Maybe you’ve heard about this, maybe
you haven’t. Tumblr was dropped from Apple’s app store for the appearance of
child porn on their website and as a result they decided to ban all adult
content (although in fact this had been brewing for a while, the Apple thing
just prompted them to do it sooner).
While getting rid of child porn is dear god always
a good thing, keep in mind that this website has a TON of users who have been
advocating for child abuse and Tumblr has done nothing—nothing—to stop them. People report them all the time and nothing
happens! No bans, no deletions. But the second Apple snaps its fingers, uh-oh,
better ban all adult content because that will also somehow double their user
base. I’m not making that up. They think that’s how it will work. It’s been
likened to Thanos’s snap in Infinity Wars due to both how arbitrary it hits
people and how ineffective it is in achieving the professed goal.
As someone who has actually been on
Tumblr, I know for a fact that there are a huge amount of porn bots. They’re
like, half my followers. I don’t really care because I’m not stupid enough to
engage them and frankly, they’re spam, and that’s literally what my blog is about. But in Tumblr’s pervious attempt to curb the
porn bots and adult content, literally nothing happened to them. But you know
what does happen? Click here for an example of the posts that get flagged. Yeah. Not porn. Not adult.
And go take a look at Tumblr’s
announcement about what’s no longer going to be allowed after December 17. First
of all, female presenting nipples? So does this mean that if the nipples have mustaches, they’re okay? Or is it
just an excuse to be able to single out trans people easier? Spoiler alert, it’s the latter.
LGBTQA+ people already get flagged for “adult content” all the time so you can
bet this so called algorithm is going to screw them over even more, and this is
especially bad considering that Tumblr was a major place where they connected
and shared with each other. But you know what isn’t banned or restricted on
Tumblr at all? White supremacists. You can’t find any boobs and the chronic pain tag is banned, but want to kill
all POC? Go right ahead.
For the kids, right?
