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Tumblr Will Ban All Adult Content On December 17th (theverge.com)
Tumblr, the underground social media site known for its pornographic content and tight-knit community, will be instituting a major change to its guidelines in a couple of weeks. The company said in a blog post today that it will permanently ban adult content from its platform on December 17th. The company flatly stated that "adult content will no longer be allowed here." The Verge reports: Banned content includes photos, videos, and GIFs of human genitalia, female-presenting nipples, and any media involving sex acts, including illustrations. The exceptions include nude classical statues and political protests that feature nudity. The new guidelines exclude text, so erotica remains permitted. Illustrations and art that feature nudity are still okay -- so long as sex acts aren't depicted -- and so are breastfeeding and after-birth photos.
After December 17th, any explicit posts will be flagged and deleted by algorithms. For now, Tumblr is emailing users who have posted adult content flagged by algorithms and notifying them that their content will soon be hidden from view. Posts with porn content will be set to private, which will prevent them from being reblogged or shared elsewhere in the Tumblr community. "Blogs that have been either self-flagged or flagged by us as 'explicit' per our old policy and before December 17, 2018 will still be overlaid with a content filter when viewing these blogs directly," the blog post reads. "While some of the content on these blogs may now be in violation of our policies and will be actioned accordingly, the blog owners may choose to post content that is within our policies in the future, so we'd like to provide that option..."
After December 17th, any explicit posts will be flagged and deleted by algorithms. For now, Tumblr is emailing users who have posted adult content flagged by algorithms and notifying them that their content will soon be hidden from view. Posts with porn content will be set to private, which will prevent them from being reblogged or shared elsewhere in the Tumblr community. "Blogs that have been either self-flagged or flagged by us as 'explicit' per our old policy and before December 17, 2018 will still be overlaid with a content filter when viewing these blogs directly," the blog post reads. "While some of the content on these blogs may now be in violation of our policies and will be actioned accordingly, the blog owners may choose to post content that is within our policies in the future, so we'd like to provide that option..."
Bring back USENET!
I'm not libertarian. I'm anarchist. I'm honestly hoping and praying for divisions in the US to tear the country apart. If the US is broken up into 5 or 10 different countries, there will be more choice of governments to live under, with one or two being likely to be in your corner of the political spectrum (my happy place is left-libertarian).
I'd have been all for letting the South leave in 1860, then embargoing the CSA and financing a slave revolt. The problem with the Civil War is that the same people running the slave system ended up in charge after Reconstruction ended. If the rich slavers had ended up being expropriated or simply executed, then their legacy wouldn't have stuck with the US for the next 150 years in the form of Jim Crow and a generally draconian legal system by Western standards.
You could shrink the US Federal government and give back all that power to the states, so the USA worked like the European Union. Like how America was designed by the founding fathers.
Porn is fantasy and not meant to be taken seriously. If porn is interfering with your relationship, or ability to have one, then you're doing it wrong. If you're indulging in porn, you're doing it wrong. If you have little self-control when it comes to porn, chances are you have little self-control in other parts of your life, too. Discriminating against porn is just making it a convenient scapegoat. That's especially true here in the USA, where we love to demonize porn, which results in a paradox where our porn is just terrible, and we indulge in it because we know it's terrible.
This is why I have such a love/hate relationship with porn. On one hand, I like what it represents, both physically and emotionally. On the other hand, I can't stand most mainstream porn, because it's often boring, stupid, and strongly emphasizes only the physical aspect of sex. It's too shallow, fantastic, over-the-top (like CGI in movies), tends to overplay the "naughty" angle, and it hardly ever looks like anyone is enjoying what they're doing.
I'm an artist, but I cut my teeth on comic strips and comic books. To me, story, character development, and humor are very important. I draw lots of porn, but I try to make my stuff more creative, and it usually focuses on committed couples enjoying the finer parts of their relationship. Alas, this seems to be a bit uncommon, and it's probably why I have so many fans, despite the fact that I have little spare time and don't post artwork very often. Given that my content is, in my opinion, a bit better than the typical hedonistic trash, I certainly don't agree with the decision to ban porn just because other people, arguably even most people, do it "wrong".
The porn we tend to like is a symptom of more fundamental cultural issues. Discriminating against adult-rated content will not fix that, and it just reminds me of all those web sites that try to enforce quality standards (which never works and always causes the death of the site). In your case, I think you just finally realized that the kinds of porn you used to like... just sucks. Good for you, but that doesn't justify making it harder for me to responsibly enjoy what I like (or try to fix it if I don't).
Sorry, but childbirth isn't friendly to most women's bodies, and you don't see any porn stars with stretch marks.
Yeah, but that's a culture problem, not a porn problem. Cue the movie with the heroine with no zits or wrinkles, slashing bad guys left and right with a katana, and then emerges from the scuffle with perfect hair and all her makeup intact. That's also why I hate most mainstream movies!