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Tumblr Is Never Going Back To Porn (theverge.com) 99

Posted by BeauHD from the sorry-to-burst-your-bubble dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg would like you to please stop asking Tumblr to bring back porn because it isn't going to happen. After widespread and inaccurate speculation that Tumblr would lift its ban on adult content, Mullenweg posted a long explanation yesterday of why Tumblr will never go back to the old days. Or, in his words: "the casually porn-friendly era of the early internet is currently impossible." That doesn't mean Tumblr's policies will stay the same. Mullenweg has said before that Automattic (which bought Tumblr in 2019) wants to loosen the rules its old owner Verizon implemented in 2018, and he reiterated that here, echoing comments he made earlier this week. Verizon's ban "took out not only porn but also a ton of art and artists," Mullenweg wrote in his post. "This policy is currently still in place, though the Tumblr and Automattic teams are working to make it more open and common-sense." Tumblr is supposed to implement those policies soon, putting the site more in line with Automattic's WordPress.com blogging platform.

"That said, no modern internet service in 2022 can have the rules that Tumblr did in 2007," Mullenweg wrote, quoting Tumblr's old liberal policy slogan. (If you're wondering, it was "go nuts, show nuts.") "I agree with 'go nuts, show nuts' in principle, but the casually porn-friendly era of the early internet is currently impossible." On Tumblr, that era helped produce a lot of unique, often queer, blogs with sexual content. The 2018 ban changed the tenor of the site for good -- and this week, many users were enthusiastically but prematurely celebrating its end. Why is returning to that era impossible? For now, it's largely because of intermediaries that play a massive role in how people access the web. Payment processors have long been leery of adult content, and they've stepped up enforcement in recent years, in part because of concerns about child abuse and nonconsensual pornography. Apple's iOS App Store has been staunchly opposed to it since launch. And without those two pieces of infrastructure, running a for-profit site is incredibly difficult. "If Apple permanently banned Tumblr from the App Store, we'd probably have to shut the service down," Mullenweg noted. Some nonprofit sites that do allow things like explicit artwork -- primarily the Archive of Our Own fanworks site -- have remained persistently web-only despite years of requests for apps. [...]

If you reached this article through Twitter or Reddit, you might have a fairly obvious question right now, and Mullenweg raises it: why can both those platforms, fairly unusually for modern social networks, allow a lot of porn? "Ask Apple, because I don't know," says Mullenweg. He speculates that Tumblr and Reddit are both too big to ban -- although Apple has forced moderation changes even for giant services like Facebook. The overall upshot, to Mullenweg, is this: "If you wanted to start an adult social network in 2022, you'd need to be web-only on iOS and side-load on Android, take payment in crypto, have a way to convert crypto to fiat for business operations without being blocked, do a ton of work in age and identity verification and compliance so you don't go to jail, protect all of that identity information so you don't dox your users, and make a ton of money. I do hope that a dedicated service or company is started that will replace what people used to get from porn on Tumblr. It may already exist and I don't know about it. They'll have an uphill battle under current regimes, and if you think that's a bad thing please try to change the regimes. Don't attack companies following legal and business realities as they exist."
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Tumblr Is Never Going Back To Porn

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  • Tik Tok (Score:5, Funny)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Sunday October 02, 2022 @09:24AM (#62930715) Homepage Journal
    For each generation there is a platform for naked pictures. Older platforms naturally are going to become less about naked people. Facebook is your grandparents platform

    I had high hopes for Truth Social but all my uploads of Melania are deleted.

  • What is it about Puritansim? This seems to be mostly a US phenomenon: businesses like payment processors wanting to avoid doing business with porn sites. And yet, you can bet that every male executive, and many of the female ones, watch porn at home.

    Sex. It exists. These people need to get over their hypocrisy.

    That said, one does need to consider kids and teens. It would be good to limit their access, or at least prevent them from inadvertently seeing porn.

