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Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th

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Re: Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th

#371
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people on Reddit are recommending Pixiv, a Japanese site.

Pixiv is also a cool company. I don't want to speak too much for fear of messing up some of their story but they're basically a bit like Japanese deviantArt. They've open sourced some small parts of their code: https://github.com/pixiv As far as content goes, it is constrained by Japanese law, which is mostly more liberal around art with the exception of their oddly specific yet vague censorship requirements.

Complete tangent, but Japan never had any censorship rules before WWII. When the Americans occupied Japan they imposed some laws to help rebuild the country. You can debate whether the laws were good or not. For example, there are many laws around farming geared to ensure that small independent farmers could survive and that Japan would rebuild its food infrastructure (which it kind of abandoned before the war, preferring to import food from outside the country). They banned the sale of farmland (so that big companies couldn't buy up all the land). They banned the import of "staple foods" (so that the country could become self sufficient in agriculture). And with the 1940's American view of wholesome society, they imposed censorship requirements on pornography (among a lot of other strange things).

Japanese culture has a very strange aspect to it, though. It is a rule following culture and they don't readily change the rules. Once you have a law for something, people don't question it. It's the law. It doesn't matter if it's a good law or a bad law. It's just the law and you make do. None of those laws changed in 70 years and unless some outside force puts pressure on the government, I suspect they won't change for another 70 years.

I always find it amusing that Americans, especially, complain about protectionist agriculture policies of Japan. Or American pundits show surprise at the really bizarre censorship laws. All of it was put in place by the Americans -- albeit probably without realising that once a law is in place, it's gong to be there for a long time :-) This is American culture fast forwarded in time 70 years!

WRT to the liberal laws regarding art... well, generally about what constitutes child pornography: if you are drawing something you have pretty much free reign to draw whatever you like. This is (IMHO humorously) constrained by the specific censorship laws (I suppose the 1940's American occupying forces did not consider child pornography). Artists will follow the letter of the law, but then will feel free to draw whatever they want outside of those boundaries.

I believe this is due to a very strong feeling in Japan that what you think is private and up to you. Even discrimination is famously not illegal in Japan. For example, you are free to serve or not to serve any customer for any reason in Japan. It's a pretty big deal for most people. Remember that before the war Japan had no censorship laws. You could depict anything you wanted in art. The current state of affairs is just an extension of that, tiptoeing around the censorship laws imposed by the occupying forces in the 1940's.

Child pornography is reviled here in Japan to pretty much the same extent that it is anywhere I have ever lived (as well as art that depicts rape, or other violent sexual crimes). However, if you draw it rather than photograph it, it is not illegal. If it doesn't involve anyone other than the artist and the viewer, it's nobody's business but theirs. Talking about it publicly is completely not acceptable in normal society, but thinking about it is your own business (even though most people will privately judge if they think you are the kind of person who is interested in that stuff -- but again, that thinking is private and not expressed publicly).

I'm always hesitant to talk about this stuff on a public forum because I don't want to incite a large thread about what should or should not be classed as child pornography. It's one of those things where no matter what opinion you hold, you are going to be seen as a monster by people who hold a different opinion. I just thought people would be interested in some information about why the rules are so strange in Japan.

Re: Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th

#372
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pixiv is also a cool company. I don't want to speak too much for fear of messing up some of their story but they're basically a bit like Japanese deviantArt. They've open sourced some small parts of their code: https://github.com/pixiv As far as content goes, it is constrained by Japanese law, which is mostly more liberal around art with the exception of their oddly specific yet vague censorship requirements.

Complete tangent, but Japan never had any censorship rules before WWII. When the Americans occupied Japan they imposed some laws to help rebuild the country. You can debate whether the laws were good or not. For example, there are many laws around farming geared to ensure that small independent farmers could survive and that Japan would rebuild its food infrastructure (which it kind of abandoned before the war, prefe…

I've always heard that Japan's form of censorship was actually a means to help control and eliminate illegally produced pornography. Also, personally I've always held the belief that a drawing is just a drawing, and it is bizarre for it in itself to be considered obscene regardless of what it depicts. Of course, the actual law is a lot more complicated in pretty much every jurisdiction.

Re: Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th

#374
post #156

Even Digg didn't set out to die overnight. Come to think of it, of all decade-plus websites, Tumblr is exactly the one for whom suicide is an entirely expected ending. Moody, unique, too obscure for the mainstream but popular enough among the kind of people who would appreciate you. You were the kind to enjoy poetry and inspirational images, but those inspirational images just couldn't give you enough dopamine. You s…

Digg's demise was due to its failure to police their content and to leave it up to the users. I remember it being a fun place, and then it became overrun by do-gooders we called the "bury brigades". Anything remotely interesting or creative got killed and you were left with press-releases from a few big media outlets. A dull news feed. Many people moved to reddit, but /r/politics is pretty much exactly what became of…

> but /r/politics is pretty much exactly what became of Digg

Could you say some more about what you mean by that?

