You know who did really nice online ads, that I have actually clicked on repeatedly?
Project Wonderful.
They shut down this last summer.
Verizon takes a huge writedown on its creepily named Oath brand, the one that runs yahoo, HuffPo, tumblr et al. Goes from $4.8 billion to $200 million. That’s their estimate of the value of the future profit stream. Wholly crap.
tumblr alone supposed had 555 million monthly visitors in Jan 2016.
…Holy shit. That’s a 96% markdown. That’s insane.
I see what you did there.
Neither does Facebook, despite claiming they do. People that I want to find my not-real-name in FB have zero problem finding it; neither did ever anybody to whom I gave my skype name or my ICQ number. OTOH, people trying to find my actual real name on Facebook can’t: Facebook naming policies do not accept my real name as being a valid name.
With an appreciation and understanding that ‘virtual communities’ are real communities and this loss is real, I have a few . . . less-than-sympathetic responses.
-If there is really a commercially viable sex industry that depends on some kind of online platform, why doesn’t someone go build it? Tumblr doesn’t want the revenue, but someone else does, surely.
-Any community that depends on a single, for-profit company (particularly one whose mission is not aligned with that of the community) should know that its days are numbered.
-The Tumblr corner of the sex-worker industry was made possible by certain features/policies at Tumblr. They’ve changed. Conditions, resources, and needs change in industries all the time. I’m not sure how this is any different. The advent of Tumblr was a change. So is the demise of Tumblr.
. . . sorry, but I don’t get this. Sex work is a choice, not a requirement. Industries change all the time. Continuing to run a business in an unsafe environment is a choice. If you believe that Tumblr’s porn ban is literally going to kill you, then I suggest, frankly, that you have deeper personal issues to work out. If I thought my career was a literal death sentence, I’d change careers. People change careers all the time. It’s not always fun, but we do it.
I feel like a lot of the discussion and feelings around sex work conflates career choices with unchangeable-identity in a way that makes it impossible for people to get proper perspective on the options open to them.
Are we talking about the future of an industry? Of a community?
Sex work should be safe work, but if there are those who feel they have no choice but to continue working in unsafe conditions, then we should explore the economic/sociological issues that keep those people trapped in a self-destructive line of work. (note, I’m not saying to focus on one and ignore the other. Let’s make sex work safe, and make sure that people are not in the industry (or any other industry, frankly) because they have no other choice).
Various people are going and building it. Cumblr, BDSMlr, Sharesome, et cetera. The problem with each of those sites (other than their newness and the fact that they haven’t quite gotten the kinks out yet - I still can’t upload any of my audio or multi-picture posts to BDSMlr) is that they’re explicitly porn-focused. Whereas Tumblr is not. And that’s actually a really important distinction.
The culture surrounding porn and sex work on Tumblr emerged organically, in a field largely built by and for women. It humanized content creators in a way that’s simply impossible on sites like Pornhub, because you got to know them as people. It’s not just porn, it’s their personal blog, to talk about whatever they want whenever they want, to intermingle with people who aren’t just there for porn, and to treat porn as just part of life, rather than this distinct “other” thing that needs to be permanently separated from all things pure and normal. Hell, my blog is half sexy stuff, half rationalist/social justice ranting. Y’think anyone on Pornhub is interested in Sasha Grey’s thoughts on dehumanization in pornography, or Asa Akira’s hilarious tweets? They’re just there to get their rocks off in an environment designed by and for cishet men who want to masturbate.
The closest thing to that currently is Reddit, but Reddit really isn’t a blogging platform, so… eh.
That’s “any community on any website”. Like, y’know, us. Case in point. And I suppose if the dope were to suddenly die, we’d all up roots, and there’d be some discussion about where we would all go. But we’re small enough and we have an actual leadership structure to the point where we don’t have coordination problems figuring out where to go, and you could in theory just throw up a MyBB board on a shared web host and have that work. This does not extrapolate well. There is a lot of communities like that. The fact that, at any time, say, WotC could crumble and pull the rug out from under the competitive Magic: The Gathering community wouldn’t make it any less of a piss-take if Hasbro suddenly decided to shutter them, and people would have every right to be pissed off.
It’s a change, sure. A really lousy change that’s hard to adapt to and will take time, energy, coordination, and often money.
This is a very fair critique, IMHO.
Here is a compilation of posts tagged as pr)n by tumblr’s algorithm. SFW
Here are a list of alleged alternatives to Tumblr. Found online: I’m not familiar with all of them.
DeviantArt (though I understand they have content restrictions. I.e. they are about artwork, not photography, AFAIK)
Minds
Pillowfort
Pornhub (discussed above)
sharesome
Over at 4chan, they are moving their SFW stuff to 4channel.org. That seems like a reasonable way of doing things.
