anonsally:

lies:

I’ve noticed another apparent inconsistency between Tumblr’s stated policies and the horror movie ads in the Sponsored Posts program.

I posted previously about how the ads appear to violate Tumblr’s Community Guidelines. But they may also violate Tumblr’s Acceptable Advertising Policy, which says that “content that falls into the following categories won’t be approved to run as Sponsored Posts”, and lists this as one of the categories:

Content related to death

It would be interesting to hear Tumblr explain the logic that was used to determine that this ad for The Conjuring (warning: horror) is not “content related to death.”

This is an excellent point. They are violating not just their guidelines but their policy. How do we get them to stop?

Something that occurs to me is that the specific sponsored post I linked to above (the ad for The Conjuring, with the feet of the dangling corpse) appeared in my dash last summer, when that movie was in theaters. I don’t know when Tumblr’s Acceptable Advertising Policy page, with the specific mention of “Content related to death”, was first published, but it looks like it was after that.

The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has two copies of that page, both of them identical to the current version. The first time it was retrieved was March 14, 2014. So if that was not too long after the page went live, it raises the possibility that the Acceptable Advertising Policy, including the “Content related to death” provision, was enacted at least in part in response to concerns about that particular ad for The Conjuring. That is, that our (and others’) complaints may actually have had some effect, in terms of getting Tumblr to put at least some limitation on the images used in horror movie ads.

The particular limitation they imposed (no images of death) seems suggestive. It may have been a result of Tumblr’s lawyers being concerned about the kind of legal exposure I discussed in my post earlier today. The Acceptable Advertising Policy focuses on one aspect of the problematic horror movie ads (suicide/death), while leaving out other elements (gore, mutilation, and torture) that are mentioned in the Tumblr Community Guidelines.

This makes me feel both good and bad. Good, because it may mean that Tumblr has taken a quiet step to tone down some of the worst aspects of the horror movie ads. But bad, because this action doesn’t go very far, and may be evidence of an attempt by Tumblr to water down the principles expressed in the Community Guidelines.

The latest horror movie ad I received in my dash was a couple of weeks ago, well after the appearance of the new Acceptable Advertising Policy. It was this sponsored post for The Only Way Out Is Down (warning: flashing images of mutilated humans/zombies/something or other). And yeah, there are no actual corpses, so in that sense it complies with the new policy.

It’s still horrific. It’s intentionally horrific. It depicts gore and mutilation. As such, it violates the pre-existing Community Guidelines for it to be inserted into my dash against my will.

Tumblr appear to be creating a two-tiered system for regulating disturbing content: One set of rules for regular users, as embodied in the older Community Guidelines. And a second, looser set of rules for itself and its advertisers, as embodied in the new Acceptable Advertising Policy.

That worries me.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1tdni3k.

I know this doesn’t begin to address the larger issue, but just for your personal comfort, have you blacklisted ‘sponsored_badge_icon’? Once I did that, I stopped seeing the horror movie ads (thankfully).

Yes, I blacklisted that as soon as I could. Unfortunately, I still see the ads when using the Tumblr app on my iPad.

My persistence in talking about this isn’t based primarily on my desire to solve the problem for me personally. It’s based more on my desire that Tumblr do a better job of living up to its own stated values, since those are values I agree with and think are important.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/VxBMi7.

cribblesticks replied to your post “Well, crap”

Well if she seems like a pretty cool person, appeal to her like you would appeal to a pretty cool person: with your personal experience, honest request and any relevant info/suggestions.

anonsally replied to your post “Well, crap”

Whine more politely? Use reason and logic and make it a request rather than a demand? Point out how it benefits them to make that change?

All good points; thanks. My current plan is to think about it some more, maybe eventually sending an ask or two to whomever seems most likely to be directly involved.

I want to assume good faith on the part of the relevant decision-makers at Tumblr. It’s possible that they’re just too busy, too immersed in the go-go frenzy of a successful tech startup, and that having a CEO and a bunch of director-level officers still in their 20s means they just haven’t thought this through. Perhaps a patient, persistent effort to point out the implications will help them see the value of modifying their actions to more closely match their stated ideals.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1sNIU8P.

I’ve found another apparent inconsistency between Tumblr’s stated policies and the horror movie ads in the Sponsored Posts program.

