Tumblr's new NSFW restrictions and why turning off safe mode won't work
Tumblr, you’ve actually outdone yourself here. All the bullshit cookies for you!
Lowdown:
Tumblr’s new approach to NSFW content (other than blocking certain tags on apps) includes splitting the NSFW blog flagging options in two.
You can now flag your blog* as NSFW or Adult.
What’s the difference? This:
Taken from Tumblr’s new NSFW policy page.
Now me? I’m a NSFW blog. I occasionally reblog raunchy fanart and pretty pictures of scantily clad hot people. This means that:
If people are browsing in Safe Mode (which is the default, CHEERS TUMBLR) and are not following me they will see nothing of mine in the search or tags.
Let me be clear: NOTHING OF MINE.
My whole blog is flagged as NSFW even though I mostly reblog stupid comics of tv characters failing to use stairs. So for every one NSFW post I have that these Safe Mode users don’t want to see, they’ll miss the nine other posts I make about werewolves in pink knitted sweaters.
Pretty shit huh? Oh wait, bro, it gets better.
That’s blogs flagged NSFW. Blogs flagged Adult have it INFINITELY shittier.
Porn-intensive blogs have ZERO visibility beyond the dash. Unless a user is following them, they are invisible. Even reblogs are tetchy because with the new restrictions, anyone reblogging NSFW content runs the risk of being flagged as NSFW themselves and thus might not take the risk.
So porn blogs: crippled, basically. No dicks and o-faces for you, tumblr users. But how’s this for another, infinitely more terrifying, approach: all those sex-ed blogs? All those beautiful how-to-masturbation, body-positive and sex-positive blogs? Under the current definitions:
You guessed it: they’re Adult. If they’re not flagged as such by the blog owners themselves, tumblr can do it for you:
"If you’re not sure how you should flag your blog you can leave it unflagged, but keep in mind that it may be flagged automatically." (x)
So there you have it.
Fuck. Basically. Everything.
PS: Anyone wanting to turn Safe Mode off (because hey, if you haven’t checked yours yet, it’s totally on! YAY!):
- Hit your settings icon
- In the left hand menu hit Dashboard
- And uncheck the “browse tag pages in safe mode”
It’s nowhere near a complete solution, but it’s as much as we’ve got right now.
* Or I’m assuming you’ll be able to? This feature is greyed out for me atm. A+ rollout of functionality there, tumblr.
OK, so it looks like NSFW & Adult peeps can still be seen by anyone who has turned off Safe Mode, see instructions helpfully provided above.
What I’m much, much less impressed by is the fact that Adult blogs are not indexed by search engines - either Tumblr’s or “third party". The whole POINT of search engines, and of marking NSFW/Adult content, is that people who WANT to find filth can find it while the people who DON’T want to find filth can merrily browse away, unbothered by surprise peen.
I’m already tagged NSFW and probably should be tagged Adult. It’s probably no great loss if my meanderings about Borderlands and bears are lost to the world, but as Hatteress pointed out above, educational and activist blogs are going to be shafted as well.
I despise people who equate ratings with censorship - I think ratings are wonderful when applied transparently and consistently - but in this case, ratings will be used as a method to censor rather than to enable viewer discretion. And that’s not what they’re for.
This is the problem: Tumblr only allows ratings at the blog level, not the post level. I probably reblog one or two NSFW posts a month, and the very occasional explicit fic. If Tumblr were to decide this is enough to merit an NSFW rating for my whole blog, everything I post -- all my fic, all my meta, everything I link or reblog-- would be blocked. The particularly ridiculous thing is that Tumblr already has a system in place that they could use to block content by post: the tags. But because Tumblr doesn't have any built-in dashboard filtering features, they can only apply the blunt instrument of blocking entire tags and entire blogs. Which seems particularly ridiculous in light of the fact that Tumblr Savior, xkit, and other third-party extensions can filter at the post level. So it's not that it can't be done; they've just chosen not to do it. And I find the implications troubling.