
Dear Tumblr: Banning “Adult Content” Will Harm Sex-Positive Communities - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/12/dear-tumblr-banning-adult-content-wont-make-your-site-better-it-will-harm-sex
======
partiallypro
The 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.

~~~
tomatotomato37
You don't need an AI to fight child porn, the FBI publishes a huge database of
hashes that make it very easy to fight it, and if I remember the Tumblr
reponse to the Apple ban correctly, they've been using it for a while.

That being said, I also believe the apple ban wasn't explicitly because of cp,
but also because an app known for NSFW conflicts with their "image", in the
same manner ad companies also refuse to associate with it, but couldn't use
that as the reason due to the PR backlash Tumblr is getting now

~~~
tfolbrecht
I don't think it's that kind of child pornography. It's more the self
produced, coming of age, scantily clad variety that is non-trivial to
moderate.

The most offensive to modern sensibilities (and advertisers) isn't the naked
people, but the gore, self harm, and extreme fetish communities.

~~~
verroq
Can you imagine the irreparable harm caused to society by teenagers taking
half naked selfies?

~~~
drdeadringer
I don't have to imagine, I can read a news article from several years ago
about how a teenager did just this from//to//in an Arab country and it made
global headlines because exactly that.

~~~
flyingfences
So is the issue the teen or the Arab country?

------
dahart
Yes, 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.

~~~
jerf
"I feel like this article isn’t making good faith arguments."

The EFF is an advocacy organization. It definitely "advocates", and does not
generally make "rational" arguments. If you always like everything they do,
you may have a hard time seeing this, but if you've ever seen them speak about
something you are either ambivalent about (probably a lot of people on this
matter today) or even outright disagree with them on (as I have), it becomes
clear.

I'm not particularly trying to be critical of them here. They advocate; it's
what they say they do, it's what they are set up to do, and they're generally
in a space that nobody else is even close to advocating for. But I do think
it's important to understand them for what they are.

~~~
bscphil
I don't have an opinion either way about the EFF especially, but I disagree
that being an advocacy organization means you don't / can't make rational
arguments. I think rational arguments should be expected of everyone; if
you're part of an advocacy organization then presumably you think the
arguments in favor of that organization's positions are winning, and so you
should present those arguments.

Not every position needs to be advocated for.

~~~
rrauenza
I generally feel it hurts an advocacy group's credibility when they advocate
for something without a rational argument. (And it's not just the EFF that do
this.)

It's an interesting dynamic in the role of advocacy...

------
peterwwillis
So 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
Fetlife.com

it already exists (plus other features, granted).

~~~
peterwwillis
It'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
I apologize in advance for the wall of text but I felt compelled to dispel a
serious misunderstandings of the Kink community and by extension Fetlife from
your comment here (though I think getting into the idiosyncrasies of the kinky
community and lifestyle might be a wee bit too far off the rails/topic for the
discussion of tumblr providing a platform for those interested in adult
content).

Sure, while Fetlife might not be a "blogging" platform like Tumblr or
WordPress is, the functionality of the site as a _community_ shouldn't be
dismissed as a viable alternative for tumblr refugees just because it isn't
dedicated to periodical columns the way WordPress is even while the platform
has a versatile and quite heavily used blogging _feature_.

 _It also trends strongly towards kink_

Yes. It does. That's the point. They advertise it as such or try to convince
you of anything otherwise. . They don't sell you anything else. That's
entirely who the community was built for, it's the entire purpose of the site.

The very first thing you see when you go to the website is:

 _FetLife is the Social Network for the BDSM, Fetish & Kinky Community._

So yes. That's exactly the point of the site. But I also made sure to add,
that among other things, the site is a pretty good and welcoming community for
artists of many types: painters, drawers, photographers, writers, it can be
many things to many people who want to trade in, and interact with 'adult
content' despite the headline viewers see before even logging in or creating
an account of their own.

But again, as I said in another comment in this subthread: kink != sex and to
be earnest in discussing the affair, it's probably helpful to divorce one from
the idea that kinky material == sexy material. Some people find pleasure-and
it doesn't have to be _sexual_ pleasure, it could entirely be psychosomatic in
controlling what another says and does as a dom or domme. Conflating the two
only sets back the entire discussion IMO.

Further, this part has me raising an eyebrow and sorry if I've missed your
point but:

 _and white heteronormative sex, which excludes a huge portion of the Tumblr
lgbtq+ spectrum._

How?

Not to be a contrarian on the subject, but as a person of color, my own
experiences with the site can be surmised the way a lot of people surmise
their experiences with many sites like reddit, twitter, et al: pick the
communities/subgroups you want to interact with, ignore those you don't.

So how does Fetlife as a platform "trend towards" white heteronormative sex?
Just curious because the platform, best I can tell over the last five years as
an active member allows the user to choose what groups they involve themselves
with, and what people they involve themselves with and which groups they
don't. If you're a person of color, looking to interact with polyamorous
people who enjoy rope play, there's a good chance a group exists for it, and
if not there is nothing stopping you from creating that.

If you're a white person who wants to interact with non-poly people and are
looking for just plain-jane sex with other white people, there are groups for
_that_ too.

Best I can tell, Fetlife enables you as a user to find and interact with all
sorts of individuals who fit your specific theme/motif of "pleasure" however
you define it, and places no limitations on those who exist outside of however
we decide to define "normative" on a given day.

Is it possible the experience you speak of has less to do with the platform
and more the groups you've chosen to subscribe to and the people you've chosen
to interact with?

