A special, mid-month
episode produced in response to the Adult Content Ban at Tumblr. In the
wake of the news, Consulting Fans @alexxphoenix42, @fffinnagain and @vexed221 discuss how
we got here and what it means for fandom.
Show notes, streaming, and
direct download information are available HERE at three-patch.com.
Addendum: In the recorded discussion, we
focused on the impact of the adult content ban on the every day Tumblr user.
This decision’s implications for fan artists, however, has been decidedly more
severe. For many, this will result in the loss of their primary channel for
sharing work, and regrettably, in the short time we had to put this special
together, we were not able to include this very important voice in our
discussion. We encourage you to support fandom artists as they deal with
this momentous change.
Yes, it is. They stated that no account will be deleted, only adult contents will be oscured and and made private. But it’s not what is happening.
Tumblr is shadowbanning all visual artists, no matter if they have NSFW or SFW material on their blogs. And this is mainly damaging the visual artists in the fandoms. The proof? Until some time ago, typing “Johnlock” in the dashboard search bar, I had among the popular results, tons of fanarts from the most famous artists. The fanarts were the most immediate and numerous result of the research, I’m sure you remember this. Now it has completely changed. These are the search results on “Johnlock” search from today. There are almost exclusively text posts, chats, and memes. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against memes or text posts, they are great. The problem is that fanarts, manips, photosets, gifset, and even most of the actors’ photos have disappeared from the research.
Is it strange? Not a result from Anotherwellkeptsecret, Reapersun, Bluebellofbakerstreet? How is it possible? Because Tumblr doesn’t want fandom material on its site anymore, and it doesn’t give a toss if it’s SFW or not. You’re a fandom artist? You are punished by becoming invisible. So much for “SFW content is still allowed,” right? :))) No, in reality it is not. How are users supposed to find new artists to follow, if they’re shadowbanned? How are arists supposed to make themselves known and show their creations, if they can’t be seen? I surely don’t have to remind you that many artists use commissions to pay bills and as a help to live. If they are no longer visible, they will lose commissioners, and even if they don’t do commissions, this attitude of Tumblr will discourage them from creating new art, since they will be invisible. There will be less new contents, less ficlets written under fanarts (if I don’t see the fanart, I can’t write a ficlet inspired by it). We are all losing, due to the new Tumblr policy.
All of this adds up to other forms of boycott that Tumblr is using: – internal research that no longer works: you can no longer explore the tags in a blog, because you do not see any results; – some users don’t appear in the list of the notes to a post, even if they added something; – for many users, their most popular posts are no longer visible under their username and blog title;
Tumblr doesn’t even allow anymore a visual preview of its own links, inside and outside Tumblr:
Besides, there are the old problems this site always had, never solved and now even more serious. The @ function doesn’t work anymore for many of us, and many peole don’t receive notifications from other users who have addressed them specifically. Seeing what the situation is like, I don’t think they have the will to fix any of these errors.
Ultimately, we can also decide to remain here, but it’s clear that the site no longer wants us here, and it’s doing all it can to crush us and make us invisible.
But what can we do to fight back? Not much, I’m afraid. The only thig I can think about, is:
Follow and reblog
FOLLOW AND REBLOG
FOLLOW AND REBLOG
FOLLOW AND REBLOG
FOLLOW AND REBLOG
Make sure you follow all your fave artists before December, 17th, so you can keep track of them, and you can visit their blog directly, if you don’t see them in the search or in the dashboard. And reblog their art, EVER. It could be the only way to save them from the oblivion. Lurkers, readers, writers can be safe, for now, but our artist comrades are under attack. This is the time to show that a fandom is truly a community, giving them all the support we can.
As a form of protest, and since I believe that Tumblr will try to shadowban this post, I have decided that I will punish it every day. Deal with it, @staff 🙂
“Not safe for work content will be taken off starting Dec 17″
“Also Safe for work content will be removed”
If Tumblr is so desperate to kill itself just shut down the servers
Well, this is worrying.
It’s not surprising but seeing more people getting hit with a shadowban makes me wonder where Tumblr is eventually heading towards. It’s like looking at a person very slowly walk towards a cliff, and no matter how much you yell at them, they just keep walking.
Still, let’s see where this is going.
Writers are as well!
There are cases of writers being shadowban with our own fandom! Along with other fandoms!
Tumblr is destroying their own website to the ground.
This is disgrace for all creators!
Spread the word!
Writers and artists are being hit by this ‘new and improved’ tumblr cycle.
Please have other links where your readers can find your work! Just in case, tumblr decides to shadowban you as well or worst delete your blog.
No porn on tumblr we describe our nudes in detail instead
today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow. A lot of preps stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.
What is almost certainly happening with Tumblr’s image classifier is that they’ve deployed the bot entirely untrained, and are relying on user complaints to train it what NSFW content on tumblr looks like.
Making people participate in their own censorship in this way and punishing them with the threat of being silenced even if in compliance with the rules should they not participate, is, IMHO, abuse of their userbase.
Source: I’ve worked for three different top-five social networks, and at all of them this type of work would have been done by making the userbase do it as much as possible.
Please signal boost. I don’t care if you reblog or repost, just get the word out so that people know what they’re doing as they interect with this thing.
My twitter is @soren_tycho (nsfw, sfw account coming soon) and my github username is sorentycho.
Hey so @staff it’s really really shitty to flag as explicit a post about my gay uncle who died due to AIDS.
@staff this is unacceptable
Thank you. I didn’t even see a notification – I just came across it while I was scrolling through my blog to see if anything was flagged.
I’m honestly pretty upset about this. It’s also wild considering the history of the AIDS epidemic and how the US government censored PSAs about the epidemic to not mention gay men because it might be seen as endorsing “deviant” behavior. I’m not saying that’s why this was flagged, I’m just saying there’s relevant history here.
Wow. I’m so sorry this happened to your post.
When people ask what we’re so worried about with the new policy this is the answer.
Yeah, I reblogged a bunch of penises and they didn’t get flagged and this did. Hard to keep believing the “algorithm error” excuse.
oh wow fuck this @staff this is disgusting get your “algorithm” under control
iamjohnlocked4life 