Yahoo Censors Tumblr Porn 216
coolnumbr12 writes "When Yahoo purchased Tumblr in May, Tumblr founder David Karp said Tumblr wouldn't be changing, and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said, 'Part of our strategy here is to let Tumblr be Tumblr.' But a new search policy went into effect Thursday that excludes all adult blogs from Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines by disabling indexing of anything it tags as 'adult.' The policy effectively makes the content and 10 percent of Tumblr users completely invisible."
10% completely invisible... (Score:4, Funny)
Really? Erm, I think we should be given a list so that, you know, we can, err.., check their data-collating algorithms for accuracy. Yeah, that.
I'm shocked! (Score:5, Interesting)
"When Yahoo purchased Tumblr in May, Tumblr founder David Karp said Tumblr wouldn't be changing, and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said, 'Part of our strategy here is to let Tumblr be Tumblr.'
Yeah, and when an independent website gets purchased by a large corporation the executives never lie to the users of a new acquisition to keep them from doing a mass exodus. After all, the users themselves are a part of the deal.
So just download wordpress (Score:2, Insightful)
and make your own blog. Or use Google blogger. Or any of a thousand different ways. Why is this even news?
I like pr0n as much as the next guy but a Slashdot groupthink seems to be developing that any entity restricting porn is bad evil censorship. Even if that entity is not government and it's not telling anyone else what to do except on its own site.
Re:So just download wordpress (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, first of all, there's the question of who determines whether or not it's 'Adult' or merely 'NSFW', since they're treated differently. Since the barrier for 'adult' appears to be that you post nudity often, there are some non-pornographic photographers that are being caught in the net.
Secondly, as of right now, #gay is a verbatim search term. This affects not just porn, but posts about LGBT politics.
Thirdly, lots of artists were migrating to tumblr BECAUSE it was a way to join a network where you could be discovered by fans. Painters and cartoon artists that post pornographic art also can't be found anymore. I know more than one artist that stopped hosting their own portfolio site because it was easier to post on tumblr and provide a DNS redirect. It was a good system, and now the rug has been pulled out from under them.
This isn't just about hardcore porn; most (all?) of that stuff is discoverable through google, even if it's not packaged up as nicely. There's a lot of fandom and art going on that counts as 'adult' content, and it seems to me that it's being unfairly punished.
Plus, honestly, it's nice for users like me to be able to follow some of these people and discover new things that I like and have it all mixed in with my goofy fandom gifs and gender politics and whatnot. I LIKE how tumblr works right now. To me, this is just the puritanical nature of North American culture and law rearing its ugly head.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't mean to be snarky, but do you know what "verbatim" means? Did you intend "verboten", perhaps?
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I was just coming back and reading over the comment and I saw it there and thought to myself, "why did I type verbatim instead of verboten"? :P
Re: (Score:2)
Secondly, as of right now, #gay is a verbatim search term. This affects not just porn, but posts about LGBT politics.
Wait, what? Was that part of this change? That's going to cause a firestorm. Are similar terms banned? Did they really just hang a "straights only" sign on the front door of tumblr?
Re:So just download wordpress (Score:5, Insightful)
It's still a dick move, and you know it.
Some people use their blog as a source of income. That income depends on their blog having an established, searchable presence. Some of those blogs may have the kind of content (like porn) that you or other people may personally look down on.
"Just make your own blog" is a terrible option when you already *have* an established blog, because it means moving and losing a lot of your traffic.
I don't see anyone where arguing that what Yahoo is doing should be *illegal*. They're arguing that it's not a good thing to do, and I agree with them. Finally, I fail to see any good reason that they need to do it, since the major search engines all have adult content filtering already. It's unlikely that Google or Bing demanded that they de-index adult oriented blogs.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of my relatives use a booth at a weekly swap meet as a source of income. That income depends on their booth having an established, locatable presence. Yet the swap meet could change their policies and refuse to sell them booth space at any time.
If you're going to base your livelihood on a business, it's best to put it entirely under your own control. In my relatives' cas
Re: (Score:3)
Well that's the risk you took when you decided not to put in the extra effort and money to start with your own blog, and instead took the easy way out and started with a hosted site which took care of most of the setup work for you.
