Bean's Towns

Mastodon “allows” pedophiles in the same way that email “allows” identity theft scams. No, “email” doesn’t put a stop to identity theft, but “email” is just a set of protocols for sending messages - it’d be absurd to expect it to

Most Mastodon instances (including mastodon.social, the largest and oldest) do more to keep pedophiles off their platform than tumblr ever has, by having strict rules against it, banning any instances that don’t have strict rules against it, and actively moderating to enforce those rules. At that point it’s as if the pedophiles are on a different website entirely - because they literally are on a different domain

As someone who actually uses it, I can confirm that I’ve never had or even heard of a run-in with pedophiles. Admins know the instances that allow it and quickly block and spread the word about any new ones that pop up. Again, it’s been more of an issue for me on tumblr than it’s ever been on masto

Recently, Tumblr was removed from the Apple app store due to an incident involving child pornography. This incident is incredibly unfortunate, but it doesn’t stand alone. Tumblr was also removed from the app store due to the large influx of porn bots and pornographic spam, users claiming to be proud to be pedophiles, blatant Nazism, racists who are not deleted for sending hate and harassing users, and more. I myself reported someone for harassing me, but because I had blocked the person and couldn’t access the messages where they harassed me, they were still able to send me anonymous asks. Your support staff, with back doors to the website (presumably), claimed they could not access the messages, and I was left SOL. Many features on this website do nothing to actually protect your users from harassment, racism, homophobia, transphobia, Nazis, pedophiles, predators, porn bots, and more. 

You claim in your statement to us that you “have been working on these problems for a long time”. This is blatantly untrue. Please do not lie to us and patronize us. We’ve been here. We’ve seen you do nothing over, and over, and over again. 

We complained to you for months and months about the rampant porn bots, and you did nothing except add a report button on mobile which only reported sensitive content or spam at best. You could have addressed this problem with an effective algorithm, but you did not. We complained to you about being harassed and sent hate speech for being LGBT+, and you did nothing. We complained to you about blogs being randomly deleted, and sometimes you’ve restored them, other times you have not. We complained to you that there were people proudly claiming to be “Minor Attracted Persons”, or pedophiles, and you did nothing. We complained to you about people proudly claiming to be white supremacists, and you did nothing. All of these things are “against the community guidelines”, and yet over and over, you have not found effective ways to handle these problems or suppress the feeling of welcome that these users claim to get here. You have had a long time to work on these problems, but you haven’t addressed them. To say you have is untrue. 

 Multiple other social networking websites, such as Wordpress, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and others have effectively dealt with rampant pornography, racism, pedophilia, and other problems without causing massive issues for their users who are not misusing the platform. They are continuing to find new, effective ways to deal with these issues without causing problems for their userbase as a whole.  There is no reason that you are unable to do this effectively other than that you wanted to do it quickly. You have once again chosen your stock holders over your users. And we have had enough. 

You have already started to ban “Adult” content with a new algorithm. Here are screenshots of just a fraction of the posts you have flagged as containing adult content:

Your new system of simply tackling everything at once is not working. At all. And each of these screenshots is proof of your utter incompetence. None of these posts contain pornographic acts, “female nipples”, or any community violation of any kind. 

We, the users, have been asking you for months to deal with these problems - particularly, the porn bots and bots that spam. In order to block a bot from a side blog, I have to do it manually, even though they are in my side blog’s feed. This is a huge issue for mobile - only users. They keep cropping up in droves, taking over our posts and tricking google into making it look like a legitimate blog linked to a pornographic website. We have complained to you for months and months now, and your solution to simply “ban all adult content” is ineffective. I agree that children should not be able to access pornography - but this is not how you tackle a porn bot problem. Your system is utterly useless, allows for racists, pedophiles, porn bots, and Nazis to remain untouched. It also harms sex workers and real people who may use this website for some forms of adult content responsibly. Moreover, as seen above, it harms plenty of users who have in no way violated your terms of service.

 If you keep this up, you threaten your website and company as a whole. Many of us are backing up our blogs and planning places to go to. 

You already have a content filter for “sensitive” content (content inappropriate for younger viewers). You could have improved this, instead of attacking your entire user base. It seems to be a very lazy “solution”, if you could call it one at all, and one that harms your entire userbase.

If you are going to keep this filter in place and make Tumblr, a website that has never been known for being family friendly and has never claimed to be, you are going to lose millions of your users. We are already planning our exodus. It isn’t hard to follow. Censor us, and we will go somewhere else. That is not a threat. It is a promise. 

Sincerely, 

The users of your website. 

Me:

Hey there frends-

I know a lot of you out there are struggling to acquire binders, and while you’re waiting to get one you might need an alternative. Ace bandages can be pretty hazardous to your health, so I thought I’d share my binding method with you. It came about out of necessity (I’m not in a position where I can buy myself a commercial binder,) but it’s comfortable and works great. I use it everyday and pass so well, at this point I’m not even looking into commercial binders anymore. 

The first slide on the guide shows two pictures of Thomas, the poster, wearing the binder. The main picture shows him wearing the binder in regular clothes - a grey sweater and some jeans. His chest is flat. The smaller image shows his binder sans shirt - showing the black camisole folded over his chest.

This intro slide reads, “We all know that binding with Ace bandages is dangerous and can even ruin our chances for surgery later on, but what’s your alternative when you don’t have a binder? Read on, dear friend.

Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor so I’m not going to say this is 100% safe only to be blamed or sued later on, but it’s not as constricting as a typical binder so I don’t see how it can really harm you. It’s just a regular article of clothing that’s been turned around and folded. As always though, it’s safest to bind with a legitimate binder that’s been made specifically to flatten your chest without harming your body. 

Also: Obviously I’m just one guy and what works for me might not work for someone else. For most of you, this is only meant to be a temporary solution until you can get a real binder.

further description under the cut:

LGBT people aren’t even, as a whole, less bigoted than literally anyone else, they’re just not bigoted against their own specific sub-group.

Yeah, and you can also get tired of criticizing something you love. You can get completely fed up with it and decide, “You know what? Flaws aside, I love this thing, and I don’t have to waste hours of my life admitting its flaws to strangers on the Internet in order to somehow justify my love of it.” You can get sick of watching others gleefully tear it apart, for no reason other than that it’s popular and they hate that you love it. You can get sick of watching others tearing it apart with good intentions, too.

he’s selfish and has a strong sense of self-preservation, but that doesn’t mean he’s an asshole and doesn’t genuinely care about other people

his sense of self-preservation gets thrown out of whack when mob and the other kids are involved cause he understands that he’s responsible for them, which is great

very vain but also super insecure, i mean that’s like my favorite character trait

likes classical music and falling asleep during b-movies like?? wow

photoshop stresses him out, v relatable

he’s an extrovert and he has no friends

he’s not actually a good liar, but he’s so persistent and he has such random good luck that it doesn’t matter

a con man who thinks it’s his duty to help his customers

lonely boy

tries to exercise, hurts his back

lightweight

“During my second month of nursing school, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions, until I read the last one: “What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?” Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50s, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade. “Absolutely,” said the professor. “In your careers you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say ‘Hello’.”