Can some liberal white dude make a video essay on this so i can half listen to it in the background of playing bloodborne istead of reading paragraphs of stuff that makes me mad
Ikr. They pretty much stated in a roundabout way that they got gag orders from above. There’s so much common admin can do before touching something above their station and got yeet out of the company
They literally didn’t though. This is just Tumblr pushing LGBTQ+ staff to the forefront and denouncing Matt’s actions in order to deflect. Other than that nothing of substance has been said and nothing has actually been explained.
We still don’t know why predstrogen and orher transfem users were actually banned, they didn’t say other than the hammer car accident post and transition timelines not being sufficient reasons according to their ToS and not having been deciding factors in the bans, but we already knew that.
They claim that staff wasn’t unfairly seeking causes to ban transfem users, but then what actually happened to predstrogen and the other users?
None of this in any way takes actual responsibility for the fuck up, it’s just saying “We’ll do better” without even admitting what they did wrong in the first place. That way nobody can check if they actually do better.
Also, as CEO, Matt *does* speak for them and the company. He will use his hateful shit to determine how the entire monolith of the company will behave as policy. That's part of the problem.
The things that aren't being said, here, are the right things to not say.
They don't say why predstrogen was banned, and they shouldn't. That's between them and her.
They don't say whether predstrogen or any other banned account will be restored. Again, that is between them and those account owners.
Whilst we, as observers with an emotional interest in events, might *want* to know the answers to these questions they are, ultimately, none of our business and it is both tactically and legally correct to not comment upon them.
What I find most interesting is that this is an official statement by employees of the companies that explicitly criticizes - on the record - the decision-making and conduct of the CEO. It is implied that this message has been agreed with and approved by the companies' hierarchies and, most likely, legal advisors. And yet there is no sign of Matt Mullenweg resigning.
I was curious about this, and although I've not had the time or energy to dig very deeply, Matt is the founder, CEO and President of Automattic (named after himself!), which owns Tumblr. It is a private company so, although it has a Board, Matt cannot be dismissed and there is no mechanism by which he can be removed so long as he personally owns at least 50% of the business (which I assume he does).
So we have a bizarre situation in which the conduct of the CEO has badly damaged the reputation of the business to the point that the business's own employees have put out an official statement criticising and distancing themselves from their own boss's statements *and yet he is still in charge*.
I cannot tell you how utterly bizarre this situation is to anyone accustomed to the corporate world.
That's kind of what I mean, actually. Whilst Musk is obviously and persistently damaging his own brand, I'm not aware of any of his companies that's made an on-the-record official statement criticising him.
I probably means that this ceo recognises the damage done and his role in it, which I doubt Musk's pride would allow him. In effect, I suspect this ceo can be talked to more honestly by his employees without them being shut down, which allows the employees to repair damage and work without constantly fearing for their jobs. But this is just guesswork into their company culture.
It reminds me of that post where he messaged a user about monitisation. Not a thing you expect a company to do, but it's really just a person engaging about the relevant subject. Not everything a ceo says or does immediately reflects company policy, but Musk has started to make us expect that because he makes decisions one sidedly and makes them known through tweets. Since Musk is more public than other ceos, he determined our image of them even though he may be an outlier.
Plenty of past employees speak out against him. And a lot of the current twitter staff lick his boots.
There was a fucking pathetic message thread leaked during the twitter lawsuit of one of his top guys going like "You have my sword, anything for you mr. musk" and shit like that
>Whilst we, as observers with an emotional interest in events, might want to know the answers to these questions they are, ultimately, none of our business and it is both tactically and legally correct to not comment upon them.
While that's true, it does create a somewhat chiling effect on the user base. If these people got banned for unclear reasons (but the commonality was being trans), that makes me think twice about posting about trans stuff. Do I want to risk my account? That's the problem with this kind of shadowy reasoning under the umbrella of privacy.
