A better, more positive Tumblr
Since its founding in 2007, Tumblr has always been a place for wide open, creative self-expression at the heart of community and culture. To borrow from our founder David Karp, we’re proud to have inspired a generation of artists, writers, creators, curators, and crusaders to redefine our culture and to help empower individuality.
Over the past several months, and inspired by our storied past, we’ve given serious thought to who we want to be to our community moving forward and have been hard at work laying the foundation for a better Tumblr. We’ve realized that in order to continue to fulfill our promise and place in culture, especially as it evolves, we must change. Some of that change began with fostering more constructive dialogue among our community members. Today, we’re taking another step by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions).
Let’s first be unequivocal about something that should not be confused with today’s policy change: posting anything that is harmful to minors, including child pornography, is abhorrent and has no place in our community. We’ve always had and always will have a zero tolerance policy for this type of content. To this end, we continuously invest in the enforcement of this policy, including industry-standard machine monitoring, a growing team of human moderators, and user tools that make it easy to report abuse. We also closely partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation, two invaluable organizations at the forefront of protecting our children from abuse, and through these partnerships we report violations of this policy to law enforcement authorities. We can never prevent all bad actors from attempting to abuse our platform, but we make it our highest priority to keep the community as safe as possible.
So what is changing?
Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr, and we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to reflect this policy change. We recognize Tumblr is also a place to speak freely about topics like art, sex positivity, your relationships, your sexuality, and your personal journey. We want to make sure that we continue to foster this type of diversity of expression in the community, so our new policy strives to strike a balance.
Why are we doing this?
It is our continued, humble aspiration that Tumblr be a safe place for creative expression, self-discovery, and a deep sense of community. As Tumblr continues to grow and evolve, and our understanding of our impact on our world becomes clearer, we have a responsibility to consider that impact across different age groups, demographics, cultures, and mindsets. We spent considerable time weighing the pros and cons of expression in the community that includes adult content. In doing so, it became clear that without this content we have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.
Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community.
So what’s next?
Starting December 17, 2018, we will begin enforcing this new policy. Community members with content that is no longer permitted on Tumblr will get a heads up from us in advance and steps they can take to appeal or preserve their content outside the community if they so choose. All changes won’t happen overnight as something of this complexity takes time.
Another thing, filtering this type of content versus say, a political protest with nudity or the statue of David, is not simple at scale. We’re relying on automated tools to identify adult content and humans to help train and keep our systems in check. We know there will be mistakes, but we’ve done our best to create and enforce a policy that acknowledges the breadth of expression we see in the community.
Most importantly, we’re going to be as transparent as possible with you about the decisions we’re making and resources available to you, including more detailed information, product enhancements, and more content moderators to interface directly with the community and content.
Like you, we love Tumblr and what it’s come to mean for millions of people around the world. Our actions are out of love and hope for our community. We won’t always get this right, especially in the beginning, but we are determined to make your experience a positive one.
Jeff D’Onofrio
CEO
Look, I know this is supposed to mean well for minors, but there are so many things that are wrong. It’s not just people who say “Oh what about my intense desire to jack off to this cartoon character”, no. That’s not what we’re all angry about here, Staff, so let’s try and break this down.
To begin, there has never been a good filter for things that are dangerous and disgusting on this site. All the minors have had to do is click on a blog. They turn off safe mode when viewing. 18+ only blogs can’t force them to not click on it, and they can’t force them to leave; blocking only does so much and that only works when they know that the follower is a minor. Aside from that, it’s not that hard to make a new email and make a new Tumblr to look up sexual content, though I understand that there isn’t anything you can do about that. Truthfully, this site has never been a safe place for minors, ever. The pornbots have always run rampant with nothing to hold them back.
Speaking of pornbots, using bots is not a good way to try and take care of the issue, as bots are unreliable, especially the ones you’re using right now. Things that aren’t the least bit sexual are being flagged as explicit for no reason. The possibilities of false positives is too high, and that’s going to get a lot of people flagged who aren’t even doing anything wrong. People have attempted to appeal for this to change, since, as the creators of this content, we know better than a bot whether or not something is sexual, and art of a character shedding tears or a post tagged as nonbinary when they’re just playing jazz music? What about that is at all dangerous for children?
The changes you are attempting to make are only going to restrict content creators. Nothing is going to change, aside from losing more than half of the user base. I’m not saying everyone who uses the site comes here for the porn. What I’m saying is the inefficient and frankly incompetent way things are filtered and run here are going to bring much more harm than good to the site. Banning adult content isn’t going to fix the issue; but having actual people look at this stuff instead of bots might at least help. Banning child pornography is good. Banning content that supports incest is good. Banning everything is not. This is greatly affecting peoples’ lives, not just what they see; some people make a living off of this stuff. This is the only social media site that gives us the freedom of open use with no repercussions. Why else do you think people stay here for so long?
And, may I say, making the point of being more descriptive and giving more detail to the userbase in this update is just pointing out how you never did so before, leaving everyone to wonder what the hell was going on, which only spouted rumors and mass panic as to what was going on. I get it. It’s your website. You’re going to do whatever you want whenever you want with your website, but you must understand that the consequences won’t wait for you. A lot of people are going to leave if you go through with this, and it’s only a matter of time before you start banning other things in an attempt to fix the mess of a website you’ve created.
So, why is it only after the app was taken off the mobile stores did this suddenly start becoming something to fix? You say that harmful things such as child pornography have always been on a zero tolerance base, yet I’ve been on this site for over six years and I’ve seen it everywhere. Why was it not taken down then? Why are pedophiles and incest-supporters allowed to defend their disgusting…”habits”, but yet they remain on the website? Why are nazis and white supremacists allowed to make their “opinions” known, but the only thing you’re attempting to crack down on is the creation of adult content made to be seen by adults? Why not fix the tagging system? Why not hire people specifically made to look through child-friendly tags to look for this stuff and make sure it’s tagged properly? Why not crack down on real-life gore that appears in completely unrelated tags? You can imagine my surprise a few years ago to be looking through the neopets tag and finding a gif of a real-life human being explicitly ripped apart.
Why is this only an issue now that you’re not getting as much exposure?
