I just sent this message through the Tumblr Help Center since @staff doesn’t care about actually reading comments on their posts. I refuse to go down without a fight.
I strongly urge staff to reconsider their new censorship route. I, and literally every single other user on this site, feel like this situation is not being competently handled. Your entire user platform is being punished because you do not want to properly handle the actual issues on this site. Allow me to explain in further detail below, because it seems that no one over at Tumblr headquarters seems to be able to grasp why this new censorship is wrong.
People have formed friendships, built communities, created safe spaces, and now you’re going to take all of that away from them because you think all sex and nudity is bad? Tumblr is not addressing the actual issues here. Instead, loyal users who have been on here for years are being punished. Instead of targeting the porn bots, nazis, pedophiles, rapists, etc, you are punishing innocent people who come on here for self-expression. Do you think any of us care when we have to scroll past a gif of people having sex? No, we don’t. We care about the porn bots in the comments, or being followed by a blog with links like “Hook up with 18 year old girls here.”
Listen, I’ve had to scroll past some furry and My Little Pony porn that I hope I never have to see again, but I, like most users, scroll past these posts and then are done with them. Who exactly are those things hurting anyway? At most, someone may be uncomfortable for a few seconds, but then they continuing scrolling and see other stuff and all is well again. I can say with 100% confidence that I am more bothered by the Republican blogs I see all the damn time making degrading posts about women than seeing someone’s naked body. Posts degrading women = harmful. Human with a body ≠ harmful.
For anything and anyone to be successful, they must listen to feedback. This is crucial to their survival. None of us here are being listened to. We were ignored when we constantly complained about the porn bots, and then months later Tumblr said they didn’t know about it. YOU WERE TOLD. YOU WERE TOLD 1000S OF TIMES. Then the situation got so bad where the app was taken off of the Apple store, then you were forced to stop ignoring the problem. If the situation had been addressed early on, you wouldn’t be about to witness the downfall of your website, a downfall that in the end you will only have yourself to blame for. A majority of users are already planning on abandoning Tumblr once this goes into full-effect. Pretty much all of us have posted or reblogged something at some point that you now deem “inappropriate”. And I must add that as a woman and as someone with an Art degree, I am completely appalled at the use of “female presenting nipples.” People are not allowed to sexually express themselves but Tumblr staff is allowed to be sexist? You walk into the religious section of any museum and I can guarantee you that you will see Jesus’s mother Mary’s breasts and nipples. If in the 1500’s this was perfectly okay, why in 2018 are we saying women’s breasts are bad and inappropriate? We are supposed to be advancing, not taking steps back.
In Jeff’s statement, he said that “Our actions are out of love and hope for our community.” I think it’s pretty obvious that this statement is untrue. If anyone over at Tumblr Headquarters actually cared about this community, they would not be going to these extremes. Once again, I urge you to do something else, something more productive, something that targets the actual issues instead of hurting every user on this site. Listen to what your users are saying, or witness your site become a desolate wasteland. The choice is yours.
andulkaphoto
kianamaiart
izzy806
vaporwave
dailybridgerton
germansingergirl