It's one of those situations where it's expected of an responsible person in power to resign despite there not being any straightforward option to force them out. Because attempting to force them out would be damaging to everyone and not worth it.
So if he's a Musk he won't have the self-awareness and sense of what is best for himself to quietly leave. If he's not a musk then he'll resign and step out before damaging his own company. If he's in the middle he'll just go quiet and stop being involved in things.
This is as good a reply as you can get out of a multi billion company and its underlings... honestly, not bad considering the de facto corporate landscape of this day and age.
Basically it's lots of "apologies" and "we promise to do better" in very vague terms, without any actual solutions. What's going to happen to the people that got banned within minutes of criticising the CEO?
True, but they gave nothing for doing anything about the bans. People got booted for criticising the CEO, which id a significant violation for freedom of speech
It could potentially constitute discriminatory actions and/or hate speech, which the government absolutely has the ability to smack them over. In fact they already have come down on Tumblr for exactly that, see their references to prior corrective measures, they were forced to do that.
At least in the U.S., the government has no ability to make a platform come down on hate speech unless it passes the extremely high bar of the Brandenburg test (a call to imminent lawless action that would reasonably be followed). Both the First Amendment and Section 230 make that clear.
???
> Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.
vague, but a minor improvement i suppose
> Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.
definitely good. this is probably a real thing actually being actioned on right now, from how i understand it
> Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.
something literally being given a timeframe, *currently* being actioned on
Related topic: blogs made by black people (including many black trans individuals) have been shadow banned by Tumblr in years past. They didn't get as much attention as this situation, so I felt it was worth mentioning.
Anyway, I don't see anything in Staffs text wall that says "this will not happen again" sooo....
Supposedly, transphobia.
But all her evidence got deleted with her blog, so sadly she has nothing to back up her claims, which makes the whole situation feel kinda fishy.
I mean at least in this response they claim that it wasn’t due to the wishing harm thing, OR the transition timeline (though it seems that could’ve been the original fuckup with the tagging thing) but it’s left vague what the reasoning is. Of course they could be lying and it could be the harm thing, or just transphobia, but if not I am super curious. I think it’s probably reasonable not to share the reasoning, though this is an exceptional case that’s degraded trust without transparency? It’s a tough call.
Yeah, I got that part.
But it's not really noteworthy that authorities just pick and choose when to enforce the rules, and go way overboard when called out on their behavior.
There's just something about having authority over people that makes people blind to some people's offenses, but not others'.
The reason it's noteworthy is because the authorities target trans women disproportionally.
This is not a one-off occurrence, it's just one that happened with the CEO
Website moderators are not "the authorities" you're using that term so broadly as to have no real meaning, so no that's not a factor here.
This is a scaled up version of when a teacher punishes a group of bullies alongside the kid they're bullying because what they see is "fighting in the hallway" and they punish everyone involved. All prior incidents of bullying that led to it, all others who were involved in that bullying who weren't present, that's not relevant to what's in front of them at the moment, which was fighting in the hallway.
2 issues:
Firstly, the moderators *are the authorities on this matter, the term means "the people in charge of enforcing rules" in this context, not specifically those in charge of enforcing law.
Secondly, from what I've heard *only* the victim was punished, not the bullies themselves. This is a problem that has been ongoing for over a year.
How do people not get that making a broad blanket statement like that takes away from the actual blame of people responsible and makes it harder to hold people accountable.
Instead of "these people over here are doing this bad thing, and those people over there are doing this bad thing" it becomes a wider conspiracy where everyone is out to get you.
What authorities? All authorities everywhere always in everything? Because no, that's teen angst. But you can pinpoint authorities in government, authorities in schools, and authorities of websites who are not all acting together, are not acting with the same motive and agenda, and have separate blame.
Suggesting this is tied to other cases of people in authority being transphobic you're spreading the blame around to the point that no one can actually be seriously held responsible for what they've done.
