don't talk to me /j

Slavery was not "200 years ago," the last living former enslaved african american passed away in 2014 at 70 years old.

Chattell slavery in America did not go away, it adapted. It became peonage, sharecropping, vagrancy laws, "chain gangs" or convict leasing, and continues into the modern day prison system and the systematic incarceration of black and brown people and expanded to forced detention of immigrants in modern day America.

Do not believe the common narrative that the emancipation proclamation freed every slave. There are many more who were unable to tell their stories out of shame or fear of harm.

I reccomend that people read Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon or watch the 90 minute documentary / film adaptation

A few weeks ago, a small but higher-than-normal number of accounts were mistakenly suspended. The suspensions were quickly reversed, but our response wasn't good enough, and we want to say more.

We're sorry it took us this long to address this. Trust and safety issues are difficult to discuss publicly, and we can’t share details about specific individuals or how our systems work without exposing Tumblr to bad actors. But caution led us to say too little, too late.

We’ve heard from members of the trans community on Tumblr that they were disproportionately impacted, and that deserves a direct response. According to 3rd party researchers, Tumblr’s userbase has the highest proportion of LGBTQIA+ folks on social media, so it makes sense that when something goes wrong, those communities might feel that disproportionate impact.

One thing we want to emphasize is that we do not moderate people's identities. We moderate behavior. We know that identity shows up across a Tumblr profile in many ways, from followed topics to the flags people put in their bios, and more. However, these signals play no role in how our moderation systems make decisions. We monitor those systems for evidence of bias and take corrective action when we find it.

We understand that the communications sent to affected users, and our broader silence to the community, didn't meet the standard people expect from us. That feedback is fair, and we apologize. We've updated the messaging sent to people impacted by these incidents. We are also overhauling our process with a goal of responding to mistaken suspension appeals within 24 hours, and have instituted an ongoing internal review of how suspensions and appeals are handled.

Going forward, we're committed to finding a better balance: being more transparent with our community about issues that matter, even when we can't share everything.

Tumblr belongs to everyone. We take that seriously, and we intend to earn back your trust. We are not afraid to have tough discussions with you or make updates based on your feedback, though on occasion, it might take some time.

To the people whose accounts were affected, and to the members of our trans community who felt targeted: we are truly sorry.

Pants That Could Smelt Steel

happy 20 year anniversary of Neil banging out the tunes!

though every rat is special, it's a wonderful and unusual thing for their accomplishments to be remembered and cherished by so many people so many years later. we're all so fortunate to know about the rat who banged out the tunes!

thank you to all the people who sent me reference photos of their beloved rats for this piece!!! credits under the cut!