afjsdjkljg.

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

“… 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.”

This is such a problem, and this really exemplifies how democracy is so vulnerable on the internet. How many times have we seen a site or app grow from humble and open beginnings where the users are instrumental in staking out the course which the websites moves in - only to become popular and lucrative for advertisers and poof, the site creators start restricting and moderating content they find unsuitable. In part because the site gets abused by bots and illegal activity, yes - but also, because the site is now a business with money on the line and in order not to lose any money, they not longer have the option to let the site develop on its own according to what the users themselves are interested in.

The problem really is here that we, the individual people using the internet, interact with sites such as Tumblr in the same way as we would a public forum or open arena. Which they usually are at the beginning - they don’t start out with a restrictive policy, they start out open and free. Why, I guess to attract users and also because they don’t really have anything at stake which necessitates restriction. The trouble is, we need the sites to remain so. If they had any moral integrity, they would. Their loyalty, sadly, lies not with free will and right to self-expression - it lies with the company and big business it has now become.

Democracy hinges on the ability of any individual being able to express themselves as they please - but when we all use the internet as our means of expression and sites on the internet so inevitably interfere with this right due to their own interests… How realized is this right, in the end?

Restricting a fundamental right or freedom really should be a decision taken by elected officials, representing the people. By the people, for the people. But we the people have grown reliant on private businesses and the services they provide to exercise our freedoms, and thus lost our ability to influence the services.

We’ve seen it with Facebook, and Reddit, and other examples, I’m sure - and now Tumblr here has weighed the free will and right to self-expression of consenting adults up against ‘cultural sensibilities’ and the ‘fragility of minors’, and they’ve decided that in order to protect the latter they will no longer function as an open arena where people are free to decide for themselves what they want to post as long as it is not illegal in accordance with the laws of the country which tumblr or the user is under jurisdiction of.