Twas the night before Doomsday, and all through the ‘net Not a blog was secure from the coming upset. Why, the staff? They had vanished. And the users, they wept, As their blogs were downloading, to safely be kept.
The porn blogs were nestled all snug with their tags, “Safe For Work” labelled: with dicks, tits, and vaj. The fandoms, protesting the change from on high, Had signed their petitions - the exodus nigh.
And down in the bottom right of my display The countdown ticked on, flagging well underway. I readied my signout, and tabbed to my dash To browse one last time before it could crash.
Why, the bubble would pop and the users would flee And those who remained would be fewer indeed. One by one to be whittled, by flag and by ban Until all that remain are the bots and the spam.
As I gazed at my feed and the names I knew well, I shook my head sadly, for - though it was hell, There was much that was good on this chaotic site. And we’ll all be the poorer, when it says GOODNIGHT.
The plan for the 17th, when the adult content ban comes in, is to protest.
To do that, we are making as much noise either side of the 17th as possible, and using the site as normal.
On the 17th, dead silence.
People are saying log off but what they really mean is don’t open the site or the app.
But, on the 17th make as much noise as possible on every other platform. Tweet about it and post on facebook and instagram and everywhere else.
What this does is causes a massive dip in ad revenue for one single day. That does not make staff think ‘oh everyone’s gone let’s shut down.’ What it actually makes them think is ‘oh shit people aren’t happy and if people don’t keep using our site we’re out of money and out of jobs.’
A boycott reminds a company that the users (consumers) have the power to make their site (business) worthless with one single coordinated decision.
If you want to join in, here’s what to do:
Do:
Close all open instances of the app and site on all your devices before the 17th
Make posts before and after the 17th on tumblr and other platforms, talking about why this ban is bad
Make posts on other sites during the 17th. Flood the official tumblr staff twitter and facebook with your anger and your opinion
Come back on the 18th and check in
Don’t:
Delete the app from your phone (this doesn’t affect their revenue and since it’s off the store at the moment it’ll be hard to get back)
Delete your account. I mean you can if you want to, but if you keep your account and don’t use it you’re saying to staff that there’s still time to save it. If you delete it’s hard work to come back.
Open the app or website (including specific blogs)
Make any posts (turn down/off your queue and make sure nothing is scheduled)
Go quiet elsewhere. Make it clear that this is just about tumblr, not a mass move away from all social media.
Remember: the execs don’t care about anything but money. Shutting down the site means there’s $0 further income from it. That’s their last possible course of action. If we make it clear we’re not happy, they’ll have to do something or we can do more and more until it becomes too expensive.
Protests take commitment. They’re a defiant action against a business that is doing something wrong. They will try to scare you into not participating, because they’re scared. We hold all the power here, sometimes the execs just need to be reminded of that.
Don’t forget to turn off your queue beans!
PLEASE DON’T FORGET THAT TUMBLR’S RESPONSE IS LIKELY ALSO DUE TO THE PASSING OF SESTA/FOSTA WHICH ARE ESSENTIALLY CENSORSHIP LAWS DISGUISED AS ANTI-SEX TRAFFICKING LAWS!
Facebook has also changed its TOS to ban talk of sexuality and sex acts, whether it is solicitation (consensual included) or not.
This law has already caused sites like Backpage (which was used by police as a sting site to catch criminals) and the personals section on Craigslist (basically, a dating/meet up platform). This law affect ANY and EVERY website and is especially dangerous to those who use those sites to advertise or host their CONSENSUAL AND LEGAL adult services. This is also what is causing your naughty anime art to be prohibited.
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been actively trying to go to court to claim this law unconstitutional and dangerous to the community (it is). They have been dismissed once already. They’ve made an ACT NOW page.
Contact your senators to tell them to repeal SESTA/FOSTA. Calling is most effective!
Educate yourselves on the consequences of this law and build up a good argument. Write. Call. Tweet at them. Comment on pages. Etc.
On that note, continue doing exactly what OP lists, because Verizon/Tumblr that have stood behind the law and used it as an excuse for censorship (and don’t even actually care about trafficking) to make their advertisers happy to not have their product next to “female-presenting nipples” deserve to be shaken up and made aware their actions due to this “support” is not a solution and their users are angry. Drag them out of ignoring your comments forever. Do definitely flood them.
“I miss Montgomery Clift. I miss talking to him, exchanging thoughts and ideas. I miss laughing together and doing silly things together. He was the best friend I’ve ever had. And I think he would say the same about me. He was so brilliantly talented and such a tragic figure. Oh, I loved him- and I still do.”-Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun. (1951)
“If autism isn’t caused by environmental factors and is natural why didn’t we ever see it in the past?”
We did, except it wasn’t called autism it was called “Little Jonathan is a r*tarded halfwit who bangs his head on things and can’t speak so we’re taking him into the middle of the cold dark forest and leaving him there to die.”
Or “little Jonathan doesn’t talk but does a good job herding the sheep, contributes to the community in his own way, and is, all around, a decent guy.” That happened a lot, too, especially before the 19th century.
Or, backing up FURTHER
and lots of people think this very likely,
“Oh little Sionnat has obviously been taken by the fairies and they’ve left us a Changeling Child who knows too much, and asks strange questions, and uses words she shouldn’t know, and watches everything with her big dark eyes, clearly a Fairy Child and not a Human Like Us.”
The Myth of the Changeling child, a human baby apparently replaced at a young age by a toddler who “suddenly” acts “strange and fey” is an almost textbook depiction of autistic children.
To this day, “autism warrior mommies” talk about autism “stealing” their “sweet normal child” and have this idea of “getting their real baby back” which (in the face of modern science) indicates how the human psyche actually does deal with finding out their kid acts unlike what they expected.
Given this evidence, and how common we now know autism actually is, the Changeling myth is almost definitely the result of people’s confusion at the development of autistic children.
Weirdly enough, that legend is now comforting to me.
I think it’s worth noting that many like me, who are diagnosed with ASD now, would probably have been seen as just a bit odd in centuries past. I’m only a little bit autistic; I can pass for neurotypical for short periods if I work really hard at it. I have a lack of talent in social situations, and I’m prone to sensory overload or you might notice me stimming.
But here’s the thing: life is louder, brighter and more intense and confusing than it has ever been. I live on the edge of London and I rarely go into the centre of town because it’s too overwhelming. If I went back in time and lived on a farm somewhere, would anyone even notice there was anything odd about me? No police sirens, no crowded streets that go on for miles and miles, no flickery electric lights. Working on a farm has a clear routine. I’d be a badass at spinning cloth or churning butter because I find endless repetition soothing rather than boring.
I’m not trying to romanticise the past because I know it was hard, dirty work with a constant risk of premature death. I don’t actually want to be a 16th century farmer! What I’m saying is that disability exists in the context of the environment. Our environment isn’t making people autistic in the sense of some chemical causing brain damage. But we have created a modern environment which is hostile to autistic people in many ways, which effectively makes us more disabled. When you make people more disabled, you start to see more people struggling, failing at school because they’re overwhelmed, freaking out at the sound of electric hand dryers and so on. And suddenly it looks like there’s millions more autistic people than existed before.
“…disability exists in the context of the environment.”
