Tuesday, July 2, 2019

Proof That Tumblr Is Anti-Lesbian

My blog "Women Loving Women" has been on Tumblr since May 3, 2016, and is fairly popular with 56K followers. Until Tumblr censorship on December 17, 2018, it had a mixture of NSFW and SFW posts. Since then, it has been strictly SFW. I delete any posts Tumblr flags. However, if you go to the blog URL bicurious-bisexual-lesbian.tumblr.com., it will isplay a message saying, "This Tumblr may contain sensitive media." This is a lie. There is no longer a single "adult content" post on the blog. So why is it still classified as "sexually explicit?"

After Verizon bought Yahoo )including Tumblr) in 2017, "Women  Loving Women" was classified as "sexually explicit" and removed from search results and blocked to the public. However, when Tumblr instituted censorship, the NSFW posts were hidden to the public and users in safe mode, and the blog was available to search results again.

On May 1, Tumblr sabotaged the blog. It was not only reclassified as "sexually explicit," removing it from search results, but I could not even access my own blog page and archives. Also, my avatar and blog header were disabled. As usual with Tumblr, there was no warning, notification, or explanation..

My support requests to at least restore my blog's functionality have been ignored, I still cannot access my own blog and archives, and my avatar and header will not display.

Since no one could see them anyway, I deleted all of the pre-December 17 flagged posts, and submitted another appeal. After two weeks, no response or action. The only conclusion I can draw is that lesbian content is considered "adult content" even if the women are clothed and not committing any sex act more than kissing.

When I deleted flagged posts, I noticed many that were designated "adult content with no appeal allowed" were of fully clothed women, some of whom were not even kissing. (This decision has to be made by human reviewers, not by censor bots.) Do you think a fully clothed male/female couple who were not even kissing would be labeled " sexually explicit?"I don't think so.

This is an examjple of a post thatt a human reviewer labeled "adult content with no appeal allowed." Yes, it's sexually suggestive, but do you think a male/female couple in a similar photo would be labeled "sexually explicit?" I really doubt it.

So is anti-lesbian bias Tumblr policy, or is it rogue employees acting on their own? If it is Tumblr policy, they will lie and say it isn't. If it's rogue employees, they obviously don't fear any consequences for their actions.

It's too bad that Verizon chose to trash Tumblr, which was one of the most popular websites in the world before Verizon go hold of it. Now that Tumblr has lost a third of its users, Verizon is apparently trying to sell it. Good luck with that. I hope Verizon's board holds its management team accountable for their monumental stupidity.




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh please.... it is an attempt to ban anything that could be "lewd", and the flagging is done by bots, NOT people. When the site's staff posts stuff on "pride month", they can post whatever, being privileged, as one might say. Nothing "anti-lesbian", just the removal of the freedom from the users to post lewd material of their own choosing. That would imply regular people have the cognitive abilities to decide what is "appropriate", and what is not. Only the staff and the bots have the privilege now. And the bots aren't perfect, far from it, as I have seen more cartoonish, fantasy art of imaginary characters..... as porn, not blocked.

Svetlana Ivanova said...

It doesn't seem as if you read the entire article or that you didn't understand it. The posts that are flagged with appeal allowed are done by bots. Many of those are reversed by staff. The posts that are flagged with no appeal allowed are done by staff. The bots did not even flag some of them. Many of my posts which were flagged were not "lewd." That's my complaint along with my blog being classified as "sexually explicit" when there are no flagged posts on the blog.

As for posting "pride" stuff, that's just virtue signaling, not to be taken seriously. What matters is what they do.