    • Re: Puritanism (Score:5, Insightful)

      by getuid() ( 1305889 ) on Sunday October 02, 2022 @09:51AM (#62930731)

      It would be good to limit their access, or at least prevent them from inadvertently seeing porn.

      Why?

      • It would be good to limit their access, or at least prevent them from inadvertently seeing porn.

        Why?

        I LOVE porn and have since I was a boy. However, I agree, you shouldn't be able to freely access it until you're an adult. It's a reasonable compromise. I was fine and handled it well, I am sure others didn't. Porn is very individual. It's not for everyone. I was watching rated R movies as a small child because I have older sisters. However, I get why people want you to wait until you're 18 to watch extreme violence or women's nipples without supervision. Parents know their kids beset and should dec

        • I understand your opinion, but you didn't give me a "why" ;-)

          • I understand your opinion, but you didn't give me a "why" ;-)

            The why is that parents, not the gov or a private company, should decide what's right for their child. This is a reasonable compromise. If you want your 16yo to have a porn library, get it for him/her. I don't have an opinion as to the correct age...I don't want to tell conservative parents their 16yo should have free access to all the porn they want. I simply defer to decision to the household. It's not for me to decide.

            • The why is that parents, not the gov or a private company, should decide what's right for their child. [...] I simply defer to decision to the household. It's not for me to decide.

              I agree with that.

              But the premise I was hooking into was "It would be good to limit their access, or at least prevent them from inadvertently seeing porn", not "parents should decide and permit if they see fit.

              But then the problem is also that of society: if your household decides that your 16yo can't see sex, and my household decides that my 14yo can, and your 16yo is friends with mine and comes over -- how are we going to handle that? Coversely: what if my household decides that my 14yo can't see guns, bu

        • However, I get why people want you to wait until you're 18 to watch extreme violence or women's nipples without supervision.

          My emphasis. Why do you, and why does Tumblr, make a distinction between nipples that are women's nipples and nipples that are not women's nipples?

          • My emphasis. Why do you, and why does Tumblr, make a distinction between nipples that are women's nipples and nipples that are not women's nipples?

            ..that we perceive them to have. I get hard as a rock seeing a woman's nipples and not a man's...so they have value to me. Do I want my 9yo son getting horny in front of me?...nope. I won't shame him, but I think everyone would rather avoid getting hard in front of their dad. Society has decided a woman's nipples have about 4000x the value of a man's. So society has decided they must be hidden.

            Should they? I don't know. I am guessing that's your fundamental question. I don't know. I don't hones

      • It would be good to limit their access, or at least prevent them from inadvertently seeing porn.

        Why?

        I think there are some legitimate reasons:

        1) The social interactions in porn videos aren't realistic. In particular the women are a lot more promiscuous and willing to engage in all sorts of behaviours.

        2) The kinds of sexual interactions from porn are very atypical.

        Now, that's perfectly fine for an adult with sexual experience who understands the difference between fantasy and reality. But for a child who doesn't know what's normal, or how the opposite gender actually behaves in those situations, it could c

        • Re: Puritanism (Score:4, Insightful)

          by getuid() ( 1305889 ) on Sunday October 02, 2022 @03:27PM (#62931341)

          The social interactions in porn videos aren't realistic.

          Social interactions in movies in general aren't realistic. Social interaction in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles, or The Transformers, or Batman, aren't realistic, either. Yet kids and especially teenagers watch those.

          In particular the women are a lot more promiscuous and willing to engage in all sorts of behaviours.

          Depends on the porn. Maybe 30 years ago. But nowadays, it's not that clearly cut.

          But even if it were, why is that an issue?

          I'm assuming here, but your implications seems to be: "young girls might take on the wrong role models." So... if that's the bar, why don't we apply the same standard to movies where police shoots first and asks questions later? War movies where people kill each other? That's not desirable role modeling by any stretch of the imagination, yet most of those are free for teenagers. And even for those that aren't, we generally don't make such a fuss if a kids sees an explosion in Die Hard or whatever passes entertainment these days.

