hapamyheart:

lies:

I mostly didn’t mind when Tumblr started running “Sponsored Posts” in my dashboard. Tumblr has to make money. Most of the ads were boring, a few were interesting, but they weren’t a big deal.

Then the horror movie ads started.

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I’m surprised this isn’t a bigger issue on tumblr. Horror movies can be extremely triggering for some of us, and I hate seeing them on my dash or on the radar yet tumblr keeps forcing them on me. Sometimes I just have to close tumblr altogether. I don’t care so much about ads when they’re for some stupid clothing brand I don’t care about or insurance or whatever, but showing me a scary gif of scenes from a horror movie against my will is rude. I don’t know why these studios act like they don’t know the difference between showing me gifs of a corny teen comedy I don’t intend to see and throwing gory or supernatural creepy imagery at me and forcing me to see it. I even have tried blocking that movie’s blog, and I still have to see their sponsored content. Please staff do something about this. Allow us to dismiss ads we don’t want to see or close it after a few seconds or something, or allow us to specify what kinds of ads we’re comfortable with. Just as they don’t show horror movie ads on Disney Channel to protect the children. 

That’s a good point about the Disney Channel. Tumblr makes a big deal about how young its users are; it’s a sought-after demographic for many advertisers, including horror movies. Tumblr says users have to be at least 13, but the site don’t appear to do anything to enforce that, such that their actual user base probably includes millions of users who are 12 or younger.

Microblogging has only been around a few years, so it doesn’t have the rules that exist on TV and in movie theaters to prevent age-inappropriate ads from being shown to young viewers. The only thing standing in the way of that is the moral sense of Tumblr’s decision-makers. Unfortunately, Tumblr is mostly run by people in their 20s who don’t have kids, and their moral sense appears to have a blind spot in that area.

There are some signs that the situation my be (slowly) getting (slightly) better. These days the ads are usually tagged with #horror. Tumblr added a guideline that advertisers not depict dead bodies. And the latest batch I’ve seen have been toned down; they’re more suggestive than outright horrific. Since Tumblr doesn’t talk about the issue publicly, it’s hard to know if that last development is a new policy or just a choice by the advertiser for a single campaign. But one can hope.

tl;dr: Tumblr’s horror movie ads suck. More here.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/106624846816.

A sense of fairness compels me to admit that I just saw a Sponsored Post that I actually found interesting and non-objectionable. It was a gifset for the Into the Woods movie.

That is all.

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singleblckfemaleaddictedtoretail:

Being sponsored on my dash?!?!
EXCUSE me but this is not something I want to see at TWELVE AM YOU FUCKING PIECES OF SHIT. Fuck you tumblr staff. Fuck YOU

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little-king-trashmouth:

Dear staff,

I understand the need for sponsored posts, the beast must be fed somehow. BUT!!! Personally, I find it disgusting, disturbing, and down right insensitive to be scrolling down my dash and see a GIF of slabs of ribs flopping onto a grill, courtesy of tgifridays

I’m sure my other vegetarian, vegan, and non meat eating friends would also appreciate not seeing it, considering most of us have taken special care to make sure the likelyhood of seeing nastyass meat eaters wet dreams on our dash is slim to none.

Is there a way to have people select the sponsored posts they might be interested in seeing? And block the ones they definitely 100% do not ever EVER EEEVVVEERRR want to see? If there isn’t, lets try and make that happen because I am really sick and tired to being bombarded by this shite.

sincerely,

Claire

As with me and the horror movies, Tumblr created their own predicament here by making the site compellingly good at letting users curate exactly the mix of content they wish to see. We users work hard to construct that mix. We value it. We feel protective of it.

Being able to choose whom to follow is Tumblr’s superpower. Sponsored posts, at least as currently implemented, are kryptonite.