I posted previously about how the ads appear to violate Tumblr’s Community Guidelines. But it appears they may also violate Tumblr’s Acceptable Advertising Policy, which says that “content that falls into the following categories won’t be approved to run as Sponsored Posts”, and lists the following among the categories:

Content related to death

It would be interesting to hear Tumblr’s explanation for how this ad for The Conjuring (warning: horror) is not “content related to death.”

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

Danielle Strle (Tumblr’s director of product for community and content) seems like a nice person, and worse, has a cool Tumblr dad. I no longer feel comfortable whining at her about my horror-movies-in-sponsored-posts concerns.

Must regroup to consider strategy. Suggestions welcome.

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

analyticisms:

Debunking the myth that Tumblr is only used and populated by kids.

unwrapping:

Age Ranges of Tumblr’s Global Audience:
Tumblr sees about 150 million global unique visitors monthly. comScore, an Internet analytics firm, averaged Tumblr’s age ranges over the first quarter of 2014 for both Dashboard and blog network traffic worldwide:

• Ages 13 to 17: 15%
• Ages 18 to 34: 41%
• Ages 35 to 54: 29%
• Ages 55 and up: 15%

“People are often really surprised to note that we have the same percentage of 55-plus-year-olds as we do 13-to-17-year-olds,” said Danielle Strle (strle), Tumblr’s director of product for community and content, in an NPR webinar. “But over half of our audience is solidly in the 13-to-34 demographic.”

So, more than 15% of Tumblr’s users are older than me.

Also, I’m going to stop whining at david and staff about the sponsored posts that feature gore, mutilation, and corpses. Because strle‘s title of “director of product for community and content” makes it sound like maybe I should be whining at her instead.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1p16UCM.

Submitted to david‘s Ask Me Anything:

Why do you allow sponsored posts depicting gore, mutilation, and corpses to be inserted into users’ dashboards? Isn’t that a violation of Tumblr’s own Community Guidelines?

Warning: Links lead to graphic horror (first three) and aggravating hypocrisy (last one).

Reposted from http://ift.tt/YacTer.

a-little-fallof-cosima:

how convenient they don’t have an ask feature on the staff page

i know certain things can be sponsored posts on my dashboard regardless of whether i follow the blog or not 

today i came across a sponsored post from the movie “As Above so Below”. The post contained gifs of horrifying zombies and general movie gore/scary things.

i do not normally have this stuff on my dash because i generally tend to follow blogs about broadway musicals and stuff. I feel that other users might be frightened and uncomfortable as the gifs are made to stun or shock and, in my opinion, sort of like silent “screamers”.

I looked at the post and BECAUSE it was sponsored there was not a way to dimiss it or block it on my dash. I went to the original poster and the tumblr staff page, neither of which have ask boxes so here i am making this post.

I am not looking to censor tumblr in any way I am just looking for a way that posts I do not follow nor want to see on my dash can be dismissed regardless of sponsorship.

I am all for tumblr making money through whatever but I wish they screened the sponsored posts more or made it easier to dismiss. I am asking tumblr staff to at least address this problem. I know I don’t have too terribly many followers but if you could reblog this and help me to bring this to their attention it would be great. Thank you so much for your time reading this 

Yup.

If you are using a desktop computer, rather than a smartphone or tablet, the XKit browser extension and the Tumblr Savior extension may be helpful. I’ve used, and currently use, XKit; Tumblr Savior I haven’t used in a while. Both offer features to help you avoid seeing posts that contain specific content or have specific tags.

When horror movie sponsored posts first appeared they did not include tags. These days they appear to be tagged with #horror, at least some of the time. It’s possible Tumblr is requiring that, or at least requesting that, of advertisers.

Something I’ve asked Tumblr support about in the past (without getting a specific reply) is the fact that sponsored posts depicting gore, mutilation, and corpses appear to violate Tumblr’s own Community Guidelines, which say, in part:

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

Cute, huh? They feel righteous enough to call a gore-posting user “dick”, while doing the same thing themselves.

Actually, what staff (who I assume is david, Tumblr CEO David Karp, for the purposes of this discussion) is doing is arguably worse. If a regular user were posting gore in my dash, I could just unfollow and/or block him. When david posts gore in my dash, there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m required to look at it as a condition of using the service.

Dick.