          What's different about sex?

          The kinds of sexual interactions from porn are very atypical.

          Again, depends on the porn. There's also plenty of "vanilla" porn out there -- not everything has to involve horses and spitroasting. Why the blanket, and not just specific porn rating instead?

          But for a child who doesn't know what's normal, or how the opposite gender actually behaves in those situations, it could cause them to perceive some very unusual behaviour, even criminal behaviour, as normal.

          This is true for every kind of information that's offered without any kind of guidance. Drawing a gun at a person, even a bad guy, is criminal behavior. Why draw the line at porn? And wouldn't the more logical approach be: offer better guidance?

          There's a lot of ways for kids to discover appropriate sexual behaviour, I don't think porn is one of them.

          How?

          And please don't get stuck at "but the sex education classes", because more often that not, they're prude and the overwhelming majority can essentially be paraphrased "now that you know how it's done, don't do it." And they don't even actually really show how to do it.

          And I'm pretty sure you don't mean "by having sexual interactions at an early age"... so, what's left there?

          • The social interactions in porn videos aren't realistic.

            Social interactions in movies in general aren't realistic. Social interaction in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles, or The Transformers, or Batman, aren't realistic, either. Yet kids and especially teenagers watch those.

            Sure, but kids either a) aren't expected to join in ninja fights, so the false expectations aren't a big deal, or b) they're touching on social situations the kids do experience, so they'll be able to understand the difference.

            In particular the women are a lot more promiscuous and willing to engage in all sorts of behaviours.

            Depends on the porn. Maybe 30 years ago. But nowadays, it's not that clearly cut.

            But even if it were, why is that an issue?

            I'm assuming here, but your implications seems to be: "young girls might take on the wrong role models."

            Well no, the problem is that young boys think that girls are going to act like they do in porn videos, they'll pressure girls to act that way when they don't want to, and they might engage in sexual harassment or even assault not realizing how inappropriate their behaviour is.

            I mean l [reddit.com]

            • Sure, but kids either a) aren't expected to join in ninja fights, so the false expectations aren't a big deal, or b) they're touching on social situations the kids do experience, so they'll be able to understand the difference.

              Those were just examples. It isn't about the ninja fighting experience, it's about the social queues you quoted. There's no lack of adverse input in teaching kids as it is, yet kids are pretty resilient to that, given proper direction. I'm not actually arguing that "vanilla" action movies should be rated 18 and above. Kids can pretty much understand the difference between fiction and reality, and what's appropriate in real life versus what the silverscreen will show you.

              But sex is no different. We're talkin

              • So where is the difference?

                I'll help you out: when you peel away all excuses, all that remains is in itself a puritanical line of reasoning. That's the only reason why "all porn is ok magically OK unsurpervised at 18, but not 16 under any circumstances" that remains standing.

                18 is a magic line we've drawn for a billion things. Heavy porn consumption at 18 is probably a bad idea for your sexual development, but no one here is suggesting to ban is.

                There's conversation between peers and near peers, stuff they glean from adults in their life, and there's tamer non-porn content.

                That's tautological -- they can't learn about sex from their peers who also don't know about sex. And "glean from adults" is pretty much an admission of defeat: "we're adamant they shouldn't see it, but yeah, they should know about this, so we hope they sneak a peek here and there."

                I'm basically describing what's happened for thousands of years before porn (outside of some bouts of actual puritanism starting in the middle ages). Kids have always been introduced to sex in a controlled manner by older generations.

                For instance, Skyfall was PG-13 (even with a sexual assault) so they can get exposed to sexual content in contexts they're more familiar with.

                Did you just say that watching a sexual assault scene in a movie is a better way to learn about sex than watching, say, an amateur vanilla homemade sex tape on Pornhub? Because they're "more familiar with" the context of... a secret agent running around and killing people? Do you really want to hold on to that argument? ;-)

                I don't want to get into that argument if you keep trying to miss the point.