Wait what? Hosted site? My dear friend tumblr is much more than a hosted site. What you're talking about is effectively the same difference as posting of flickr vs making your own photography website. Or maybe creating a website of your life vs signing up to facebook.
Tumblr is for the large part also a social network. Users interact, friend, follow, reblog, and comment on each others stuff. You tag posts, tumblr offers a complete search engine for internal posts. This is not something you can replicate with
Re: (Score:3)
I like pr0n as much as the next guy but a Slashdot groupthink seems to be developing that any entity restricting porn is bad evil censorship.
That would be because it is censorship [google.com].
Re:So just download wordpress (Score:4, Insightful)
and make your own blog. Or use Google blogger. Or any of a thousand different ways. Why is this even news?
If generic blogs were an acceptable substitute for what Tumblr does, they wouldn't have 100 million users.
I like pr0n as much as the next guy but a Slashdot groupthink seems to be developing that any entity restricting porn is bad evil censorship.
Why is it good when it's non-governmental? The loss of utility is the same whether it's done by a government or by a corporation. It may be less bad when it's not backed up by force, but it's still a shameful act by Yahoo, and they deserve to be shamed for it.
Re: (Score:2)
A well-done generic blog is a perfectly acceptable substitute for what Tumblr. It's just that with a well-done generic blog, you have to do the work yourself, and pay a small monthly fee for a hosting service. Tumblr does all the work for you, for free. At least, until the time rolls around where you have to pay for it after all.
Re: (Score:3)
and make your own blog. Or use Google blogger. Or any of a thousand different ways. Why is this even news?
Because they didn't come out and say, "Starting in two months we will stop indexing any site that we think is questionable. This will give you time to move your adult material to a new site." Instead they do it without any warning whatsoever. That's a big fuck you to their customers. How many times will this do this kind of thing again in the future?
Re:So just download wordpress (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're using a service for free, chances are you're not the customer.
Re: (Score:3)
OK, so: "that's a big fuck you to their product". Still pretty stupid.
Re: (Score:2)
Customers? The bloggers aren't customers. They don't pay anything. The bloggers are product, and Tumblr will do what they think is best to market that product.
When ever they want. Them what pays the bills, calls the shots.
Re: (Score:2)
The other thing to remember is that its fun to scream at corporations about censoring you, but most of the stuff we use is funded by advertising. If the place becomes a pornorific cesspool, their ability to get legitimate companies to advertise there will vanish, and th
Tumblr censors tumblr porn (Score:2)
Try to replicate this behavior which was in place before the Yahoo buyout:
1. Place pornographic term in tumblr's own search engine
2. Receive lolcats
Improvement. (Score:5, Funny)
Rendering 10% of Tumblr invisible is an improvement and a great start. Please get to work on the other 90%, too.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly, I was going to say "And nothing of value was lost", but I think you captured it better.
Actually I think they gutted the only part of value. Can they offer an inverted filter for ... uha ... my friend.
Why even buy Tumblr? (Score:2)
Isn't this the equivalent of buying Slashdot and then censoring "Anonymous Cowards"?
It's cute how people believed it (Score:2)
When they said "tumblr won't be changing", it's cute how ANYBODY believed them. Acquiring companies always say that. It's always a lie. In this case, most people even predicted it was a lie.
Don't worry, this is just step one. They'll totally wreck things later.
Re: (Score:2)
Its not that anyone believed, them, its just fun to post "I told you so" posts.
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, it's not that we believed it, but it's a deep flaw in how "news" is presented - it's "vertical" - Today's Story is Today's Story, with comments, etc.
Then X time later when a followup like this one comes along, it takes a bit of work to find the earlier story we knew felt bogus.
I have no programming skills, so I can't do it, but I've long envisioned to have a "horizontal" news site where some original story goes on the left, in this case the news is specifically the portion of the sale news where the Ya
Karp on Colbert (Score:5, Informative)
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
came here to say this as well. He just said that they would keep it pure when asked exactly this question! Hopefully colbert calls him out next week, or today.
Re: (Score:2)
Welcome to corporate weasel speak. He can claim he hasn't censored anything. It's all still there, right?