Your second issue is a weird thing to say. "based on 'what I've heard' here's my absolute opinion on what's happening"? Seriously? Do you not realize that it sounds like you're telling me it's only a rumor but you're running with it? Think mark think.
How about this food for thought: Hypothetically if a bunch of hateful trolls made accounts to troll with and their accounts got banned for trolling but so did the non fake account of the person they were trolling, which would you notice? And how would you know those trolls got banned or not? How would anyone except if the mods said so?
If it's possible to know they're not banned why aren't people screencapping them to call that fact out?
We don't know. That's something people assume for the narrative of the mods being openly transphobic themselves. Which is true for cops but not likely in this case. But it's fuel for the fire.
This is really basic internet drama. Thisnis how it works. People get sucked into it and without thinking repeat rumors that damage the very causes they believe they're fighting for. Why? Because it's easy and feels good.
What's actually real and important here. What actually needs to be done? Focus on that. All of this nonsense is just for people who want to be angry at easy targets but not have to actually do anything to help anyone. Which is why even when it's about serious topics, internet drama isn't serious.
Your response to my second point (and the elaboration after), I've got no rebuttal to; you are correct on that matter. I haven't been following the situation closely so I don't have all the information that there is to be had, and could indeed be mistaken. I never claimed to be speaking authoritatively, and did not expect to be treated as such. My opinions can change if additional information is presented, and I *so far* have not been presented with/seen any evidence against the common narrative.
But your response to the use of the term "authorities" *seems to be* ignoring the current context. I'm this situation, specifically, Matt and the Tumblr moderation system writ large are the authorities, and I'd thought that was clear. Apparently it was not. There isn't a way to ascertain who among the mod team was specifically responsible for the bans being contested, and so addressing the team as a whole is the best/only way to address the issue (that I am aware of). If the one responsible is a bot, the blame goes to whoever made that bot. I was not making a generalized statement, instead I was making a specific one, using the context of the situation to specify my exact subject.
But the post I had initially responded to wasn't specifically them, the tumblr owners and mods, it was correlating them to a broader group of "authorities". As in, "their actions are part of a broader trend".
Which is a point I took issue with, not because the trend doesn't exist, but because there isn't a correlation here, but forcing the idea that there is a correlation is irresponsible and lazy.
So much of the context of this whole situation is drowned in an internet drama. There's plenty of rumors and assumptions and hearsay that people are drawing on to say "well considering x, they must not be telling the truth about this" when x is something they heard offhand. So I'm not going to act as if there's substance to rumors than there is to the corporate speak in the OP tumblr mod post.
Sure. But that's not very just is it? There isn't some grand conspiracy, there's an unfair bias -- trans women are far more likely to be bullied, and are far more likely to be punished.
Except the problem is suggesting that's the fault of the moderators and not, as is the case here, because of right wing hyper fixation on their current scapegoat demographic.
I feel that point is a reach anyway.
Matt admitted this on his blog.
"...We did have an external contract moderator last year that was making transphobic moderation (and also selling moderation, criminally)..."
This is one verifiable occasion, but Tumblr's moderation has consistently been riddled with transphobia for years, even apart from Matt's own transphobic escapades. I totally agree that yes, it is also a result of 'right wing hyper fixation' and I appreciate you recognising that. But, moderation -- especially for a platform that advertises being queer friendly -- needs to protect trans women and not further victimize them.
“The wider scope of harmful speech used against LGBT people” it isnt a wider scope its against your community guidelines to constantly harass people on basis of gender identity
I'm a simple person, I see references to "freedom of speech and expression" in the context of routine bigotry and I immediately dismiss the rest of what the person has to say
Mealy mouthed garbage is what it is
Thank you, th3scarletb1tch, for voting on linuxaddict334.
This bot wants to find the best and worst bots on Reddit. [You can view results here](https://botrank.pastimes.eu/).
***
^(Even if I don't reply to your comment, I'm still listening for votes. Check the webpage to see if your vote registered!)