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For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

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blueringumbreon:

This is annoying. Lately I’ve been getting sponsored posts with these startling animated GIFs advertising horror movies. Horror movies don’t really bother me that much in themselves, but I don’t care for them, and I definitely don’t like scrolling through my dashboard looking for cute posts about Pokémon and getting startled by an auto playing GIF of a crazed sweaty guy shaking his head back and forth and screaming! Good thing GIFs can’t play sound at least. Really, a still image would work just fine for the advertisement of your gory Halloween flick. You don’t have to give people Heart Attacks!

Is there any way to disable these kind of things?

If you are browsing on a computer (as opposed to a tablet or phone) you can look into installing Tumblr Savior or XKit with the Blacklist plugin.

But yeah. It’s awful. It’s awful because in this respect the business decisions made by staff (and I assume in particular by david) really, really suck.

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kattheghosthunter:

I’m getting real tired of these Sponsored Posts. They’re obnoxious. I’m seeing enough of them that it’s like following a very active, shitty, blog.

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justonepurpose:

I have Hannibal blacklisted, but because nbchannibal is a sponsored blog, it shows up on my dash anyways. This is a violation. I despise sponsored posts and I will spitefully refuse to watch any shows or movies that have showed up on my dash via sponsored post.

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Thanks! Replying publicly to try to help spread the word.

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justonepurpose:

What really gets me about these sponsored posts is that ignoring the blog doesn’t take them off my dash. Even blacklisted via xhit, they still show up, just not as an open post. And the thing is, more than one of these sponsored posts has contained things that stoke my anxiety or squick me out. Like, the ones for that Annabelle movie, for example. I have a phobia of porcelain dolls. I have “porcelain doll”, “glass eyes” etc blacklisted to avoid them. But because of the sponsored post, bam, there it was all over my dashboard. It’s just really unfair.

Sponsored posts for horror movies violate the spirit (and in some cases the letter) of Tumblr’s own Community Guidelines. So now we know how much the values expressed on that page really mean to david: They’re important when they constrain the dicks who would post gore just to be shocking, or would showcase the mutilation or torture of human beings, animals, or their remains, as long as the dicks who want to do that are not willing to pay Tumblr for the privilege.

In the latter case, though, you’re good to go, dicks. Shock away. staff will even help, in effect forcing users to follow you while disabling their ability to unfollow or block your content.

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darkvixen28:

Dear staff,

If sponsored posts are here to stay, can there be a way to opt out of certain ones? 

I don’t watch horror movies because they leave me unbelievably paranoid for days afterword. The tie-in between this statement and your sponsored posts stems from the facts that a majority of the sponsored posts I’m getting are from horror movie blogs whose posts are filled with the exact reason I do not watch their movies. 

I had to block Universal Horror Films, The Quiet Ones Movie (whose theater preview before the start of a different movie had me leaving the cinema paranoid), and As Above So Below Movie nearly a dozen times a piece before their posts stopped coming across my dash permanently.  They would disappear when I refreshed the page afterward, only to reappear the next day. It’s extremely off-putting to be scrolling through my dash only to be scared nearly to screaming by whatever monster was in the newest horror movie due to be released.

The posts from The Quiet Ones Movie had me blocking blogs of sponsored posts without ever looking at said post or even the name of the blog it was from in an attempt to clean horror flick blogs off my dashboard. I don’t know how these posts are set up behind the scenes, but may I safely assume that the indiscriminate blocking of these posts hurts the revenue they were designed to make for the site?  

I don’t mind that sponsored posts exist. I don’t mind if they hang around until the Apocalypse happens and wipes out everything. All I ask is that there be some sort of compromise regarding what sponsored posts appear on whose dashboard. 

If someone from the Staff sees this, I thank you for at least taking the time to read it.

Very truly yours,DarkVixen28 

So much this.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/99408933196.

thatfinnickkid:

Is there a way to stop horror movie ads from showing up on my dash because I’m not about that life

Here are the three things I’ve tried, from most to least effective:

Very effective: You can install the Tumblr Savior or XKit (with Blacklist plugin) browser extension on your desktop browser. Most horror movie sponsored posts have recently been tagged with #horror, so you can use those extensions to try to block posts tagged with that.

