for the love of Surak

The plan for the 17th, when the adult content ban comes in, is to protest.

To do that, we are making as much noise either side of the 17th as possible, and using the site as normal.

On the 17th, dead silence.

People are saying log off but what they really mean is don’t open the site or the app.

But, on the 17th make as much noise as possible on every other platform. Tweet about it and post on facebook and instagram and everywhere else.

What this does is causes a massive dip in ad revenue for one single day. That does not make staff think ‘oh everyone’s gone let’s shut down.’ What it actually makes them think is ‘oh shit people aren’t happy and if people don’t keep using our site we’re out of money and out of jobs.’

A boycott reminds a company that the users (consumers) have the power to make their site (business) worthless with one single coordinated decision.

If you want to join in, here’s what to do:

Do:

Close all open instances of the app and site on all your devices before the 17th

Make posts before and after the 17th on tumblr and other platforms, talking about why this ban is bad

Make posts on other sites during the 17th. Flood the official tumblr staff twitter and facebook with your anger and your opinion

Come back on the 18th and check in

Don’t:

Delete the app from your phone (this doesn’t affect their revenue and since it’s off the store at the moment it’ll be hard to get back)

Delete your account. I mean you can if you want to, but if you keep your account and don’t use it you’re saying to staff that there’s still time to save it. If you delete it’s hard work to come back.

Open the app or website (including specific blogs)

Make any posts (turn down/off your queue and make sure nothing is scheduled)

Go quiet elsewhere. Make it clear that this is just about tumblr, not a mass move away from all social media.

Remember: the execs don’t care about anything but money. Shutting down the site means there’s $0 further income from it. That’s their last possible course of action. If we make it clear we’re not happy, they’ll have to do something or we can do more and more until it becomes too expensive.

Tumblr seems to be in potential death throes or at least, incredibly volatile and unreliable lately, but we’ve done some pretty good and informative work on canon analysis and reference guides so I was looking for ways to back it up without losing it…and the solution became obvious to me: Archive of Our Own, aka AO3.  “What?” you might ask if you are less familiar with their TOS. “Isn’t that just a fanfic archive??” No! It’s a fanWORK archive. It is an archive for fanworks in general! “Fanwork” is a broad term that encompasses a lot of things, but it doesn’t just include fanfic and fanart, vids etc; it also includes “fannish” essays and articles that fall under what’s often called “meta” (from the word for “beyond” or “above”, referencing that it goes beyond the original exact text)! The defining factor of whether Archive of Our Own is the appropriate place to post it is not whether or not it’s a fictional expansion of canon (fanfic), though that is definitely included - no, it’s literally just “is this a work by a ‘fan’ intended for other ‘fannish’ folks/of ‘fannish’ interest?”  The articles we’ve written as a handy reference to the period-appropriate Japanese clothing worn by Inuyasha characters?  The analyses of characters? The delineations of concrete canon (the original work) vs common “fanon” (common misconceptions within the fandom)? Even the discussion of broader cultural, historical, and geographic context that applies to the series and many potential fanworks?  All of those are fannish nonfiction! Which means they absolutely can (and will) have a home on AO3, and I encourage anybody who is wanting to back up similar works of “fannish interest” - ranging from research they’ve done for a fic, to character analyses and headcanons - to use AO3 for it, because it’s a stable, smooth-running platform that is ad-free and unlike tumblr, is run by a nonprofit (The OTW) that itself is run by and for the benefit of, fellow fans.  Of course, that begs the question of how to tag your work if you do cross-post it, eh? So on that note, here’s a quick run-down of tags we’re finding useful and applicable, which I’ve figured out through a combination of trial and error and actually asking a tag wrangler (shoutout to @wrangletangle for their invaluable help!): First, the Very Broad: - “ Nonfiction ”. This helps separate it from fanfic on the archive, so people who aren’t looking for anything but fanfic are less likely to have to skim past it, whereas people looking for exactly that content are more likely to find it. - while “Meta” and “Essay” and even “Information” are all sometimes used for the kinds of nonfiction and analytical works we post, I’ve been told “ Meta Essay ” is the advisable specific tag for such works. This would apply to character analyses, reference guides to canon, and even reference guides to real-world things that are reflected in the canon (such as our articles on Japanese clothing as worn by the characters).  The other three tags are usable, and I’ve been using them as well to cover my bases, but they’ll also tend to bring up content such as “essay format” fanfic or fanfic with titles with those words in them - something that does not happen with “Meta Essay”.