Re: (Score:3)
David has spoken several times about his vision for Tumblr, and censorship isn't part of it. I find it mind-boggling that Yahoo would spend over a billion dollars in an effort to make it seem like a hip and cool company, and immediately fuck it up.
Also, the kid has a lot of money right now, it wouldn't surprise me to see him leave and start another site more in line with his values. That is precisely what I would do.
Yahoo, how about innovating on this issue? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Innovation? From Yahoo? You picked the wrong end of its lifetime for that.
More than 10% traffic (Score:4, Interesting)
The first thing Yahoo did... (Score:2)
Despite their explicit promise "not to screw it up", the very first action Yahoo has taken as owner of Tumbler, is to ruin Tumblr. Major bummer! Looks like I'm going to have to remove all my - decidedly non-pornographic - content and find a new home for it. Any suggestions /. for a less prudish microblogging site?
Can someone explain to me why Yahoo is still in business? Do they have actual users/customers??
I feel a great distubance in the Force (Score:3)
...as if millions of wankers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
Seriously though, Yahoo has a knack for turning acquisitions to shit. Nobody should be surprised here. Expect more "improvements".
More at Eros blog (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.erosblog.com/2013/07/19/tumblr-admits-then-denies-hiding-porn/ [erosblog.com]
Eros reported on this back in May, and here has a good discussion of the evasions and falsehoods from Yahoo!
Same thing they did with egroups (Score:3)
Re:Not really... (Score:5, Informative)
I think the point is that they're not allowing spiders to crawl pornographic tumblrs. That affects everyone who uses a search engine that respects robots.txt.
Re: (Score:2)
it's sort of a half assed stance on the issue though.
pretty stupid too.
OOH NOW I GET IT! they're funding another search engine of their own that ignores robots.txt and will kill google off with that!
(seriously, that could be the only way googles search dominance will be beat).
give duh people wut dey want! (Score:4, Funny)
Fine! I'm gonna go build my own image microblog, with blackjack and hookers!
Probably should make it distributed and censorship-resistant by design.
I propose this new site be named bendr!
Re: (Score:2)
This new site would also filter the results, but would only return things related to the lunar lander, blackjack and hookers.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not really... (Score:5, Interesting)
I imagine a lot more interesting content is on that part of the network.
Re:Not really... (Score:5, Interesting)
my robots.txt contains one item which doesn't exist.
If you try to access that item your IP is added to the firewall drop list. (until the next reboot)
I don't even have much hosted, just some pictures I don't want to give to flikr.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Neat idea. How did you set that up? A custom fail2ban filter? Some other way?
Re: (Score:2)
my robots.txt contains one item which doesn't exist.
If you try to access that item your IP is added to the firewall drop list. (until the next reboot)
I don't even have much hosted, just some pictures I don't want to give to flikr.
On the other hand, you've just documented your disallowed content, so I actually don't need to access the content itself in order to index it -- I only need to know to download your robots.txt and shove it into my index.
As the service grows (assuming it does), then I can have a fleet of non-contiguous IP addresses which I use as "content verifiers" for the robots.txt contents (e.g. directories vs. files), and I can "burn" them against your site for content verification.
The arms race escalation is pretty obv
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Not really... (Score:4, Insightful)
I was thinking that too. I wasn't aware that there was anything on tumblr that wasn't porn.
Re: (Score:2)
That could be interpreted as unauthorized access under the CFAA.
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot is unusable without noscript.
is a really old signature, isn't it?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I don't change my sig often. I whitelisted slashdot in noscript, with the classic discussion system it's a lot better than it was when I wrote that. I will edit my sig, thanks.
Re:Not really... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh right...wow...this has gotten a lot worse since I last checked...
Aaaahhhh...that's better.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone should make a search engine that *only* indexes the stuff that robots.txt suggests against.
I imagine a lot more interesting content is on that part of the network.
Yep. I want "Unsafe search" as an option for my search results - filter out all the mundane crap.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Someone should make a search engine that *only* indexes the stuff that robots.txt suggests against.
Those entries aren't "suggestions" - they are instructions I want search engine spiders to unquestionably follow.
