A lightning rocket is a rocket device, generally about the size of a man, that trails behind a conductor, such as a fine copper wire or other medium that is conductive, to conduct lightning charges to the ground. Lightning strikes derived from this process are called “triggered lightning.” (Source)

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. 

Butterflies fluttering around a turtle. The butterflies are drinking the turtle’s tears to get salt. (Source)

Here’s the thing:

Taxonomy is tricky. Moths and butterflies make up the insect order Lepidoptera. But… just like technically wolves and coyotes are already dogs (canids = dogs-ish I guess?), butterflies are just a type of moth. A very, very small group of insects in a gigantic, humungous, incomprehensibly more diverse order of insects. Allow me to demonstrate.

POP QUIZ! QUICK! FIND THE MOTH!

Got it? Good. Here’s the answer key (NO PEEKING BEFORE SPOTTING IT YOURSELF!). 

From Left to right: TOP: Painted Lichen Moth, Moonseed Moth, Beautiful Tiger (moth), Grote’s Buckmoth (endangered) BOTTOM: Eubaphe unicolor (moth), Eight-spotted Forester (moth), Ailanthus Webworm Moth, Chickweed Geometer Moth

Wait… ALL OF THEM ARE MOTHS? Of course they are. There are so few butterflies in the giant sea of moths, it’s amazing you even notice them!

Okay, okay fine. That one was tricky (or was it?). Here’s another.

AGAIN! QUICK! FIND THE MOTH!

Easier this time, right? Let’s see how you did! (NO CHEATING)

From Left to Right: TOP: Checkered Skipper, Soldier Pansy, Funereal Duskywing, Dotted Checkerspot (endangered) BOTTOM: Texas Powdered Skipper, Tawny Emperor, Reakirt’s Blue, Fatal Metalmark

Wait… so which one is the moth? NONE OF THEM THESE ARE BUTTERFLIES. “What do you mean these are butterflies, they are boring?!” Shut up I love them. “But moths are supposed to be the boring ones!” Shut up moths are cooler than a T-rex with a mohawk riding a skateboard.

Moths are furry; Moths are smooth

Left: Southern Flannel Moth; Right: Carmenta ithacae (glass wing moths)- mating pair

Moths are large; Moths are small

Left: Cecropia Moth; Right: Banded Scythris Moth

Moths are Air; Moths are Water

Left: Eggplant Leafroller Moth, caterpillars live on plants; Right: Jalisco Petrophila Moth, caterpillars are aquatic and grow up in freshwater and the adult female moths will swim into the water to lay her eggs GUYS SHE IS A MOTH!!!!!! Also: they are jumping spider mimics! Look!

Moths are Elegant; Moths are Strange

Left: Wilson’s Wood-nymph Moth; Right: Dejongia californicus Plume Moth

Moths are Perfect; I Love Them

Left: Virginia Creeper Sphinx Moth; Right: Harrisina coracina

have you felt the primal call of the unmerciful sea calling you to strike down those who would defy you? no? well if you stopped using overpriced flower-scented body wash and switched to SEA HAG, you might. 

look down.

back up. where are you? you’re a siren, bare-breasted and shrieking as you lure the unwary to their doom on the rocks below. and you smell amazing. 

what’s in your hand? back at me. it’s a vial of skin-nourishing ingredients, derived from the seaweed you used to strangle a hated foe. it does wonders for your skin tone and resilience, and we all can agree that we will need that resilience in the coming war.

look again: the seaweed is now a formal apology from the last man who unnecessarily tried to explain something to you.