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[potofsoup]

neomeris posted a link to the CollegeHumor video where the "tumblr CEO" discovers that tumblr is just 98% porn, and it reminded me of when I tried to explain the Great Tumblr (un)Fuckening to people who aren't on tumblr.

Usually, their first reaction was "oh wait, I've heard about this -- tumblr is removing porn, right?" followed by a quizzical look, "Why is that such a big deal? Why is everyone leaving?"

And my answer is: it's not that all of tumblr is porn. Probably, by sheer volume, maybe 1% of tumblr is porn. BUT, that 1% can't be easily separated from the rest of the 99%. I'm sure the tumblr staff were like "oh, we're just removing 1% of the people, that's not a big deal." But they messed up on 2 counts:

1) They didn't realize that one major attraction of tumblr platform, with its reblogs and sideblogs, is that it is a place where people can share *all* of themselves: the political activism, the creative projects, *and* the porn. Tumblr is where you find or create "niche" porn that creative, politically-active people enjoy, and then you share it on a sideblog. There's a reason why "horny on main" is a thing that happens on tumblr. So instead of getting rid of 1 person out of 100, they're actually threatening the sideblogs and dashboards of a large chunk of their users.*

2) Their algorithm sucks. And by flagging every beige-ish pixel, they made it onerous for the remaining people who might actually just be on there to post pictures of bread.

While I'm fairly happy that we're moving on from that mismanaged hell site, I do hope that wherever we end up, it'll be a place where I can have the political activism, the creative projects, *and* the porn, all in one bundle (or a complicated network of 19 sideblogs))


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* Yanno, sometimes I wonder if tumblr would have made a different decision if someone there actually looked up the data on (a) how many of the pornblogs were actually sideblogs of sfw primary accounts, and (b) how many likes on porn posts were by actually sfw primary accounts.

Comments

[ellebeesknees]

<3

[neomeris]

1) Oh, yeah. I barely reblogged any actual NSFW content, but quite a few of the people I followed were invested in that and started leaving the platform in justified protest, which leaves "ghost blogs" like mine without any content.
Also, the fact that Tumblr insists I can't have any NSFW content should I want it, wakes the juvenile part of me, insisting I should have the freedom to chose whether I have porn on my blog or not.
No, I didn't have it, no I probably wouldn't have much in the future, but by saying I couldn't Tumblr pissed me (and as it seems others!) off.
1.b) Fine, you're removing porn. Oh, think of the virtue of kids... but not removing a lot of other content? Besides, wouldn't it be easier to just restrict the 18+ content the way LJ, AO3 does? Everybody takes responsibility of their internet experience!
OR, if we want to go radical, go the Facebook way, make people register with some form of ID, restrict NSFW blogs with age restrictions that would be automatically checked via ID-linked-to-the-account. Don't just ban stuff!
2) The algorithm seems very random. The infamous (I think) elbow flag, there is a joke in The 100 fandom, that Tumblr flagged a GIF of a HUG (clothes on and no sexual content whatsoever). It doesn't work, it pisses people off and they implement it anyway.
Great job.

[potofsoup]

Yeah. I definitely gave some thought to staying on tumblr and rebuilding from there, given that I don't actually post nsfw stuff. But then again, tumblr deleted my account with no explanation and no response, and I really don't want to reward that behavior. And everything about tumblr is so ... "we don't care about our users, we just care about our investors". All these big clumsy actions taken without proper thought given to it.

[mtoddweb]

Tumblr's genius algorithm keeps targeting pictures of birds as porn, leading to a friend of mine coining the term "avian presenting nipples". Another friend of mine drew a bikini top on a pic of her white budgie hen that was flagged as NSFW, then a porn bot reblogged the bikini top post.

I'm rembrandtswife on Tumblr, btw. :-)

[potofsoup]

oh yay! ::waves::

[minoanmiss]

Well said. And considering they SOMEHOW can't deal with, say, Nazis.....

(Also, not all porn is created equal. When trying to talk about this I've been giving people the example of how a Steve/Bucky sex drawing is more like a Steve/Bucky hug drawing than a commercial-porn still, yet also more likely to get a Tumblr deleted these days.)

[potofsoup]

haha, true! Also: no female-presenting nipples...