#but continued violations will be reported

[moki-dokie]

REMINDER as new fans and new tumblr users are converging:

IT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE TO POST OTHER PEOPLE'S ART WITHOUT CREDIT AND/OR WITHOUT ASKING THEM FIRST.

Stop it.

If you find art you like, do a reverse image search and find the original i promise it takes less than 2 minutes in most cases. Or just ask one of the bigger gomens blogs. This is a rather close community and I guarantee you most of us are going to know who the artist is about 99.99% of the time.

[terrorbirb]

I'm bored at work so I'm seeing if I should report my old company for violating labor standards.

[supersymmetries]

sometimes i think about how the revolt music video was released in 2016 and depicted the worst-case scenario matt could dream of for 2020, and then 2020 proceeded to look exactly like that. and then i have to stop thinking about it or else i will explode into a thousand tiny bits of shrapnel

[chloe12801]

Whoever in my apartment building is having what sounds like a rager at 5:18am on a Thursday, you are both insane and annoying <3

[staff]

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.

[wain-wright]

Regarding the charlottan ban: i don’t closely follow this user but how are there so many mysterious bannings on this site? Does this happen on twitter and fb as well? It looks like the automation for bans are somehow easy to abuse.

[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.

[yourlocalcorviddad]

@thatrandomsarahchick @stealingyourbones

Saw a thing about you two pointing out, rightly, they'd just roll with the punches and got an idea? Also tagging others I think would find it funny? @hdgnj @mar-and-the-idea-graveyard @illya-roma @blob-of-darkness @booklover4177

"Alright, who had "government hides new sentient rights violation in small Midwestern town" on their bingo cards this year?"

Barry entered the room with that as the greeting, a flurry of tablets and such being pulled out to mark off and be ready for the debrief.

"Question, Waller involved or no?" Hal asked, looking from his own bingo card.

"Surprisingly no, but Luthor was when he was president."

Hal cursed and switched his tablet back to work mode, but Clark cheered.

"Bingo!"

There were a mix of grumbles about him winning the next movie night pick but the team was quick to get into work mode from there.

Batman sighed before motioning to Barry to continue, "Report."

"So apparently two mad scientists punched a hole in the fabric of space time, but didn't make a black hole. In other news, Clark that's what the weird whispering you've been hearing is, magic induced silence field."

[jessiarts]

[Shut off last version of this post to avoid possible continual spread of misinformation that was corrected by staff. Reposting clean with corrected info]

So I'm sure almost everyone knows about the porn bot problem by now, so here's a post detailing why it's a problem, and what we need to do about it.

First off, yes, always block the porn bots. Don't be mislead into thinking they're ok to keep around because they 'inflate your follower count.'

Firstly, no one cares about, nor can anyone even see, your follower count. Be free from the shackles that are the bullshit other socials told you was important. Don't let your ego be tied to a number. Having a lot of followers won't earn you any clout here.

Secondly, bots only follow blogs to try and legitimize their malware (and other dodgy) links. This post goes into more detail about that.

Now that that's out of the way, you'll need to know how to recognize a porn bot. This round the template seems to be:

A profile photo of a pretty lady or guy, usually in their underwear, with a similar header photo.

A bio with some combination of: [Age] // [Name] // [Location] // [Emoji] // [Top Bullshit% OnlyFans]

URL consisting of a name followed by a number (i.e: firstlast999)

Typically an empty blog, or if there is content, it's all dodgy links. Visible, but empty, Likes Tab, & occasionally a visible Following Tab.

You likely recognize the pattern.

So, what you want to do is, first, report the blog as spam On mobile it'll look like this:

On mobile you'll need to report spam first, and then go back to the menu again to block.

On desktop it will look like this, and unlike mobile, you'll be able to report spam and block in the same motion:

If I remember correctly,* be sure to "Report Spam", not "Report sexually explicit material" to feed the bots to the proper channels. Because the blog is empty, they haven't posted anything explicit that would violate TOS. However, staff can recognize a bot, and if you report the blog for spam (the actual problem) they'll take a look, more than likely find that the blog is posting or DMing dodgy links, and dispose of it.

And I think that's it. Here's wishing you all a happy and safe blogging experience!

[UPDATE: It was suggested on another post that the bots track your IP if you click on them to send more your way. However, someone from staff corrected and said this is incorrect. They also corrected the 'guilt by association' myth that bots following you can get your blog flagged by tumblr.