                First, it's really easy to g

          • gerund, I agree with you

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Why?

          I think there are some legitimate reasons:

          1) The social interactions in porn videos aren't realistic. In particular the women are a lot more promiscuous and willing to engage in all sorts of behaviours.

          2) The kinds of sexual interactions from porn are very atypical.

          So? That is true for a ton of stuff on TV or YouTube or TikTok. Suppression is not the answer, in particular because it does not work and cannot work. What you need to do is _explain_ this to your children. If you have children, you have a bit of an idea about sex in the real world, right? Yes, that may mean having a not so comfortable talk (for you) with your kids, but you need to do it.

    • What is it about Puritansim? This seems to be mostly a US phenomenon: businesses like payment processors wanting to avoid doing business with porn sites.

      Puritansim is the worst of all of the sequels/followers-on to SimCity. There are almost no features, yet somehow the load times are still tragically long.

      This is absolutely not a US-only phenomenon, though. I only know for certain that it also happens in the UK, where there is a thriving market for "alternative" and "adult" payment processors... but there's plenty of parts of the world where pornography is only sort of legal, and even a few where it is not legal at all...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by splutty ( 43475 )

        Porn in the UK used to be 100% illegal until not so long ago, so yeah. They've come some way since then, but basically the UK is still far more puritan than the US currently.

        • but basically the UK is still far more puritan than the US currently.

          Most of us haven't lived in the UK and don't know what you mean. Why is the UK more puritanical? (serious, not rhetorical, question)

    • Re: Puritanism (Score:2, Interesting)

      by choko ( 44196 )

      It's not puritanism. Stop engaging in dated stereotypes. Payment processors were fine with pornhub before a bunch of underage and non-consential material was discovered. Would you want to do business with that? I certainly wouldn't and it's not an issue of puritanism, unless your idea of puritanism is not wanting to support victimization porn.

      • Re: Puritanism (Score:5, Insightful)

        by splutty ( 43475 ) on Sunday October 02, 2022 @10:04AM (#62930747)

        It should not be any of the payment processor's business what a company uses it for, in a normal situation.

        But apparently it's now common practice to sue the payment processor if you can't sue whatever site makes use of the payment processor.

        So their self censorship takes the wide angle approach, which I can understand, but that's not particularly their fault.

      • I think we should let censorship up to government and when companies get to the size such as Mastercard/Visa/Apple/Google they should not have much of a choice of who they do business with. Duopolies need to be regulated as monopolies, voting with feet doesn't work with such a small set of choices.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          Mastercard and Visa are totally different then Google and Apple, Does Apple even deny anyone the ability to buy their hardware besides who the government orders them not to sell to and does Google deny anyone the use of their search engine?
          Mastercard and Visa are basically infrastructure and I agree that anyone who can pay should have access to Google Fibre, assuming it is available but otherwise neither Google or Apple are infrastructure unless you consider their browsers as infrastructure and they're free

          • The Android/iOS stores are infrastructure.

            Apple denying Tumblr access to their appstore would make their business model commercially un-viable, so they had to comply with extra-legal censorship. This is not much different from Mastercard/Visa using their duopoly power for access to financial services for extra-legal censorship.

      • You are completely wrong there about it not being Puritanism and how there was tons of CSAM on PornHub. That was a. Lie made up by anti-porn/anti-sex work religious non profits like Exodus Cry. I have done a lot of research and advocacy about this. I suggest you look at @stopexoduscry1 and my main, @sxyalicer0se90 on Twitter to learn more. MasterCard & Visa weâ(TM)re pressured by NCOSE & their âoepartner in crimeâ, Exodus Cry, to stop doing business with PornHub. But now they don
    • It is not Puritanism. Tammie is threatened by all the pretty young girls that were on Tumblr. So she put a stop to it.