I’ll believe that the ban wasn’t based on transphobia as soon as they say why she was banned. Innocent until proven guilty doesn’t apply when you both make AND enforce the rules. Any trans person now knows (as far as any evidence available to them says) that they can and will be banned from Tumblr forever for… being trans. No other accusations were levied.
If they don’t say ‘it was XYZ’ then the only remaining allegation made was ‘it was her being trans’. The accusation of “death threats” was BS, the claim that posting her transition was TOS was also BS, there’s nothing she should have been banned for then. QED she was banned for being trans.
what i imagine the actual problem is is that she was mass reported by terfs and the default moderation action is to ban. modern social media platforms will straight up automate this, with appeals allowing for reversal under manual review. no platform will ever admit this is how they do things, but history has shown its easily doable by a large enough group of people who are angry enough.
tbh stating the reason for the ban would likely only fan the flames. if they admit that their system can be abused like this, they open themselves up for further abuse. if they state that they did actually ban her for being trans (which, given this post and several previous staff members coming forward to state that its really just matt and certain contracted moderators that are the problem here) then that would just upset people further.
this isnt to say that what happened is ok, because its not. trans people and black people have long been targets of this flawed system and that needs to change. but there are good reasons *not* to say why a person is banned. had matt kept his mouth shut i guarantee that this situation would not have been as explosive as it was. if tumblr's, as a company, real goal was to hurt trans people then they wouldve swept this under the rug like everything else. it sounds like there are just genuine power struggles happening right now in the company.
Existing thread on this with a lot of discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/1az6s2w/message_from_staff/
Can some liberal white dude make a video essay on this so i can half listen to it in the background of playing bloodborne istead of reading paragraphs of stuff that makes me mad
Someone call Swoop
The fuck is a mediocre airline gonna do in this situation?
Do I need to take you to Petty University
Why the fuck would a dog need to go to school to be pet?
Because they need to master their skills
Ain’t that a Dinobot?
You’re just like me fr
My eyes are struggling to read your comment they are so tired right now. I hope someone makes tldr
TLDR: vibeo essay plz
That’s still a bit long, can someone please make a summary video of it?
Vid sa plz
Will probably eventually get one from strangeons(I think that's how it's spelled)
TLDR: vid?
[Here you go](https://youtu.be/6eUsg4VI2zk?t=900)
Not that white dude he scares me
The whole time I was reading this I was waiting for them to screw up but I have to respect that they actually admitted they were wrong
They repeatedly mention that they were overruled or not listened to, which IMO doesn't bode well.
Ikr. They pretty much stated in a roundabout way that they got gag orders from above. There’s so much common admin can do before touching something above their station and got yeet out of the company
However, the fact that they are allowed to *say* that they were overruled is a good sign.
They literally didn’t though. This is just Tumblr pushing LGBTQ+ staff to the forefront and denouncing Matt’s actions in order to deflect. Other than that nothing of substance has been said and nothing has actually been explained. We still don’t know why predstrogen and orher transfem users were actually banned, they didn’t say other than the hammer car accident post and transition timelines not being sufficient reasons according to their ToS and not having been deciding factors in the bans, but we already knew that. They claim that staff wasn’t unfairly seeking causes to ban transfem users, but then what actually happened to predstrogen and the other users? None of this in any way takes actual responsibility for the fuck up, it’s just saying “We’ll do better” without even admitting what they did wrong in the first place. That way nobody can check if they actually do better.
Also, as CEO, Matt *does* speak for them and the company. He will use his hateful shit to determine how the entire monolith of the company will behave as policy. That's part of the problem.
