Tumblr is initiating a new policy beginning in December, in which, if the words in their message of today are to be taken literally and at face value, they will ban images with adult content and images containing nudity. While I don’t post porn images or other sorts of things that might be considered porn, I’m not anti-porn. I just don’t want those things on my site. My feeling is that this is a big world, and there should be room in it for those whose tastes and interests are different from mine. I’m not a proponent of censorship and so long as that which is portrayed in the imagery or the language involved shows or describes consensual behavior, I think it should have a right to its place in the world. Verizon, the huge corporation that owns Tumblr, certainly has the money to develop filtering mechanisms that can more effectively allow people to block sites and materials they don’t want to see and don’t want following them. As for illegal activities, well, those things are already illegal. There are extant ways of dealing with them, should the Tumbloirds find or be informed of their existence on this platform. However, the changes being proposed by the brain trust at Tumblr Central are more significant and more insidious than simply a ban on porn. The precise wording of their message this morning included this sentence: “Today, we’re taking another step by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions).” Umm…excuse me, but “explicit sexual content” and “nudity”are two entirely different things. No explanation has been provided for what those “some exceptions” might be. I might not post porn, but I have posted many photographs that include both male and female nudity. Are the photographic works of Edward Weston, Willy Ronis, Lucian Clergue, Diane Arbus, Ringl and Pit, Francesca Woodman, Helen Levitt, Imogen Cunningham, Robert Mapplethorpe and so many others now going to be banned from Tumblr because they photographed nudes? Will the words of Henry Miller, Vladimir Nabokov, D.H. Lawrence or Margaret Atwood be banned because they have been accused and in some cases prosecuted for producing pornography? This plan, as it has been detailed to the public through Tumblr’s message this morning is, in my opinion, wrong. But it is beyond wrong. it is ugly and dangerous. Who is Tumblr to decide what art is? The new plan is completely reactionary, but what else should we expect from a corporate overlord?
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