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Farewell, a8c

On Wednesday I, along with 16% of the company, was suddenly and unexpectedly laid off from Automattic. Traditionally, folks departing Automattic are given an opportunity to make a farewell post to acknowledge and thank those a person had worked with during their tenure. This time, however, people that asked if we’d be given that opportunity were told no. So in lieu of that post, I’m sharing my…

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An experiment for 2025

As you may have noticed, it has been a while since I’ve blogged here, but I’m trying something new now. I’ve figured out that I am not great at writing in reflection. I tend to just not do well with sitting down and writing about things that have happened in the past. So I’m trying this because I do know that I have found over time that I am pretty good at extemporaneously speaking. So I’m going…

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Megan Thee Stallion waving a bisexual flag 🩷💜💙 (x)

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Proud to have had a part in this build!

https://wordpress.com/blog/2024/07/09/my-dot-blog/?page_id=68232

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A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:

We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally. 

A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:

The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.

Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.

Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr. 

Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.

When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.

Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:

Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.

Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.

Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.

We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.

We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.

We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.

— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.

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My Non-Standard Packing List

Today at work, we had a freewriting social event with the prompt: What non-standard items do you always travel with? I’ve found that list has grown as I’ve aged! My CPAP My Humira (if I’m scheduled to take my injection that week) A travel humidifier My own coffee, coffee grinder, and travel kettle, because I’m a coffee snob Distilled water, which I need for my CPAP, humidifier, and…

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Hello World: I'm Giving Up

To all my friends, family, coworkers, and whoever else might be listening: I’m making this public post to share what’s going on and what I plan to do. I’ll also be sharing this with people who are impacted by what I’ve decided and what it means for them. TL;DR: Without ADHD impacting my ability to manage my priorities, I’m going to need to reprioritize. I’ve promised a lot of things “very soon”,…

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My Overcommitted Life (Part 2)

This is part 2 of a post I made a few days ago about just how overcommitted I am and how I got here. Now, it’s time to list those commitments. A Lot of Things I’m involved in a lot of things. Ironically, everything on this list I’m doing because I love it and am passionate about it. But as I’ve found many times before, it’s impossible to maintain that level of passion about so many things. And,…

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Has it been a year?

One year ago today, I started my four-week trial to be a Happiness Engineer at Automattic. I was planning to do some long, reflective writing on my trial and how it went (TL;DR: It was one of the roughest months of my life, and totally worth it). But my life is still busy, so it’ll have to wait until I get a little more time. The good news is, there are anniversaries that followed that – like…

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eTMS Update: One more week!

This post is about my own experiences and thoughts about eTMS treatment. It should not be used as medical advice or be considered an authoritative source for medical information. If you think TMS/rTMS/eTMS could help you, check with a medical professional for the latest information and steps to get help. If you are a Veteran, First Responder, or Law Enforcement officer struggling with substance…

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eTMS Quick Update

It’s been a few since I’ve posted about my treatment progress. It’s still going strong and there’s definite improvement! I’ll post more details tomorrow after I meet with the doctor overseeing my treatment, but you can get the latest meanwhile in a couple TikToks I posted. @stray.taco My 6th #etms treatment. Thisnis becoking a routine! If you have any questions about how this is going, let me…

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eTMS Day 6: Second Scales

This post is about my own experiences and thoughts about eTMS treatment. It should not be used as medical advice or be considered an authoritative source for medical information. If you think TMS/rTMS/eTMS could help you, check with a medical professional for the latest information and steps to get help.If you are a Veteran, First Responder, or Law Enforcement officer struggling with substance…

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eTMS: Treatment 5 and the first weekend

This post is about my own experiences and thoughts about eTMS treatment. It should not be used as medical advice or be considered an authoritative source for medical information. If you think TMS/rTMS/eTMS could help you, check with a medical professional for the latest information and steps to get help.If you are a Veteran, First Responder, or Law Enforcement officer struggling with substance…