Tumblr's New Ban on Adult Content Is a Bigger Deal Than You Think

guest · Dec 5, 2018

Tumblr's New Ban on Adult Content Is a Bigger Deal Than You Think
December 3, 2018
https://io9.gizmodo.com/tumblrs-new-ban-on-adult-content-is-a-bigger-deal-than-1830831079

In a public statement regarding the upcoming changes, Tumblr CEO Jeff D’Onofrio explained that going forward, the site will use programs taught by humans to identify and flag content featuring explicit content and subsequently shutter any sites where such context exists: [...]

While close-knit fandoms predate the internet by a country mile, Tumblr rose to prominence at a time when the relationships between fans and the studios (that create the things fans love) were becoming much closer and transparently reciprocal in a way that can’t be understated.

"[...] We’re relying on automated tools to identify adult content and humans to help train and keep our systems in check [...]"
Obviously, it’s not as if pornography is being erased from the internet whole cloth, but Tumblr is going to lose a significant part of its identity that turned it into cultural juggernaut that it is today.
[...] Tumblr is already being overly-aggressive with its attempts at censorship.
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https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/3/...-porn-ban-date-explicit-changes-why-safe-mode
Explicit blogs will be allowed to remain on the service, but they’ll be heavily censored for all visitors.
[...] in recent months — and under the ownership of Verizon’s Oath unit — it began to consider removing content more aggressively.
[...] It also decided not to remove explicit accounts because it wanted to give these accounts a chance to post appropriate content instead.
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guest · Dec 5, 2018

Tumblr's Porn Ban Further Stigmatizes and Alienates Sex Workers Online
December 4, 2018
https://gizmodo.com/tumblrs-porn-ban-further-stigmatizes-and-alienates-sex-1830860956

But Tumblr’s sanitization directly impacts one community in particular: sex workers.
Now, sex workers say, they have been further silenced with the loss of yet another space—one that grew thanks in part to the communities they built.

Last month, Tumblr disappeared from Apple’s app store. At the same time, users who posted adult content claimed that their blogs were being deleted.

Tumblr’s adult-content ban “is another example of how companies use the labor, imagery and content of sex workers to build their businesses on our backs—and then kick us off their platforms when it becomes inconvenient,” Blunt added.
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mirimir · Dec 5, 2018

Funny. I really have no clue what Tumblr is I'm not going to look, either.

guest · Dec 6, 2018

Tumblr's New 'No Sex' Rules Show The Problems Of FOSTA And EU Copyright Directive In One Easy Move
December 5, 2018
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...ta-eu-copyright-directive-one-easy-move.shtml

But, beyond demonstrating the censorship problems of FOSTA, this move by Tumblr is also doing a bang up job demonstrating why mandatory filters, such as those pushed for in Article 13 in the EU Copyright Directive will be so harmful. Filters are notoriously terrible at accurately taking down only the content they're supposed to take down.

Buzzfeed has a hilarious list of Tumblr posts that have been flagged as being adult content, that clearly... are not. Here are just a few: [...]
it demonstrates the utter futility of believing that filters will work and won't make a huge number of mistakes, pulling down perfectly reasonable content. Those working on laws (especially over in the EU) such as the EU Copyright Directive's Article 13 would do well to actually heed this message.
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guest · May 2, 2019

Verizon is trying to sell off Tumblr
The telecom company recently banned pornographic content on the platform
May 2, 2019
https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/02/verizon-is-trying-to-sell-off-tumblr/

Just two years after taking control of Tumblr as part of its acquisition of Yahoo, Verizon is looking to offload the blogging platform. According to the Wall Street Journal, the telecommunications giant has spent that last few weeks approaching other companies to gauge their interest in purchasing Tumblr.

Tumblr still has a sizable and active user base with more than 450 million blogs and 172 billion posts, but it has been steadily declining as its corporate owners have struggled to figure out exactly what to do with the platform. Yahoo acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion in 2013 [...] Verizon purchased Yahoo for $4.5 billion in 2017 [...]

Last year, the telecom changed Tumblr's policy to block adult content [...] The decision led to a significant drop in traffic to the blogging platform, which was predictable [...]
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guest · Aug 12, 2019

Verizon is selling Tumblr to WordPress parent, Automattic
August 12, 2019
https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/12/verizon-is-selling-tumblr-to-wordpress-parent-automattic/

Six years after Yahoo purchased Tumblr for north of $1 billion, its parent corporation is selling the once dominant blogging platform. WordPress owner Automattic Inc. has agreed to take the service off of Verizon’s hands. Terms of the deal are undisclosed, but the number is “nominal,” compared to its original asking price, per an article in The Wall Street Journal.
Axios is reporting that the asking price for the platform is “well below $20 million,” a fraction of a fraction of its 2013 price tag.

The news certainly isn’t surprising. In May, it was reported that Verizon was looking for a new owner for the site it inherited through its acquisition of Yahoo. Tumblr was Yahoo’s largest acquisition at the time, as then-CEO Marissa Mayer “promise[d] not to screw it up” in a statement made at the time.
Tumblr proved not to be a great fit for Yahoo — and even less so Verizon, which rolled the platform into its short-lived Oath business and later the Verizon Media Group (also TechCrunch’s umbrella company).

“We couldn’t be more excited to be joining a team that has a similar mission. Many of you know WordPress.com, Automattic’s flagship product. WordPress.com and Tumblr were both early pioneers among blogging platforms,” Tumblr fittingly wrote in a blog post.
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guest · Aug 14, 2019

How Yahoo's prudish policies pushed Tumblr into obscurity
The social network, which was bought by Yahoo for $1.1 billion in 2013, just sold for £3 million. What happened?
August 14, 2019
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tumblr-sold-to-wordpress

But the social network has floundered in recent years, overtaken in popularity by Facebook and other rivals. Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo at the time of acquisition, promised Tumblr users “not to screw it up”. Yet a series of missteps soon followed.
There was also the issue of a suddenly imposed $100b (£827.7b) annual sales target that employees perceived as completely arbitrary. “Nobody knew where that number came from, but [Mayer] used it,” said a former executive from the company.

But perhaps the most catastrophic misfire of all was the notorious ‘porn ban’ that came into place on December 17, 2018 [...] Until then, the platform had remained a refuge for a devoted community of users, but this decision affected swift and dire consequences.
She says that she believes these attitudes came from Verizon. “Because Tumblr, and the people who work there and the ethos they've always had, runs very much counter to the adult content ban.” At present, the company is using AI to flag and automatically block inappropriate material.
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Is there any hope for its continuation, even under different ownership? “Truthfully, I think that the best PR move they could do would be to reverse the adult content ban," says Gerrard. "That would be a game changer.” In the absence of this, they better be preparing something savvy to attract new users or beckon deserters back to the platform.
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Rasheed187 · Aug 17, 2019

LOL, Marissa Mayer must be one of the worst CEO's ever. Why would you pay 1 billion dollar for Tumblr?

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