A better, more positive Tumblr

xxaeris:

staff:

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

Hey I fixed it!!

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 horrific bullying and abuse that we’ve done fuck-all to fix. 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 totally give up their crafts as their posts get lost in a sea of garbage.

Over the past several months, and inspired by our storied past recent spotlighting of ACTUAL FUCKING PAEDOPHILIC CONTENT BY MINORS AND ADULTS ALIKE AND OH NO IT’S CUTTING INTO OUR AD REVENUE OH SHIT, 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 frantically searching for a lazy solution to problems we caused by being even more lazy. We’ve realized that in order to continue to fulfill our promise and place in culture (which is to be the laughing stock of the internet), especially as it evolves, we must change. Some of that change began with fostering more constructive dialogue among our community members another lazy word policy we were unable to actually fucking enforce. Today, we’re taking another step by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions) stabbing our userbase in the fucking back and shooting ourselves in the foot because porn bad, my peepee get hard when I see it and that’s bad.  

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 only just realised this when Apple took our app off the app store and tanked our ad revenue, but previously allowed this content to go forth with no issues because we’re fucking horrible people who only care about money. To this end, we continuously occasionally 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 only motivating our staff of barely-trained monkeys to fucking do something if we’re on the brink of being shut down. We also closely partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation (but have never ever mentioned them publically up until this point because we need to appear good), 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 sometimes remove it if, like, nine thousand of you report the same post. 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 can’t actually use this excuse because we let so much child pornography onto our website that we got fucking decked for it.

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 tell people to kill themselves because they don’t ship Hot Yaoi Ship #58291. 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 tank our website’s revenue even further because the little monkey that lives in the office cooler says that it’ll make Apple-senpai notice us again.

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.

Apple removed our app from the store and we’re desperately trying to appeal back to them so they’ll put us back on, but they never will. The divorce is final, the papers signed, and we’re just gonna keep digging this hole deeper because SOMEONE has to dig our grave and it might as well be us!

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 be absolutely ruined financially and in terms of userbase, thanks to our complete ineptitude. All changes won’t happen overnight as something of this complexity takes time (ignore the fact that the pornbots and child porn disappeared overnight, shhh).

Another thing, filtering this type of content versus say, a political protest with nudity or the statue of David, actual fucking white supremacy posts and stone man dick but not human “female presenting” titty nipple, 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 our poorly trained monkeys to despacito hope that we don’t get pulled up by even more serious organisations like the FBI. 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. hurgus burgus old fashioned smergus we already fucked up on a collossal scale.

Most importantly, we’re going to be as transparent sexist 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. banning “female presenting nipples” on real models but still, like, allowing you to write fanfictions where Samus Aran puts a 12-inch strapon on and [CENSORED] Bayonetta’s [CENSORED] while Bayonetta [CENSORED] with Samus’  [CENSORED] and Kirby watches from the foot of the bed. 

Like you, we love Tumblr and what it’s come to mean for millions of people around the world money. Our actions are out of love and hope for our community realisation that our actions have consequences and we aren’t making any fucking money. We won’t always get this right, especially in the beginning, but we are determined to make your experience a positive one have, as already stated, fucked this up in the worst way possible by putting actual fucking children in danger for several years and ONLY caring once other companies put an end to our bullshit on their platforms.

Jeff D’Onofrio Bozo the Money Loving Clown,

CEO