I’ve come to the conclusion that the only thing that Tumblr @staff want to see on Tumblr is cat blogs. Wait…are cat nipples NSFW? Inquiring minds.
Seriously, I have been having a hard time wrapping my brain around this. As someone who used to work as a journalist for the adult entertainment industry (this is no big secret, however the last time that it came up I was raked across the coals because people are prudes and have sticks up their butts) I find this change in Tumblr disturbing.
I have been trying to think how to put things into words without writing a novel, and I’m still not sure that I can do it.
What is considered NSFW is subjective because sexual harassment cases have been brought upon people for hanging up swimsuit calendars. We have turned into a society that takes things too literally, too seriously, and too far.
As someone who has spent hours talking to porn stars, directors, and reviewing their movies, watched the ‘rules’ of STD testing in the industry change, and not necessarily for the better, I am very much aware of laws, regulations, and everything regarding pornography, obscenity, and protecting children on line.
Tumblr is acting with a knee-jerk reaction to make everything PG-13 because they refused to clean up the mess that became of Tumblr. People have been complaining about porn-bots for as long as I have been here. Child pornography has been reported and not taken down. Pedophiles have been reported and left to interact with minors. Basically, Tumblr @staff has ignored the problem and let the illegal stuff remain and done nothing about the worst of the community. Instead of doing a proper clean up, probably because at this point, its too much work, and actually means people policing the site and looking into everything that gets reported, everyone that has followed the rules gets punished because @staff has failed to do their jobs in the past.
…make available any content that is harmful to children, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortuous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically, or otherwise objectionable
This Is where things get hair, as for something to be considered obscene it must past the Miller Test, and most things on Tumblr do pass this test. It is the third prong of the Miller Test that protects art, video games, the written word and so much more
Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value
The problem that we have here is that “harmful to children” expands this so much. Because we have to protect minors from things that might be harmful we have a game rating system and a movie rating system. These things make sense, but it also up to the parents to decide in the end what games and movies their kids are allowed to read. Taking this to the extreme, we also try to ban books because someone somewhere doesn’t agree with the content and finds it offensive or harmful. People have tried to force museums to cover the Statue of David because of nudity and children might see it. There is a world of difference between the Statue of David and Debbie Does Dallas.
Common sense is lacking in this equation and that leads to censorship.
So, because minors use Tumblr someone decided that it would be a good idea to make everything “child friendly” even though there are adults on the site who have no desire to live in a PG-13 world. Making Tumblr PG-13 is a form of censorship because the ability is there to hide adult content. If the human beings that work at Tumblr did their jobs, the current (old) system would work.
And the censorship begins. And it’s brought about with a poorly designed algorithm that isn’t very smart, and Tumblr expects the community to “teach” it. This is the same staff that ignored the complaints about porn-bots and child porn. If Tumblr policed it’s site under the current (old?) guidelines and investigated and removed things that were reported, they wouldn’t be in the position where Apple has removed the app from their app store. Tumblr doesn’t want to admit that they are any way at fault (for not enforcing their TOU) and are placing the blame - and punishment - on it’s users.
It’s just not the NSFW blogs that are going to end up with content deleted. Artists and gamers and photographers are going to be at risk. Tumblr is a unique platform, there isn’t another like it. In the end this change is going to hurt Tumblr and it’s community more than help it.
jacobvanloon
areudirty
prguitarman
discoholicmusic
stormborns
pixelskylines
ellievsbear