Somewhat effective: You can avoid using Tumblr’s mobile app, since it doesn’t allow you to block problematic posts. My problem is that I like the mobile app, at least when it’s not forcing me to look at horrific images against my will, so it’s hard for me to give that up.

So far, not effective at all: You can try convincing Tumblr to stop running ads like that in the dashboards of users who object to seeing them. Horror movie ads are arguably a violation of Tumblr’s own Community Guidelines, which say:

Don’t post gore just to be shocking. Don’t showcase the mutilation or torture of human beings, animals, or their remains. Dick.

Apparently Tumblr is okay with being, collectively, a dick, as long as universalhorrorfilms is paying them. That makes me sad, but it seems unlikely to change at this point. So I think your best bet is probably Tumblr Savior or XKit.

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sink—florida—sink:

HOLY SHIT I HAVE HORROR BLACKLISTED FOR A REASON TUMBLR ADS WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR ISSUE

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theoriginalsocalcrunch:

I do NOT like these sponsored ads on Tumblr!

Seriously, I follow the blogs I follow for a reason and I DON’T follow everyone else because I don’t want their posts on my dash!

I do not like scary things and I DON’T want this freaking creepy ass doll showing up on my dash every time I get onto Tumblr

literally what the heck

NO

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My dash this morning. Thanks, staff.

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missstacielou:

lies:

I mostly didn’t mind when Tumblr started running “Sponsored Posts” in my dashboard. Tumblr has to make money. Most of the ads were boring, a few were interesting, but they weren’t a big deal.

Then the horror movie ads started.

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Seriously this 100%! I mean if you want to try to sell me miracle whip or like some sunglasses or something, fine go for it. I understand you need to make money, and I’m totally ok with seeing sponsored ads like that.

But, as someone who is severely afraid of dolls, it is not a fun experience to be scrolling down and suddenly be forced to see a gigantic gif of that Annabelle thing rocking back and forth in a rocking chair while staring directly into my eyes. I legitimately had to slam my hand over the screen and then try to scroll quickly past it. I would be happy even if there was just a spot I could click that says this is not the kind of content I want to see.

Like I said, sell me all the laptop cases and apple juice you want, but please stay away from the things that make me have to sleep with my light on for the rest of the night

The thing is, horror movie advertising isn’t aimed at people like you and me. We were never going to buy a ticket. It’s aimed at people who actually go to horror movies. Those people have been desensitized through long exposure, so to reach them the advertisers make the ads as creepy as possible.

People like us are just collateral damage. The advertisers don’t care if our Tumblr experience is interrupted by horrific images we don’t want to see. Neither, apparently, does Tumblr.

Which kind of sucks.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1rF7bhb.

For the record, the draculauntold (I guess for the movie of the same name?) sponsored post that just ran in my dash did not creep me out as much as some of the previous horror movie sponsored posts Tumblr has made me look at. Thanks, staff!

I guess a closeup of a vampire face with pointy teeth is not as fear-inducing for me as, say, the feet of a swaying corpse, or a woman with a creepy mask and blood-spattered nightgown skipping toward me with a sword. I think that’s because vampires seem vaguely silly to me, while the suicide victims and violent sword-wielders of previous sponsored posts seemed disturbingly real.

On the minus side, this ad was not tagged #horror, as some previous horror movie ads have been. So people trying to blacklist on that term are out of luck.

Tumblr: One set of community guidelines for ordinary users. A different, more-permissive set for horror movie advertisers, who get to post disturbing images intended to be shocking, glorifying gore, violence, and self-harm with no way for sensitive users to opt out.

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robinvenetia:

thank

Yeah. I’m glad they’re tagging the ads now, and glad they’ve said “no actually-dead people, m’kay?”

Still sucks for mobile users without blocking options, because those who promote horror movies are still capable of creeping non-horror-fans the fuck out without showing corpses.

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