#avewy

[omnybus]

I don't normally make "political" art like this, but after recent events I felt I had to say something

[literal-bot-account]

y'know, back when I used Reddit, if you found some hateful content of any sort, it wasn't that hard to report it. You clicked the "Report" button, selected "Hateful Content" out of the wide variety of options available, and then clicked the "Submit" button. I did this pretty often, because some of the communities I was in attracted rather unsavory characters as a side effect.

Do you know what happened next? Next, I received an automated message that said basically "Hey, thanks for reporting This Content (link to reported content). We've received your report and will review it shortly." Usually, a day or two later, you'd receive another message in your inbox saying "Thanks again for reporting. We found this content in violation of our TOS and have removed it." Sure enough, if you followed the link back to whatever you reported, it would be gone.

It was that easy. No explaining yourself, no explaining yourself again but differently, no redirect to a new tab, you didn't even need to know the specifics of what did or didn't violate TOS. No matter what happened, they would write back and tell you what was going on. If the reported content didn't violate TOS, they would tell you.

When I hopped over here full-time, I continued that reporting habit, thinking it'd be largely the same experience. I have had complete and utter radio silence from @staff on every single report I've ever filed. Have I been making a difference? Is my voice being considered? Who knows! But it certainly hasn't felt like it so far.

At least now I know those reports were going straight into the garbage, rather than just having to wonder.

[residual-fortitude]

You know what, fuck it. If transfems can get banned for posting nonsexual timelines, I'll gladly go down hand in hand with my sisters. Here's 2019, 6 months before my egg cracked, to 2024, happily on Estrogen for a year and a half. I stand proudly with my community on this.

[theoretically-questionable]

like. cards on the table: at first, i thought, hey, maybe the framing and recounting of the predstrogen situation is (understandably) biased because this seems really fucking weird, even for tumblr.

but, for real, it does just look like a series of repeated mass-reports drew staff attention to her and inevitably got her accounts flattened for entirely normal edge-case posting.

like, repeatedly, mass-reports happened, she'd appeal and get it reversed, and then it'd happen again, until finally it stuck. oh boy, did it stick! permanent lifetime ban.

the "death threats" that got her banned were cartoon-violence grumblings (responding to getting stung by bad-faith mass reporting) and the "harassment" seems to have just been pointing out specific user accounts that were needling her or outright harassing her. neither are against rules unless you're taking a bizarrely bad-faith reading of things.

and of course, all of this was her direct response to repeatedly being falsely reported and having to wade through the drawn-out, unresponsive appeals process while far worse content and accounts remained untouched, despite being reported.

also there was the whole "incredibly obvious and malicious rape/pedo-jacketing mass-anon disinfo campaign" run against her.

deeply uncomfortable that the CEO of tumblr took to posting about the mean anon threats he was getting about the situation, but didn't say a peep about the *genuinely malicious* threats and harassment predstrogen was getting. like. that's not worth a quick callout, lil buddy? you can't see why people are pissed?

anyhow. car hammers, or whatever.

[hugopegler]

Like, obviously Matt deserves crap for how he's been handling this situation, but I feel like people have been focusing on the wrong thing.

[k1tty-wh1te]

I call this piece free speech

[incubian]

Mr Matt Tumblr ceo deleted the reblog where in I told him to sit and spin on a cactus lmfao. It's interesting that I, not a trans woman, make a "violent threat" equal to predstrogen's and the most I get is that and him blocking me.

[woolieshubris]

1 million people die to carhammer explosions every day!!! be careful out there folks

[autogynocrat]

power tripping cis man bans trans woman, personally dming people that he did nothing and the big scary trans was so so scary and they/it/she(i got it right this time! please praise me, an ally) was violent toward him, now proceeds to move to twitter to continue attacking her

[gupdoo3]

Just in case the news hasn't made it back to Tumblr yet, photomatt has gone full 'phobe

Full screencaps:

Queerest place on the Internet, everybody!!

[ice-to-orange-blossoms]

Now would be the time to find the @predstrogen post about how trans women deserve to feel so fucking angry

But she's deleted for being a trans woman so I FUCKING CAN'T

[rose-kalliope]

I'm not a lawyer or anything, but I think it may be worth contacting the NYC Office of Human Rights about this Predstrogen/general transphobia situation. Tumblr settled a lawsuit with them in January 2022 about specifically anti-LGBT bias.

Matthew Charles "photomatt" Mullenweg wants us to think we have no recourse here, but I think we may.

[bestfurryhusband]

[theoretically-questionable]

PSA - Things You Cannot Say On Tumblr

Hi, I'm a tumblr user. Did you know that it's illegal to say "i hope photomatt dies forever" on tumblr?

It's illegal! It's a TOS violation. It's one of the only sentences that you're not allowed to say.

It was ok for me to say it right then, because I'm not actually saying it, I'm just letting you know it's illegal to say. Kind of like a public service. I'm letting you know, so that you don't accidentally go out and say something like that.

But what's interesting is that while it's very illegal to say "I hope photomatt dies forever a painful death" (that's illegal, extremely illegal, very very illegal), it's not illegal to say "involving a car covered in hammers that explodes" - because that's it's own sentence!

It's an incomplete sentence, sure, but it may have nothing to do with any previous sentence before it. So, that's perfectly fine. Perfectly fine.

However, I also found out that it's incredibly illegal to go on tumblr and directly criticise photomatt for tumbling ass-first into an overtly transmisogynistic mass-reporting harassment incident and deciding to side with the harassers. INSANELY ILLEGAL! Ridiculously, recklessly, insanely illegal!

It is yet more illegal to post a series of images involving cars and hammers:

ILLEGAL! They will come to your blog in the middle of the night an ban you for life. Extremely against the law.

Uh, one thing that is still technically legal to do is post a string of emojis related to cars, hammers, and explosions in the tags of your post.

Yes, this is an extended bit based on the WKUK 'I want to kill the president" sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg3_kUaYFJA

[batknot]

Tumblr Alternatives

In light of recent news, here are some tumblr alternatives that I am aware of.

Cohost (very much like tumblr, seems to be the most popular alternative)

Bluesky (more like twitter, I find it harder to use)

Pillowfort (nostalgic 2015 tumblr build, doesnt seem to have a lot of users)

Dreamwidth (old internet kind of build like a 2000-2010 website)

Mastodon is also an alternative but I do not personally recommend it since it's not the most user friendly.

Please feel free to add reviews, other websites, or your accounts.

[lyemohan]

I am going to be entirely real, if you banned a trans woman over a loony toons bit then you deserve every bit of hate you get.