- I’ve also found by poking around in suggested tags, that “ Fanwork Research & Reference Guides ” is consistently used (even by casual users) for: nonfiction fannish works relating to analyses of canon materials; analyses of and meta on fandom-specific or fanwork-specific tropes; information on or guides to writing real-world stuff that applies to or is reflected in specific fandoms’ media (e.g. articles on period-appropriate culture-specific costuming and how to describe it); and expanded background materials for specific fans’ fanworks (such as how a given AU’s worldbuilding is supposed to be set up) that didn’t fit within the narrative proper and is separated out as a reference for interested readers. Basically, if it’s an original fan-made reference for something specific to one or more fanworks, or a research aid for writing certain things applicable to fanworks or fannish interests in general, then it can fall under that latter tag. 

- You should also mark it with any appropriate fandom(s) in the “Fandom” field. Just like you would for a fanfic, because of course, the work is specifically relevant to fans of X canon, right? If it discusses sensitive topics, or particular characters, etc., you should probably tag for those. E.g. “death” or “mental illness”, “Kagome Higurashi”, etc. 

Additionally, if you are backing it up from a Tumblr you may wish to add: - “ Archived From Tumblr “ and/or “ Cross-Posted From Tumblr ” to reference the original place of publication, for works originally posted to tumblr. (I advise this if only because someday, there might not be “tumblr” as we know it, and someone might be specifically looking for content that was originally on it, you never know) - “ Archived From [blog name] Blog ”; this marks it as an archived work from a specific blog. And yes, I recommend adding the word “blog” in there for clarity- Wrangletangle was actually delighted that I bothered to tag our first archived work with “Archived From Inu-Fiction Blog” because being EXTREMLY specific about things like that is super helpful to the tag wranglers on AO3, who have to decide how to categorize/”syn” (synonym) various new tags from alphabetized lists without context of the original posting right in front of them.  In other words, including the name AND the word “blog” in it, helps them categorize the tag on the back end without having to spend extra time googling what the heck “[Insert Name Here]” was originally. 

Okay, folks. So. Tumblr’s jumped the shark in a big way, and I’m not even just talking about indiscriminately blocking all “adult” content on a platform that IS, in fact, primarily 18+.

Many blogs, like the wonderful @blackkatmagic , that are not especially NSFW have vanished.

(And I for one LIKE being able to go to curated porn blogs run by actual people and have a chance of finding stuff to my taste, it was one of the things that kept me on this hellsite, but that’s another issue entirely.)

I know lots of people are talking about migrating, but none of us are sure to where yet. Pillowfort seems to be an option, some people are talking about Twitter. But for now, it’s a mess, and even if we knew where we were going, it’s often a huge process, and a lot of us have stuff on tumblr that ONLY exists there. One possible quick solution to save your blogs, both NSFW and personal, is to import it to WordPress. I found this solution through from frantic googling on how to save an entire blog, text posts an all. There are several apps for downloading all the pictures from a tumblr, (Plently for Windows, but only a few paid ones for mac, of which Tumbelog Picture Downloader is working for me so far) but this is the only solution I’ve seen so far that allows you to save EVERYTHING. I downloaded my NSFW blog in like 10 min. My regular blog, which is significantly larger, is in the process of importing, but I don’t anticipate any problems. I will, of course, update you if I have any.  

This tutorial I found worked really easily. http://quickguide (.) tumblr (.) com/post/39780378703/backing-up-your-tumblr-blog-to-wordpress

I put parenthesis around the .’s like we’re back in FF-Hell, just in case tumblr’s new thing about outgoing links kicks in. You know what to do.  To break it down, just in case:

 Sign up for a WordPress.com account at wordpress (.) com/start You’ll have to create an account, with your email, a username, and a password. They should send you a confirmation email immediately, check it, activate it, and you’re good to go. On the site, it will ask you for a site name. That page asks you a bunch of other information too, but you only have to fill out the site name.

Then you have to give your site a URL. If you’re lucky, your tumblr URL is still available, if not you’ll have to come up with another one, sorry.

It will tell you if that option is still available for free.

Then it will ask you to pick a plan. Free is really good enough, I swear.

Now you’re set up! You can import your tumblr! The only differences from the linked tutorial are that the Import button is now on the first level menu, not in tools.

Hit Import, then you have to follow the link for “other importers”  at the bottom, to find the option for Tumblr.

