A better, more positive Tumblr

staff:

Since its founding in 2007, Tumblr has always been a place for wide open, creative self-expression at the heart of community and culture. To borrow from our founder David Karp, we’re proud to have inspired a generation of artists, writers, creators, curators, and crusaders to redefine our culture and to help empower individuality.

Over the past several months, and inspired by our storied past, we’ve given serious thought to who we want to be to our community moving forward and have been hard at work laying the foundation for a better Tumblr. We’ve realized that in order to continue to fulfill our promise and place in culture, especially as it evolves, we must change. Some of that change began with fostering more constructive dialogue among our community members. Today, we’re taking another step by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions).  

Let’s first be unequivocal about something that should not be confused with today’s policy change: posting anything that is harmful to minors, including child pornography, is abhorrent and has no place in our community. We’ve always had and always will have a zero tolerance policy for this type of content. To this end, we continuously invest in the enforcement of this policy, including industry-standard machine monitoring, a growing team of human moderators, and user tools that make it easy to report abuse. We also closely partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation, two invaluable organizations at the forefront of protecting our children from abuse, and through these partnerships we report violations of this policy to law enforcement authorities. We can never prevent all bad actors from attempting to abuse our platform, but we make it our highest priority to keep the community as safe as possible.

So what is changing?

Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr, and we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to reflect this policy change. We recognize Tumblr is also a place to speak freely about topics like art, sex positivity, your relationships, your sexuality, and your personal journey. We want to make sure that we continue to foster this type of diversity of expression in the community, so our new policy strives to strike a balance.

Why are we doing this?

It is our continued, humble aspiration that Tumblr be a safe place for creative expression, self-discovery, and a deep sense of community. As Tumblr continues to grow and evolve, and our understanding of our impact on our world becomes clearer, we have a responsibility to consider that impact across different age groups, demographics, cultures, and mindsets. We spent considerable time weighing the pros and cons of expression in the community that includes adult content. In doing so, it became clear that without this content we have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.

Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community.

So what’s next?

Starting December 17, 2018, we will begin enforcing this new policy. Community members with content that is no longer permitted on Tumblr will get a heads up from us in advance and steps they can take to appeal or preserve their content outside the community if they so choose. All changes won’t happen overnight as something of this complexity takes time.

Another thing, filtering this type of content versus say, a political protest with nudity or the statue of David, is not simple at scale. We’re relying on automated tools to identify adult content and humans to help train and keep our systems in check. We know there will be mistakes, but we’ve done our best to create and enforce a policy that acknowledges the breadth of expression we see in the community.

Most importantly, we’re going to be as transparent as possible with you about the decisions we’re making and resources available to you, including more detailed information, product enhancements, and more content moderators to interface directly with the community and content.

Like you, we love Tumblr and what it’s come to mean for millions of people around the world. Our actions are out of love and hope for our community. We won’t always get this right, especially in the beginning, but we are determined to make your experience a positive one.

Jeff D’Onofrio
CEO

GREAT News!

slumbermancer:

terratheterror:

slumbermancer:

terratheterror:

relishboi:

slumbermancer:

All gorillas can cast thunder magic now.

fucking finally

fyi: this is about ALL gorillas. if you’re gonna be near one, wear a rubber suit

PLEASE do not spread misinfo on my posts. 

Thunder magic is SOUND-based. It is NOT lightning magic. The rubber will not save you UNLESS it is designed to be sound-proof. 

Bring earplugs if you must, but please be aware this will hurt a gorilla’s feelings.

my apologies. i will refrain from assuming in the future.

y’all reblog this post with the right info!

Thank you for making things right.

briwhosaysni:

paralol:

naked-yogi:

naked-yogi:

As a society, we need to stop assuming that everyone enjoys drinking alcohol.

Lmao @ people who think I’m ridiculous for this post. I’m defensive because alcoholism is a huge issue. Everywhere in the world. Not to mention, I know it’s hard for some of you fucks to believe because of how widely accepted alcohol is, but there are a HUGE amount of people who have personal issues with alcohol. Either being recovering or previous alcoholics themselves, having a close personal tie with someone who abused alcohol, growing up in an unstable alcoholic household, having DEEPLY EMBEDDED family or spouse issues ALL because of alcohol. FUCK OFF with your me being so offended bullshit. Just assume people are sober till you find out on **their** terms they aren’t. Don’t expect that everyone likes to drink. Just like you wouldn’t expect that everyone likes to smoke cannabis, why would you do it with alcohol? (That’s rhetorical, it’s obviously because basically everyone assumes the entire world enjoys drinking). It’s not hard. Don’t offer people drinks unless you know they drink. BYE.