I’ve written about this in these older posts:

• Tumblr should stop making users watch horror movie ads against their will
• The creepy dude I can’t unfollow
• Still yet more whining about untagged horror in sponsored posts
• All my posts in the “sponsored posts” tag

Good luck!

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

The ones I’ve seen lately have all been tagged “horror”. I certainly hope that people who are particularly sensitive to those types of images are blacklisting them. I suspect Tumblr is now requiring advertisers promoting horror movies to tag their posts with that term, and I think that’s a good decision on their part.

But yes, the ads still are problematic for users on mobile devices, either using browsers or using the Tumblr app, since those users don’t have access to the same blacklisting tools desktop users have.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/UY6FfF.

kokoronoir:

I don’t normally use trigger warnings, but in this case I saw need to. Today, I saw a sponsored post about a new movie called “As Above, So Below.” Normally, I don’t get too offended by horror movies as I have loved the genre since I was first able to read ghost stories in elementary school (this isn’t including the gore horror genre which seems to have taken over the genre completely in the movie world.) I also, in general, don’t bother being too offended by the way pagans and witches are portrayed in the genre because there is no use doing so. We live in a world where witches and witchcraft are “evil.” I’m used to that by now.
Many of my followers may not be aware, but I am Wiccan. I don’t practice the craft, but I do believe in Wiccan teachings in a spiritual and religious way. Now, here is where this movie comes into play- Hollywood has portrayed witches and pagans as evil so many times it outweighs the number of times they have portrayed good witches or pagans by a ridiculous amount.
I first heard the term “as above, so below” through the teachings of Wicca, but I am aware that many Christians also use this term and believe it has powerful and important meaning. The fact that these people have taken a term that has been used and accepted by so many religions bothers me greatly. The way I learned about as above so below was that everything within our minds, in other words what we believe and think, can be reflected in our actions and vice versa. It is a way of keeping oneself in check and remembering that everything we do has an impact on the people and things around us. Originally, I learned the entire phrase as “As above, so below. As within, so without.” Many people believe these words mean a myriad of many different but equally likely and important things.
To use such a prominent phrase, and one which many wiccans follow as one of our rites, to promote a movie which is gore and violence filled is ultimately to promote the exact opposite of what the term means to begin with. Indeed, to title a film with this term is to completely disregard all those who have used the term for improvement in their own lives. It is to take away from the original morality behind the phrase. It is to mock the opening and closing ceremonies of Wiccan, Christian, and other Pagan traditions. This is why I had to write today, because though many may not know it, many people’s religions are being harmed in a way by the existence of this “title” stolen from those who follow religions which regularly use this term. I’m tired of Hollywood mocking my religion at every turn and promoting the view that wiccans and other pagans are bad people or evil because of the things we believe in and the ceremonies we perform.
We do not kill animals to perform rituals. Wiccans in particular believe that all life is sacred. To take the life of any creature is seen as a mar upon oneself and on the world. We don’t just live animals, but we believe in the importance of the existence of all animals- even dung beetles. Though I am sure there are some people who call themselves Wiccan somewhere who do “curse” people, this is something most Wiccans would not do. There is this thing called the rule of threefold that is of utmost importance to Wiccans which says that whatever you may cast into others will come back threefold. Anyway, I won’t get into it much more, but I, as a person who has been Wiccan most of my life, had to at least set the record straight a little and speak out against the use of our beliefs as a title for some gorey movie. Thanks for reading. :)

It was the sponsored post for this movie that got me all angry again about Tumblr forcing me to view animated horror gifs in violation of their own community guidelines.

Grr.

Okay. Back to cute webseries and cloudscapes.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1AT0fzq.

“Gore, Mutilation, Bestiality, or Necrophilia. Don’t post gore just to be shocking. Don’t showcase the mutilation or torture of human beings, animals, or their remains. Dick.”

– Tumblr Community Guidelines. Too bad you violate this guideline yourself, Tumblr, by posting gore, mutilation, and human remains in the horror movie ads you force users to see as part of the sponsored posts program. Dick.

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

That Tumblr shows horror movie ads with creepy animated gifs inline in my dashboard drives me up a wall. It hasn’t happened to me in a while, and they did switch to using tags in the posts (like #gif #horror #movies), which helps some. And the ones I’ve seen lately have seemed a little tamer than the batch that was bothering me last year.