That said, that trail all led to another, easier, way to report/block the bots all from your Follower Tab instead of visiting each blog separately, unfortunately it only works on desktop:

(For newbies, click on the little person icon at the top right of your screen and scroll to find the Followers tab under the blog/sideblog you need to block a pornbot from.)

*I remember this information from a blog that used to be all about taking down the pornbots. Unfortunately I do not know if that blog is still active, nor can I remember the URL. If anyone knows what blog I'm referring to, and/or if they're still active, please feel free to tag them so others can follow them for more tips!

[violottie]

"At least 12 killed, including a mother with a baby strapped to her back, in twin bomb blasts that hit two camps for displaced people in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo on Friday 2nd May." from African Stream, 04/May/2024:

caption continued under video

This brave brother allegedly took the baby away from his dead mother's corpse; effectively, saving the baby's life, according to local reports.

The United Nations condemned the attack that targeted the camps in Lac Vert and Mugunga, near the city of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, the UN said in a statement.

The attacks, in which at least 20 people were injured, were a "flagrant violation of human rights and international humanitarian law and may constitute a war crime”, it said.

Many of the victims were sleeping in their tents when the area was attacked.

The United States has accused the military in neighbouring Rwanda and the M23 rebel group of being behind the attacks. Yet the U.S. remains a staunch ally of Rwanda despite its many violations of human rights in DRC and its support for M23.

[zvaigzdelasas]

Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle tonight are lambasting the Biden administration for not getting Congressional approval before moving ahead with military strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen.[...]

“The President needs to come to Congress before launching a strike against the Houthis in Yemen and involving us in another middle east conflict. That is Article I of the Constitution. I will stand up for that regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican is in the White House,” posted California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna on X, just as news was breaking that the strikes were in progress. Some 30 minutes earlier, there were reports that Congressional leaders were given a heads up that the strikes were a go.

“Only Congress has the power to declare war,” posted Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie. “I have to give credit to @RepRoKhanna here for sticking to his principles, as very few are willing to make this statement while their party is in the White House.”[...]

“@POTUS is violating Article I of the Constitution by carrying out airstrikes in Yemen without congressional approval,” charged Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib. “The American people are tired of endless war.” Democratic Reps. Cori Bush, Val Hoyle, Mark Pocan, and Pramila Jayapal weighed in similarly as of 9 p.m. tonight.

On the Republican side, Sen. Mike Lee, who has often crossed the aisle on war powers issues, also gave Khanna a boost. “The Constitution matters, regardless of party affiliation.”

"The Constitution is clear, only Congress has the power to declare war. President Biden must come to Congress and ask us to authorize this act of war," posted Florida Republican Rep. Anna Luna.[...]

“These attacks have endangered U.S. personnel, civilian mariners, and our partners, jeopardized trade, and threatened freedom of navigation,” Biden said. “I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.”

The Houthis have said they would continue the attacks until “crimes in Gaza stop and food, medicines and fuel are allowed to reach its besieged population.” The Biden administration, which has not supported a ceasefire in Gaza, said it would hit back hard if the Houthis did not stand down. After a particularly heavy volley of drones and rockets on Tuesday, the administration made its move.

This has a lot of analysts worried about escalation — something the Biden administration said it didn't want. "If the objective is to stop Houthi attacks without escalating matters toward a full war, then bombing them has proven quite inefficient in the past. Just ask the the Saudis," said the Quincy Institute's Trita Parsi, on X, referring to the Yemen civil war in which the Houthis gained major victories despite routine missile bombardments from U.S.-backed Saudi Arabia.

"Moreover, bombing them very likely will escalate matters, which means that not only will the attacks not be stopped, but the broader war that Biden [allegedly] seeks to prevent will likely become a reality."

12 Jan 24

[fairuzfan]

Id:

I wouldn't have won The International Women's Media Foundation (@IWMF)'s Courage in Journalism Award 2024 this June if I hadn’t been on the ground reporting events and exposing Israeli flagrant violations under perilous conditions, all while being systematically attacked by supporters of the perpetrators.

Winning a prize for “courage” means being subjected to attacks and choosing to continue your work regardless. However, I regret to say that the very organization that recognized these perilous conditions and awarded me the prize succumbed to pressure and chose to act contrary to courage; they rescinded the award in a decision that would put my life at risk.

