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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

#381

Post by wtracy »

jacquesm wrote: post #290
dvtrn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

These online groups have the same advantage that many other cults have over their victims: they can re-try until they find enough buttons to press that work to bring out the vulnerable people. It's like negotiating against a much more experienced adversary: you're going to lose. The only way to deal with that stuff is not to get exposed to it in the first place. Something similar happens with advertising, there too t…

Does anyone have any resources that explore how these groups achieve these things? (Especially the process of alienating inductees from friends and family--that's scary stuff.)

It seems like understanding how these systems work would be a prerequisite for protecting your loved ones (or even yourself!).

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

#382

Post by wtracy »

leppr wrote: post #344
jacquesm wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These online groups have the same advantage that many other cults have over their victims: they can re-try until they find enough buttons to press that work to bring out the vulnerable people. It's like negotiating against a much more experienced adversary: you're going to lose. The only way to deal with that stuff is not to get exposed to it in the first place. Something similar happens with advertising, there too t…

What does a "pro-ana" group gain from attracting new members ? Seems to me the dynamics are very different from a cult, where members are asked for money/work, and to bring new followers. This is mostly just teens discovering fetishes and sharing them to feel better about it.

Don't discount the possibility that these groups generally believe that they are helping others through outreach.

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

#383

Post by solveit »

MickerNews wrote: post #295
Nelson69 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

>What's your long term game plan with that? That they're going to be more mature when that happens because they've demonstrated that they weren't ready just yet.

Like all the old people on facebook demonstrating that their decades of life experience has taught them to recognize obvious bullshit..?

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

#384

Post by barry-cotter »

jacquesm wrote: post #290
dvtrn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

These online groups have the same advantage that many other cults have over their victims: they can re-try until they find enough buttons to press that work to bring out the vulnerable people. It's like negotiating against a much more experienced adversary: you're going to lose. The only way to deal with that stuff is not to get exposed to it in the first place. Something similar happens with advertising, there too t…

This is bull. I have had ample exposure to far right and far left groups and their philosophy as well as many varieties of weird deviant porn and a plethora of other subcultures the wider world would look askance at. I fall pretty squarely within normal.

Online subcultures can’t target people because online subcultures don’t have memories, minds or goals. They are distributed patterns of behaviour, beliefs and norms, which attract people or not based more on the people than the subculture.

Brainwashing doesn’t work. The cult panic was bull. You can’t change people’s minds outside of a totalitarian society. They change their own minds.

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

#385

Post by namlem »

nickthegreek wrote: post #15
pdimitar wrote: post #9

If Verizon bought Tumblr with the sole purpose of having one more service to serve ads to, and if banning the adult content move aims to please the advertisers then oh boy, are they in for a nasty surprise. Tumblr will become a ghost town in days.

Agreed. So many artists, photographers and models used tumblr to showcase their work. It was also easy to link your blog to a .com with little to no webdev experience. The only other social media network out there with a following that allows near the same level of expression is twitter and I have already seen posts from artists directing their followers there. But twitter is no real substitute to what tumblr offered…

Reddit has user pages now. It's a bit rough, but it can pretty much fill tumblr's functionality.

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

#386

Post by namlem »

dvtrn wrote: post #47
bvinc wrote: 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…

I've heard this type of story way too many times. People getting sucked into some social media community and becoming anxious, fearful, and bitter. Social media is much more dangerous than we bargained for it seems.

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

#387

Post by namlem »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #70
bvinc wrote: 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…

I knew pro-anorexia groups use slang like "your friend Ana" to hide their actions, but had to google "thinspo" and "meanspo". Thinspo (thin inspiration) is positive anorexia reinforcement, like anorexic role model pictures. Meanspo (mean inspiration) is negative anorexia reinforcement, like aphorisms demonizing fat or destructive critic. Why are young girls so vulnerable to mental disease trends? What can we do bette…

Boys instead fall into other toxic communities, like incels.

The youtuber ContraPoints made a great video about such communities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD2briZ6fB0

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

#388

Post by wtracy »

danaris wrote: post #173
debt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too expensive to police. Losing users every month, downward trends, etc. Tumblr has become a money loser and won't ever be competitive with Facebook, TikTok, etc. Another botched acquisition.

> and won't ever be competitive with Facebook, TikTok, etc. Which is just another example of why the corporate culture today is absolutely insane. Why can there not be a site like Tumblr that is perfectly stable (leaving aside for the moment whether today's Tumblr is or could become that stable), but is not and could never be "the next Facebook" or "the next Twitter"?

Before the Yahoo acquisition, Tumblr was hemorrhaging cash. I don't think it ever was "stable" financially, which is all that matters in the end.

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

#390

Post by chipotle_coyote »

pdimitar wrote: post #9

If Verizon bought Tumblr with the sole purpose of having one more service to serve ads to, and if banning the adult content move aims to please the advertisers then oh boy, are they in for a nasty surprise. Tumblr will become a ghost town in days.

While "Tumblr is for porn" seems to be received wisdom, let me play devil's advocate (angel's advocate?): most of us are just taking that for granted without digging in.

In 2016, Motherboard actually did the digging, and discovered a few interesting numbers, categorizing 130M Tumblr users into "producers" of porn, "consumers" (those who follow the producers), and "unintentionally exposed" users who don't follow porn producers but see reblogs from them.

* Only about 1% of users are producers. * About 22% of Tumblr users are consumers. * About 28% of Tumblr users are unintentionally exposed.

So, what happens?

* Obviously, they lose the producers. * They lose some of the consumers, but not all. (Not all of the consumers are there exclusively for porn.) * They lose some of the unintentionally exposed, but probably not most.

They may lose a quarter or more of their userbase this way, sure, but Tumblr's estimates a few years ago for their total user count were over 200M. Maybe that drops down to "only" 150M, or even 100M. But now their hosting costs have dropped dramatically, too. So if advertising revenue increases or even stays the same as it is now, they win. And 100M users is absolutely a big enough audience to bring in advertisers.

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