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
CEOGood. If you’re an adult and post porn on the internet and a child sees it, it’s not much different than exposing yourself to a child on a public bus.
So I guess every porn site is exposing themselves to children on busses then.
That was an idiotic thing you said. If you fear children seeing porn, you should evaluate some preventative methods.
By your logic, any and all NSFW content should be banned from the internet because kids may see it if they make the right few clicks
And, I shouldn’t have equivocated there… YES. Every porn site is exposing themselves to children on buses. Porn sites track everyone who comes their websites… THEY KNOW HOW MANY CHILDREN ARE DOWNLOADING THEIR PORN. They have beacons and tracking cookies and pixels… They have access to all the marketing databases. They have demographics on all of their users… So, YES…. ALL porn sites are knowingly serving porn to children and are IN FACT engaging in acts of abuse similar to someone exposing themselves to children.
If my child has access to porn sites, it’s not the porn site’s fault. The computer has a million ways to filter adult content, all of which RESPONSIBLE ADULTS have access to.
I guess it’s Google’s fault if a minor ends up seeing porn images. Even with filters and locks available. A quick Google search will have a bunch of these ready to use.
Fuck no. At some point, it’s time for parents to take responsibility for what their child can and can’t access. It’s not Pornhub’s fault for a child’s lack of safety features on their device. It’s the PARENT’S fault. If a child ends up with a shotgun from the master bedroom, it’s not the seller’s fault. It’s the PARENT’S fault for having it accessible.
The only thing Tumblr is responsible for is negligence. Negligence that allowed child porn and negligence that allowed porn bots to run rampant.
So, if a child is separated from its parents and wanders onto a bus, the fact that a hobo exposed himself to the child is entirely the parents’ fault… The hobo in question bears no responsibility whatsoever? Is that right?
If someone has shitty parents, which according to statistics, 95 percent of the parents are by this definition “shitty,” does society owe nothing to that child? You aren’t required to act reasonably and responsibly in a public forum because any and all situations created by the incomprehensible amount of pornography on the internet are because the parents are too stupid to understand the dangers… So, screw any burden of responsibility on MY part?
And yes, it is Google’s fault… Google manipulates search results all the time. Google knows who’s doing what and where they are doing it from. Yes. It is google’s fault.
If you post something damaging on the internet and a child sees it… You are participating in a form of abuse. It’s abuse on a societal scale… but it is abuse. You can’t discount your part in it just because the parents bear some of the blame.
The absolute only way your metaphor would make sense was if pornhub intentionally showed it to kids, which is impossible. Try again.
The only way you can hold the site responsible is if the site intentionally shows a child adult content.
No you are not participating in child abuse if some child stumbles onto some adult thing you post on the internet. It’s the parent’s fault for letting the child have access. That’s ridiculous on your part.
You’re trying to compare a man actively exposing himself to a child to something that’s just there and the child ends up there. False Equivalence. You assume the porn site is sending your child something.
If a child wanders out into a road, it’s the parent’s fault. The road is the porn site.
You can’t blame the ROAD for a child getting hit, only the driver. In other words, someone who sends the child something sexual.
I’m gonna share an anecdote. My wife’s little sister (14) was maliciously sent lesbian porn. Who’s to blame? The person sending it, or the site they got it from? Obviously the fucking person.
What if the hobo in question is blind and just exposing himself to the adult patrons on the bus? He doesn’t know the child is there?
The porn sites know how many children are visiting their sites. They do. There’s no way they couldn’t. They can accurately report to marketing agencies the number of users between 18 and 34 and users between 34 and 50 … they know how many children are online because even if the kid lies about their age… they are reading the kid’s tracking cookies from facebook and google plus and whatever… They know everything about the people using their sites. They know. They just ignore it because they are making money.
If you are posting porn and one of your followers is a child, you are sending them porn… It doesn’t matter if you are doing it knowingly or maliciously… you are serving porn to minors.
Man, this “hobo on a bus” analogy is becoming more and more tortured the longer you use it
The only way this works if is the bus driver was the hobo and they crashed the bus into a strip club, a la KoolAid Man.
(via bombsoverbagdhad)
