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Dear Tumblr: Banning “Adult Content” Will Harm Sex-Positive Communities
- nailer 8y agoA suggestion: - Verizon/Oath could make a reasonable exit and get some of their investment back - Users could continue using Tumblr - Tumblr could continue to exist if Verizon/Oath sold it to Mindgeek or a similar adult focused company.
- lmm 8y agoWho's going to sign off on a "reasonable exit" that realizes millions of dollars in losses? Better to drive the value all the way to zero while looking like you're trying.
- justtopost 8y agoThey know. This is a move to extract value from a problematic platform. It was never about the users except as a growth metric to valuate, and sell, which they did. The life cycle is complete, and the remains are being butchered for sale. As much as I love liberal boobies, its still a walled garden you chose to play in.
- mymythisisthis 8y agoThere is nothing wrong with sex. There is nothing wrong with nudity.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 8y agoThere is nothing wrong with a platform disallowing it, and requiring you hosting it elsewhere.
- phailhaus 8y agoNobody is saying Verizon isn't allowed to do this. The entire argument is that Verizon _shouldn't_ do this.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoYeah, I said the same thing when Cloudflare was deplatforming white supremacists [1]. That's the thing about free speech: you have to defend it when you don't agree with the content, not only when it's speech you agree with. I have since changed my stance after that event: platforms should deplatform everything they don't like. It's the only way people will advocate for solutions that support free speech in all its forms. EDIT: Everyone running their own phpBB instance is looking pretty smart right now. To own your content/speech/destiny, you have to own your platform. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031922
- autopoiesis 8y agoArguably, though perhaps I am unwise to post this here (if so, it is a sorry state of affairs..), the idea that there is "nothing wrong with nudity" is less controversial (more true, even!) than the idea that there is "nothing wrong" with white supremacy.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoMorality is subjective, which is why the freedom of speech is (almost entirely) absolute (except in cases of causing immediate harm, such as yelling fire in a crowded theater when fire doesn't exist).
- Kye 8y agoYelling "pedophiles in the pizzeria" (for example) hasn't yet caused a mass causality event, but it's coming. Yelling "funded by George Soros" didn't cause one because the bomber was incompetent, but it was close. The gray band here is narrow enough to see across.
- dahart 8y agoTumblr didn’t say there’s something wrong with sex and nudity. They only said there’s now something wrong with posting pictures of sex & nudity on Tumblr, like most of the millions of other forums online that aren’t focused primarily on porn.
- freeone3000 8y agoPornography has been a significant part of tumblr for a long time, and the community that has evolved around it is protesting being removed from their platform of choice. The fact that there are millions of other forums where this isn't a significant component is an argument TO allow pornography, not to remove it.
- bazooka_penguin 8y agoAnd there's nothing wrong with a company pruning content it doesnt want to host or be associated with. Tumblr is ambiguously painted as a porn site by many internet communities because of how much crap is on there. Yet this decision has been met with moral outrage as if tumblr is doing something "evil".
- antepodius 8y agoIt's a symptom of the the pathologies brought on by the current centralised state of web 2.0. Something like this couldn't happen so easily with a more decentralised tumblr-like system. Of course, decentralised systems like that have their own problems, and there are reasons they're not very widely used. But in principle, a technological solution (make it easier to use/run federated, decentralised alternatives) seems preferable to a social or legal one. Assuming it can be done.
- SilasX 8y ago<removed because I don't think it contributed to discussion but couldn't delete>
- ricree 8y agoI disagree. There is absolutely nothing wrong with users saying: "I have enjoyed this use case that is currently allowed. I dislike the fact that this use case will be going away. If it does happen, I am much less likely to use the site. I think you should reconsider your decision." Tumblr, of course, is free to disregard this feedback, but I cannot see how there is anything even slightly wrong with concerned users providing it.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tossaccount123 8y agoSeems like they've tried to roll their own machine learning classifier as well because I've seen some comically bad screenshots of banned content. For example, a picture of someone's finger got banned as sexually explicit. Should have just used AWS or Google Cloud AI APIs
- adrianN 8y agoThose never have false positives?
- tossaccount123 8y agoNot as bad as I've seen from Tumblr. It's moving towards meme territory with how bad some of the bans are Update It has in fact become a meme, example https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1437369-tumblr#comments https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1437369-tumblr#comments
- Domark 8y agoTranslation for non-millenials: It’s become a joke.
- Kye 8y agoA meme is basically a joke template that becomes popular. Then they get remixed, and the remix gets popular. Before you know it someone's asking "where did that cosmic brain meme image come from?" and you find out it's from a stock video.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoOr Not Hotdog
- nxc18 8y agoYeah its really bad. I reviewed my (exclusively adult) tumblr when they started hiding things and it was comical what did and didn't get banned. Shirtless guy on the beach? Banned! Completely naked person with genitals in full view, posed to arouse prurient interests? Totally fine, apparently. Totally agree that they should have used existing tools. As for the CP issue, they absolutely should be using the tools published by Microsoft, the FBI, etc. - it is totally shameful if they weren't already doing that.