    • Re:Puritanism (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Sunday October 02, 2022 @10:46AM (#62930849) Journal

      I'll say it again. Demand Congress stop payment processors from blocking legal, if unsavory, businesses.

      Corporations become so large everything depends on them, and then they abuse that dominance. Congress loves to kick them in the nuts in other circumstances.

      If you make a market in the electronic transfer of US dollars, which are good for all debts, public and private, you have to provide service for all of it.

      Like a gas company refusing to sell gas to trucks shipping Playboys.

      • In this case the problem was Apple though.

        In retrospect Tumblr should have gone the Epic way, first take it public, then threaten to sue (for Apple being an illegal trust, abusing monopoly power to play favourites, Twitter mainly). They thought they could go mainstream by dumping porn and thought Apple was as good an excuse as any, instead they lost a profitable niche.

    • Re:Puritanism (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 ) on Sunday October 02, 2022 @11:08AM (#62930887) Homepage Journal

      Puritanism isn't just US and it obviously has been around for a while. It goes way back. The leaders of ancient history observed that the phenomenon of marriage and family created social and economic stability. It ensured steady population growth and it ensured that people (mostly the men) were "over a barrel" to support those families, and hence would accept awful working conditions and "put up with it."

      There is no denying that it worked, but in order for it to work one important element was that the male sex drive (being, as it is, quite a powerful motivator under normal circumstances) needed to be used to push men into these commitments. Marriage needed to be the only option for sexual release. So, puritanism was the means of social-engineering this effect.

      Porn is a direct violation of this, since it provides a means of sexual gratification that involves no mating-competition or commitment at all. So, it ruins everything. So, those who want everything to be nice and stable demand that it be thwarted. They don't care in the slightest how unnatural it may force your life to be, nor how difficult, because they don't benefit from those things. They only benefit from your compliance, which they try to force.

      It is quite clear that this approach isn't working in the modern day. We still have some hold-outs causing friction. In my opinion, if the goal is to strengthen and encourage the institution of marriage and family, the first thing we need to do is remove the utterly ruinous consequences that divorce brings to any male who would be in the provider role. The threat of going from financially-stable to indentured servant just because your wife changes her mind is a tremendous barrier to the enterprise, and it is simply unfair.

      • Re:Puritanism (Score:4, Insightful)

        by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Sunday October 02, 2022 @11:56AM (#62930977) Journal

        If sex is the only thing you get out of a relationship, then, well then you suck at relationships. Or possibly have never experienced one. Even if you're horniest man alive, you can't actually spend all that much time humping. The vast majority of relationship stuff is not sex. And porn isn't the inverse of sex or relationships, as evidenced by the massive surge in the dating industry and porn at the same time both coincident with the internet.

        They don't care in the slightest how unnatural

        More or less everything we do these days is unnatural. Washing daily? Unnatural. Eating farmed food? Unnatural. Living in houses? Unnatural. Sanitation? Very unnatural.

        the first thing we need to do is remove the utterly ruinous consequences that divorce brings to any male who would be in the provider role.

        If salaries were equal this would be much less of a problem. But don't pretend that staying at home and raising kids is valueless just because you're not employed.

        • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

          by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 )

          Your reading comprehension skills need work.

          I didn't say that sex was "the only thing a man gets out of a relationship." Nor does what I said imply that. I said that it was a powerful motivator, and that the puritans of old sought to use it to motivate men into commitments. That statement says *nothing* about other motivators or other benefits of the marriage, and nothing about any other kind of relationship.

          I also didn't say that porn was the inverse of sex or relationships. Again you failed to underst

          • A stay-at-home parent who decides to abandon their spouse should not be entitled to continue living as a stay-at-home parent, nor should they be entitled to enormous amounts of their spouse's earnings and future income

            The stay at home parent gives up career advancement as part of the deal. One person works and advances their career, the other does not but takes on the load of childcare. What you propose is that the stay at home person get no compensation for the future earnings they gave up as part of the d

            • That is a misrepresentation. In the modern day, most parents must both work in order to make ends meet. The mere option to be a stay-at-home parent is a luxury afforded by marrying someone who earns enough to afford to pay for a stay-at-home parent.