In fact, I’m very glad that both my winning the award and its withdrawal have starkly demonstrated the systematic physical and moral attacks Palestinian journalists endure throughout their careers. These threats and character assassinations aim only to silence us and perpetuate the longstanding bias in global media. I have never worked to receive awards, nor have I ever submitted an application to nominate myself. I didn't choose journalism as a profession; I became a journalist after recognizing the extent to which the world overlooks Palestinians’ suffering and opts to conform to Israeli pressures.

Every year, Palestinian journalists are recognized with international awards for their brave reporting under the Israeli occupation and relentless attacks. These accolades honor their courage and dedication to uncovering the truth.

However, each announcement of an award to a Palestinian journalist is systematically followed by extensive smearing campaigns and intense pressure on the awarding organizations from supporters of the Israeli occupation and the Zionist lobby. While some organizations uphold their principles and maintain their decision to honor these journalists, others, regrettably, cave to the pressure and withdraw the prizes.

Instead of recognizing the threats they face and contributing to their protection, a decision to withdraw a prize from a Palestinian journalist in Gaza—where over 150 journalists have been killed by the ongoing Israeli genocide—can further endanger them and increase their risk of targeting.

I have no regrets about any posts or reasons that led to the rescinding of this award, and I will not stop expressing my views. Before being a journalist, I am a Palestinian living under military occupation, a strangling blockade, and genocide in Gaza.

My grandparents were expelled from Jerusalem upon the creation of the state of Israel, and I have been expelled from my home in Gaza during this genocide.

If winning a prize entails enduring and witnessing war crimes while remaining silent, I am not honored to receive any prizes. I will always be objective in my reporting, but I can never be neutral; I will always point out the perpetrators and stand in solidarity with the victims. This is what journalism is truly about.

[sayruq]

Under international law, Israel is an occupying power although it already ‘disengaged’ from the Gaza Strip in 2005; it still continues to control entry and exit from Gaza by land, sea and air. Likewise, it controls Gaza’s population registry, telecommunication networks and many other aspects of daily life and infrastructure. Rather than undertaking its duty of protecting the civilian population in the Gaza Strip, Israel has been placing Palestinians under a suffocating blockade, which constitutes an unprecedented form of collective punishment in a stark violation of international humanitarian law.

Read the rest of the report to see how Gazans have lived under the illegal blockade imposed by Israel for almost 2 decades.

[eilidh-eternal]

Captain Price smut? Yeahhhh, Captain Price smut.

Real estate agent reader who’s showing John Price flats in London, but the only thing he cares about are all the surfaces he can fuck you on.

18+ MDNI | f!reader | d/s dynamics | praise kink | oral f-receiving | unprotected P i V | creampie |

“This unit is just under 100 square meters, but it has the open floor plan you requested, and the kitchen has recently been remodeled; all new cabinetry, appliances and gorgeous Calcutta marble countertops. It’s an entertainers dream.”

John won’t be doing much entertaining but he thinks you’re an exquisite show spread out on those countertops you love so much, skirt hiked up around your hips and lacy thong between his teeth as he nips and teases the sensitive juncture of your hip and thigh. The scrape of his beard against your thighs only causes you to spread them wider for him, already burning, and before you can protest—complain that you’d just bought those—he’s tearing the flimsy lace from your body and growling at the sight of your glistening cunt.

“Christ sweetheart, just look at ya. Been drippin’ since we walked through the door.”

The first card of his tongue through your folds is long and languid, and the way he moans at the first taste of you is something purely primal, born of raw desire and burning need. Hands made rough by years of hard work snake beneath your thighs, seeking purchase at your hips to knead at their plush and soft skin. He pins them to the counter when he dips into your entrance and you clench around him, a moan of his own echoing yours, vibrating against the throbbing bundle of nerves pressed against his nose.

You clap a hand over your mouth to muffle what would have been a scream when he takes your puffy clit between his teeth, flicks the tip of his tongue over it until your thighs are quivering against him. You could scream when he pulls away from you, leaves you dangling from that razor thin edge to pull himself up, to brace his arms on either side of your head and pull your hand away from your face.

“No more of that, doll. Need t’ hear ya. Gotta know how thin these walls are. Don’t want any neighbors reporting us for violating the noise ordinance.” With his orders given he returns to his position between your thighs, not wasting a moment as he hooks his arms under you and drags you to the very edge of the counter to throw your legs over his shoulders and continue with his meal.

You grip the edge of the counter with such force you worry it might crack, that it might crumble in your hands just as you are in his. Every searing pass of his tongue, nip of his teeth and bristle of his beard coaxes you back towards that ledge, and every moan and gasp you give him is rewarded with a growl that reverberates from his chest and straight to your clit, sending hot sparks of pleasure licking on your arching spine.

