I wrote an incredibly long post on Dreamwidth about the Tumblr purges and what happens next! Here’s the first bit, which I’m quoting here as a little bit of a fannish history lesson for all you young’uns, probably it’ll get deleted, thanks Tumblr:
First: let me start off by saying that it is very probable that Tumblr will back out of this particular bad idea. They often do. The pattern of fannish archival catastrophes at the hand of corporations almost always has five stages: 1) a sale, or rumored sale, of the platform; 2) falling or nonexistent profits; 3) pressure from (pick at least one) governments, morality warriors, and/or advertisers/other corporate interests; 4) the actual fannish archival catastrophe, caused by a change in the TOS or in the enforcement of the TOS, which itself frequently comes in multiple stages; and 5) a second sale of the platform.
Strikethrough, for example, wasn’t a single terrible idea executed badly, it was at least two terrible ideas executed badly: first Strikethrough, which happened in May 2007; and then, following masses of outrage (particularly outrage from fans), some limited concessions from LJ management; followed by a second round of permanent suspensions conducted a little bit differently, a.k.a. Boldthrough, in August 2007. These tend to get lumped together in fannish memory, but I want people to remember that they were not a single event.
And those two events, themselves, are also not the whole story: Strikethrough itself followed on well over a year of rumors that LJ was changing its TOS/enforcement of its TOS, ever since LJ had been sold to SixApart in 2005, who were trying to monetize the site. Likewise, alongside those rumors, LJ’s adult content—which, unlike Tumblr, may actually have been predominately fannish, because I don’t think actual porn producers used LJ anywhere near as heavily as they use Tumblr—had been under continual attack from Christian pressure groups because it hosted material that they claimed was “harming children” [I can’t find a source on this, but I remember it very clearly—if anyone has a source, lmk in comments and I’ll link], what with all the fannish erotica with clear disclaimers on it that it was intended for adult audiences, frequently (as with pornish_pixies) posted in locked communities. There was, simultaneously, a lot of pressure being put on LiveJournal by the Russian government, because another group that heavily used LJ at the time was Russian political protestors. On top of that, there was a lot of rumor about LJ/SixApart’s advertisers getting antsy about blogs containing adult content [I can’t find a source on this either—if anyone has a source, lmk in comments and I’ll link].
So, in short, here is what happened to LJ: 1) LJ was sold to SixApart; 2) SixApart tried to monetize it; 3) SixApart got pressure from a) the Russian government, b) the Christian anti-porn police, and c) advertisers to bring its “adult content problem” under control; 4) LJ deleted a whole bunch of blogs, backed up and said “mea culpa”, and then… deleted a whole bunch of blogs; and 5) SixApart sold LJ to the Russians.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
Following this pattern, here is what I suspect is going to happen to Tumblr: 1) Tumblr was sold to Yahoo (now owned by Verizon); 2) Yahoo/Verizon tried to monetize it; 3) Yahoo/Verizon got pressure from a) various governments, including Indonesia and China, b) the anti-porn/anti-sex-work/anti-shipping moral purity police, and c) the Apple Store to bring its “adult content problem” under control; 4) starting earlier this year, Tumblr deleted a whole bunch of blogs, backed up and said “mea culpa”, and then… changed its TOS and started deleting content [← we’re here right now]; and 5) Verizon will sell Tumblr to ? ? ?
It’s possible that we’ll have another couple rounds in Step 4. It’s not like 2 rounds in Step 4 is magic, or something; my point is just: Tumblr has already backed down once. You see where that gets us (fucking nowhere, that’s where). That said? The death throes are going to take a while. I was still reluctantly cross-posting to LJ in 2015; as late as 2013, LJ was still a lot of fans’ primary home. Six full years after Strikethrough!! Six! Full! Years! After they started deleting our shit, and banning our friends!!! And in that six years, all that happened was LJ’s TOS got continually and aggressively more restrictive, while the Russians were banging up all the political dissenters whose content they’d purchased into jail.
My point, here, is just that we have been here before. Exactly here. We have done this before, exactly this. Tumblr may take a while to bleed out, and they may try to triage it, but the writing is, in fact, on the wall: Tumblr will throw us off whatever cliffs they need to to try and eke out a profit for the morons in Verizon’s boardroom; and in the end, our data’s going to get deleted, or it’s going to get sold, because that is just how these things go.
So we need to figure out where we go next.
Please read/reblog/reply—I really do want people to weigh in! I’m not promising to keep tracking this on Tumblr (come to DW, the water’s fine), but I do want to hear what people have to say.
Police officers are the one group of people who should not get to use the “not all of us are bad” defense.
Other privileged groups can at least argue that they don’t want to be held responsible for other people’s actions.
But the police are responsible for other people’s actions. It’s in their job description. They literally chose a job where they’re paid with tax money to keep people safe from criminals. If there’s a criminal among them, it’s literally their job to make sure that the criminal is held accountable. If they sit back and don’t care just because the bad cop is not them, then they’re failing at doing their jobs.
Every chapter. Every one shot. Every drabble. Every ficlet.
Whether it’s on a personal website, a blog, or an archive. Whether you’ve read
it a hundred times before or you’re reading it for the first time. Whether the
fic was posted years ago or minutes ago. Whether you sign your name or leave
your thoughts anonymously. Whether your comment is paragraphs in length or a
few short words. Comment on every fanfic you read and enjoy in the month of
January.
teachers, share the weird crap your kids have done!
I’m not a teacher (yet) but I do work with students and one of them had the nerve to look me dead in the eye and ask me “why would it be a bad idea for me to eat this entire marker?” They’re 11
An 4th grader asked for a high five by saying, “A little slappy to make daddy happy?”
I did not give him a high five.
A student during break had her head in her arms and was shaking a bit, so i asked the kid next to her whether she was laughing or crying and this 8 year old stared me in the eye deadpan and said “im crying on the inside”
Wait i take that back, I cant believe i forgot about the time i brought in a small stuffed octopus as a class mascot because why tf not. It was a class of high schoolers and i didnt imagine theyd actually care much, but one student snuck in a snack and gave it to the octopus as a tribute. Which led to other students doing the same thing, until every day there was a pile of of offerings to Fweej the Overseer, mostly consisting of things like string cheeses and small bags of chips, but sometimes there wouldd be a couple bucks in quarters, one kid brought in some giant pocky i think, and at one point there was a cold stone gift card. This stuffed octopus gained a cult following.
Later i brought in another stuffed octopus that looked exactly the same but bigger and told the class that Fweej the Overseer accepted their offerings and became stronger. These highschoolers lost their goddamn minds.
I recently had one of my second graders run up to me clutching a book and say “I’m reading a chapter book now!” in a really proud voice. I started to congratulate him on his accomplishment when he cut me off mid sentence to say “and I ate an entire sticky note!” before zooming off. Congrats, kid
ill be real im getting kinda really annoyed with people who are complaining about pillowfort features. pillowfort was not made to handle this much traffic right now. the mods are open about what the site can handle and that it is very heavily in early beta. people who seem confused about the fact that it isn’t Tumblr 2.0 right now are missing the point that it is UNDER DEVELOPMENT and it was nowhere near ready to accommodate tumblr’s policy announcements and the wave of panic and safe-guarding tactics.
take a deep breath, give em a donation and grab a link, and support PF so it can reach its fullest potential rather than ragging on features because it can’t immediately do what you want it to do.
konekorambles 