TUMBLR NUDES LICENSE
And though it’s a site welcoming content creators, the site’s terms stated that once you post content, you “expressly grant us … a worldwide, assignable, sub-licensable, and transferable right and license to quote, re-post, use, copy, reproduce, modify, create derivative works of … and otherwise exploit such Content in any form or media, anywhere, and without any notice or compensation to you of any kind.” It already had rules against illegal content, deciding to accede to Puritanical notions of what is acceptable was not necessary.Īnd because of all of this, the things users really need-consistency and clarity-are lacking completely.Those perusing Sharesome’s terms of service (now a 404) found that in order to make an account, you must “have never been convicted of a felony,” are not registered as a sex offender, and, curiously, “are either single or separated from your spouse or domestic partner,” users pointed out. Tumblr says it has to use these tools because it’s the only thing that can work on a large-scale, but that, again, misses the point that Tumblr didn’t need this policy in the first place. But then again, Tumblr employs an automated system incapable of being nuanced, resulting in absurd results.
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The policy is broad and clumsy, while Tumblr claims it’s nuanced. And who knows what setting on the filters caused a sudden deluge of flagging for Burstein. They’re almost exclusively black-and-white line drawings and diagrams of things. Well, a heart-shaped necklace, a boot-scrubbing design, LED jeans, troll socks, a Louis Vuitton bag, some boxes, a tire, a hanger, a flamingo floatie, shoes, pillows of all sorts, and so much more. Right after the new ban was announced, Burstein ran into a number of her posts being flagged. Which brings us to Sarah Burstein, a law professor with a Tumblr that shares “new, notable, or otherwise interesting design patents.” Patents rarely include pornography in them, but, again, automated filters are very bad at the job they’re supposed to do. The hashtag “#TooSexyforTumblr” had people sharing some of the more ridiculous and upsetting mistakes. One that it admitted straight out would make mistakes. So Tumblr decided to use an automated system. It insisted that the new policy struck a balance, that it banned adult content but would continue to foster a “diversity of expression” for people using the platform to discuss “art, sex positivity, your relationships, your sexuality, and your personal journey.” That sounds like a complicated issue, right? It’s expensive to police this issue, particularly if you’re already policing other categories such as illegal activity. Tumblr made what could be charitably described as “a lot” of mistakes in the roll out of the ban. The only semi-helpful result of this high-profile disaster in platform censorship is how well-publicized its failings have been. There’s a human cost to what Tumblr probably just sees as a business decision. About how all of this is reflective of a very specific, sanitizing view of what’s acceptable online. About how hard it is to find somewhere to go that would be as safe as Tumblr had been.
![tumblr nudes tumblr nudes](https://66.media.tumblr.com/8b7a610c794009998286fdd846b7237e/tumblr_nmm24hu2ah1rcpweko1_500.jpg)
About the queer and sex-postive communities that felt threatened and erased. While Tumblr has never come right out and said what caused their decision, it’s a fair bet that some combination of these factors got them there.Īnd there’s a lot to say about the effect of this ban. And it’s much easier to do that by using a filtering tool that is over-inclusive-so much so that it winds up flagging your own examples of acceptable content. So, when you’re being cut off from potential customers and you could be liable for things related to sex, it’s much easier to just institute a blanket ban on sex and nudity as much as possible. Add to that passage of SESTA/FOSTA, a bill which makes platforms liable for what is said and done by their users if those things are tied to prostitution.Ĭompanies-especially large ones-are risk-averse. The existence of porn on Tumblr also led to it being banned in Indonesia. The ban came a month after Tumblr saw its app disappear from the Apple App Store, which, as a gatekeeper, has enforced draconian rules for app developers, exerting control over how its users get to experience the Internet. In December of 2018, blogging platform Tumblr announced a new ban on “adult content,” a wonderfully vague term that wasn’t so much defined in later posts as made more confusing. And so Tumblr is also a perfect microcosm of the problems plaguing people on every platform. It’s also the story of how people at the margins find themselves pushed out of the places where they had built communities.
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Tumblr’s ban on “adult content” is a treasure trove of problems: filtering technology that doesn’t work, a law that forces companies to make decisions that make others unsafe, and the problems that arise when one company has outsized influence on speech.