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Monday, December 17, 2018

The Great Tumblr Logoff

Starting at midnight this morning (Eastern Standard Time), countless Tumblr users logged off to avoid using Tumblr for at least 24 hours. Some will never return, at least not unless Tumblr revises their new restrictions, in effect as of today.

Tumblr hosts blogs and allows for easy following of other blogs and reblogging of entries. It was purchased by Yahoo years ago, and, as a result, is now part of Verizon's corporate empire. Probably for advertising purposes and to comply with new laws in various countries, a sweeping ban of material that could be considered "adult" was announced, even though people could already mark their blogs as being "Not Safe For Work" and thus people who didn't want to scroll through such content could avoid it.

Other services have been scrambling to handle the influx of new accounts of "Tumblr refugees" and at least one new service has started specifically to be a place to "rescue" Tumblr blogs by importing them.

For the time being, this blog's sister Tumblr blog, which, like this blog, is intentionally "Safe For Work," will continue on Tumblr as long as it is allowed. Unfortunately, it is likely that hundreds, if not thousands, of the over 11,000 followers we've connected with there will be gone. But we will stay there as long as we're helping people there.

It's sad to see communities, especially where marginalized and oppressed people have found friends and support and reassurance, broken up. Traffic at Tumblr will undoubtedly shrink significantly. Will enough new users join up to offset the defections? Probably not. It is also unlikely petitions and protests will get a full reversal of Tumblr's new terms, but perhaps there will be a revision.

A link to our Tumblr blog will be added to this post after the day of protest ends.
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1 comment:

  1. do not let corporates take your rights away.

    ReplyDelete

To prevent spam, comments will have to be approved, so your comment may not appear for several hours. Feedback is welcome, including disagreement. I only delete/reject/mark as spam: spam, vulgar or hateful attacks, repeated spouting of bigotry from the same person that does not add to the discussion, and the like. I will not reject comments based on disagreement, but if you don't think consenting adults should be free to love each other, then I do not consent to have you repeatedly spout hate on my blog without adding anything to the discourse.

If you want to write to me privately, then either contact me on Facebook, email me at fullmarriageequality at protonmail dot com, or tell me in your comment that you do NOT want it published. Otherwise, anything you write here is fair game to be used in a subsequent entry. If you want to be anonymous, that is fine.

IT IS OK TO TALK ABOUT SEX IN YOUR COMMENTS, BUT PLEASE CHOOSE YOUR WORDS CAREFULLY AS I WANT THIS BLOG TO BE AS "SAFE FOR WORK" AS POSSIBLE. If your comment includes graphic descriptions of activity involving minors, it's not going to get published.