#( cp and porn-bots flooding the site )

[dragonsteps-blog1]

sorry but i have been terribly sick for the last few days which is the reason i haven’t been online ! also....it seems that tumblr is deleting all of its nsfw-content ?? what ???

[sirchubbybunny]

Okay, now I'm getting pissed off.

@staff when are you going to stick to your promise about weeding out spam/porn bots. I've just gotten three of them invading my IM in the past ten minutes, and I'm not in the goddamn mood to email you guys again about this to get a half-assed automated response and then send me a "how did we do :)" message.

No. Fuck you.

You guys have made this site almost unusable with it being flooded with porn/drug/spam bots in the messaging system, replies, and the like. I can't even go through safe for work tags without seeing porn bots. This is ridiculous on top of the broken algorithm system that you implemented to stop adult content blogs that weren't full of viruses or CP like you punished everyone for. This is why traffic has dropped dramatically and there was a mess site exodus of tens of thousands of blogs. You did this, and you need to correct it.

This shouldn't be hard. Just admit you guys fudged it and that you're actually committed to restore the integrity of this place while there's still something left to save instead of trying to make it ~*~aesthetically pretty~*~ when nobody asked for it, which is also making the site more broken and glitchy. I don't know what it's going to take for you guys to do something at this point, since it was never like pulling teeth years ago, and I've been here since 2010. It's not fair to us or the former staff members who quit.

Fix your shit.

[ancientouroboros]

I am honestly confused with what's been going on with tumblr. Why are people "jumping ship" and would it be wise for me to join this "PillowFort" site? I love following all you amazing artists but I just don't know what's going on and none of these posts flooding everything is helping. It's distressing me a bit. Would you mind explaining simply if you can? I get that NSFW stuff is getting deleted, but why is that collapsing tumblr? Please...I'm just really confused.

I think the main issue with artists who don’t draw nsfw is that the algorithm that’s flagging things as nsfw isn’t...good. like at all. my stuff got flagged, @eregyrn-falls had a photo of owls flagged, and none of us knows if that means our blogs will be deleted or not. artists don’t want to lose their work! and their blogs! 

and I think there should be a space for tagged, non-illegal nsfw on tumblr. why is “truth coming out of her well to shame mankind” not okay anymore? Why is ship fanart not okay? I have ZERO tolerance for cp, porn bots, etc. and those are what tumblr needs to focus on, not classical art and female-presenting nipples. tumblr has done a really poor job in the past at moderation and it’s very unlikely this will be any different. Tumblr needs to clean up but it needs to do it in a way that makes sense and still leaves room for communities that face discrimination and loss of platforms. remember how safe mode blocked a lot of sfw and helpful lgbt+ blogs?

as long as tumblr seems to only be interested in destroying blogs from orbit, and ONLY when profit is on the line (not in order to, you know, create a platform that PROTECTS VULNERABLE PEOPLE), I think we’re all a little leery of whether it has a future or not.

I don’t know much about pillowfort, but I would be happy to have a tumblr-like site that has staff that is engaged and fixes issues proactively, instead of letting them fester for months and then firebombing everything. I think it’s not accessible right now? But if pillowfort’s devs are smart, they’ll allow new user accounts asap...I think they could really gain a LOT of users right now.

It’s a shame because I really love all the people I’ve met here. But tumblr’s handling of this, and its REFUSAL to handle its problems until it literally was pulled from the app store? It doesn’t bode well for the future of this site and it’s making us all worried about what happens next.

[peppermint-shamrock]

homura-bakura replied to your post “Though I may not personally look for or engage with n/s/f/w content on...”

I'm really worried that this collective punishment of everyone who creates ns/fw content is going to let those who are actually hurting people with things like CP or targeted sexual harrassment will fall through the cracks. it's like trying to put out a kitchen fire with a fire airplane. i'm also automatically nervous of anything that creates an environment of censorship because my question will always be "so where are you drawing the line?"

timahina replied to your post “Though I may not personally look for or engage with n/s/f/w content on...”

It’s so extreme and ya know it’s just gonna become tighter restrictions when the solution was simply ban the porn bots and make n/sfw content not easily accessible to the underaged / not interested but nope....

Exactly. Even if I agreed with getting rid of all n/s/f/w content (which I don’t, you both are right that this is an extreme reaction), I’m already seeing tons of posts about how their completely innocuous content is flagged (and tumblr does not notify you if things are flagged, you’ll only know if someone sees it and tells you or you happen to go back through your blog). There doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to what gets flagged, and that’s probably so no one can try to game the system. Of course, that means that it’s completely ineffective as a moderation tool, too. They’ll be flooded with false positives that they won’t be able to deal with the actually illegal content.

And I agree about the environment of censorship. Even if, even if they don’t go down the slippery slope and start pushing the boundary of what’s acceptable further and further back (which they most likely will), they’ve still created an environment of uncertainty where people do not trust them NOT to do that, and that perception is enough to drive the site downward.

I know everyone freaks out with every change tumblr does that tumblr’s gonna die, but I really do think that this kind of change is going to lead to a downward spiral for tumblr - it’s not going to disappear overnight, but this is going to hurt the site, badly, and I don’t know that it’ll be able to recover. When have content purges, especially of this scale, ever worked out well for a site? When have they ever NOT contributed to its decline?

And I bet they won’t even allow links back in the tags after they’ve made this change, too. That nonsense has made it really annoying to try to share fanfics, and with tumblr continuing to push against content creators (even ones in a category that shouldn’t affect me), I wouldn’t be surprised when there’s a large exodus from this site. For my own part, I might start using that pillowfort account I got a while back and never used. I don’t plan on leaving tumblr outright, but I think branching out is a good idea at this point.