Re:Not really... (Score:5, Insightful)
point is that they're not allowing spiders to crawl
No, that's tangential. The point is people have made different types of information publicly available, using a private service, and now that information is being effectively taken offline with no recourse. The content is content tagged as "NSFW" or "Adult" which could affect educational content, or content not approrpriate for minors -- which isn't always porn.
This is really falls into the broader category of censoring information which was previously publicly available. FTFA that's about 12 million sites apparently
Re: (Score:2)
The censorship thing isn't important. There are one or two other websites on the internet where you can get porn.
Third-party opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
The people with porn Tumblrs don't need to move, they just need an easy way to be found. Why not a retro, Yahoo-style directory? That's how lots of us found things before search engines got so good. Just start tumblrporn.com (lawyers permitting) and list all the blogs Yahoo doesn't want indexed, in categories. Sell ads. Profit!
Re: (Score:2)
The summary fails. Not a big surprise, FTFA.
"Now, around 12 million Tumblr blogs marked "adult" have been removed from Tumblr's internal search; "
Re:Not really... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only Yahoo's index, they're blocking indexing for Google and Bing also. Presumably via robots.txt or similar.
Re:Not really... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
A new use for magnet links, perhaps?
Re:Unsearchable != Censored (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't the result the same? Whether you take it down or hide it, people who want it can't find it.
Re:Unsearchable != Censored (Score:4, Insightful)
Host $5 website. Post redirect to tumblr. Let google index your $5 website.
Re: (Score:2)
Another everyone is a techie solution. I invite you to go visit some of the tumblr porn feeds. Go to the first 10 odd posts and see just how basic people's understandings of how even the idiot proof tumblr works.
That site is not made up of techies.
Re: (Score:2)
They didn't censor the content.....the just made it harder to find. Sensational headline.
yea.. so now you have to find some other blog that indexes them!
Re: (Score:3)
"...just made it harder to find"
Imagine trying to find information at the Public Library if the librarians suddenly got rid of the catalog. Sure, you could find the information, but at serious cost to the amount of time you have available to you, and thereby preventing you from spending that time looking up other information. What Yahoo! has done is worse--they essentially took books off the shelves and put them in the fucking basement. Define it as you may, this is censorship.
Corporate Mass-Media is doing
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Unsearchable != Censored (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Unsearchable != Censored (Score:4, Insightful)
Free speech is the right that no coercive force will be used to stop speech. It mostly applies to government, but could apply to anyone being physically threatened for what they say.
Censorship, as is commonly used, isn't limited to free speech, but also in instances where there was an implied liberty to speak one's mind. If a television show bleeps someone out, that's called "censorship". If a library removes a book over interest group pressure, that's "censorship". If a newspaper fires a columnist for something they wrote, that's "censorship" (if said newspaper refuses to print someone's letter to the editor, though, that's distinctly not censorship).
And if Tumblr is changing their policy to restrict more forms of speech, that would be censorship.
State-enforced curation and censorship (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You misunderstood the analogy (I think). "Free Speech Zones" [wikipedia.org] were nonsense created by the government intending to hide and push speech they didn't like to irrelevancy. The definition of censorship is not the point, but rather the act of pushing things off to a dark corner effectively stifling the content/speech is what is comparable here.
Re:Unsearchable != Censored (Score:5, Insightful)
To be classified as porn, two opinions have to be met: provokes a sexual response, and has no artistic merit.
Given that people have rather elaborate sexual fetishes, the first part can be (and is) used to classify practically any type of content as porn by at least someone. Not to mention that some people get a hardon from leather boots -- ergo leather boots are pornography? The second aspect is grossly subjective as well, as some people find art in the arrangement of trashcan contents.
Because of this, what get's classified as porn by one individual may not be classified as such by another. Strictly speaking, it becomes a scenario of "you can't look for this because I said so". Well, excuse me, but... I've outgrown the need for parenting on that level. We're basically all adults (or on the way of becoming one), and the world is ran by adults for adults. Subjecting all of us to childlike treatment is an insult.
Re: (Score:2)
To be classified as porn, two opinions have to be met: provokes a sexual response, and has no artistic merit.
