[walrus66]

There are a growing number of censorship and free speech issues facing the internet- this is not one of them. This society is heading to the toilet if a mainstream website used by children cannot decide that they don’t want to host porn on their product. Why is this even controversial?

[jisangryaf]

This is an open letter expressing how Tumblr's decision will be harmful to a subset of its users.

As a commenter, there are several "good faith" ways to respond to this:

- I disagree, this is not harmful to these users, because ____

- I agree that this is harmful to these users, but that is outweighed by ____

- I don't know whether or not this is harmful to these users, and I'm looking to learn more about their concerns.

You seem to have taken another route, "I don't understand this concern at all, nor do I intend to educate myself on it, and instead I'm going to rant about how these people are bad for society". This doesn't strike me as productive.

(Also: you're arguing against an imaginary position. Nobody is claiming that Tumblr doesn't have the right to decide what content is allowed on their platform. The argument isn't that tumblr can't do this. This is just shedding a light on the harm this decision will cause)

[publicfig]

To be fair, most of the arguments (at least that I've seen, could be non-representative) aren't against big C "Censorship" in the way that this comment implies. It's not an argument as to whether or not Oath/Verizon/Tumblr CAN remove the content and be within their right to do so, it's that it's a poor idea from either a business or a community based point of view (often both). While they are able to manage their community in any way they seem fit, it's that the users of the platform are coming out (and I have absolutely zero data to say whether it's a vast majority or vocal minority) to say that they disagree with the decision that is being made. When phrased in the way that you did, you seem to imply the black-and-white view of "Porn is obviously bad, why shouldn't Tumblr remove it" though ignoring most of the discussion and nuanced views that make a discussion like this worth having.

[barberousse]

> you seem to imply the black-and-white view of "Porn is obviously bad, why shouldn't Tumblr remove it" though ignoring most of the discussion and nuanced views that make a discussion like this worth having

You've effectively changed what he said. He said something much simpler: there are children that use Tumblr; because there are children that use Tumblr, removing porn from Tumblr should not be controversial.

A "nuanced" reply would assess the risk of exposing children to the fascinations of various alternative communities that do not dabble in child porn. I don't see "Porn is obviously bad", but I do see exposing children to porn is obviously bad.

[soundwave106]

It's more than a porn ban, though, it's an "adult content" ban. IMHO because Tumblr chose to make the ban broad instead of focusing on commercial pornography, this made the controversy a lot stronger than it needs to be.

As it stands, Tumblr is not just banning someone's stash of hardcore sex videos. It also is banning, say, a casual vacation photo taken on a beach where topless sunbathing is acceptable (due to the explicit ban on female nipples except for a few narrow contexts). On a more "adult" level, it is also banning stuff in between the two categories, like say boudoir photography (which is usually adult in nature, sometimes erotic / titillating, but is usually not explicitly pornographic.)

Even the "any content that depicts sex acts" seems vague. Would something like, say, Rodin's "The Kiss" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kiss_(Rodin_sculpture) -- be flagged? I don't know, it depends on what the auto-algorithms sees as a "sex act" I guess. Certainly if you were an artist that dabbled in any sort of erotic drawing / painting, the vague definition would probably be a worry IMHO.

(Tumblr is already 13+ already. Commercial crass porn is one thing, but I personally don't think there is any problem showing a 13+ year old this Rodin sculpture or a casual beach shot where topless sunbathing is acceptable.)

[verroq]

It is even simpler, he literally just made a “will somebody please think of the children” argument. Which is so that inane it doesn’t even need a serious reply.

[toasterlovin]

Do you have kids?

As a parent, the idea of exposing my kids to the internet is frightening. There are so many paths by which they can get exposed to stuff they shouldn't be exposed to. I, personally, think that attempts to make more of the internet child friendly are good. The internet as it exists today is like walking down the Main Street of some town, except that people surprise you by randomly jumping out from behind mailboxes and shrubs and engaging in hardcore sex on the sidewalk. It's insane.

[bdhess]

If you’re worried about your kids being exposed to that stuff, set up internet filtering in your home. It’s pretty effective these days, and you’ll actually get way closer to the result you want with that approach than with trying to change the internet.

[toasterlovin]

My kids are young, so it's not something we've had to seriously get into yet. Honestly curious, though: how does filtering handle sites like Reddit or YouTube where all requests are via https, which makes the specific content on the page not visible to filtering which takes place at the network connection level?

[walrus66]

I understand there are a lot of “nuanced” rationalizations against Tumblr’s decision-and of course it’s great that they’re discussed and cases are made, so that fair minded people rightfully reject them. We live in a free society- Tumblr is not a monopoly- and now a competitor can freely scoop up the obvious niche community that Tumblr is choosing not to support anymore.

[bdhess]

Because there’s already plenty of places on the internet to host a censored photo blog for free. And because some people (myself included) resent the implication that watching porn is deviant behavior. And because there’s actually no conclusive evidence that’s it’s harmful to children.

[TallGuyShort]

Are you aware that in this case the actual issue was child pornography?

[ahoy]

That's obviously not the case, otherwise they'd have banned only that.

[TallGuyShort]

When do you think child pornography was not banned?

It's widely believed to be an issue of effective enforcement, and they explicitly call out the connection in their own announcement.