Watching you unravel before him is John’s second favorite part of the tour, tasting your spilled essence as you writhe and clamp your thighs around his head when you cum on his tongue. Second only to the way you feel wrapped around him, the way your brows slope upwards and your mouth makes that perfect little ‘o’ when he sheathes himself to the hilt inside you.

“F-fuck, ‘s too much… I can’t-”

“You can,” he grunts with a pointed thrust, and you whine at the fullness, the stretch of his thick cock and the press of the flared tip against your cervix. “You can take it, honey. Just keep those pretty eyes on me yeah?” You focus on his face, concentrate on the lines between his brows. “Good girl.”

He sets a steady pace, one hand pressing your knee up beside your face and with the other he braces himself on the counter, bent over you to watch your eyes flutter with every drag of his cock in and out of you.

“Fuck sweetheart… ya feel fuckin’ perfect. ‘S like you were made for my cock.” It’s too much, too intense staring up into the swirling depths of ocean blue eyes when he says things like that, and you look away before you drown in them and all of his pretty words.

But John is like a rip tide; calm and collected on the surface, but swift and brutal below. He halts his movements abruptly, grips your face, thumb and forefinger pressing into your cheeks, and forces your gaze back to his. “Did I say you could look away?” A beat of silence and he cocks an impatient brow.

“No…” you squeak.

“What were my instructions?”

“Eyes on you.” It’s less whiny but it still comes out small and breathy.

“That’s right, eyes on me. Gotta be able to see ya so I can take care of ya. Gotta know it feels good, that I’m not hurtin’ ya. Understand?” You nod weakly, but his brows remain furrowed, mouth set in a hard line, and he doesn’t move.

“Y-yes sir.”

“Good girl,” he hums in approval and removes his hand from your face, drags it down the length of your body as his hips begin to roll forward again, following the valley of your breasts down to your navel, your messily bunched up skirt, and presses his thumb to your clit, tracing slow circles around it. It doesn’t take long for him to find his rhythm again, faster this time, each stroke pushing him further and further towards that simmering pool of pleasure as your silken walls begin to flutter around him.

You can feel your own orgasm building, the velvety head of his cock brushing against pleasure centers deep inside of you and his thumb working your clit to fan the flames of your lust and desire into a blazing inferno. Hot tendrils of pleasure lick up your spine, arching you into him and rocking your hips against his as you mewl and whine, desperate for your release and to ease the growing heat within your veins.

“Close… fuck, I’m close-” you can barely manage, and he shushes you sweetly.

“I know sweetheart, can feel ya- fuck… clenching around me,” he says between panting breaths. “Wanna feel ya… milkin’ me. Be a good girl… and cum for me.”

He’s relentless in his mission to see you, to feel you, cumming on his cock, hips slamming into yours at a brutal pace, the sound of skin slapping against skin mingling with each of your breathy moans in the sweetest symphony he’s ever heard. And it’s hard, so, so hard to keep your eyes open, to keep them trained on him when he’s fucking you like a man utterly consumed by the desire to see you shatter beneath him.

You don’t hold back, don’t bother trying to quiet the scream that rips from your throat when he sends you careening over that edge, falling, falling, falling into a warm, blissful oblivion. Every muscle in your abdomen pulls taught, pussy clamping down on him as your orgasm tears through you like a wildfire through a parched forest, and he chases his own release with the same rabid intensity, grunting and panting above you with wild thrusts of his hips. A raging storm of intensity that finally breaks when his balls tighten and he spills inside of you, hips stuttering with a guttural moan that rumbles like thunder in his chest.

You stay like that for a long moment, your arms limp beside you, legs quivering against cool marble with his face tucked into the side of your neck and breathing raggedly. When he finally withdraws you whimper at the loss of him, the absence of his warmth and the fullness he gave now leaves you empty and leaking your combined essence, dripping down your thighs onto the obscenely expensive counter. You open your mouth to say something, try to move back to your feet before you make a further mess, but he silences you with his tongue, lapping at your entrance to taste both of you, and the only sound that comes out is an overstimulated whine.

“I know, I know…” he murmurs into your dripping cunt. “But we’ve gotta get ya cleaned up.”

You. Not the counters—you.

When he finally deems you ‘clean’ enough, he helps you down from the counter, makes sure you’re steady on your feet before you even try putting those ridiculous heels back on. And when you leave he tucks the ruined lace of your underwear into his pocket and guides you out of the flat with a firm hand on the small of your back, all the way to your car, and insists on opening the door for you.