Who says? Because that really sounds like the legal definition of obscenity according to the ruling in Miller v California:
The Miller test for obscenity includes the following criteria: (1) whether âthe average person, applying contemporary community standardsâ(TM) would find that the work, âtaken as a whole,â(TM) appeals to âprurient interestâ(TM) (2) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable sta
obscenity != porn (Score:2)
porn ... legal definition of obscenity
obscenity != porn
(or at least not necessarily)
Sure would be nice if the search engines let you choose which of the two (if any) you wanted filtered.
Re: (Score:2)
> obscenity != porn
That was my entire point. He was using the definition of one narrow thing to define something much more nebulous.
Was I really that unclear?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"To be classified as porn, two opinions have to be met: provokes a sexual response, and has no artistic merit."
No, that's the legal test for obscenity (not porn).
Porn is not a waste of space because... (Score:3)
Pornography is one of the MAIN driving forces behind much of what shapes the web today. It may be a waste of space in your opinion, but there are hundreds of advancements in web design, storage, streaming, and so on that would not be where they are today without Pornography.
If you don't like it, fine, but give it credit when it is due. Don't dismiss it.
Re: (Score:2)
Feh, I like porn as much as the next guy, but porn didn't get mankind to the moon or bring about world peace, and I fucking hate hyperbole...
Re:Unsearchable != Censored (Score:5, Funny)
Be fair - it's hard to think up cogent analogies for other situations when you're inside a welded box that's been encased in concrete.
I'm surprised he's got any Internet access in there at all, frankly. I'll have to figure out how that happened before the next time.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Bad Idea? (Score:4, Insightful)
I dont think somehow this is such a bad idea. I mean, they could have just deleted all those pages really
If nobody can find them what's the difference? Is this like getting out of a speeding ticket on a technicality?
Nobody is going to publish content to places no visitors will go. That defeats the whole point of publishing.
Re:Bad Idea? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Also, I had noticed that most Tumblr pages did not have any warning for adult content.
When are they going to start warning people about childish content?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
When are they going to start warning people about childish content?
But this is the default. Why should any warning be needed?
Re:Ten percent? My ass (Score:5, Informative)
It's not just blogs that feature posts tagged as "adult," it's the entirety of any blog tumblr has already flagged as NSFW or adult (the overall blog flag, not just posts). My personal photography blog has been branded as NSFW, as I sometimes post risque work. Basically, there will be no new discovery of my blog, since Tumblr's also blocked internal tag searches for such blogs as well (unless one is already following said blog). My rate of addition of new followers dropped precipitously after that. Bastards...like the occasional nipple is going to end the world.
Make your own red light district (Score:2)
Re:Make your own red light district (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should he? His art is his art.
Far better response would be to move all of it together to a better place, and choose some better social medium.
Re:Make your own red light district (Score:4, Informative)
No, there isn't a limit to "side blogs" as they're called (I run another one for information on my band's tour schedule). Replying to messages and following other blogs is limited to your primary blog, however.
As far as self-censoring the occasional photograph I take that might have boobs, the horse is already out of the barn. Someone at Tumblr made the call some time ago that my blog was NSFW (luckily, they recognized the difference between art and porn, and did not flag it as "adult." This NSFW flag can apparently never be changed (Tumblr has no mechanism for review or protestation of their classifications). I'd have to start completely over, and somehow convince my several thousand followers to go follow the new blog. At this point, I've got too much invested in "my brand" to deal with any of that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Per Tumble at http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/nsfw [tumblr.com]
NSFW blogs contain occasional nudity or mature/adult-oriented content.
Adult blogs contain substantial nudity or mature/adult-oriented content.
So yes, if your blog is primarily focused on adult content, then Tumbler will not help you advertise it to the world. Yahoo is trying very hard to shake the notion that Tumbler it is a haven for porn.
Personally, I don't use Tumbler and I don't care to waste my ti
Re: (Score:2)
It is censorship that is Constitutionally illegal in the United States.
Please, don't let little things like facts get in your way. The 1st amendment makes it illegal for the US Govt to suppress free speach, it does NOT prevent private entities from controlling content they publish. Yahoo is not doing anything illegal. It's fundamentally no different than Blockbuster deciding they won't stock X-Rated movies, or when 7-11 decided to stop selling Penthouse magazines, or Craigslist deciding to drop certain adult categories.
Don't like it? Then take your business elsewhere.