~~~
peterwwillis
Saying that Fetlife is an adequate safe haven for the Tumblr lgbtq+ diaspora
is like saying a punk record store is a safe haven for all the musicians in a
city. Sure, technically speaking, the punks may welcome the musicians. But
maybe those musicians don't _want_ to sit around with a bunch of crust punks,
pretending to like their trite immature lyrics and three-chord symphonies.
Maybe they'd like a space built to make them all feel comfortable and
independent, and not shoved into somebody else's space.

Kink isn't sex, but guess what there is a _lot_ of on Fetlife? _SEX._ Look at
the trending page. It's all bondage, stupid rants, and sex/nudes. That is
literally all that is on the page right now.

It's white and heteronomative because, again, look at the viral feed. It's all
white people having straight sex. I know of maybe 3 regular-old gay men on the
whole site. The gay leather community, which literally invented BDSM, is
bearly represented at all. And if there are pictures of women, or just any
woman with an account, they get inundated by men trying to have sex with them.

Back to Tumblr - if I want to find furry-related content on Tumblr, I just
search for "furries" and bam - gifs/jpgs, short posts, memes, everything the
Tumblr community wants. I can also search Google and plenty of content comes
up.

Now, if I want to find furry content on Fetlife, I have to log in, search for
"furries", and individually weed through 602 discussion groups, looking at
every individual's profiles, because no posts come up on the search page. No
posts. No gifs/jpgs. No. Memes. It would take _hours_ to find the same
content.

This is not what Tumblr users want. Fetlife will not work for them.

~~~
iamdave
_I know of maybe 3 regular-old gay men on the whole site._

"regular-old gay"??? Would you care to articulate what this even means? What
is 'regular' gay? Is there a 'regularity' of being gay or are you applying
YOUR presumptions of sexual orientation to a group of people you've never met?

I feel like this probably says much more about how you're using the site than
you (probably) intend to give off, and further belies what your associations
with the LGBT and kink communities are even to begin with describing things so
lackadaisically and I'm not sure I'm inclined or convinced by anything you're
really countering with as to what the Fetlife community even is.

It seems limited, surface-level, and full of projections that reduce a
spectrum of experiences, desires and wishes for the site down to some personal
hangups that really aren't worth discussing here.

And if this comment seems inflammatory to you, then I'll point back to the
very beginning of my apoplectic response to your "regular-old gay" comment as
an example of exactly how it feels.

\---

Anyhow, that aside I'm leaving the discussion to rest with this: Fetlife isn't
a 1:1 replacement for EVERY disaffected Tumblr user out there, but it is a
good alternative for some, has good features for some, and can be a good and
enjoyable community for others.

 _The gay leather community, which literally invented BDSM, is bearly
represented at all._

This is patently false to the point of almost being humorous, but also and
even so, the Kink world is several times larger than the "gay leather
community". It's mdae up of more people with more varied interests than
whatever outmoded idea of Kink you have from the 80's.

I probably did a poor job phrasing that from the start, here-admittedly, or
getting the point across that it has features some may find attractive to use
for the type of content they want to publish, but to be honest I find your
particular characterization in response as a counterpoint to be missing a lot
of nuance of the platform, and one that dismisses and completely _erases_
entire social-groups who use the site successfully to create their own local
communities, groups and networks based on a few cherrypicked features.

*

If you'd like, I would be MORE than willing to share with you some of the
groups and events on the site that (1) aren't about "white heteronormative
sex" or (2) full of stupid rants, because contrary to what you're putting out
here: they are NOT that hard to find, they are NOT that hard to join, and they
are ABSOLUTELY welcoming to all sorts of flavors, identities and orientations.
I really suggest you take a much closer look at the site than someone who made
an account ten minutes ago and decided their mind is made up

------
k33n
I 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?

------
mymythisisthis
There is nothing wrong with sex. There is nothing wrong with nudity.

~~~
dahart
Tumblr 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
Pornography 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.

------
justtopost
They 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.

------
tossaccount123
Seems 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
Those never have false positives?

~~~
tossaccount123
Not 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
Translation for non-millenials: It’s become a joke.

~~~
Kye
A 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.

------
trippypig
First 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.

------
nailer
A 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
Who'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.

------
notyourday
There'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
I _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
Horny people have no rights. Horny people are NOT protected under the
constitution.

------
konart
>Sex-Positive Communities

TIL

~~~
joeax
LOL me too

------
walrus66
There 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
To 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.

~~~
barberousse
> 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.

~~~
verroq
It is even simpler, he literally just made a “will somebody please think of
the children” argument. Which is so that inane it doesn’t even need a serious
reply.

~~~
toasterlovin
Do you have kids?

As a parent, the idea of exposing my kids to the internet is frightening.
There are so many paths by which they can get exposed to stuff they shouldn't
be exposed to. I, personally, think that attempts to make more of the internet
child friendly are good. The internet as it exists today is like walking down
the Main Street of some town, except that people surprise you by randomly
jumping out from behind mailboxes and shrubs and engaging in hardcore sex on
the sidewalk. It's insane.

~~~
bdhess
If you’re worried about your kids being exposed to that stuff, set up internet
filtering in your home. It’s pretty effective these days, and you’ll actually
get way closer to the result you want with that approach than with trying to
change the internet.

~~~
toasterlovin
My kids are young, so it's not something we've had to seriously get into yet.
Honestly curious, though: how does filtering handle sites like Reddit or
YouTube where all requests are via https, which makes the specific content on
the page not visible to filtering which takes place at the network connection
level?

~~~
verroq
Install a local root CA so you can MITM.

------
SirensOfTitan
Social 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
why 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
Some people just really like applying blockchains to problems that blockchains
have no business "solving".

------
rwoodley
Glad 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
infowars came from radio not the internet,it still has a substantial following
there

------
jrs95
When 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.

~~~
vernie
Then they shouldn't have bought a porn site.

~~~
mftrhu
They bought Yahoo. Tumblr came with it.

