responsibility whatsoever.
On a final note: "not recognising the harm to the community" should never, ever be shorthand for "he ran a directed smear campaign, on a different platform, which divulged information he is not in a legal position to reveal".
A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:
We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally.
A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:
The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.
Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.
Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr.
Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.
When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.
Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:
Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.
Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.
Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.
We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.
We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.
We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.
— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.
Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment. Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment. Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.
FUCKING PLEASE WE ARE BEGGING YOU.
A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:
We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally.
A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:
The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.
Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.
Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr.
Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.
When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.
Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:
Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.
Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.
Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.
We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.
We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.
We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.
— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.
if transition photos were never against policy how did they get autoflagged when trans women posted them?
if this was purely other bloggers misusing ur terrible reporting policy then why were mature labels automatically applied to TEXT posts just using the words "transfem" and "trans women"
i had posts of drag queens fully clothed unable to post due to the mature labels
and none of this rly addresses why Avery was banned just saying "oh it wasnt what matt said and we can't say more trust us we're trying!!"
and this is all after years of these same harassment campaigns and restrictive labelling had been silencing black trans and sex worker bloggers constantlyyy
trans @staff yall can collect a paycheck without lying about ur shitty job
A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:
We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally.
A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:
The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.
Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.
Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr.
Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.
When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.
Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:
Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.
Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.
Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.
We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.
We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.
We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.
— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.
yknow, i do feel Bad for any trans employees in automattic/tumblr rn that feel theyre stuck in this situation until they can find a new job, lest lose income/valuable health insurance, but also
this rings Incredibly hollow as of late with the proof you can nuke accounts from orbit, but have only done so to transfems and not terfs or nazis
A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:
We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally.
A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:
The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.
Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.
Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr.
Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.
When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.
Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:
Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.
Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.
Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.
We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.
We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.
We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.
— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.
We'll see in the coming time if this rings true. The next step I'd recommend is inquiring about considering a new CEO for the company. It's shameful how he was able to get away with this for as long as he did.
A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:
We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally.
A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:
The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.
Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.
Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr.
Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.
When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.
Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:
Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.
Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.
Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.
We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.
We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.
We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.
— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.
right.
A year ago a transwoman I know was banned from Tumblr after she kept following up on the removal of one of her side-blogs. This harassment against transwomen has existed for quite some time.
Okay. I am going to offer some heartfelt advice. This is what I would be doing to Tumblr if I somehow won Powerball and bought Tumblr.
#1. Expand the number of reasons for Reporting a post. Include reasons such as transphobia, racism, anti-LGBTQ sentiments, antisemitism, online bullying.
#2. Set up teams of three mods of the same minority to investigate the report. That means three Jewish people would look into antisemitic posts, three LGBTQ+ people would investigate anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment, three black people would investigate racist content.
#3. Set up a punishment for habitual false reports. So if someone keeps flagging posts against LGBTQ+ people, they get a time-out of 24 hours, and also are blocked from viewing the content of the person they reported. Honestly, it should be a Two Strike situation.
#4. Set up a Reward System for successful reports of Porn Bots. Give us a free Crab that we can put in a post. These damn Porn Bots are a far greater threat to the financial viability to this website than all of the transwomen in the world, and your boss should realize that rather than harass transwomen for the crime of existing. Seriously. He wants this site to be financially viable? Then HE SHOULD BE PUTTING SIGNIFICANT EFFORT INTO ELIMINATING PORN BOTS AND THEIR ILK. I am reporting 3+ bots that label themselves Critical Role, Life is Strange, Nature, Science, and more every single day, just about. I also have these Bots showing up and Following me frequently. This is not a nuisance. This is a financial threat to the viability of the website. The Porn Bots are the true enemy of your owner, even if he doesn't acknowledge it.
#4a. Actually remove the Porn Bots.
#5. Post a policy that Tumblr is not and will never sell images found on the site to any AI-iteration site. We do not want our stories or art stolen in training these theft programs. And given that there is the growing trend to protect art using programs that poison the data so that AI cannot effectively use it, so selling the data isn't going to benefit your owner much because the AI programs are going to be fucked over. And if you try to steal stories from us? The legal fees from lawsuits will make any attempt at making money from us will eliminate any financial viability. Do not go this path.
I hope you know, your owner's antics has damaged the financial viability of Tumblr far more than any transwoman has. An increasing number of people are looking into alternatives. This brouhaha has poisoned the site for a number of us, and this Staff post in response is not going to convince anyone that things are going to change.
But if you follow the steps I put forth? It might help with damage control.
For those of you working at Tumblr... I feel bad for you. If Tumblr feels increasingly toxic to us transwomen using Tumblr, I cannot help but wonder how any transwomen and LGBTQ+ people working for Tumblr must privately feel. You take care of yourselves.
A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:
We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally.
A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:
The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.
Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.
Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr.
Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.
When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.
Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:
Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.
Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.
Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.
We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.
We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.
We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.
— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.
No amount of apologies are ever going to be enough to repair the broken trust between you and your userbase while Matt is still CEO. He's fucked it. He made a callout post for a trans woman that oh look, turned out to be full of lies, just like every other malicious callout post on this site. He then used his power to ban a bunch of other people who questioned what was going on or just hurt his feelings, DMed a whole bunch of other people to complain some more about his hurt feelings, and finally stalked her to another site and revealed a bunch of private information about her.
And there's absolutely nothing here to suggest there's anything stopping him from doing it again.
A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:
We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally.
A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:
The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.
Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.
Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr.
Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.
When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.
Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:
Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.
Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.
Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.
We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.
We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.
We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.
— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.
Matt MUST step down as CEO or be forced out of his position. That is how you can start to rebuild trust. While I understand the sentiment behind saying photomatt does not speak for tumblr LGBT staff, as CEO he (unfortunately) literally does speak for them, he represents the whole of tumblr, it's plans, it's ethical stances, and it's staff. His words are the words of tumblr as a corporate entity, he is the CEO. He's demonstrated his stance on trans issues here and has only doubled down on his stance. Notably he's still defending himself on twitter today, the same day staff made this post. It's nice to know that the staff at tumblr don't appreciate his views but unfortunately as long as he is in charge it's his views that matter. The CEO has already demonstrated his bias and disdain for trans women and abused his power to harm them over and over again. CEO photomatt has got to go, as long as he speaks for tumblr, as long as he has moderation powers, as long as he is attacking trans women, as long as he has power to abuse, then trust cannot be rebuilt.
A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:
We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally.
A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:
The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.
Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.
Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr.
Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.
When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.
Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:
Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.
Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.
Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.
We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.
We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.
We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.
— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.
honestly until matt is removed altogether, completely from tumblr, i dont have high expectations i truly do not believe he should stay as ceo after what he has done, and keeping him will only prove your words to be empty imo. matt should have no power over tumblr going forward