So long, and thanks for all the fish
A rant. About the thing we’re all ranting about.
So by now everyone probably knows about what’s happening on December 17th. Mostly because you can see the official notice at the top of your Dashboard now if you missed everything else that was going on. As much as I want to be angry about it, I’m mostly just resigned. I’ve seen it happen before and I’ll probably see it happen again to other sites. First, the machine-banning with an intolerably high rate of false positives, then new community guidelines that are so frustratingly vague that you cannot even determine whether your content is violating them or not, anger, vitriol, and in the end, a much less vibrant and unique community that no longer holds my interest. No apologies from the owners, no attempts at remediation at all.
I’ve... always had issues with the community of tumblr and how its users often fail to be as inclusive as they claim they are, but I still met some great friends on this platform, connected with content creators on a more personal level than I ever would have anticipated, and stumbled across a lot of really cool things, from art to photography to stories to funny anecdotes to new shows/movies/books/etc... I’ve discovered entire communities of people who share my interests. I’ve stumbled into discovering more about myself too. I stumbled across a webcomic with nonbinary characters and that is how I determined myself to be genderfluid. I may have stumbled across a few new fetishes too, but nobody’s perfect.
Meanwhile, people have been complaining for years about the porn spamming bots, the hate speech, the downright illegal content such as CP, and yet they did nothing. Instead they waited until Apple finally took notice, realized that they had allowed the mess to grow far beyond their ability to control, and now they’re taking drastic measures that could have been avoided if they’d actually paid any attention to their user base.
The saddest thing is, this change means that a lot of the content that shaped my perception of myself is no longer allowed on this platform. That webcomic which taught me about genderfluidity might not be allowed due to its suggestive themes. The personal anecdotes that allowed me to come to terms with my bisexuality might be blocked due to being too “adult” for this site. The creators whose content I enjoyed might find greener pastures, even if none of their work violates the new community guidelines at all.
I fall into that last group of people, myself. I know I rarely post any more (other than occasional reblogs), my writing has basically stalled out for years, and I probably have few, if any, followers paying attention to me at all, but I still feel like I need to make my displeasure known to the people who operate this site, not to mention the fact that their process for banning still has too many false positives based on what I’ve been hearing. I don’t want to risk suddenly losing everything because I used the wrong swear word or reblogged the wrong post. So on the same day their new community guidelines go into place, I’m leaving and deleting every post prior except this one, leaving it as a final “farewell” of sorts.
I’m backing everything up first, of course. I’m not that vindictive. 98% of my work is posted elsewhere (on FanFiction.Net or AO3), and the remainder is just small drabbles and one-off scenes that will undoubtedly find their way over to AO3 soon.
I want to reiterate that I’m not leaving because my own content will be banned, or at least I don’t think I have any bannable content here. I’m leaving because I don’t think where things are going, I vehemently disagree with the decision to ban NSFW content, and I refuse to support such a decision when it is made with such short notice and with no recourse or debate.
I’m also tired and running on almost no sleep right now so I’m sorry if this stream of consciousness sounds like the ramblings of a sleep-deprived person, because they very much are exactly that.
EDIT: I ended up not deleting prior posts but I’m definitely way less active now (almost to the point of being completely inactive). I decided that deleting stuff was kind of a knee-jerk reaction, especially since I don’t want to start erasing my stuff from the internet. I don’t have a personal blog outside of tumblr so I don’t have anywhere to repost any of this. If I ever do move fully to another platform, I’ll reconsider it.
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