My favorite response when I tell people im straight edge is “what? You’ll never drink ever? Not one drink? I don’t believe you.”
And they’ll laugh
And I’ll look them straight in their fucking eye and tell them both my parents, and my aunt are recovering alcoholics. The rest of my family? Has never tried, nor ever got the chance to recover from their addiction. It’s by some miracle my mother is alive right now because she drank so much her liver stopped working. She was in a coma for two weeks. The doctors almost gave up on her.
My dad was an abusive drunk and then turned to hard drugs and that certainly didn’t help anything. My 3 younger sisters and I were almost put into foster care because of the both of them. I was only about 14 at the time. Making my youngest sister, 7. And because of all of this my family went bankrupt and we were almost homeless. All because of drinking 🙂

That usually shuts them up real fucking fast but, I shouldn’t have to explain that to anyone. I shouldn’t have to defend my (perfectly healthy!) choices!

If someone tells you they don’t drink, it’s for a fucking reason. Don’t be a dick. Casual alcoholism is a huge fucking problem in the world and its scary that most people can’t see it.

Also, some people just… don’t like drinking. There are people out there who just genuinely do not enjoy drinking alcohol. They don’t like the taste, they don’t like being impaired, and they have no desire to try to force themselves into enjoying it just because someone else thinks it’s “weird”.

There are all kinds of reasons that someone might not choose to drink, and all of those reasons are valid. There’s nothing wrong with it, it doesn’t mean they “can’t have fun”, and I guarantee you they’re not judging you for drinking. And if they are? It’s definitely not as much as they’re being judged for not drinking.

Don’t try to force people to drink. Don’t assume everyone likes to drink. And if someone says they don’t drink? Don’t force them to explain why just to get you to stop hounding them.

ordinaryredtail:

candiikismet:

cats-and-company:

Queen.

I always have to reboot this.

For anyone wondering, this is amazing enrichment for the animal and a great way to involve guests! The lions aren’t forced to play with the rope if they don’t want to, and these guys (and anyone else who tries this out) have an awesome close up and hands on experience, all without having to come in direct contact with the cat!

artekka:

whetstonefires:

the-real-seebs:

arjan-de-lumens:

titaniumelemental:

bookavid:

arkthepieking:

exomoon:

isashi-nigami:

ice-light-red:

windycityteacher:

burntcopper:

things english speakers know, but don’t know we know.

WOAH WHAT?

That is profound. I noticed this by accident when asked about adjectives by a Japanese student. She translated something from Japanese like “Brown big cat” and I corrected her. When she asked me why, I bluescreened.

What the fuck, English isn’t even my first language and yet I picked up on that. How the fuck. What the fuck.

Reasoning: It Just Sounds Right

Oooh, don’t like that. Nope, I do not even like that a little bit.  That’s parting the veil and looking at some forbidden fucking knowledge there.

How did I even learn this language wtf

I had to read “brown big cat” like three times before my brain stopped interpreting it as “big brown cat”

I’m kinda reading “brown big cat” as “brown (big cat)”, that is, a “big cat” – like a tiger or lion or other felid of similar size – that happens to be brown. “Big brown cat”, on the other hand, sounds more like a brown cat that’s just a bit bigger than a regular housecat – like a bobcat or a maine coon cat or something like that.

yeah, a brown big cat is almost certainly a puma. a big brown cat is probably a maine coon.

yeah, if you put the adjectives out of order you wind up implying a compound noun, which is presumably why we have this rule; we stripped out so much inflection over the centuries word order now dictates a huge amount of our grammar

Just looked up why we do this and one of the first lines in this article is, “Adjectives are where the elves of language both cheat and illumine reality.” so I know it’s a good article.

Things this article has taught me:

  • This same order of adjectives more or less applies to languages around the world

    “It’s possible that these elements of universal grammar clarify our thought in some way,” says Barbara Partee, a professor emeritus of linguistics and philosophy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Yet when the human race tacitly decided that shape words go before color words go before origin words, it left no record of its rationale.

  • One theory is that the more specific term always falls closer to the noun. But that doesn’t explain everything in adjective order.
  • Another theory is that as you get closer to the noun, you encounter adjectives that denote more innate properties. In general, nouns pick out the type of thing we’re talking about, and adjectives describe it,” Partee told me. She observes that the modifiers most likely to sit right next to nouns are the ones most inclined to serve as nouns in different contexts: Rubber duck. Stone wall.
  • Rules are made to be broken. Switching up the order of adjectives allows you to redistribute emphasis. (If you wish to buy the black small purse, not the gray one, for instance, you can communicate your priorities by placing color before size). 

    Scrambling the order of adjectives also helps authors achieve a sense of spontaneity, of improvising as they go. Wolfe discovers such a rhythm, a feeling-his-way quality, when he discusses his childhood recollection of “brown tired autumn earth” and a “flat moist plug of apple tobacco.”

  • Brain scans have discovered that your brain has to work harder to read adjectives in the “wrong” order.

TL;DR: No one knows why we do this adjective thing but it’s pretty hardwired in.