Friends: if you are reading this, then my Tumblr is already dead.
For at least the past week, there has been a growing ban wave of NSFW content on Tumblr. The Tumblr app was removed from the Apple Store on November 17th-18th, seemingly because child pornography was accessible through the app. Tumblr’s response has been to begin aggressively banning porn bots and child pornography blogs (finally!), but it also appears that many “acceptable” NSFW blogs, and even some SFW ones, have been caught up in the ban.
I guess I would know; I’m apparently one of them.
My blog was terminated on November 23rd, the day after Thanksgiving. One moment I was chatting with friends; the next, I was asked to sign back in and presented with the infamous termination screen:
Fortunately, I lost very little of my writing. Every story I have written this year was backed up on my computer, the benefits of creating manuscripts in Scrivener instead of typing them directly into Tumblr. Some of my older stories have been (temporarily) lost, but I’m working to recover them and port them over to this site. Most precious and fragile, though, were my semi-regular “Infernal Dispatches” writing updates, which chronicled my growth and struggles as a writer over the past year. Fortunately, all of those updates are now re-hosted here and back-dated to the day I originally posted them on Tumblr! I was very lucky: the Tumblr terminations had spooked me enough that I actually founded this website the day before my Tumblr was terminated, and I spent much of Thanksgiving evening transferring over the posts that I felt would be most difficult to recover in the event my blog disappeared.
The real losers are the artists and authors that I have befriended on Tumblr. I tried my hardest to be a friendly, positive, enabling influence on the site, reblogging art and stories with supportive comments or glowing reviews. That curation, that support—a few paragraphs about why I adored a certain author’s work, or a gif of Jordan Peele nervously sweating in the face of some excellent art—is simply gone.
What’s most infuriating about this process is the complete absence of an explanation or even response from Tumblr’s support staff. I did as the termination screen asked: I used their website portal to fill out a short request for more information concerning my ban. I received no response, not even an automated reply that the support request had been received. When I resubmitted my request using a different email, I received an immediate confirmation, followed by a demand that “for my own security” I re-submit the request using the email tied to the terminated account. When I did, I once again received no automated confirmation that my request had been received.
My hunch, as dour as it might sound, is that Tumblr has adopted a policy of blacklisting the email addresses associated with terminated accounts, preventing requests for more information or review from ever being escalated to the support staff. I don’t know if this is a temporary measure implemented to handle the increased volume of requests, or a new “zero tolerance” policy for ostensibly egregious infractions.
But I don’t even know what rule I broke! I have absolutely never shared or supported child pornography in any form, and my Tumblr was appropriately flagged NSFW. I’m flummoxed at what rule my blog transgressed that isn’t violated by all of NSFW Tumblr.
And I think that is the scary part. Given that the Tumblr app is still not back in the App Store, over a week since it was removed, I suspect that this problem is not going away. Apple is exerting pressure on Tumblr to gets its house in order; that Tumblr is banning “good” NSFW content alongside “bad” NSFW content is not as serious a business concern as the profits and visibility that are being lost every day the Tumblr app is not available. Tumblr will either reach an accord with Apple that allows NSFW content to exist in some form on the site, or it will continue to ban NSFW content until Apple is satisfied.
In the meantime, bans like mine actually benefit Tumblr. NSFW content that threatens Tumblr’s relationship with Apple is a liability, and bans like this help push that “problematic content” off the site, hopefully never to return. Even if my blog is subsequently restored, Tumblr has sent a very clear, albeit implicit, message that NSFW content isn’t wanted on its site and needs to find a new home.
In my case, that new home is here.
Welcome back to Devi Lacroix Writes. I appreciate you following me here, and I look forward to sharing many more NSFW stories in the coming days.