Before you can seat yourself he tightens his hold on you and drops down to place a kiss on your cheek, lips brushing against the shell of your ear as he whispers, “I’ll see you next week for that showing, sweetheart. Be good for me until then.”

©️Eilidh-Eternal.2024 ~ The intellectual property of Eilidh-Eternal is not permitted for reposting, transcription, translation or use with AI technologies.

[embracing-the-ineffable]

Beware clickbait accusations

Hi fandom, here's what happened yesterday: A reporter named Rachel Johnson, who is the sister to Boris Johnson and a big terfy supporter of JK Rowling, released a 4-part true crime podcast featuring two women accusing Neil Gaiman of SA. Yesterday. The day before the UK elections. This post explores the possible political links in more detail.

CW: this post is free of graphic details, but if you follow these links, there may be explicit descriptions of sex, kink, and bdsm, plus mentions of mental illness and suicidal thoughts.

I want to believe and support survivors, and I also want to base my thoughts and actions on facts. I thought the xitter livestream commentary from Not Becky for all 4 episodes was very insightful. There's also a first episode transcript without extra commentary. (Edit: released after I wrote this post: the full audio plus transcripts for all four episodes of the podcast are now available to download here, or you can read all four transcripts in your browser.) I have since concluded (pending more time to think and read and learn, or any new information, of course):

This seems like the worst kind of clickbait, an unjustified mess that will hurt everyone involved (except possibly a few politicians who might benefit somehow, we'll see). The evidence the "reporters" present directly contradicts their accusations. They're counting on people reading headlines and not digging any deeper.

They tried to make something sinister where there was apparently consent and a caring relationship. Have they exploited one or both of these women? S, in particular, is described as vulnerable and with a history of unspecified mental illness. They have all of the message history between S and Neil, and her messages make the sexy stuff between the two of them sound enthusiastically consensual. There are even messages (multiple!) where she specifically says everything was consensual. Here's one:

They're playing horror music in the background to try to make us feel horrified, even as S reassures us that things were consensual. It's emotional manipulation by the reporters.

The times S sounds upset during the interview are the times she talks about Neil leaving her behind or not paying attention to her. Not the times she talks about consent violations. Her stories during the interview are inconsistent, and they contradict her messages with Neil and with others. Maybe we'll get better information from a more reputable news source, or maybe not, I don't know. I also don't know why anyone who cares about her would have advised her to do this interview.

Then they tracked down lots of other women who know/have dated Neil and they all had glowing things to say, except one other lover from 20 years ago, K. She described some bad sex, and then pointed to a time in their 2-year relationship when she felt something wasn't consensual and he thought it was. And after their breakup, they continued to text and flirt, for decades.

This podcast "exposé" feels like explosive clickbait with political ramifications. The evidence here doesn't support a pattern of poor conduct so much as establish Neil as a fellow well-meaning human with imperfect judgement. That doesn't mean the accusations are all made up; intimate partner violence is complicated, and the responsibility for checking in and getting regular enthusiastic consent from partners is very real, especially when kink or bdsm are involved.

I don't know what the right balance is here between supporting survivors, thinking critically, assuming good intentions, and waiting for better information, but I feel confident that this podcast alone is not enough to condemn anyone aside from the irresponsible journalists who inflicted it on the rest of us.

PS/edit: I'm tagging my relevant posts (mostly reblogs) with #ineffable grief, and you can see all of them here.

[mariacallous]

The first thing to say about the hate and scorn currently directed at the mainstream US media is that they worked hard to earn it. They’ve done so by failing, repeatedly, determinedly, spectacularly to do their job, which is to maintain their independence, inform the electorate, and speak truth to power. While the left has long had reasons to dismiss centrist media, and the right has loathed it most when it did do its job well, the moderates who are furious at it now seem to be something new – and a host of former editors, media experts and independent journalists have been going after them hard this summer.

Longtime journalist James Fallows declares that three institutions – the Republican party, the supreme court, and the mainstream political press – “have catastrophically failed to ‘meet the moment’ under pressure of [the] Trump era”. Centrist political reformer and columnist Norm Ornstein states that these news institutions “have had no reflection, no willingness to think through how irresponsible and reckless so much of our mainstream press and so many of our journalists have been and continue to be”.

