I’m trying really hard to be understanding about this whole tumblr mess because people should be upset but like
this isn’t unexpected at all
the rise of “I shouldn’t have to see anything problematic ever, and instead of using available tools to protect myself from these problematic things, I demand that all such content be removed because no one should see it” rhetoric has inevitably been leading to something like this
don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that “all content should be morally pure” crowd is directly responsible for apple’s (or tumblrs) current battshittery
but if you don’t see how an algorithm designed to eliminate a mention of, let’s say, ‘erectlon’ has decided that ‘Alec Lightwood’ is also problematic, then you must’ve crawled out from under a rock yesterday
people say shit like “stories involving minors should be banned” without realizing that implementing something of the sort will inevitably result in the word “minor” being banned, whether we’re talking about minors, something unimportant, a school degree, or a whole set of fckn music chords
last time, tumblr didn’t ban p*rn, they banned pictures of hills and loaves of bread and a thousand other things that were in no way related to anything they were actually trying to ban
and then people spent the next two years going “we should ban problematic things” as if chasing off one person with exposed tits didn’t also mean chasing off thirty people who just liked to bake bread and twenty people who like to take pictures of barren hills, because, idk, they thought that was a fair trade?
and now they wanna know why the word “wax” on the banned list?
because this is literally what censorship devolves into, absolute absurdity, that, in its final form, makes a space utterly unusable even by those who were its most vehement supporters
“Wax” is on the ban list because of “bikini wax” and semi-pornbots full of pictures of women showing off their wax jobs.
Of course, that also blocks a lot of posts talking about candles. But hey. That’s how censorship works: You block all of TOPIC X, and anything that happens to use the same keywords or structure or exists in the same physical space as TOPIC X, also gets blocked.
Also: this is what happens when people think that the government/the website/the phone company/the ISP should protect them/the children from BadThing.
BadThing shouldn’t be allowed. BadThing is wrong and if you want it on your platform you are bad. BadThing must be blocked with no nuance, no question, no recourse. You perverted freaks can talk about suicide and mental illness and queerness and marginalization and medicine and girls and candles in private like you should, away from the upstanding citizens who don’t want to see what you pervert freaks are talking about. All the good people will be on their feed scrolling through Disney-approved marvel gifs like the upstanding citizens they are./s
ANYWHO, this is why it is necessary for people to curate their own internet experiences and to not expect platforms to do it for them, and if you are concerned about childrens’ experiences you should probably curate your own childrens’ experiences or block minors, but beyond that it is not your fucking problem.