As for the ad-dollar issue, I wish Flashblock was up and running. I don’t mind static ads without obnoxious ad copy.
You seem to be making some rather incorrect assumptions.
The people who we talk about losing their lives are people who can’t do other kinds of work, or at least can’t make enough money to get by on other types of work. They found a safe place to do business online that allows them to have a life without the need of having a pimp or being out on the street.
We’re talking people who are disabled, who have mental disorders, who have physical disorders, and other such that makes the stereotypical workday impossible. We’re not talking about the people who have skills to do other jobs but prefer sex work.
Additionally, even if we aren’t talking about those people, the idea that it’s hard but possible to simply up and change careers is just out of touch. If that were the case, we wouldn’t have the working class problem that we have. Why would coal workers want to keep on working at failing coal plants if they could afford to get trained in another job? That’s the argument you are making: that people can just up and choose.
In fact, most of your post sounds like right wing logic. You assume that capitalism just works. That, when there is a hole in the market, the guiding hand will come in and fill it in. But reality is far more messy than that. It doesn’t always happen, and, when it does, it’s at a higher systemic level, not at the individual or group level.
You neglect the facts on the ground. For example, why do you think Verizon would think that they need to have Tumblr be work-safe? Because all the online companies that allow you to make money are trending in that direction. Advertisers are becoming more squeamish about NSFW content, because they want to avoid controversy. Patreon has been not allowing NSFW content. Paypal has been pulling funding from places. YouTube is demonetizing NSFW and controversial content.
There is no inherent reason that any of them will decide “I want to take a gamble and be the one who still supports NSFW stuff.” There’s no guarantee that any company will come in and fill the gap, due to the huge startup costs causing so much inertia. Even if it eventually does happen, a lot of people will hurt in the mean time.
You also neglect the big push of traditional media companies to undermine online companies because they can’t seem to shift into online content and do as well. It’s a classic problem with capitalism: the old guards struggle to hold on as long as they can, taking out others with them. Sure, eventually it tends to work out, but again, a lot of people hurt in the mean time.
And then there’s just how you analyze everything as having to do with money. Apparently having an LGBT, sex positive community only has value if it makes companies money. Why in the world should that be? Sometimes capitalism screws society over, hurting what it actually needs because it is only interested in profit. There are tons of very helpful things that should exist, but capitalism keeps away–including your issue with people who don’t want to do sex work being able to not do sex work: capitalism doesn’t necessarily give them an option.
That said, the destruction of a community can actually harm business. Even if other sites pick up the slack, you’ve lost a built-in audience. The community–the network of people-- are now split up. Tumblr kept them all connected together. Sure, new connections will eventually form, but, again, that doesn’t help people in the meantime, or those who don’t ever recover.
I think all that’s left is about why we treat sex workers as a class. That’s easy: because they are discriminated against. Even you presume that being a sex worker when it is not your ideal job is worse than all other jobs. The majority of people have jobs that they would rather not have–why is sex work different?
Sex workers face a societal taboo that is unwarranted, created by the prudery of society that was historically fueled by misogyny. Based on your post, you’ll probably hate this word, but it’s entirely applicable: sexual taboos exist because of the patriarchy, of keeping women in their place. The reason we shame women who have sex outside of marriage is to keep them under control.
There are enough similarities that the fact that some sex workers choose to be in the industry is overwhelmed by the problems these groups share with other discriminated groups. If you want to get technical, it’s actually a form of classism.
I know my post is long and not really planned out. But I hope you will read it and understand why there is such a reason for sympathy in this case, and why this seems like such a huge wrong that will only harm the companies involved for making it. None of your reasons to withhold sympathy really hold up to scrutiny.
And don’t forget that non-porn related Tumblr is being attacked too, since the whole thing is automated. That’s what has the possibility of taking Tumblr down completely. But then there’s a huge amount of inertia for any new company to take it’s place. The whole thing is a catch 22 with social networks: no one wants to join unless there are people already there. That’s what happens when the social aspect is the product.
My brother says the porn bots are cleverly getting around the censor bots… by tagging their entries with “sfw”. :smack:
Deviantart is, sadly, not at all the same. Tumblr was perfect for me (and others I assume), in that I could go there with the confidence that I wouldn’t be completely lambasted by porn I had no desire to see. I chose who I followed and chose what I got exposed to. I could find all sorts of media based around my interests, and if some of that media included NSFW material, then that was my choice and I knew to expect that. Deviantart, you can NOT get away from it. Even with the mature filter on, you still get absolutely drowned in fetish porn that doesn’t count as ‘real porn’. Go look at the ‘top deviations’ with the mature filter on and see how long you go before you see foot fetish or fat fetish or some sort of MLP fetish art just right there in the middle of it all. I don’t want to see that shit and I have no way to filter it out.