Most voters, he says, “have no clue what a second Trump term would actually be like. Instead, we get the same insipid focus on the horse race and the polls, while normalizing abnormal behavior and treating this like a typical presidential election, not one that is an existential threat to democracy.”

Lamenting the state of the media recently on X, Jeff Jarvis, another former editor and newspaper columnist, said: “What ‘press’? The broken and vindictive Times? The newly Murdochian Post? Hedge-fund newspaper husks? Rudderless CNN or NPR? Murdoch’s fascist media?”

These critics are responding to how the behemoths of the industry seem intent on bending the facts to fit their frameworks and agendas. In pursuit of clickbait content centered on conflicts and personalities, they follow each other into informational stampedes and confirmation bubbles.

They pursue the appearance of fairness and balance by treating the true and the false, the normal and the outrageous, as equally valid and by normalizing Republicans, especially Donald Trump, whose gibberish gets translated into English and whose past crimes and present-day lies and threats get glossed over. They neglect, again and again, important stories with real consequences. This is not entirely new – in a scathing analysis of 2016 election coverage, the Columbia Journalism Review noted that “in just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election” – but it’s gotten worse, and a lot of insiders have gotten sick of it.

In July, ordinary people on social media decided to share information about the rightwing Project 2025 and did a superb job of raising public awareness about it, while the press obsessed about Joe Biden’s age and health. NBC did report on this grassroots education effort, but did so using the “both sides are equally valid” framework often deployed by mainstream media, saying the agenda is “championed by some creators as a guide to less government oversight and slammed by others as a road map to an authoritarian takeover of America”. There is no valid case it brings less government oversight.

In an even more outrageous case, the New York Times ran a story comparing the Democratic and Republican plans to increase the housing supply – which treated Trump’s plans for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants as just another housing-supply strategy that might work or might not. (That it would create massive human rights violations and likely lead to huge civil disturbances was one overlooked factor, though the fact that some of these immigrants are key to the building trades was mentioned.)

Other stories of pressing concern are either picked up and dropped or just neglected overall, as with Trump’s threats to dismantle a huge portion of the climate legislation that is both the Biden administration’s signal achievement and crucial for the fate of the planet. The Washington Post editorial board did offer this risibly feeble critique on 17 August: “It would no doubt be better for the climate if the US president acknowledged the reality of global warming – rather than calling it a scam, as Mr Trump has.”

While the press blamed Biden for failing to communicate his achievements, which is part of his job, it’s their whole job to do so. The Climate Jobs National Resource Center reports that the Inflation Reduction Act has created “a combined potential of over $2tn in investment, 1,091,966 megawatts of clean power, and approximately 3,947,670 jobs”, but few Americans have any sense of what the bill has achieved or even that the economy is by many measures strong.

Last winter, the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has a Nobel prize in economics, told Greg Sargent on the latter’s Daily Blast podcast that when he writes positive pieces about the Biden economy, his editor asks “don’t you want to qualify” it; “aren’t people upset by X, Y and Z and shouldn’t you be acknowledging that?”

Meanwhile in an accusatory piece about Kamala Harris headlined When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?, a Washington Post columnist declares in another case of bothsiderism: “Voters want to blame someone for high grocery bills, and the presidential candidates have apparently decided the choices are either the Biden administration or corporate greed. Harris has chosen the latter.” The evidence that corporations have jacked up prices and are reaping huge profits is easy to find, but facts don’t matter much in this kind of opining.

It’s hard to gloat over the decline of these dinosaurs of American media, when a free press and a well-informed electorate are both crucial to democracy. The alternatives to the major news outlets simply don’t reach enough readers and listeners, though the non-profit investigative outfit ProPublica and progressive magazines such as the New Republic and Mother Jones, are doing a lot of the best reporting and commentary.

Earlier this year, when Alabama senator Katie Britt gave her loopy rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union address, it was an independent journalist, Jonathan Katz, who broke the story on TikTok that her claims about a victim of sex trafficking contained significant falsehoods. The big news outlets picked up the scoop from him, making me wonder what their staffs of hundreds were doing that night.

A host of brilliant journalists young and old, have started independent newsletters, covering tech, the state of the media, politics, climate, reproductive rights and virtually everything else, but their reach is too modest to make them a replacement for the big newspapers and networks. The great exception might be historian Heather Cox Richardson, whose newsletter and Facebook followers give her a readership not much smaller than that of the Washington Post. The tremendous success of her sober, historically grounded (and footnoted!) news summaries and reflections bespeaks a hunger for real news.