              No-one is forced to "give up their career." They choose to not work, when they could instead work like most people have to. The only reason they have the option to do this is because of the wealth of their spouse.

              So, for a wealthy person, marrying a spouse wh

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          If salaries were equal this would be much less of a problem. But don't pretend that staying at home and raising kids is valueless just because you're not employed.

          These days salaries _are_ equal for equal work. Oh, not quite, there are several fields and geographical areas where women make more.

      • So it's an articulate post and almost fooled me. I had to really parse your words to see your hostility towards women. If you think you're "over a barrel" to support your family and your complaint is the financial penalties of divorce (easily solved by a prenup), you have some severe issues, my friend.

        Women aren't the problem. You are. I'm sorry you went through whatever ruined you as a person.

        I started reading your post and thinking you were an angry misogynist, if not incel...but then on second

        • So, hang on. I never said that *I* was over a barrel, nor would be if I got married. I was talking about the situation in ancient times when Puritanism was the norm. Your "parsing" is actually a "reading in" to what I said, many things that I did not say, so you could then hurl insults and mockery thinly veiled as sympathy.

          Nor did I ever say or imply that women were the problem. The only one who brought that up is you. My topics were puritanism, motivation for it, and problems with divorce law. And th

      • Brain-Fu is on the right track. I would add that, when it's considered a grave sin to have sex (aka consummating a consensual love relationship) outside of a marriage, and even masturbation is frowned upon (you'll be shamed and punished, even if it's technically legal), then people who are raised without knowing all of their options will be incentivized to marry. And if the only way to be married is by a church, and that church only marries couples who have demonstrated living my their standards (and tithin

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Puritanism is part of a fcuking business model.

          It is. And as we are currently observing the extremely bad effects of overpopulation, the ones with that business model turn out to be an evil death-cult. Not that this surprises anybody that is able to see actual reality.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        It ensured steady population growth

        Ah. So basically the thing that has lead us to a very real threat of species extinction. I fail to see anything good about it these days.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      VISA is afraid of cosplay vampires. That's how stupid the whole ordeal is.
      If you want to operate a site that deals with porn, they make no distinction between drawing boobs on paper, and taking a selfie. They ask for egregiously stupid compliance data for completely fictional non-existing people, and if they aren't perfectly human-looking, you get told it's forbidden.

      What needs to come down the pipe is that payment processors can not forbid anything that is legal. Because what's happening is that VISA makes

    • The US is hardly the worst in terms of Puritanism. If you think so, I’d like to introduce you any middle eastern or predominantly catholic country. They’ll put the US to absolute shame. Hehe see what I did there?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Yes to most of this. But:

      That said, one does need to consider kids and teens. It would be good to limit their access, or at least prevent them from inadvertently seeing porn.

      Not really. If they are too young, they turn away with "Gross!". If they are old enough, then they are old enough. There is no scientifically sound evidence that porn is harmful to children or teenagers. There is a growing body of indication that it is not or not more harmful than regular, not age-restricted advertising (bad body images, etc.). Basically it is just the religious nuts and other puritan morons trying to keep some censorship in place. The one thing you need to do as a

    • If people won't give you $$$$ for naked people, then they're hypocrites, right ?

  • Queer and kink communities will never be back then (Score:5, Informative)

    by slaker ( 53818 ) on Sunday October 02, 2022 @10:05AM (#62930753)

    A friend of mine had a Tumblr with about 140,000 subscribers. She had a particular niche kink and followers all over the world. Her blog wasn't porn in and of itself, but some of the stuff she'd reblog definitely go caught in the great purge. The writing was on the wall, and her community just disappeared. There wasn't time to coordinate new landing place, with different tumblr clones springing up constantly. These days she has maybe 2500 followers on whichever one she wound up using. It's sad, really.