You can read the posts I’ve made in the #sponsored posts tag for more details about how much this bugs me, if you’re so inclined.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1nS5wTs.

mrforrest:

lies:

mrforrest:

People complaining about sponsored posts are infuriating because 

1) I guarantee they scroll right past vapid bullshit on their dash all the time
2) They don’t understand that running a website, especially one as large, complex, and data intensive as Tumblr, costs an actual shitload of money per day, and the only way to fund that is either a) charge users, b) sell ads/sponsored posts, c) finding angel/venture capital which pretty much requires option b to happen at some point down the road.

Now, I get that Yahoo! bought up tumblr, but they were gonna get bought at some point, welcome to the internet ya twats. That’s how social media sites have and always will work.

I don’t complain about sponsored posts per se, for the reasons you outline, among others. But you’re wrong about Tumblr’s implementation of sponsored posts. Their inclusion of shocking gore as part of horror movie ads, inline in users’ dashboards with no means to opt out (at least on the mobile platform, though I can use Tumblr Savior on the desktop, thankfully), is a violation of Tumblr’s own community guidelines. More about that here.

It’s true that there’s a lot of inanity in my dash. But there isn’t any gore, or wouldn’t be if Tumblr didn’t force me to see it against my will as a condition of using the site. I don’t think Tumblr has the right to do that. If they can’t stay in business without doing that, they don’t deserve to stay in business.

The gore bit is unacceptable, however, I had no idea that there were sponsored posts containing gore (what movie ad are you referring to?), nor have I seen anyone else complain about gore-related sponsored posts. Nearly 100% of the sponsored posts I have seen are about fast food, cell phones, or cars. I’m not trying to degredate your negative experience, I’m just saying I think it might be more isolated than you think. The complaints I see are mostly aimless pointless OMG TUMBLR PUT ADS ON OMG WTF I’M LEAVING TUMBLR FOREVER OMG DELETED BYE type posts, not well constructed things like this.

I didn’t bother saving this one; I’m trying to get better at just ignoring them and moving on. Tumblr’s chosen to do this, I’ve explained to them why I object to it, and they’ve decided they don’t care. I can either leave or stay, but either way I’m trying to tone down my yelling about it (recent yelling notwithstanding).

This particular ad was for the remake of the movie Carrie. It featured a collection of animated GIFs with the iconic image of Carried covered in blood in the center square. I didn’t study the post to see what the rest of it showed; that image was enough to dredge up my memories of the original (which I’m sure was the intent of those who created the post), and having had that forcibly inserted into my brain I didn’t want to linger.

There are examples of ads for two other movies linked to from the post I made previously in this thread. There was a fourth movie I managed to mostly ignore between those two and this latest one. It looks like Tumblr runs sponsored posts for a horror movie about once a month or so.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/62156428174.

mrforrest:

People complaining about sponsored posts are infuriating because 

1) I guarantee they scroll right past vapid bullshit on their dash all the time
2) They don’t understand that running a website, especially one as large, complex, and data intensive as Tumblr, costs an actual shitload of money per day, and the only way to fund that is either a) charge users, b) sell ads/sponsored posts, c) finding angel/venture capital which pretty much requires option b to happen at some point down the road.

Now, I get that Yahoo! bought up tumblr, but they were gonna get bought at some point, welcome to the internet ya twats. That’s how social media sites have and always will work.

I don’t complain about sponsored posts per se, for the reasons you outline, among others. But you’re wrong about Tumblr’s implementation of sponsored posts. Their inclusion of shocking gore as part of horror movie ads, inline in users’ dashboards with no means to opt out (at least on the mobile platform, though I can use Tumblr Savior on the desktop, thankfully), is a violation of Tumblr’s own community guidelines. More about that here.

It’s true that there’s a lot of inanity in my dash. But there isn’t any gore, or wouldn’t be if Tumblr didn’t force me to see it against my will as a condition of using the site. I don’t think Tumblr has the right to do that. If they can’t stay in business without doing that, they don’t deserve to stay in business.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/62069327679.

Oh, look: Another sponsored-post horror movie gif in my dashboard.

Fuck you, David Karp.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/62068253162.

silverbluemoon:

Hey you guys, I honestly don’t remember, so can you help me out? Have we always had “sponsored” posts come up on out dashes? Or is this new? I don’t remember ever seeing them before this morning.

It’s new-ish on the website, having been around for a few months now with varying degrees of intensity. They may have begun rolling it out to more users recently, though. Running tests on a subset of your users is a common practice in the Web world.