- claydavisss 8y agowtf is a "sex positive community"? everything on the planet that walks also is "sex positive", yet only a handful are wanking to tumblr
- Myrmornis 8y agoOf course it will harm “sex-positive communities”. That’s the entire point.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- walrus66 8y agoThere are a growing number of censorship and free speech issues facing the internet- this is not one of them. This society is heading to the toilet if a mainstream website used by children cannot decide that they don’t want to host porn on their product. Why is this even controversial?
- publicfig 8y agoTo be fair, most of the arguments (at least that I've seen, could be non-representative) aren't against big C "Censorship" in the way that this comment implies. It's not an argument as to whether or not Oath/Verizon/Tumblr CAN remove the content and be within their right to do so, it's that it's a poor idea from either a business or a community based point of view (often both). While they are able to manage their community in any way they seem fit, it's that the users of the platform are coming out (and I have absolutely zero data to say whether it's a vast majority or vocal minority) to say that they disagree with the decision that is being made. When phrased in the way that you did, you seem to imply the black-and-white view of "Porn is obviously bad, why shouldn't Tumblr remove it" though ignoring most of the discussion and nuanced views that make a discussion like this worth having.
- walrus66 8y agoI understand there are a lot of “nuanced” rationalizations against Tumblr’s decision-and of course it’s great that they’re discussed and cases are made, so that fair minded people rightfully reject them. We live in a free society- Tumblr is not a monopoly- and now a competitor can freely scoop up the obvious niche community that Tumblr is choosing not to support anymore.
- barberousse 8y ago> you seem to imply the black-and-white view of "Porn is obviously bad, why shouldn't Tumblr remove it" though ignoring most of the discussion and nuanced views that make a discussion like this worth having You've effectively changed what he said. He said something much simpler: there are children that use Tumblr; because there are children that use Tumblr, removing porn from Tumblr should not be controversial. A "nuanced" reply would assess the risk of exposing children to the fascinations of various alternative communities that do not dabble in child porn. I don't see "Porn is obviously bad", but I do see exposing children to porn is obviously bad.
- k33n 8y agoI understand why Verizon doesn't want to be in the porn business, but shouldn't this have come up during due diligence? Hasn't tumblr been porn-riddled since its inception?
- SirensOfTitan 8y agoSocial data and data sharing really needs to be standardized around common protocols. I could see a better future wherein: 1. There's a core layer made up of an immutable ledger of encrypted social data (content users publish and relationships between users) and a series of protocols to use and manipulate that data. This layer is non-discriminatory and anything can be published. 2. The future "Facebook"s, "Tumblr"s create frontends that use (1)s data in interesting ways by consent of the user. These frontends can blacklist certain content depending on what their goals are. Depending on country of operation, these classes of services additionally act as legal gatekeepers for what is legal or non-legal content.
- beaconstudios 8y agowhy would you want an immutable ledger? Just make it peer-to-peer and encrypted. The whole world doesn't need to store a copy of someone's PMs or even their public posts.
- leducw 8y agoSome people just really like applying blockchains to problems that blockchains have no business "solving".
- dahart 8y agoYes, the exact guidelines are going to be vague, that’s a good thing. It might just show they understand that it should be okay to allow art and breastfeeding and other forms of nudity that aren’t explicitly pornographic. I feel like this article isn’t making good faith arguments. Every single sentence is trying to tear down Tumblr’s announcement word by word without attempting to understand their position, making the worst case assumption about their intent rather than assuming reason, and Tumblr’s position seems to be completely reasonable. Tumblr isn’t for porn anymore, just like most other web sites on the planet. Plus, if they lost a spot on the Apple App Store due to porn, then the title isn’t true, removing the porn and getting back on the App Store will definitely make their situation better.
- agentdrtran 8y agoThey didn't lost their app store spot due to porn, they lost it to child porn
- dcole2929 8y agoTo be clear, they lost a spot on the Apple App Store due to child porn. I don't have a leg in this race. Don't use Tumblr, never have and likely never will but the decision is at best questionable considering the size of some of the communities they are shunting off the service.
- PhasmaFelis 8y agoI've read that they were planning this change for months before the App Store incident.
- chimeracoder 8y ago> I've read that they were planning this change for months before the App Store incident. They were likely planning this since March, which is when FOSTA and SESTA were passed.
