
Tumblr refugees trying to save its NSFW content - seancaptain
https://www.fastcompany.com/90277836/meet-the-tumblr-refugees-trying-to-safe-its-adult-content-from-oblivion
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gnicholas
It's interesting to see Tumblr described in many articles/forums as primarily
for pornography. Tumblr has been the biggest user acquisition channel (and a
free one, at that) for my startup, which has nothing to do with pornography.

We've gained tens of thousands of users in a few days from a single user post,
and several user posts have accumulated 50,000+ notes. This is all thanks to
the strong accessibility groups around ADHD and dyslexia that exist on Tumblr.

I've spent (wasted) time and money on FB ads, and I wish that I could have
advertised on Tumblr. Unfortunately, every time I tried, they only wanted big
brands with $25k minimum spend.

~~~
buboard
Yeah , but how do you think these users got into tumblr in the first place?

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ahakki
Tumblr being just for porn is mostly a meme. I have used Tumblr for many
years, not for porn, but for art and lifestyle content, and memes. It actually
took me a few years to find out that Tumbler had tons of extremly high quality
free porn.

Thr hugh amouts of porn give creatives a certain security that their works
won‘t be deleted for nudity and such.

~~~
bobthepanda
Well, as of the last announcement, "gave". The NSFW thing seems to be throwing
out the baby with the bathwater, particularly since the way they are flagging
content seems to be error-prone.

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Animats
Awful site. Won't even load if cookies are blocked. Summary, after stripping
all markup:

 _The internet is for porn, goes the song from musical Avenue Q. Since Tumblr
announced this week that it will no longer be part of that internet, many
users are mounting an exodus to existing networks like still-freewheeling
Twitter, as well as efforts to build a new kind of Tumblr, the kind of Tumblr
that Tumblr had been until now. There were people sharing their discovery of
their sexuality. There were people sharing the journey of themselves going
through hard times, says LolaBohemia, a professional dominatrix from Florida.
..._

 _The platform 's ban on visuals of adult content, including explicit sexual
content and nudity (with some exceptions), which officially begins on December
17, has already flooded bloggers inboxes with automated alerts about suspect
images, videos, and GIFs. ... In addition to flagging visuals, Tumblr seems to
have filtered its searches. Hashtags like BDSM now return no results at all.
No erotica or other text appears either, despite Tumblr's assurance that the
new content rules don't apply to text posts._

 _There is an appeals process for flagged items, and its unclear how much
content will ultimately be blocked although straight-up porn certainly will
be. Many adult bloggers get the sense that they are no longer wanted. There
are [sic] no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content,
wrote Tumblr 's CEO._

Tribe and Experience Project also went sex-free. They're both gone now.

~~~
patient_zero
autoplaying video, check. Pop up ad slow loading to make sure it pops up after
i start reading, check. Empty, contentless "article", check.

Yup, shit site, don't go folks.

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buboard
This decade feels like the Victorian era all over again. How long did the last
one last?

~~~
jseliger
Here is one plausible theory: [http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-
censorious-age](http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-censorious-age)

~~~
buboard
it's mostly observations, not theory. And he doesn't even touch on the Spanish
Inquisition that sprang out of silicon valley and anti-Trump media after his
election.

~~~
jonnydubowsky
Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!

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fruzz
As a trans person, Tumblr was the best place to find other trans people,
having shared experiences talked about, negativity processed, and where I was
able to post pics of myself as I shifted seeing myself from ugly (as
reinforced in me in movies) to worth loving. It was one of the only places
where I didn't have to be bombarded with the hateful remarks of transphobes,
as I got to pick who I followed.

I had some of my content censored following the acquisition by Yahoo. It
happened to other folk too. I really wish there wouldn't be this shame around
bodies, sexuality and gender identity that companies enforce with their
censorship algorithms.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
The issue they are going to run into is that they are automatically going to
be labeled a porn site. As such they will automatically lose the top tier of
advertisers and payment processors. In addition, because they are new and
probably won’t have the filtering systems in place, very offensive content
including cp will likely get posted. This will further make them a pariah to
the main stream internet with app stores and internet infrastructure players
not wanting to do business with them. For example see the example of Apple
banning the Tumblr app. And that was with a well established service. With
this new NSFW service it won’t even be a close call.

~~~
Animats
That seems to be what's happening - a hard division between no-sex sites and
porn sites, with nothing in between. Apple and Google seem to be driving this,
with their no-sex policies.

Verizon, having acquired Tumblr, had a problem. Their own "Verizon Smart
Family"[1] censoring system would now be blocking their own site.

[1] [https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/verizon-smart-
family...](https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/verizon-smart-family/)

~~~
lostmyoldone
What if companies that want to expand globally actually want to be forbidden
to show any 'objectionable' content. They don't really want to do it
themselves, so they work to get it mandated?

Seems like it could increase the barrier of entry significantly while
simultaneously giving access to new, less saturated markets?

Sounds like crazy talk, but why has porn suddenly become such a big deal?

Even before internet, porn has been readily accessible for decades, so why
does it suddenly become a problem big enough that companies seems willing to
loose their entire business to filter out a specific class of content?

The only reasonable explanation is that they are seizing the opportunity, one
possibly created on purpose, to enact realignment to new markets without
getting all the flak themselves.

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ognarb
I saw a lot of tumblr 'refugees' on mastodon this week.

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anticensor
They should name the new platform Relbmut (inverse of Tumbler).

~~~
trm42
Actually, I'm kind of surprised Tumbler is trying to get rid of the all
content instead of moving it to some separate "Porn Tumbler" instance. Sounds
like there could be additional revenue stream coming out of that kind of
stuff...

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gberger
No mention of reddit?

~~~
deminature
Reddit actively discourages people from posting their own original content,
other than a small number of subs intended for it.

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tomc1985
Are you sure? Among the reddit snobs not posting "original content" is frowned
upon

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syntheticcdo
I think he's talking specifically about NSFW subreddits, where many do say "no
self generated content" specifically to avoid tumblr-style underage problems.

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eaandkw
That's cute. The Tumblr Refugees don't think that Twitter is censored.

~~~
r-w
It’s not. The only caveats are that you have to mark porn as porn, and you’re
not allowed to get paid for it.

Source:
[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwavkq/j](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwavkq/j)

~~~
chimeracoder
> It’s not. The only caveats are that you have to mark porn as porn, and
> you’re not allowed to get paid for it.

For now. Twitter is subject to SESTA and FOSTA just like Tumblr and Facebook
are, so it's only a matter of time before they follow suit.