Note that you can use Tumblr Savior or XKit to block them on the desktop, at least currently. Details about that (along with some propaganda about my least-favorite of the sponsored posts) is here.

If you’re browsing Tumblr using a mobile app, the sponsored posts have been around longer, going back at least several months. Sadly, there’s no way to block the ads if you’re using the app, since apps don’t support plugins and you’re stuck with the Tumblr-delivered experience.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/57443927249.

Details here. Thanks.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/57016602412.

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.

I don’t care for horror movies. The 1963 version of The Haunting is awesome, and I loved The Shining, but that’s about as far as I go. When it comes to slasher movies I’m not interested. I actively avoid them. I don’t mind if other people watch them, but they’re not for me.

I don’t think Tumblr should make me watch ads for movies like that. I especially don’t think they should make me watch those ads in the form of creepy animated gifs that appear without warning in my dashboard. As of now, though, that’s Tumblr policy: I have to watch horror movie ads, integrated into my dashboard via the Sponsored Posts program, as a condition of using the service.

I think Tumblr should stop doing that.

What am I talking about?

I want you to be able to see what I’m talking about. BUT PLEASE DON’T CLICK ON THESE LINKS UNLESS YOU’RE OKAY WITH SEEING CREEPY HORROR IMAGES.

http://universalhorrorfilms.tumblr.com/post/50444456345

http://theconjuringmovie.tumblr.com/post/56818251610

For those who didn’t click, the first post (advertising The Purge) shows a blood-spattered woman with a sword and a spooky mask skipping down a hallway toward the camera. The second (advertising The Conjuring) shows the feet of a hanged female corpse swaying in the air behind the face of actor Patrick Wilson. A number of other ads for both movies have appeared in my dash, but those are the two that bothered me the most.

Why you might not have noticed

If you haven’t noticed these ads, congratulations. That might be because you’re using Tumblr Savior or the XKit extension’s Blacklist plugin (both of which I recommend) to avoid sponsored posts. Or it might be that you’re not accessing Tumblr via a smartphone or tablet. Third-party ad blockers aren’t available on the Tumblr mobile app, a fact that isn’t lost on Tumblr. (“Use the Tumblr app! It’s faster and a zillion times better,” they tell you. Well, yes, it’s better. One of the things it’s better at is showing you ads.)

Sponsored posts appeared first on the Tumblr app before they appeared on the website, and the ads continue to seem more intrusive  –  more frequent and more off-putting, at least to me  –  on the app than on the website. It may be that Tumblr avoids running too many ads on the website because they don’t want users to install ad-blockers. If true, that means mobile users in effect are subsidizing Tumblr, viewing the ads website users don’t have to.

Why it’s a problem

So what’s the big deal? If users can just avoid the horror ads with a little effort, what’s the harm?

For one thing, users have to experience the harm before they know to avoid it. That’s a lot of users being exposed to content they’d rather not see. As a practical matter, too, many users won’t bother bypassing the ads, or won’t know how. They’ll just keep flinching every time a horror gif appears in their dash. They shouldn’t have to.

Tumblr is new, but this is an old problem. Advertisers have always wanted to go too far, and publishers have always had to rein them in as part of protecting the interests of their readers/users.

Horror movie advertisers don’t care about people like me. I was never going to buy a ticket anyway. To effectively reach their target audience (people who would buy a ticket), the advertisers want the ads to be as shocking as possible. In that battle I’m just collateral damage. If Tumblr isn’t willing to stand up to advertisers in situations like that, then Tumblr as a platform is going to go downhill really quickly. And that will be sad for all Tumblr users, not just those who don’t like horror gifs in their dash.

Kids

There’s also this: A lot of Tumblr’s users are young. Tumblr discourages people younger than 13 from signing up, but I don’t think they police that. Even if they do, 13 is still pretty young to be seeing this stuff. Tumblr is aware of the problem, which is why they’ve been trying to clean up the porn lately. But images of violent horror, of a young woman spattered with blood as she lurches toward you with a sword, or of another woman’s hanged corpse, are potentially just as damaging to young minds as images of people having sex. Maybe more so.

The main difference for Tumblr seems to be that the porn vendors aren’t paying them, while the horror vendors are. Tumblr needs to understand that just because someone is willing to pay doesn’t make it okay to show users disturbing images against their will. And when the users in question are children, people (rightfully) are going to have a problem with it.

