GreenGellyBean

Dear Jeff,

Dear Tumblr @staff ,

I’ve read your new guidelines with great interest and care and I must say you’ve missed a huge opportunity to become a leader in Internet community safety.

Let me explain:

First of all, as an adult and a parent I wholeheartedly applaud your efforts in making Tumblr a place where minors can explore the Internet in a safe environment. You have my full support in banning any and all form of child pornography! So in all sincerity kudos to you for taking this step.

Having said that, as a parent, I know all too well how forbidding a certain toy/food/activity to my offspring will turn it into a forbidden fruit. Coming down on my kids like a maddening fury yelling they’re not allowed to do drugs for example is by no means a guarantee they won’t end up with a needle in their arm. Harsh, I know, yet a reality nonetheless.

The same applies to sexuality in all it shapes and forms. Taking all adult content away form Tumblr will only push all these curious youngsters to go and explore elsewhere and we all know the Internet showcases fucked up stuff!

Also, trust me when I say my young teenage offspring has quite the sexual imagination already.

Turning sex and/or nudity into a taboo is not helping my offspring. Talking to them however is, answering any and all questions they have is.

Secondly, I’m a proud member of the BDSM community here on Tumblr, have been for over 2 years.

In my time on here I’ve seen and discovered this community is very protective of itself; abusers and/or wannabes are called out, numerous child pornography blogs have been reported.

There’s a whole community online of people, both Dominants and submissives alike, with up to 40 years of experience that share their knowledge, that take new people under their wing, that openly demonstrate the difference between porn BDSM and real life relationships.

New, curious people - when of legal age - were all welcomed with open arms by all of us. An insane amount of questions have been answered, advice and guidance have been offered freely to anyone who genuinely wanted to explore the BDSM world.

Now, now you’re pushing all these new aspiring dominants/submissives into uncharted territory! Safe, Sane and Consensual has been thrown out of the window for the BDSM community.

What I wanted, hell what every single one of my followers wanted, was to get rid of the porn bots! What we wanted was to get rid of the child pornography.

What we wanted was a safe environment for all of us.

What we’re left with is a whole lot of the opposite. Making Tumblr Safe Again has made the whole Internet an even more unsafer place.

What you could, and should have done, is reach out to the blogs with the largest follower base, made an open invitation to any and all smaller blogs who wanted to help you make Tumblr a safer place. Yes, we should have been vetted amidst this process. No, no one would have objected.

I’m beyond disappointed Tumblr. What started as an no doubt good and spot on idea has left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Sincerely,

Ha ha, no, of course not.

Yahoo is a notorious repeat offender. Yahoo is the reason the “if you’re not paying money for a service, then you’re not a customer, you’re the product.” saying exists.

Here is some fully general advice: If you’re the user of a free-to-use website, and you learn that it’s being bought by a large company, then this is always, and forever, bad news. If it’s not an acquihire, then it’s something worse. You’re not a customer, you’re the product.

If we’re lucky, this will be a Livejournal-style buyout, where the site just gradually disintegrates over the course of several years. If we’re unlucky, then it’ll be a Posterous-style buyout, and Tumblr will be shut down when Yahoo goes bankrupt in six months. It is vanishingly unlikely that being owned by Yahoo will benefit Tumblr users at all.

Predictions:

More ads. Karp has a weirdly principled dislike of ads, for a guy running a free social network. Marissa Mayer is unencumbered by morals, here. If you spend a billion dollars on something, you’re gonna want a return on income.

NSFW content is probably going to be banned, or heavily restricted. (As in, “verify your age by giving us a credit card number”) Ad networks hate and fear porn, and Yahoo is going to run more ads. No other Yahoo property allows NSFW content, for precisely this reason.

They might try to restrict fan content, due to copyright/CP concerns, as Livejournal did; they might not.

My inside voice: because the place where I could connect to kink communities in ways I otherwise couldn’t, where my attention deficient brain could easily find record and share content, find validation for an aspect of myself that is usually hidden, make actual friends, feel like I’m almost on the periphery of a community instead of solidly being on the outside, and where I enjoy nipples of all presentations is ruining everything.