I saw the news that Tumblr will permanently ban adult content on December 17th. The Verge reports that this move will “eradicate porn-related communities on the platform and fundamentally alter how the service is used.”
I’m sure a few of you use Tumblr to be with your online communities and wanted to check in with you today.
Will just have to launch a ‘‘SOS bengal’’ telling my users where they can find me 
I don’t use Tumblr for Patreon things but I’m very sad to see this.
There has always been a very strong current of adult content going through Tumblr and a lot of communities are going to be hit by this very hard. My own fetish community has a lot of presence there and this loss is going to leave quite a hole.
It also raises the concern about adult communities getting marginalised and pushed away until they are gotten rid of. This is something I and others are definitely worried about when it comes to here.
I’m curious to see how much of Tumblr’s traffic disappears because the adult content is certainly a large draw for a lot of people.
I wonder if anyone pushing to remove pornography from the Internet has noticed the steady decline in sexual assaults since porn became so readily and easily available?
Got any sources that indicate that this is the goal here or in similar cases? I don’t buy it so easily. Individual services removing this kind of content is about their services – their goals, their users and employees, their responsibilities, their shareholders and so on. It doesn’t have to do anything with the goal of “freeing the internet” from this type of content in general. Anyone wanting to offer this kind of content can just set up their own website easily. Only then do you stay in full control. Building your audience on other platforms always has risks – completely independent from the topic of adult content.
Even if what you link to is true (and I would guess it is), it doesn’t mean that the conclusion is that every social network should host this kind of content.
well i had a tumblr that used to make some post for my game…
but that was kept aside, cuz from a time that place makes me feel… unease at most times,
and not bcuz lewds, was because the place needed you to log in each time you wanted to see something that was not even lewd, hence i dont really like the mainstream areas, i have a twitter but i even use it a lot as i would love, i prefer to do stuff rather than tell, but yeah, i felt like Patreon was waaay better to join rather than a social place, not for the money, but for the freedom that you could post your stuff.
if i can help , n-not monetary tho, i am here if anyone needs a hug :3
or chat XD
I wasn’t entirely sure how to go about posting a thread about this topic, I’m still new to the Patreon Community and am slightly overwhelmed by the whole process, so shout out to Mindy for the wonderful post.
I’ll spare you a full on introduction of who I am, but in short, I’m a ASMRtist who essentially does audio dramas which sometimes fall on the erotic side of the fence. Sometimes as popular fictional boys from comics, video games, or anime, sometimes no characters at all, and so on. It’s a peculiar niche (my nice way of saying yes, I know it’s weird) but the type of peculiar niche that Tumblr made possible. The unique intersection of fandom and NSFW content that Tumblr’s platform provided has allowed for traditional and non-traditional artists to thrive outside of spaces that cut the legs out of their users via algorithms and such.
With Tumblr as my main platform I amassed a following of 24,000, launched a Patreon that is now 500 members strong, and I’ve made countless wonderful friends in the process. Tumblr, as flawed as it could be at times, played a huge role in what turned into an odd, wonderful, life changing experience for me. In the days following Tumblr’s ban announcement, blogs have been wrongfully deleted, muted, shadowbanned, and so on. I’ve seen countless artists trying to get the word out to their followers about where they can find them after the 17th, and if you’ve done the social media thing, you know it’s hard to mobilize users who are comfortable on their chosen platforms. Without a doubt, there will be artists who are set back several steps (if not indefinitely) by this ban.
It’s a lesson in never putting your eggs in one basket, and diversifying your content. I’m “lucky” because basically ever since finding even minimal success on Tumblr, I was terrified that it would go up in flames, so I’ve been making plans and building my following elsewhere, but for it all to go down like this is a real shame. I was the person in chat during Hang Time that mentioned Tumblr, and I really appreciate what Jack said in response. I know that Patreon’s relationship with NSFW content creators hasn’t always been the best, but it’s also very clear that Patreon must be fighting behind the scenes against the same kind of pressures that hastened Tumblr’s demise.
All of that said, Tumblr did this to itself. If you’ve been following what happened to kickoff this whole chain of events with Tumblr, you know that there was a disgusting underbelly of illegal pornography on the website so rampant that they had startling amounts of “original content” that bypassed filters and safeguards that are meant to prevent that sort of thing from being posted online. Someone at Verizon/Yahoo/the boardroom must have been appalled that their pet social media project managed to drop the ball this bad, and if I was them, I’d probably purge all the NSFW content on the website as well. So while yes, it does suck for content creators, I’m also glad that Tumblr is taking firm, appropriate measures to ensure that nothing like that happens again.
It’s definitely scary knowing that in some fashion, my direct line to the bulk of my community is going to be impeded, we don’t exactly know what effect the ban is going to have on blogs that have followed the rules from the start. They’re saying they’ll force you have a default icon/banner, but safe for work posts will be alright. However, there have been some weird happenings over the past week that make me less than confident that post-ban Tumblr will be a functional outlet for me. I’ve managed to nearly triple my Twitter following in the fallout, and I have about 100 new patrons, but the circumstances for these milestones makes it feel like less of an achievement than it should be.
Anywho. Thanks for reading, and I hope I provided some unique insight to this whole mess.
They’re purging us.
@YuuriVoice I admit Tumblr had some problems with its content, but a blanket ban is the wrong solution. If you knew a criminal was living in one apartment unit, would you demolish the entire complex? Other platforms manage to police their content just fine. I really doubt this is about the tiny fraction of Tumblr users who posted illegal stuff, no matter how heinous it was.
Thanks for posting, Mindy. It really sucks how Tumblr is launching an annihilation campaign against an entire community. How many of those users haven’t accessed the site in years? How many works will be deleted forever?
Maybe people will make something better afterwards. It’s just a disappointing move to sterilize the Internet and nobody really cares because they see us as ‘deviants.’