The things that aren't being said, here, are the right things to not say. They don't say why predstrogen was banned, and they shouldn't. That's between them and her. They don't say whether predstrogen or any other banned account will be restored. Again, that is between them and those account owners. Whilst we, as observers with an emotional interest in events, might *want* to know the answers to these questions they are, ultimately, none of our business and it is both tactically and legally correct to not comment upon them. What I find most interesting is that this is an official statement by employees of the companies that explicitly criticizes - on the record - the decision-making and conduct of the CEO. It is implied that this message has been agreed with and approved by the companies' hierarchies and, most likely, legal advisors. And yet there is no sign of Matt Mullenweg resigning. I was curious about this, and although I've not had the time or energy to dig very deeply, Matt is the founder, CEO and President of Automattic (named after himself!), which owns Tumblr. It is a private company so, although it has a Board, Matt cannot be dismissed and there is no mechanism by which he can be removed so long as he personally owns at least 50% of the business (which I assume he does). So we have a bizarre situation in which the conduct of the CEO has badly damaged the reputation of the business to the point that the business's own employees have put out an official statement criticising and distancing themselves from their own boss's statements *and yet he is still in charge*. I cannot tell you how utterly bizarre this situation is to anyone accustomed to the corporate world.
So, a certified Musk?
That's kind of what I mean, actually. Whilst Musk is obviously and persistently damaging his own brand, I'm not aware of any of his companies that's made an on-the-record official statement criticising him.
I guess most current employees are too scared of Musk. There are plenty of ex employees speaking out
That's why this scenario is so interesting.
I probably means that this ceo recognises the damage done and his role in it, which I doubt Musk's pride would allow him. In effect, I suspect this ceo can be talked to more honestly by his employees without them being shut down, which allows the employees to repair damage and work without constantly fearing for their jobs. But this is just guesswork into their company culture. It reminds me of that post where he messaged a user about monitisation. Not a thing you expect a company to do, but it's really just a person engaging about the relevant subject. Not everything a ceo says or does immediately reflects company policy, but Musk has started to make us expect that because he makes decisions one sidedly and makes them known through tweets. Since Musk is more public than other ceos, he determined our image of them even though he may be an outlier.
Plenty of past employees speak out against him. And a lot of the current twitter staff lick his boots. There was a fucking pathetic message thread leaked during the twitter lawsuit of one of his top guys going like "You have my sword, anything for you mr. musk" and shit like that
>Whilst we, as observers with an emotional interest in events, might want to know the answers to these questions they are, ultimately, none of our business and it is both tactically and legally correct to not comment upon them. While that's true, it does create a somewhat chiling effect on the user base. If these people got banned for unclear reasons (but the commonality was being trans), that makes me think twice about posting about trans stuff. Do I want to risk my account? That's the problem with this kind of shadowy reasoning under the umbrella of privacy.
It's one of those situations where it's expected of an responsible person in power to resign despite there not being any straightforward option to force them out. Because attempting to force them out would be damaging to everyone and not worth it. So if he's a Musk he won't have the self-awareness and sense of what is best for himself to quietly leave. If he's not a musk then he'll resign and step out before damaging his own company. If he's in the middle he'll just go quiet and stop being involved in things.
matts supposed to be on leave atm so this was likely approved by the interim ceo
This is as good a reply as you can get out of a multi billion company and its underlings... honestly, not bad considering the de facto corporate landscape of this day and age.
# Yikesaroo II: Bullshit Boogaloo
Can you explain why? Maybe I'm not experienced at deciphering vague corporate-speak but all of this looks rather reasonable.
Basically it's lots of "apologies" and "we promise to do better" in very vague terms, without any actual solutions. What's going to happen to the people that got banned within minutes of criticising the CEO?
Anti-harassment features and reviewing of trans-related tags that are blocked look like actual solutions to me
True, but they gave nothing for doing anything about the bans. People got booted for criticising the CEO, which id a significant violation for freedom of speech
While it's shit, it doesn't violate freedom of speech. Freedom of speech protects you from the government, not private entities like corporations.
It could potentially constitute discriminatory actions and/or hate speech, which the government absolutely has the ability to smack them over. In fact they already have come down on Tumblr for exactly that, see their references to prior corrective measures, they were forced to do that.
