Plus ça change ...
... plus c'est la même chose.
I survived LJ's Strikethrough in 2007, Strikethrough 2: Electric Boogaloo in 2008 and TOSup in 2017 (not sure if that's the official name for it). I survived two (or was it three?) purges of FF.net. I survived losing my GeoCities website in 2009. I even survived JournalFen's robust servers. So, it's with a world-weary sigh and a strong sense of déjà vu that I note the Tumblr Purge of 2018.
To be honest, I hardly ever used my Tumblr account -- I disliked that the site made reblogging so easy and interacting with content creators so difficult -- but it's sad to see yet another platform succumb to poor management and knee-jerk reactions. I have no problem with the desire to keep child pornography off the web but it's ridiculous that a depiction of consensual adult sex or even a female nipple is seen as equally taboo. If only they felt the same way about graphic violence and hate speech ...
I'm very glad to see that Denise and Mark and various mods are making everyone feel welcome, and that guides for Tumblr refugees are already up. I have edited my interests to reflect my fandom coverage more accurately so if anyone actually wants to read my decades-old LOTR fics they can.
Related, but slightly off-topic -- I read an interesting article about Toxic Fandom on GeekDad a few weeks ago. After opening with some egregious examples of batshit craziness involving shippers and antishippers in the Voltron fandom, it goes on to look at the differences between opt-in platforms (LJ and DW, for example) and opt-out platforms (Tumblr, Instagram and probably Facebook and Twitter, not that I use them either). It's all connected with the increasing attitude (especially in the US but sadly not restricted to that country) that "I don't want to see that" automatically becomes "No one else should be allowed to see that". As various people have pointed out over the centuries, freedom of speech is not freedom from being offended.
I survived LJ's Strikethrough in 2007, Strikethrough 2: Electric Boogaloo in 2008 and TOSup in 2017 (not sure if that's the official name for it). I survived two (or was it three?) purges of FF.net. I survived losing my GeoCities website in 2009. I even survived JournalFen's robust servers. So, it's with a world-weary sigh and a strong sense of déjà vu that I note the Tumblr Purge of 2018.
To be honest, I hardly ever used my Tumblr account -- I disliked that the site made reblogging so easy and interacting with content creators so difficult -- but it's sad to see yet another platform succumb to poor management and knee-jerk reactions. I have no problem with the desire to keep child pornography off the web but it's ridiculous that a depiction of consensual adult sex or even a female nipple is seen as equally taboo. If only they felt the same way about graphic violence and hate speech ...
I'm very glad to see that Denise and Mark and various mods are making everyone feel welcome, and that guides for Tumblr refugees are already up. I have edited my interests to reflect my fandom coverage more accurately so if anyone actually wants to read my decades-old LOTR fics they can.
Related, but slightly off-topic -- I read an interesting article about Toxic Fandom on GeekDad a few weeks ago. After opening with some egregious examples of batshit craziness involving shippers and antishippers in the Voltron fandom, it goes on to look at the differences between opt-in platforms (LJ and DW, for example) and opt-out platforms (Tumblr, Instagram and probably Facebook and Twitter, not that I use them either). It's all connected with the increasing attitude (especially in the US but sadly not restricted to that country) that "I don't want to see that" automatically becomes "No one else should be allowed to see that". As various people have pointed out over the centuries, freedom of speech is not freedom from being offended.