If you use Tumblr, you’ll probably have seen this post about the updating of their policies, including the change from ‘Content Policy’ to ‘Community Guidelines’. It’s an interesting linguistic shift, because it marks a change from arbiter of service provision to a more collective, social image. Of course, every social media company has to present these two faces simultaneously in the modern age, so it’s more of shift of emphasis than meaning. However, it still seems to me like a distortion of the term ‘community’: Tumblr, as a platform, does have a very strong community aspect which I enjoy, but it is fragmented and, crucially, bottom-up - there are a wide variety of communities which largely just share the same mechanisms for posting and communication.
In that sense (and in terms of what I was talking about yesterday on society and multiculturalism with boatzone3), Tumblr is not ‘the community’, it is the societal organisation and regulation of a variety of communities, and in that respect - and the technical meaning - a ‘content policy’ seems more appropriate, if not perhaps as accessible. It isn’t really true, more over, that their actual policies haven’t expanded:
“It’s worth noting that, while the Community Guidelines have gotten longer, the only new policy in the draft that we weren’t already enforcing is “Promotion and Glorification of Self-Harm”. The other additions are meant to clarify our existing policies.”
Before I get to some of the differences, though, let’s note the improvement to their admitted new policy on self-harm and eating disorders (as I discussed here):
“Don’t post content that actively promotes or glorifies self-harm. This includes content that urges or encourages readers to cut or injure themselves; embrace anorexia, bulimia, or other eating disorders; or commit suicide rather than, e.g., seeking counseling or treatment, or joining together in supportive conversation with those suffering or recovering from depression or other conditions. Dialogue about these behaviors is incredibly important and online communities can be extraordinarily helpful to people struggling with these difficult conditions. 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.”
They are still going ahead with a form of censorship (at least theoretically - if you see some of the other entries in the guidelines or policy, you’ll guess they’re not particularly well enforced) but at least the emphasis has clearly shifted towards allowing discussion and general free speech while still reserving the right to take protective action on whatever it is they consider “active promotion or glorification”. And that is their right, broadly speaking, as a private company/service provider, and there is clearly a demand out there - whether paternalistic, ill-considered and potentially ineffectual or not - for taking such steps. Again, this seems like a role more in keeping with a societal regulator than a true community spirit - there are not only conflicting interest, but conflicting groups at play here, and it’s probably a good idea to keep that in mind while reflecting that this is as reasonable a decision as was likely.
Anyway, that’s the really serious stuff. Other injunctions include:
“Don’t post gore just to be shocking. Don’t showcase the mutilation or torture of human beings, animals, or their remains.”
and
“You can embed anything as long as it follows the other guidelines on this page. But please don’t use Tumblr’s Upload Video feature to host any sexually explicit videos. We’re not in the business of profiting from adult-oriented videos and hosting this stuff is fucking expensive. You can use services like Fantasti.cc to host those instead.”
I’ve seen both on Tumblr (even if I only really wanted to see one), so it seems a bit stable-door. I can’t really object to the content, as it were, of either decision, but the phrasing of the second is illuminating and questionable. “We’re not in the business of profiting from adult-oriented videos and hosting this stuff is fucking expensive” - what are Tumblr in the business of profiting from, and why does it exclude ‘adult-oriented videos’? It’s something - being ad-free, with a small and seemingly trivial range of premium paid options - that they are quite obscure about; while the second part, though a valid technical concern, just seems petulant in its phrasing. If Tumblr want to restrict their user’s expression, they need to be clearer about what their own interests are.
This heading is one I just find amusing:
“Non-Genuine Social Gesture Schemes.”
The old Content Policy is much narrower (e.g., it briefly covers sexually explicit videos but doesn’t mention gore), but it’s interesting to note the one thing that has gone from it in the new updated ‘community guidelines’:
“Redundant Content. Tumblr is not intended to be an all-purpose content aggregator. Users who import or aggregate content in a less-than-meaningful way are likely to be suspended.”
Hmm… so Tumblr has abandoned the quest for the definition of ‘meaning’, in terms of content, in favour of defining appropriateness for its ‘community’. Is this the beginning of a brave new blogging platform, or just the emergence of hidden rules to the game?
