Mindless Bliss of CORE

http://gsmediallc.com/

Some good news, I’ve been talking to two developers now and got them working together, we just had a meeting with the guys behind an existing large (millions of users) site similar to Tumblr, with a vibrant and open-minded community, and more importantly, it has open-minded owners who believe in free speech. They think we can get something done here to rescue the whole community.

I’m not allowed to reveal the site name yet. I can tell you it’s mainstream, open to everyone, open-minded and welcoming. (It’s not WordPress or any site owned by Facebook or Twitter. It’s not Pillowfort, that’s in closed beta. It’s not Ello, that’s mainly for artists. It’s not kinkspace or fetlife, those are too specialist. It’s not jux, that seems to be closed. It’s not Soup, that seems still in development and too small.)

One of the reasons for delaying the announcement for next few days is they don’t want a “land grab” where people take the names of current popular Tumblr users over there (cyber squatting). So they are looking at ways for existing Tumblr users to keep the same names on the new site.

More info over the days to come.

The plan is, broadly:

1. By December 9th, announcement of the new site and how to secure your username there

2. By December 10th, an online tool for bloggers to copy their existing content to the new site automatically, with the same tags and captions.

3. Bloggers will need to copy their content across between December 10th and December 17th if they want to use the automatic tool.

4. My understanding is that after December 17th there will be no public access to any “flagged” posts on Tumblr, but the original poster will still be able to see the flagged post (for a short time at least). Therefore, the original poster may still be able to manually download a post to their own PC or phone, after December 17th, and manually upload it to the other site. But if you have lots of posts that will take a long time, it will be better to use the automatic tool before December 17th.

Please understand that these dates are approximate and may change for technical or other reasons.

There may be a few rough edges or not so perfect looking site design on the transfer tool. Everyone is doing their best. The main goal here is to help as many people as possible preserve access to their content, in the short space of time Tumblr has allowed us, and preserve as much as possible of the Tumblr community spirit somewhere new.

The new site will cater for photo, GIF, text and html posts. It will not offer video and audio posts, due to cost reasons - maybe in future, but for now you will need to preserve video and audio content yourself in some other place.

If your Tumblr blog has a mixture of original content and reblogs, or all reblogs, all of that can be copied over to the new site. Reblogs will become “your” original content if nobody else posted them yet, otherwise they will be shown as reblogs. The devs are looking at ways to preserve attribution of reblogs back to the original Tumblr poster, if that person also moves to the new site.

Important: your Likes cannot be copied from Tumblr to the new site. You will have to go find the same posts again on the new site, and like them afresh.

(Similarly, existing reblog comments, asks, messages and other user interaction on Tumblr cannot be copied to the new site - that’s just too much to do, in the short time available.)

If you want to preserve any of your existing Liked posts on Tumblr, you will need to either: (1) download the post to your own PC, or: (2A) reblog it now to your own Tumblr blog, and then (2B) use the automatic tool, before December 17th, to move your whole Tumblr blog across to the new site.

If you have Liked a lot of posts here on Tumblr, the gridllr.com webapp should be able to help you do steps 1 and 2A quickly, I mean download or reblog.

(Someone complained to me today about the appearance of Gridllr on a phone. It’s best to use Gridllr on a PC, Mac or Tablet with a large screen.)

If you have liked a post here on Tumblr and the original poster decides to delete it, or even to delete their entire blog, some time before December 17th, then that post will be permanently lost. So if you want to be sure to preserve any of your Liked posts, you should best download or reblog as soon as possible. If it’s reblogged to your own blog it is safe from deletion, at least for next few days.

TLDR: You can export of all of the content you’ve created for your blog, and package it up into a convenient ZIP file for you to download.

To start the process, go to your account settings on the web:

Click “Settings” under the account menu at the top of the dashboard (the person silhouette).

Select the blog you’d like to export on the right side of the page.  

Scroll down to the “Export” section and click the “Export [blog name]” button.

You’ll see a message indicating that your backup is processing.

http://web.archive.org/

So I’m going to begin with what is wrong with the purge.  Tumblr has every right to decide what is shared on their platform. It’s not about them limiting our freedom of speech.creation etc.

My biggest problem with the purge is perhaps the creatives would never have added as much porn if Tumblr hadn’t told us all repeatedly we could and it would always be fine. 

The main problem is that tumblr made a big deal about this being a free expression place, and now everybody knows that’s not true. Because Tumblr is a business and everybody has a price. That’s just good business sense. We all know businesses aren’t really about the morals they claim to have, and that really they’re about money or success, reputation and community status - but people get angry when businesses claim to be principled and hold a belief and back up in complete reverse.

This is the bit that puts tumblr in the position of being like a lying ex. What I’m hearing mainly from people is. Tumblr Lied to us.

So many people feel betrayed and the people with the greatest right to feel betrayed are the adult ent professionals. For the rest of us this is annoying, this is inconvenient. But the many adult ent bloggerss have been treated quite badly here.