    Reddit and Twitter are shitty replacements for various reasons. Those communities aren't built around the ability to find like-minded people in the same way. In a very real way, losing adult content erased these groups of people who really spent all of the 2010s finding one another.

    • Just out of curiosity did your friend try moving to OnlyFans?

      The thing about OnlyFans that makes me think not, is that it seems just for striaght-up porn, where Tumblr might have some porn like content, but a lot of it was more artistic.

    • The king community is won't be but the queer communities didn't go anywhere.

      Don't understand why people can't understand that being queer isn't any more sexual than being cis. The classic meme is that nobody sees anything sexual about a prince kissing a princess but make it two princesses or two princes and suddenly it's a porn.

      I mean I kind of get it it's political and it's being used as a wedge issue by the American right wing to get us all punching down against an out group. But I'm not sure why
  • Tumblr is full of porn.
  • The author of the WordPress Gutenberg plugin does not like porn, and is also sucking Mullenweg's dick. There has not been a single sensible business decision out of Automattic since it started. This is complete BS. It is not Apple. It is Tammy.

  • US subcultures are mostly Puritanical in practice (Score:3)

    by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Sunday October 02, 2022 @10:32AM (#62930811)

    The American public are an angry, censorious lot in public (their search histories show otherwise in private) so porn is more wisely hosted offshore.

    • Re:US subcultures are mostly Puritanical in practi (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TheGratefulNet ( 143330 ) on Sunday October 02, 2022 @03:24PM (#62931325)

      you are, in fact, referring to the subgroup known as republicans.

      they are the ones yelling for censorship and only want to watch/listen to faux news sources.

      the only thing they have in their lives is to hate the 'others'.

      this is your source of problems in the US. repubs that have ruined most things for the rest of us.

      • Re:US subcultures are mostly Puritanical in practi (Score:4, Interesting)

        by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday October 02, 2022 @07:43PM (#62931771)

        you are, in fact, referring to the subgroup known as republicans.

        [...]

        the only thing they have in their lives is to hate the 'others'.

        These days, that is pretty much all that keeps them going.

        There are no so-called "conservative" values to be found with these people. Truth? Nope. Integrity? What is that? Honor? We need not stinking honor! Rule of law? Not for us! And so on.
        This is just a wild horde now that wants to essentially kill anybody not in their in-group. Much like some other political movements in history. Whenever they got power, it was an unabashed catastrophe. Of course, the followers that made it all possible, typically deny any responsibility later, also see above.

  • WTF is the matter with iOS users? (Score:3)

    by Mononymous ( 6156676 ) on Sunday October 02, 2022 @10:36AM (#62930821)

    "If Apple permanently banned Tumblr from the App Store, we'd probably have to shut the service down," Mullenweg noted.

    The only conclusion I can draw from this is that iOS users don't use the web browser.

    • And apps that are essentially just the website are not allowed in the app store from normal independent developers. But apple allows the big sites to do it, I suspect just to spite all the small developers, they love to show how little they value them.

    • That was the whole point of the web browser. A general purpose application, as opposed to specialized apps, to provide any interface you like. It had massively grown since just rendering general descriptions of display in whatever the local paradigm was.

      Personally I hate custom apps, and am disgusted at links opening the app instead of a new window in the browser.

      No, ma'am. It is not "better in the app". Anyone who has ever tried CBS Big Brother live feeds knows the app is a clumsy interface and shadow

    • >The only conclusion I can draw from this is that iOS users don't use the web browser.

      The WWW was grandfathered in. If someone introduced it today they'd be cancelled by sundown.

    • The only conclusion I can draw from this is that iOS users don't use the web browser.

      It's because the web browser is Safari, and it sucks. Which is ironic, since the original vision was that all of the apps would be web apps, presented through the browser. But then Apple figured out there would be no reason to hand them money for apps if you could get the same shitty experience by going to a website, and the rest is happening.