I LIKE Tumblr’s layout. I LIKE the feed. I LIKE seeing thoughts and memes and random shit from people who have the same interests as me. And I LIKE knowing that if I happen across something NSFW on my feed it’s going to be something I LIKE. No other site has given me that freedom. As as been said before Tumblr feels SAFE. I don’t feel like I’m tiptoeing through some cishet male jerk off site, just to try and find something that interests me (NSFW or not).
I’ve looked at other sites, me and everyone I know/follow on Tumblr have. None of them give us what Tumblr has. And that’s what we’re upset about. People are leaving in droves and we’re going to lose touch with the people and communities we’ve grown close to. Ugh, I’m basically rambling at this point and I’m not even sure I’ve made any sense but I’m really upset about this. Even more so cause I know it’s inevitable and nothing can be done about it.
Closest thing I can think of is twitter. Which is different.
So… if I understand this correctly some like to only see the NSFW stuff that appeals to them, and not NSFW stuff that doesn’t. That seems fairly typical as a preference IMHO. But, correct me if I’m wrong, lots of people also like to see a mix of SFW and a little NSFW stuff in their feed, provided the latter is the sort of thing they are comfortable with.
Am I correct on this?
You say it better than I could. 
Yeah I’d say in a nutshell yeah. I mean, at least for me. I’m sure there’s people who enjoy Tumblr for different reasons but I feel like that’s a good representation for a lot of the users. And this is even more so true for people who are parts of fandoms, which I really think is what drives a lot of Tumblr. For me, scrolling through my feed, and seeing a random bit of slash art involving characters I love from whatever fandom is really enjoyable. It’s like a pleasant surprise lol Albeit one that I need to be careful of at work!
I don’t know if there will be anything to replace Tumblr. I know a lot of people are talking Twitter as being the closest thing but I’ve never really been able to get into it. And honestly, how long until it clamps down on this stuff? I’m getting really frustrated with the ‘purification’ of the internet. Because usually the sites that suffer are sites that cater to LGBTQ or women’s interests. Sites like pornhub aren’t ever going anywhere, which is fine, but at the same time…those kinds of sites are in vast majority geared towards male desires/tastes. There’s much less out there for people like me.
There is SOME hope for the new site pillowfort, as I’ve heard that name floating around but…there’s also some concerns about security given recent happenings. And right now they’re basically only pay to play, since they’re in development still. So basically, at this point we just can watch as the Tumblr that grew because users like us helped it grow is slowly phased out for Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.
I don’t know Minds nor sharesome. Pornhub as far as I know is only a MindGeek porn provider. I don’t think there are any kind of personnalisation or interaction going on there. Deviantart is entirely different. People do interact, but they don’t, say, talk about their day, share their feelings, pontificate about the proper way of living your kink life or whatever. It’s extremely centered about artistic creation and that’s pretty much the only thing people talk about. And by the way, there are lots of photographers there. In fact, a significant part of the photo content posted on Tumblr was stolen from DeviantArt, even though DeviantArt is on the overall much tamer than Tumblr was (for photography, I mean. For other kind of arts, it’s another matter entirely).
I registered on and visited Pillowfort. Its layout is very similar to Tumblr, and the general concept too. However, it’s by comparison extremely small. There are currently about 25 000 registered users. I looked into both the “BDSM” and “art” “communities” and they have some hundred members each. It’s not even remotely the same scale.
I also registered on and visited BDSMlr. The layout is essentially a copy/paste of Tumblr, and the content seems rather similar to what you’d find on Tumblr BDSM pages. However, as already pointed out, it’s all about not just NSFW content, but specifically BDSM content. It could satisfy people like me, and many people I interacted with who were pretty much solely interested in this aspect, but it’s obviously much more limitative. People who are mostly interested in raising chickens with a bit of NSFW content on the side will be out of luck.
In any case, I’m not so much bothered by not finding the same kind of content at this point, I might even completely give up the whole NSFW blog thing, and if I don’t Pillowfort or BDSMlr would probably both be good enough for me. I’m mostly pissed at all the existing content that will disappear and ties that will be severed.
Having checked Sharesome their “about” says :
So, this is apparently a platform specifically for sex workers and their customers, not similar to Tumblr. On top of which I noticed a very strange and unexpected requirement in their “terms and conditions” :
The reason why escapes me.
As a Rabbi I can say that this bit of preachiness makes you look like a putz.
Here is a list of NSFW Tumblr alternatives, both social networks and porn alternatives:
Well, for once, I’d agree with pretty much everything ** BigT** wrote, wrt both capitalism and sex workers.
Wait, you’re a Rabbi?
…
…Have you met Blalron?