On November 19, 2018 my primary tumblr blog and all sideblogs associated with it were terminated without warning. It became quickly clear in context of the rash of other blogs that were terminated at the same time that this was due to NSFW content. Bear in mind that I flagged my NSFW blog as Explicit and it was compliant with tumblr’s rules on acceptable content at the time. I immediately filed a support ticket (as instructed upon my attempt to log in). I still have received no response as of today (December 3).
At the time, tumblr’s TOS still stated this:
In the time that’s passed between then and today, I and many other bloggers I know have heard nothing back from tumblr regarding our terminated blogs. Today tumblr officially announced that it will be disallowing most NSFW content sitewide, starting December 17. Here are some choice bits from their new community guidelines (bolding mine):
Will I get kicked off of Tumblr if I’ve uploaded adult content in the past?
We’re removing content, not people. However, those who repeatedly and deliberately post new content that violates our updated guidelines may have their account deactivated per our Terms of Service. If you feel you’ve been incorrectly suspended, you can appeal here.
(reminder: I have appealed far in advance of this new TOS being enacted and heard nothing.)
What if my blog (not to be confused with posts) was marked as “explicit” before December 17, 2018?
Blogs that have been either self-flagged or flagged by us as “explicit” per our old policy and before December 17, 2018 will still be overlaid with a content filter when viewing these blogs directly. While some of the content on these blogs may now be in violation of our policies and will be actioned accordingly, the blog owners may choose to post content that is within our policies in the future, so we’d like to provide that option.
Tumblr sounds very gracious and agreeable about giving people a chance to evaluate their content in relationship with their new policies. But I and many others were not given that opportunity.
The hypocrisy and false pretense of transparency in these statements is probably what bothers me most, possibly even more than the “uwu we’re making tumblr a more positive place, sex is bad” bullshit--I’ve lost so much because of tumblr’s kneejerk disastrous handling of this whole situation, and have no hope of getting any of that back. I know this is all just tumblr covering their asses, but I wish they wouldn’t do it in such a disingenuous way.
I won’t be using tumblr anymore, regardless of whether my @reallycorking blog gets brought back, which I’m sure it won’t be. My art queue has run out here, and I won’t be posting anymore to this blog either unless I have a particularly important update. I’ll leave it up as an archive.
I will really miss the community here. I have felt so loved and supported by so many people who have interacted with me and my art. I’ll miss the messages and asks and cute tags. You guys are really wonderful. I hope we can foster a functional and connected fandom community again somewhere on a platform that works for us.
For now, I can be found in these places (most active on twitter!):
Twitter SFW: https://twitter.com/reallycorking
Twitter NSFW: https://twitter.com/reallyforking
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reallycorking/
Pillowfort: https://www.pillowfort.io/reallycorking
Dreamwidth: https://reallycorking.dreamwidth.org/
Also, @esselley and I will not be using our @essiecorking blog here on tumblr anymore. This makes me really sad, as I have so many happy memories tied up with that blog. :( essiecorking on twitter is where we’ll have any collab updates moving forward.