- GiuseppaAcciaio 8y agoI don't believe in good faith arguments when it comes to services operated by big corporations: regardless of the good intentions of the humans originally involved, the corporate machine at some point takes over, and rules are enforced in such a way as to maximise share/stakeholder value and/or to minimize their risk. If something is not explicitly allowed under the rules, I wouldn't trust that it's going to be allowed by some discerning human of goodwill.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- partiallypro 8y agoThe reason they banned porn, is not because of some sudden guilt about porn. It's because, apparently, there had been a lot of child porn that was getting published. Tumblr seems like it doesn't have the resources to fight off child porn, and AI is too dumb to know what is underage or not. So now they are just banning all porn. That's why Apple banned their app from the app store recently. The bad thing is that, this will absolutely kill the platform. Porn and porn gifs have always been popular on Tumblr for as far as I can remember. I'm not a Tumblr user, but this is just a fact anyone that has ever even casually browsed it knows.
- krapp 8y agoIf they have the capability to effectively ban all porn, they have the capability to fight child porn. This is something every legal site which allows image uploads has to deal with - every platform capable of hosting images will be used to host child porn, that's axiomatic. Yet somehow 4chan, Reddit and other large image-centric sites are at least willing to put in the effort without banning adult content wholesale. And, just like Youtube suddenly "discovering" an entire industry of exploitative child videos on their platform, I have a difficult time believing Tumblr's owners didn't know this was an issue, given how widespread NSFW content is on their platform. The truth is, Tumblr was willing to look the other way on child porn until it directly harmed their monetization efforts.
- friedman23 8y ago> If they have the capability to effectively ban all porn, they have the capability to fight child porn. Why do people insist on spreading their uneducated unsubstantiated opinions? Do you know this is true? Why don't you link some papers showing how porn detection neural nets can accurately detect age as well.
- shadofx 8y agoIt's probably possible, but you'd need gigabytes of child porn to train a NN to detect child porn versus porn in general.
- konart 8y ago>Sex-Positive Communities TIL
- joeax 8y agoLOL me too
- peterwwillis 8y agoSo when is someone going to start a Sex-Positive Blogging Platform? These communities have always been marginalized by generic hosters - why not make one dedicated to the content? Ohhh, right..... the advertisers.
- iamdave 8y agoFetlife.com it already exists (plus other features, granted).
- smelendez 8y agoThe difference is FetLife is 90%+ sex. Tumblr has sex, memes, libraries posting cute pictures from old books, cat gifs and everything else.
- iamdave 8y agoThe difference is FetLife is 90%+ sex. I think you'd be surprised at the amount of people who are on Fetlife and aren't looking for sex but rather enjoy the kink community, are photographers, or content creators of other types (the blogging feature for example gives you the option of treating/tagging posts as blogs or as "erotic fiction", catering towards that particular wing of the sexually creative types). Hence my statement of (plus other features, granted) in the original comment. Sure, it's oriented towards the Kink crowd but Kink != explicit sex.
- peterwwillis 8y agoIt's not a blogging platform, it's a badly implemented Facebook clone. It's also private, making it difficult to collaborate or spread content, and has terrible search functionality. The only thing you can do is look at their global viral content feed and hope something that isn't just bondage or idiotic rants pops up. It also trends strongly towards kink, and white heteronormative sex, which excludes a huge portion of the Tumblr lgbtq+ spectrum.
- iamdave 8y ago
- jrs95 8y agoWhen did the EFF turn into a porn advocacy group? Doesn't seem to really fit with what their core mission is supposed to be. And we should remember that what likely led to this was that there was a large amount of child porn being posted to the website. Advertisers probably didn't like that very much, and I imagine Verizon isn't interested in running a porn site anyways.
- trippypig 8y agoFirst I'm told that YouTube won't pay me for my 400 videos because my subscriber count is too low. Now I'm told my porn Tumblr with 5,000 posts and 45,000 subscribers will be made private (i.e. deactivated). The internet is dying, man. Sad.
- syril 8y agohahahahaha haaa (me laughing at you)
- syril 8y agono one should write, let alone say, the phrase "sex-positive". big time cringe.
- rwoodley 8y agoGlad I cancelled subscription and donations to eff. This blind devotion to 'free speech' is what led the tech industry to empower InfoWars and their ilk. The world is complex.
- kkarakk 8y agoinfowars came from radio not the internet,it still has a substantial following there
- notyourday 8y agoThere's a much simpler explanation: after regular movies porn costs boatload of money to distribute for free. Tumblr like consumers of porn refuse to pull out their credit card to pay for it, Tumblr producers of porn refuse to pull out their credit card to pay for delivery and advertisers are having a hard time justifying advertising on porn sites. Kill the porn => make tumblr cheap to run => make money off the ads => profit
- dvtrn 8y agoI swear I'm not trying to be a sassy arse about this, but when people talk about the "porn" on tumblr, I seriously thought this was about a crackdown of pictures and videos stolen from porn studios and reuploaded to tumblr the way people upload popular songs and music videos to YouTube and the subsequent copyright issues that come from that. So when I saw so many people talking about "I get all my porn" from tumblr, my immediate response is ".....seriously?"
- whateveracct 8y agoHorny people have no rights. Horny people are NOT protected under the constitution.