Re: Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digg's demise was due to its failure to police their content and to leave it up to the users. I remember it being a fun place, and then it became overrun by do-gooders we called the "bury brigades". Anything remotely interesting or creative got killed and you were left with press-releases from a few big media outlets. A dull news feed. Many people moved to reddit, but /r/politics is pretty much exactly what became of…

> but /r/politics is pretty much exactly what became of Digg Could you say some more about what you mean by that?

A filtered news feed of the political left.

The difference is /r/politics has a whitelist of "acceptable" domains. Essentially anything left of Lenin is OK, and anything else is deemed "far right".

The bury brigades still exist in the comments.

Re: Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th

#376
post #71
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly correct. Sure there are "clean" portions of Tumblr, but from what I can tell the real purpose is to host adult content. And there's nothing wrong with that! It's a fantastic magnet for eyes, with which to show ads. They're basically killing themselves with this.

The vast vast majority of advertisers do not want to be displayed next to porn. Think of tumblr as nothing but a way to get pageviews for Cheerios and Volvo ads. It explains their decisions perfectly.

so no ads for adult tumblrs then.

Why shutting them down? You can't tag adult content or you can't write a SELECT...WHERE filter?

Re: Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you monitor (almost) everything? Unless it's at a friend's house, my ten-year-old has no access to tumblr. I fail to understand why children must have access to internet connected devices.

What's your long term game plan with that? At some age, they'll get a device, are you just hoping for the best when that happens? Or "you pay for it, it's your problem" or what? We limit device time and I try to be as involved as I can, we ask them what they're doing, we try to play games with them, etc. Every day. We keep repeating the mantra about not talking to strangers online, and to tell us if they talk to you.…

There's a pretty wide spectrum between full-blown free-for-all and full-blown Amish-mode. In particular, routers/firewalls with parental controls (whether network-wide or by MAC address) are increasingly common in homes nowadays, even if those features go unused. A whitelist would be pretty effective here for outright blocking.

Re: Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th

#378
post #21

My daughter at 12 got sucked into Tumblr and developed an eating disorder. She was in this gigantic web of pro-ana tumblrs with crazy diet plans that tell you to eat like 100 calories a day. Then the app would just keep suggesting more, "skin and bones", "thinspo", "meanspo". Holy crap there are some scary corners of Tumblr. I of course am more mindful of what she looks at, but she was hiding it and I can't monitor e…

My sympathies.

The internet an interconnected web of information, used by both children and adults.

It can be more friendly for children when large platform "police themselves", but those efforts will naturally paint with very broad strokes.

I suspect the best strides here will be made by parental restrictions, so that the choices can be more individual and appropriate. (That's no panacea either of course; I'm merely suggesting it is the most promising solution.)

Re: Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th

#379
post #47
post #21

My daughter at 12 got sucked into Tumblr and developed an eating disorder. She was in this gigantic web of pro-ana tumblrs with crazy diet plans that tell you to eat like 100 calories a day. Then the app would just keep suggesting more, "skin and bones", "thinspo", "meanspo". Holy crap there are some scary corners of Tumblr. I of course am more mindful of what she looks at, but she was hiding it and I can't monitor e…

My daughter at 12 got sucked into Tumblr and developed an eating disorder. I'm really sorry to hear this, having gone through a similar thing with a now ex-significant other. She too became very active in the segments of tumblr you identified and others (showed me many of them, some seemed like teenage angst in blog form, others were far more...worrisome), developed an eating disorder along with severe anxiety issues…

You make me think of Boyinaband.

(https://youtu.be/xR3hrZS2c0A?t=705)

Re: Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th

#380

there are a lot of jokes being made along the lines of "there goes their userbase" but for me personally this is a huge loss. especially for those of us who have certain kinks, Tumblr to this day has been the only place to ever exist where women could safely express their sexuality. it allowed us to meet like-minded people, it allowed us to break the taboo and it ended the isolation that many of us felt. Tumblrs main…

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if it was that valuable to you, all of you guys should have gotten together and offered to start paying. The next website you guys find yourselves on, you should really consider paying.

I'm inclined to agree with the general sentiment here—the fact that no one is willing to pay for software is harmful in the long run, because companies find other ways of extracting money, that either harm the product itself or the user.

But, asking users to "get together and offer to start paying money" in exchange that's free is completely unreasonable. Tumblr didn't offer any kind of payment avenue.

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