Tumblr Staff: A New Policy Against Self-Harm Blogs
One of the great things about Tumblr is that people use it for just about every conceivable kind of expression. People being people, though, that means that Tumblr sometimes gets used for things that are just wrong. We are deeply committed to supporting and defending our users’ freedom of speech,…
Although I like the second option somewhat, what Tumblr is advocating is censorship. They’re completely turning down certain ideals of self-harm, such as branding, scarification, and certain practices that actually lead well into the DIY body-modification community. This potentially could fuck over:
- People that pierce their own body parts without “professional” training.
- Those that involve themselves in scarification. My best friend was involved in it for some time, and he swears to this day that it was one of the most invigorating set of experiences in his life.
- Other groups involved in the body modification community in general. It seems the idea of cutting yourself open and modifying your body, the one thing you truly own, could be frowned upon here as a “harmful ideology”.
- Basically anyone that embraces the ideologies of pain. While Tumblr seems to be mainly looking out for anyone that could kill themselves, this is a really slippery slope.
- People involved in ritual self-branding, or branding for sentimental reasons.
The problem is that things linked to these could potentially be censored. First, Facebook started censoring their users. Then, Twitter did it. Now, Tumblr’s thinking about it, and on the fence. In order to truly support free speech, you need to support all of it, or things are going to Hell quickly.
And really, if they’re doing a “cleansing” of ideologies they don’t like, who else are they going to target?
- Weed/stoner blogs
- People with extremely controversial beliefs
- Anti-Government blogs
- Conspiracy blogs
- Anything to do with Anonymous.
- Call me crazy, but it’s already happening with Facebook and Twitter. It’s not that much of a leap to say that Tumblr could start doing this too, if they do in fact employ censorship tactics.
Tell Tumblr NO.