Tumblr’s Community Guidelines

The frustrating thing is that Tumblr should know better. Most of the time they do a good job of helping users avoid content they don’t want to see. The “Unfollow” and “Ignore” buttons are awesome. For certain kinds of content, Tumblr will go as far as actively censoring it. Near the top of Tumblr’s Community Guidelines, which every user is required to follow, it says:

Don’t post content that actively promotes or glorifies self-harm. This includes content that urges or encourages readers to cut or injure themselves… or commit suicide rather than… seeking counseling or treatment.

The Community Guidelines go on to say:

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

The whole point of those policies is that it’s wrong to make people look at disturbing content they don’t want to see. Tumblr needs to recognize that the policy applies to them, too, and that the horror movie ads violate it.

What can Tumblr do?

Speaking for myself, I’d give Tumblr a medal if they did any of the following:

Gold medal – Publicly announce that they will no longer run horror movie ads, or will give users the ability to opt out of seeing them, and then follow through on that. Also, apologize for making users view the ads, acknowledge that that was a mistake and a violation of Tumblr’s principles, and promise never to do it again.

Silver medal – Publicly announce that Tumblr will stop running horror movie ads, or that it will give users the ability to opt out of seeing them, and follow through.

Bronze medal – Quietly, without fanfare, stop running horror movie ads, or roll out a feature that allows users to opt out of seeing them.

Tumblr user anonsally sent a letter about this issue to Tumblr support with the following suggestions (I’m summarizing; see her post for details):

1. allow users a choice of the types of products they are willing to see ads for.

2. allow users to opt out of ads by paying a modest fee.

3. don’t accept ads for scary movies.

4. hide ads for scary movies behind a “click here for info on [scary movie]” with “trigger warnings: death, gore,…”

5. tailor the ad to match the content on the person’s dash or their own posts.

The point is, Tumblr has options.

What you can do

Block the ads – If you browse Tumblr from a computer, check out Tumblr Savior – I’m currently blocking “sponsored_badge_icon”, which seems to work – or XKit, especially its Blacklist plugin.

Email support@tumblr.com – You might eventually get a reply from someone on the “Tumblr Trust & Safety” team who will assure you that Tumblr takes users’ concerns seriously, and that they’re going to share your views with “the team.” At some point, if enough of us complain, those assurances might actually come to mean something.

Complain to Yahoo – Since Tumblr has now been bought, it may help to complain to the new owners. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a good way to do that. All the options at http://help.yahoo.com/ lead me to a form that wants me to first pick a product to complain about, and Tumblr isn’t one of the listed options. If you figure out how to complain to them, let me know and I’ll update the post.

Share your views – I’ve started tracking the Sponsored Posts tag. If you agree that this is a problem, please consider sharing your thoughts there. It will help others know they’re not alone.

Previous posts I’ve written about this are here.

Thanks.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/57016526873.

To: support@tumblr.com

Fr: John Callender (jbc@jbcsystems.com)

Subject: Community Guidelines violation

Hi. I’d like to report a fellow Tumblr user for violation of Tumblr’s Community Guidelines. This user appears to have some sort of special access to my dashboard, where he has been repeatedly posting disturbing images of violence, suicide, and self-harm. I appear to be unable to stop this.

I don’t want to promote these posts any more than they already have been, but it’s important for you understand what I’m talking about. Here are links to a few of them. (Warning: They contain images that are graphic and disturbing.)

http://universalhorrorfilms.tumblr.com/post/50444456345

http://theconjuringmovie.tumblr.com/post/56818251610

These are the two that bothered me the most, but there have been many others. Presumably there will be more in the future.

Tumblr’s Community Guidelines prohibit the following activity:

Malicious Bigotry. Don’t actively promote violence or extreme hatred against individuals or groups, on the basis of… gender.

The posts in question appear to skew in a gender-specific fashion. I haven’t analyzed them in detail, but from the quick exposure I’ve had they appear to disproportionately depict women as the terrified victims of violence, while showing men as grinning perpetrators.