[oddevan]

Regardless of how one feels about the policy itself (for the record, I do side with you for the most part), the way they are implementing it leaves much to be desired:

First, they're deploying a machine-learning algorithm that simply does. not. work. It's flagging SFW content and ignoring NSFW content. I've been collecting a sample of erroneously-tagged posts here: https://paperairplanemob.tumblr.com/tagged/GREAT-WORK-VERIZO...

Second, it is a marked change from an earlier effort to make a "Safe Mode" for minors that filters out illicit content for those that don't want to (or shouldn't) view it. This is taking it a step farther, leaving those that have previously used Tumblr for such content scrambling to find a new platform.

Third, the announcement was incredibly disrespectful to the existing community on Tumblr. Everything from the post's title to the language used ("female-presenting nipples") was laced with corporate double-speak that would barely have flown on a normal social network. On Tumblr? Yeah, no.

Finally, because this is a change from earlier behavior on Tumblr, it's going to change the social makeup of the network. I don't go to Tumblr for illicit material; that's not why I'm there. I'm there to see and read some good fandom material, read webcomics, and have a good time. The previously lax content policy meant that the people I follow were free to experiment and be creative without worrying about having a post taken down for violating some vaguely defined "no porn" rule. Now, even if someone isn't posting illicit material, they still have an algorithm to content with. If they make it through the algorithm, they still have to worry about someone with an axe to grind reporting their content anyway. Eventually, people will stop posting rather than deal with the new changes. And that's going to change the community on Tumblr.

So no, in the broad scheme of things, there are plenty of other things we should be worried about. But something we love is being taken away from us, and we're going through the stages of grief as a result.

[netcan]

Because platforms.

Web 2.0 spent the last 15 years taking over the internet. They made publishing easy enough for your mom. The web evolved from a niche many-to-many medium into a really global, many-to-many medium.

But... In exchange for these great, free publishing tools... most online content got concentrated and funnelled through a handful of companies. Being startups, they had reasonably diverse personas. Family friendly Facebook, anarcho-lunatic Reddit, neckbeard news.yc and pansexual tumblr...

As valuations grew, online advertising exploded and startups aged... they all end up with the same corporate persona.

I care about freedom too. But, I think a lot of liberals/libertarians (like me, this isn't shade) get too caught up in philosopmhical "blackboard freedom" and don't look at actual freedom.

An web where most content is reviewed by a taboo filter (this is what nsfw means, taboo) is not as free as one that isn't.

I'll throw out a reminder that many of the web's first communities existed to discuss taboo topics: drugs, sex, etc.

These were, for example, in my opinion, responsible for the cultural liberalisation that enabled "the great coming out" of gay and other marginalized culture.

[iamdave]

I had a similar thought after discussing this exact topic with a friend last night over beers:

Used to be if you wanted a presence on the web, you did it yourself. You got hosting, you learned what you needed to learn if there was something unfamiliar to you, some trial and error later, a website. You dot com.

The platforms came and soon it became you dot theirplatform dot com. Because they made it easier, faster and cheaper to get your stuff out there and get it seen by many people also posting on 'the platform'...the great tragedy is that it also made it easy for 'the platform' to get rid of 'your' stuff (read: stuff you leased to the platform) if at any point they decide, for whatever reason, they don't want it there.

I remember that being much harder to do that when it was you dot com. We were happy to do the work of putting up a you dot com. Some of us still are, because it's what we came up with, what we cut our teeth on so to speak.

Not sure if I'm really going anywhere with this...just sort of thinking idly at a bygone era I guess.

[kennyadam]

I feel the same way. The more popular the internet becomes, the smaller it feels. I'm sure stats on the numbers of websites would prove me wrong, but it's not my experience in day-to-day usage.

In the past, I would visit dozens of different websites in a day, each catering to their own little niche. Now, it's all moderated-subreddits which have to ultimately bow to the rules of the reddit admins.

It's impossible to have a decent conversation online now. Before, when everything was forums, the conversation in a thread was a single thing. People posting one after the other. Now, it's threaded comment chains where you get so many little conversations going on that it's garbage.

How many forum threads have you subscribed to and been eager to read the new replies the next time you visit? How many reddit posts have you ever returned to after the first visit, assuming you read the comments at all?

I hate the current-day internet. HN, SA and XDA excluded.

[jstarfish]

> It's impossible to have a decent conversation online now. Before, when everything was forums, the conversation in a thread was a single thing. People posting one after the other. Now, it's threaded comment chains where you get so many little conversations going on that it's garbage.

You forgot the gamification of it all with weighted popularity ranking. There's little point in contributing to any conversation unless it aligns with the existing accepted beliefs of the community.

And since have to maintain a minimum social credit/karma/gold/whatever score to function on many sites, why jeopardize it? Best to avoid controversial topics and opinions.

[netcan]

I think besides platforms, a lot of ways the conversations online have changed is down to the number of people now online.

The web was very big, very early in absolute terms, but pretty small in the "number of people from your town" sense.

[iamdave]

How many forum threads have you subscribed to and been eager to read the new replies the next time you visit?

If this is your way of asking if people still visit Fark, the answer is "yes" :P

[ravenstine]

Is Tumblr a product aimed towards children?

[danaris]

It explicitly states that it is not for those under 13. It has never presented itself as being family-friendly in the past.

[philwelch]

Even if you remove all of the porn from Tumblr, it still isn't a good platform for children and children still shouldn't use it.