Tumblr pushed out this announcement a few days ago as the tidal wave of "mature" content flagging hit everyone's dashboard and posts.
This passage here is really indigestible and not sitting well with me:
"Why We’re Doing This These updates help make Tumblr safer and more consistent for everyone. They will help protect users, especially younger audiences or anyone else who prefers not to see this content."
Umm... Why are you putting the burden on the majority of users when those primarily affected already have tools and recourse to enjoy a "safe" browsing experience?
Younger audiences...shouldn't be here engaging in the first place, per Tumblr's own terms of use during account creation, right?
Anyone else "who prefers not to see this content" can learn how to deploy a few little filters for their browsing pleasure in less time than it takes to clutch their pearls.
Let’s be honest: this notion of safety is performative pandering. It’s not about protecting anyone. It’s about putting up a front to appease advertisers. It’s about pretending to solve a problem instead of engaging with it responsibly. Parents—not platforms—are responsible for managing what their kids see online. Punishing adults for occupying adult spaces does nothing to make the internet safer; it just makes it emptier and duller.
This is exactly what Vox described as the “enshittification” of social media—where platforms degrade the user experience to chase vague corporate virtue and—of course, that McGinley of everything that was once beloved and became popular—profit. AI moderation and empty “community protection” rhetoric are part of that decline. They strip away nuance, creativity, and humanity in all its chaotic, but honest, glory.
Tumblr built its reputation as a home for artists, writers, and creators who express whimsical, wonderful, weird, and beautiful creativity running the gamut of human emotions and experiences. Now, those same creators are being silenced by a malfunctioning algorithm that cannot tell the difference between art, education, and obscenity. It’s hurting creators, diminishing visibility, and possibly placing them at risk of shadow bans or account restrictions—all because of poor automated moderation while ramming this really dangerous, puritanical vision of what is "appropriate" down our throats.
We deserve a lot better.
Posts of mine that got filtered:
Posts of mine that DIDN'T get filtered:
Absolutely nothing wrong with this system at all!
In all seriousness, Tumblr needs to hire back all the people they laid off so this site can function (at least mostly) properly instead of relying on these broken bots. AND they need to stop capitulating to the whims of their advertisers while alienating the users that this site was built on. This is not a space for children, and it's incredibly patronizing to apply this puritanical BS to adult spaces like this. Please go after content and users that are actually harmful!