  • Tumblr could conceivably still do it, though it would surely be a huge hassle.

    I've got a small startup which is trying this, though it is closer to Instagram than Tumblr.

    https://kinkykin.com/ [kinkykin.com]

    > you'd need to be web-only on iOS and side-load on Android

    Our mobile app is a progressive web app, this avoids the Apple/Google gatekeepers entirely. It has notifications and a home screen icon...what more do you need? Though, notifications only work on iOS 16+.

    > take payment in crypto

    This is the crux. We are ad-

  • That is a load of crap (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Sunday October 02, 2022 @10:54AM (#62930857)

    "That said, no modern internet service in 2022 can have the rules that Tumblr did in 2007"

    That is a load of crap and he knows it. There's nothing fundamentally different to the modern age and Tumblr IN 2017. Talking about 2007 is some kind of bullshit distraction from the fact that Tumblr had no issues with content only a couple of years ago, and when they banned content alternate sites popped up without issue and continue to operate to this day. e.g. BDSMlr (obviously NSFW, though no porn on the login landing page) [bdsmlr.com].

    He's making up horseshit excuses. Speaking of horseshit excuses:
    Apple's iOS App Store has been staunchly opposed to it since launch. - Yeah nah, Apple and Android both had a Tumblr app in 2017. It was great for scrolling through porn. Twitter, and Reddit are too. He raises the point in his comments that just shows he is actually clueless about how the internet works.

  • Because women, not children (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The fundamental opposition to porn comes from women, not because it can hurt children, but because it is competition, diluting their power.

  • I am baffled as to why they don't allow porn. Is there any other point to tumblr? Tumblr without porn is like a nightclub without booze. What's the point? What do they offer that is remotely better than any competitor?

    • The only other major content was people LARPing mental illnesses. It was a bizarre competition to see who could be the most oppressed. The 'headmates' phenomenon was most disturbing - pretending one had a selection of personalities living like a sitcom in one's head. Unsurprisingly, personal pronouns were big on Tumblr long before normal people ever encountered the nonsense.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        The 'headmates' phenomenon was most disturbing - pretending one had a selection of personalities living like a sitcom in one's head.

        What are people who actually have multiple personality disorder* supposed to do? Lie to readers by denying the existence of all but one headmate?

        * Names for the condition vary from person to person.

        • Seek medical help. Anybody with more than a passing familiarity with schizophrenia knows it's not what Tumblrinas were exhibiting. This and related conditions aren't fun. You don't have Doctor Who and Loki taking turns to 'front', always humorously bickering between themselves. It is instead a living hell, one these people mock so they can feel special.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tepples ( 727027 )

            Anybody with more than a passing familiarity with schizophrenia knows it's not what Tumblrinas were exhibiting.

            I'm aware of that. Schizophrenia and MPD are different conditions [adamfout.com].

            • Tumblerinas acted out both. Schizophrenia in relation to auditory hallucinations in the form of voices, and MPD particularly in relation to 'fronting'.

              What's your point? Are you suggesting these people weren't playacting, instead were an unusual cluster of rare conditions, MPD even being debated as to whether it exists?

              • Are you suggesting these people weren't playacting

                Correct.

                I think I have three points:
                1. If someone finds MPD to be a useful model for their lived experiences, and there are no signs of malingering (feigning illness for personal gain), it doesn't hurt to give them the benefit of the doubt.
                2. Seeking medical help for a psychiatric condition tends to be cost-prohibitive in Tumblr's and Slashdot's home country.
                3. Some people's MPD makes them better at their job or hobby, and forcing the headmates/alters to "integrate" has been seen on occasion to cause people

  • Asking for a naughty friend, of course.

  • People still use Tumbler?
  • They are continuing to find ways to make things worse.
    The 50s weren't all that great and the church is not that great of an organization. Seen all the stuff about priest molesting kids?

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