Granted, the sword-wielding woman in the first post linked to above is something of an exception. Whether these posts actually promote violence or hatred against women is a debatable point, so maybe we should give the posts a pass on that particular guideline. But the Community Guidelines also state:

Promotion and Glorification of Self-Harm. Don’t post content that actively promotes or glorifies self-harm. This includes content that urges or encourages readers to cut or injure themselves… or commit suicide rather than, e.g., seeking counseling or treatment… We aim to sustain Tumblr as a place that facilitates awareness, support and recovery, and to remove only those blogs that cross the line into active promotion or glorification of self-harm.

I think these posts do, in fact, cross the line into active promotion or glorification. Their dramatic depictions of violence, including the sword-wielding, blood-spattered young woman in the first image, and the dangling feet of the suicide victim in the second, are profoundly disturbing, and are presented with no hint that they are intended to promote awareness, support, or recovery. For Tumblr users who are struggling with issues of self-harm and suicide to encounter these images against their will and without warning could be extremely harmful.

The Community Guidelines continue:

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

The posts in question clearly violate this guideline. The person responsible for these is posting gore intended to be shocking, showcasing the mutilation and torture of human beings, and depicting dead human remains.

Please enforce Tumblr’s Community Guidelines by restricting this user from posting this sort of content. At a minimum, let me know how I and other users who object to these posts can block them from appearing in our dashboards.

I’m not sure who the user responsible for these posts is, but from what I’ve read I think it might be this guy:

http://www.davidslog.com/

He reportedly makes these sorts of decisions at Tumblr. I could be wrong, though; he also posts to the blog at http://staff.tumblr.com, where he recently wrote this:

Making sure people aren’t surprised by content they find offensive is also incredibly important and we are always working to put more control in your hands.

So maybe it’s actually someone else who’s doing this. Regardless, it needs to stop. Please investigate and let me know what you find out. Thanks.

John Callender

jbc@jbcsystems.com

http://lies.tumblr.com

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/56886236641.

anonsally:

aivley:

[snipped]

1. There is a way to block all sponsored posts by blocking the $ symbol on them. But I don’t remember how to do that and it certainly won’t work forever.

Using Tumblr Savior, I think you can blacklist sponsored_badge_icon ?

2. I don’t understand their algorithm for handing out these ads. I’ve had neither of the horror movies (so far…) but I did have vh1’s Lets-Objectify-Women ad.

My best guess is, there is no algorithm at all. They just have a few ads and they show up at random, with no relation at all to what is on your blog or dash.

3. Mostly I’m frustrated because tumblr could have come up with really cool ways to do advertising* but instead they chose the absolute most boring and, incidentally, the one that is the least consumer friendly.

Exactly.

4. I understand if you choose to leave but I will miss you.

That was addressed to lies, and I want to echo the sentiment.

*For instance:

 – have us choose one “ad-blog” to follow per 100 regular blogs. (this would be a pretty great way to do it i think.)

 – have us select a classification rating (eg G, PG, M) and/or the ability to block certain topics (like tags!) like: suicide, nudity… etc??

 – have us select, from a list, several topics of ads.

I like these ideas for other ways they could handle advertising that would be more friendly. So, signal boosting.

Thank all of you who’ve been willing to think and post about possible solutions for this.

Just to clarify, I think I’ve almost always seen the horror movie sponsored posts on the Tumblr iPad app, rather than when browsing Tumblr on my computer. I believe sponsored posts were introduced first on the app, before they ever appeared on the website, and it appears that sponsored posts are still more intrusively implemented (with more ads/worse ads) on the app. I think that was true even before I started using Tumblr Savior in an effort to block the sponsored posts when viewing the website (which I’ve now done).

I don’t know if the ads being worse on the app is intentional, or if it’s just a side-effect of the development pipeline for the app working differently than the one for the website. Having worked on development teams that were delivering both app-based and web-based interfaces, it wouldn’t surprise me if updating the app takes substantially longer than updating the website, which could mean that even if Tumblr chose to respond to the complaints there might be delays before any changes filtered down to the app (or they might choose to just leave the app with the old behavior, even if they backed off from running the horror movie sponsored posts on the website).

Besides technical issues, there could be business issues involved as well. For example, it might be that Tumblr entered into a sales agreement that commits them to running a certain amount of horror movie advertising. Even if a negative response from their users made them decide that they didn’t want to continue running the ads, there might be a big difference for them between letting the current agreement expire without renewing it, versus canceling it in mid-stream. I could see that being a factor in the noncommittal responses they’ve been making to the complaints.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/56031013920.