On the other-hand, perhaps this will mean less free porn, better sales for adult ent folk, better blogs overall.

I mean, lately , yes I think there are far to many lazily put together porn blogs - but for the creative eroticism blogs, the story writers, the kinksters I don’t know that these blogs would have ever been so heavily laced with porn if they hadn’t been told “Go ahead”.

My blog has become more porn related because there is a lack of quality other things being posted, and who doesn’t like boobs?  Tumblr  apparent *giggles*. But the porn trap is very easy to fall into on tumblr. You don’t have to be a porn addict or gooner. If you can’t think of stuff to say, or while you wait for inspiration to hit you just re-post boobs- because They are there.

 Since when do nipples count as porn though? In the UK at least you see more on magazine covers in our newsagents than the proposed new guidelines.  Where will the line between porn and art even be drawn? I find it a little surprising that glamour level topless photos are not allowed. If we are moving towards a more tolerant , less buttoned up society, this seems like a step backwards. I feel very sorry for the breastfeeding blogs if they’re going to be the only boobs on tumblr because you just know that its going to have that magical effect like when people don’t see flesh all winter and the first glimpse of summer exposed legs gets you cat-called and hooted as you are just trying to get your groceries.

There are plenty of people on here who are not porn blogs, they are inlove couples who post porn tagged at their partners as a means of flirting and communication. But they probably would have still joined tumblr and sent these messages privately if the rules had existed in the first place.

Nobody likes radical change, especially when it limits a person the freedom they are accustomed to. Tumblr would have probably been ok if they hadn’t promised so much and then done such a U-turn.

Personally I’m undecided. I don’t expect humans to have integrity. So few do. But I also know humans hold grudges. Most people have porn blogs and other blogs together. My second blog is my secret dream wedding  blog - because hey, i like cats, kindness, dresses, fashion and titties.This makes me wonder how many people have multiple blogs, but will hold onto the anger and never return here.

@staff , ever heard of MySpace? No? All their users stopped using it and found other ways to express themselves. It became obsolete almost overnight.

I know. Weird, right? Almost as though the USERS were the driving force of their BUSINESS. Huh. Crazy.

But the way @staff has handled this makes me absolutely furious. It’s about so much more than wanting erotica on my dash.

Tumblr has always been a community that is very female.dominated, with lots of content-creators, fans, sjws and just women talking to other women about the things women want to talk about. Sometimes, these things are sexual in nature.

And on just about every other site, that’s an impossible thing to do, because on the one end of the scale, anything to do with sex, especially female sexuality, is shamed or prohibited (this is where tumblr’s headed! Yay, purity culture!) or on the other hand, dominated by male gaze and predatory behaviour.

For Staff to pretty much shrug and say “you want sex, go someplace else” means to ignore the user base that built this website, that found a secure community here, that dared explore their identities in a relatively safe space.

The pornbot plague is an intrusion of those “other places” into our space, and instead of dealing with it, Staff decided to punish those who have been here all along. Like shooting a patient because they contracted the measles instead of nuking the infection.

Nipples are nipples, tumblr. There is nothing inherently sexual about some and not others, depending on the shape of the body they’re attached to. We’ve had this discourse for years. Adding the word “presenting” doesn’t tidy that over.

It was actual real child pornography with real victims that got you in trouble, tumblr, not nsfw-fanart of consensual adults getting it on.

Someone needs to tell Tumblr @staff that you don’t deal with child abuse by banning ALL legal adult content from the site.

Policing your site BETTER is what helps.

Banning ALL adult content, (the vast VAST majority of which is consensual and sensibly age gated) only moves the child abuse problem elsewhere, whilst punishing a community that has nothing to do with it, and is more likely to report it if they come across it.

Your “fostering a better community blog post” is rubbish. You didn’t deal with the problem effectively when it was reported to you. Probably (I might add) by the community you are now punishing.

No idea if it’ll make a difference, but it’s got more chance than doing nothing…

Here’s a petition:

Soup.io - well-known alternative to Tumblr. Reblogging, post types, themes, collab blogs, dashboard, artsy, great community already there. Soup can auto-import everything you’ve posted on Tumblr.

TypePad - Includes reblogging. Dashboard and post types similar to Tumblr.

Congratulations! We are now free to express ourselves however we desire. So long as our desires conform to the guidelines of puritanism. The female form is scandalous and must be concealed! Behold this beautiful preview inspired by Tumblr’s exciting new direction!

No more will we be forced to accept that women are allowed to express their sexuality!

All female presenting figures must be covered, all must be concealed! Our corporate lords demand it, for the good of the divine shareholders!

Freedom isn’t free, suppression equals profit!

If you turn ON safe search and look for “islamic state” and “white supremecy” you will find tons of hate speech and really evil shit….

But if you search like.. “latex” or “boobies” you get almost nothing…

The world is upside down, kids.

Why don’t you make a NSFW version of your app and require age verification to participate, instead of alienating millions of users? Give us an easy way to convert our blogs to the new environment. Win-win.

You’re welcome. -§§§