Then you’ll have to sign in with tumblr, using your normal tumblr credentials. You’ll be redirected there automatically. You’ll have to allow Wordpress permissions on your blog.

Then your blogs, including all your sideblogs, will show up in wordpress.

Hit import, wait a WHILE depending on the size of your blog, and you’re done!

ALSO!!

I made my NSFW blog private for now, since I don’t know WP’s policy on NSFW.

This means that to access it, someone has to have an account and request access. But hey, part of our problem on this hellsite has been people going places they aren’t wanted, so I don’t personally see this as a bad thing. They can send a request from the landing site on your blog, you get an email, click a link in the email, and PRESTO, they have access. To make it private, go to Settings > Reading > Site Visibility. Go back and check, it took me changing the setting twice for it to actually stick. tl;dr, you can import your entire blog to wordpress in just a few steps.  I’m going to tag the hell out of this, in no particular order. PLEASE reblog this and spread the word so people know it’s an option. If you’re having trouble, PM me, and I’m happy to help.

@gallusrostromegalus @kaciart @lena221bee @deadcatwithaflamethrower

@norcumi @deandraws @morn-art, @thebisexualmandalorian @kristsune @marloviandevil @punsbulletsandpointythings @protagonistically @cris-art @elfda @fish-ghost @godtierwonder @heartslogos @haekass @iesika @incogneat-oh @itispossibleihaveissues @jaegervega @jhaernyl @the-last-hair-bender @kleine-aster @latenightcornerstore @lectorel @medievalpoc @mgnemesi @me-ya-ri @myurbandream @peskylilcritter @cywscross ,@cheshiresense @varevare @victoriousscarf @whatsmeantobe @swpromptsandasks @gabriel4sam @stonefreeak @brighteyedbadwolf @pumpkin-lith @puzzleshipper @suzukiblu @myurbandream @lacefedora @jademerien

There’s a lot of panic running around my dash today about various people’s blog’s getting arbitrarily deleted, and noone seems to know what’s happening (if, actually, anything).

There is most certainly something happening, and it’s this:

twitter.com

/bluechoochoo/status/1063836783257866240

Turn that mess into a URL and you can read about Apple suddenly dropping the tumblr app from the App Store. I’ve mangled the link, because (I hear) tumblr has also changed their search algorithm to deprioritize posts that contain links, and I want people to be able to search for this post.

The random blog deletions are almost certainly part of the same effort to appease Apple. People on my dash have reported being deleted without warning, having subsequent accounts similarly deleted, and then being reinstated after getting a sufficient amount of follower-rage via alternate accounts.

This, to me, looks like tumblr is running a script that scans their complete list of blogs to look for whatever Apple is complaining about (most likely pornbots, but maybe NSFW content in general, Apple is famously prudish and censorious), finds it by matching some set of parameters (most likely some combination of being marked as NSFW, posting mostly reblogs or original content that are primarily images or image+link posts, possibly with a machine-learning filter that looks for porn-ish content but I very doubt they spent the effort on that), and “taking care of it” (by uncerimoniously deleting the blog). They’ve tuned the parameters of the matching script to be very broad, and are relying on people to have enough connections to raise a stink they’ll notice if a real person gets caught by the script.

The parameters I just mentioned would tend to target visual-artist blogs as well as pornbots, leading to the apparent spate of artist-blogs getting deleted. The repeated deletions indicate that this wasn’t just a one-time run, and that whatever “flare up” (whether it’s criminal activity or moral guardian boredom) will be ongoing for a least a while now–WHICH MEANS IF YOU’RE A VISUAL ARTIST OR HAVE A BLOG THAT EVEN VAUGELY MATCHES THE PARAMETERS MENTIONED ABOVE, YOU SHOULD SET UP ALTERNATE SOCIAL MEDIA AND MAKE YOUR FOLLOWERS AWARE OF IT NOW. THIS ISN’T OVER AND THERE’S A GOOD CHANCE THE SCRPIT WILL FIND YOUR BLOG NEXT.

If you’re not ultra-popular in a way that your deletion would cause user-base unrest Tumblr’s holding-company can see on their bottom line, it’s very likely you’ll not be able to get reinstated.

Source: I’m a web developer, and I spent five years in Silicon Valley working for three different top-five social networks, and this is how somehting like getting kicked from the App Store would have been handled at all of them.

My alternate social media are Twitter (@Soren_Tycho) and Github (username sorentycho). If I disappear here, look in one of those places for more information.

HT @bea-the-witch for the news links.