Untitled

Trump: *has a meltdown*

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. 

The moment the announcement that we were going on lockdown was made, everything went into chaos. One of the seniors pushed me to the middle of the class and told me to stay there, and in the midst of that, I lost sight of where my best friend was. She came back, along with a wave of terrified students running for their lives.

The moment the doors were closed and locked and the lights were turned off, I finally processed what was going on. Within the storm of panic and fear, the sudden quiet seemed to wake all of us up. This could be the end for us. One by one, I saw the students pull out their phones and rapidly text their loved ones goodbye. To see teenagers like me go through that was heartbreaking.

The moment my dad replied to my text, tears started falling from my eyes. What were my parents feeling now? What would happen if I didn’t make it out alive? To have to go through this pain, to see my friends and classmates go through this pain was something so awful and devastating.

The moment the entire school fell silent, we finally started checking to see if our friends were okay. It was chaos within calm within chaos. To know our friend were okay was relieving, but to be in the dark about the situation at hand was suffocating.

The moment the rumors started spreading, the restlessness began. People were shifting and whispering as the rumors slowly spread through the class. There’s a shooter here. The school received a call saying that someone was going to shoot up the school. A guy has a duffel bag with bombs and guns. There was a shooter at McDonalds that fled to our school. But the scariest was the one that affected me directly: The shooter is in D Hall.

The moment that rumor arrived at our room — D-15 —, a different kind of fear started to spread. This icy hot fear that stabbed at our hearts could not be stopped, and we could do nothing but sit and wait. So we sat and waited for someone, something, anything to tell us we were safe.

The moment the door suddenly unlocked felt like an eternity. The door was opening agonizingly slowly, yet all too quickly. This is it, I thought. Either I get to live, or I die now.

The moment I saw the face of the SWAT team, everything inside me collapsed. We would live to see another day. My sister would graduate tomorrow. The seniors in my drama club would graduate tomorrow. We would get to go home for summer vacation. It wasn’t over.

The moment the lights in our classroom turned back on, the wariness began to spread. Were we really okay? What was going on? When could we leave this class? The questions started flying, and one by one, they were answered with ambiguity. All we could do was wait until we were dismissed.

The moment we stepped outside the school, our freedom was plagued by cameras. Three huge cameras were amidst the crowd, recording our every movements. My conversation with my frantic and panicked aunt was being televised. All I could do was glare and turn away, hoping that they would turn their cameras away from me.

My school did not have an active shooter. The police found no evidence of real threat to our school. Even still, to crouch down in that dark class with 40 other students, hoping that I would live another day, was one of the most traumatizing experiences of my life. We always hear about these events in the news, but never do we think it would happen to us. I write this to tell you that it will. It will happen — unless we do something to stop it. I’m not asking for the abolishment of the Second Amendment; I know that’s not possible. But I’m asking for a revision. I’m asking for a new law, a new regulation — anything to stop this.

This time, it was a threat, but next time, it could be an active shooter. My fourth grade brother could have to go through the same thing I went through. People could die — no, people will die if we don’t do something about gun control.

You know when you feel hot or thirsty but your dog has no way of telling you he is. Idk about other areas but right now my hometown has a severe weather warning for extreme heat. You may be able to walk around and catch pokemon and know when to quit, but if you walk your dog at the same time all I’m asking is be aware of when THE DOG needs to quit too. Be aware of the signs of heatstroke, be aware of how much exercise your dog needs or can realistically handle, and especially look out if it’s a very small or a very flat faced dog. The last thing we need is someone walking five miles in the summer heat and giving their dog heatstroke because the pokestop was too far away.

It’s great that so many dogs are finally getting more exercise than ever (as pet obesity is endemic) but high temperatures carry high risks.

Note that short-faced dogs (bulldogs, pitbull mixes, and similar) are at an increased risk for heat issues, as are small dogs, dogs with thick fur, and dogs who are overweight. 

Check your pooch regularly when you’re out looking for Pokemon, and be sure to bring water for both of you, even for a short jog.  If you go long distances on pavement, check your dog’s feet for burns - asphalt and concrete can scorch!  There are booties you can buy to protect your friend’s feet, which would probably be a good idea in areas that regularly get over 90F.

Just in case, here’s how to help out a heat-stressed dog: