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. 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
Dear Tumblr Staff,
As someone whose line of work includes internet security, I’d like to know: how do you plan to do this?
Machine monitoring and teams of adults going over their work is all nice and sweet, but humans cannot go over all of these posts, and image recognition isn’t developed enough to be fine-tuned to recognize child pornography from erotica art. I know this because I worked with a team looking to develop image recognition.
Let’s all be honest here, Tumblr’s best filters against such atrocities are its users. Like many, many, many social media platforms, Tumblr is shaped by those who use it.
It was us, users, who did the porn bot purge. It was also us who reported violence, child pornography and every horror humanity (or lack thereof) has managed to get into this site.
But you see, in order for someone to report something, they need to see it. Users who are likely to come across such content (thanks to your lovely and simple preference-based content algorithm that apparently cannot detect when tags are thrown in on random and suggests porn links as something I might like because the porn bot tagged it under “studies” “art” and “cooking”) are users who usually use the NSFW tag. Artists who create NSFW content. These people create. But they are responsible. They tag their work. They report anything they see that isn’t supposed to be there, because it’s fucking messed up and insane. You are putting these artists, this entire community, on the same level as trashbags, as the fucking piles of human scum, who actually caused harm.
And you’re also stripping this platform of its best defence. Because these artists will pack up their bags and leave. They don’t want to. This place has become a home to many of us. But we will leave. Some us will lose friends. Others will lose their jobs. And we all lose a little piece of home. But you, YOU lose the one thing that could make this platform safer because these people CARE and actually go poking around the “dark place” that is adult content and are so horrified when they see abuse that they REPORT it.
And, for general record, I have the NSFW tag blocked. And yet, porn bots have been showing up in my dash more often these last few days than the entire time I’ve been on Tumblr.
This is not a solution. It’s a superficial measure that will make the situation worse, but it’s your way of getting your sales back.
Dear Tumblr Staff,
You haven’t done your homework right. Because this will undeniably make things worse. And people will be hurt in the process. Not just artist who made a living out of this. Not just every single person who got to express themselves and find out who they were and join a community they cared about. But also every single new user who will come in. Every child who is on this website. Because they will be lured into believing it’s safe.
But now that all the people who understand what erotica is and how important it is to get your tags and warnings right are leaving, Tumblr has never been more dangerous.