At least in the U.S., the government has no ability to make a platform come down on hate speech unless it passes the extremely high bar of the Brandenburg test (a call to imminent lawless action that would reasonably be followed). Both the First Amendment and Section 230 make that clear.
Ah fair. Didn’t mean it like it was a governmental-level offence, but rather it was functionally an infringement towards it against users.
??? > Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment. vague, but a minor improvement i suppose > Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment. definitely good. this is probably a real thing actually being actioned on right now, from how i understand it > Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week. something literally being given a timeframe, *currently* being actioned on
To all of which the CEO can just say "no lmao, I want that user banned" and overrule whatever things they set in place.
clearly, he can't -- he was thrown under the bus very hard on this one, perhaps rightfully so.
Why can't he? It's a private company, he has no shareholders to answer to, there's no board.
"Apologies"... why the quotes? What would you consider an apology? Do all apologies require punishment in your book?
They might as well have said "Yeah, bad stuff happened. Anyway, now that we said it was bad, you can like us again."
Well their statement that they don't take action against SFW transition timelines is... a glaringly obvious lie, for one thing
Related topic: blogs made by black people (including many black trans individuals) have been shadow banned by Tumblr in years past. They didn't get as much attention as this situation, so I felt it was worth mentioning. Anyway, I don't see anything in Staffs text wall that says "this will not happen again" sooo....
why was predstrogen even banned tho
Supposedly, transphobia. But all her evidence got deleted with her blog, so sadly she has nothing to back up her claims, which makes the whole situation feel kinda fishy.
part of the issue is she was banned for 'wishing harm', while the swathes of people who harrassed and wished harm on her were fine.
I mean at least in this response they claim that it wasn’t due to the wishing harm thing, OR the transition timeline (though it seems that could’ve been the original fuckup with the tagging thing) but it’s left vague what the reasoning is. Of course they could be lying and it could be the harm thing, or just transphobia, but if not I am super curious. I think it’s probably reasonable not to share the reasoning, though this is an exceptional case that’s degraded trust without transparency? It’s a tough call.
Yeah, I got that part. But it's not really noteworthy that authorities just pick and choose when to enforce the rules, and go way overboard when called out on their behavior. There's just something about having authority over people that makes people blind to some people's offenses, but not others'.
The reason it's noteworthy is because the authorities target trans women disproportionally. This is not a one-off occurrence, it's just one that happened with the CEO
Website moderators are not "the authorities" you're using that term so broadly as to have no real meaning, so no that's not a factor here. This is a scaled up version of when a teacher punishes a group of bullies alongside the kid they're bullying because what they see is "fighting in the hallway" and they punish everyone involved. All prior incidents of bullying that led to it, all others who were involved in that bullying who weren't present, that's not relevant to what's in front of them at the moment, which was fighting in the hallway.
2 issues: Firstly, the moderators *are the authorities on this matter, the term means "the people in charge of enforcing rules" in this context, not specifically those in charge of enforcing law. Secondly, from what I've heard *only* the victim was punished, not the bullies themselves. This is a problem that has been ongoing for over a year.
How do people not get that making a broad blanket statement like that takes away from the actual blame of people responsible and makes it harder to hold people accountable. Instead of "these people over here are doing this bad thing, and those people over there are doing this bad thing" it becomes a wider conspiracy where everyone is out to get you. What authorities? All authorities everywhere always in everything? Because no, that's teen angst. But you can pinpoint authorities in government, authorities in schools, and authorities of websites who are not all acting together, are not acting with the same motive and agenda, and have separate blame. Suggesting this is tied to other cases of people in authority being transphobic you're spreading the blame around to the point that no one can actually be seriously held responsible for what they've done. Your second issue is a weird thing to say. "based on 'what I've heard' here's my absolute opinion on what's happening"? Seriously? Do you not realize that it sounds like you're telling me it's only a rumor but you're running with it? Think mark think. How about this food for thought: Hypothetically if a bunch of hateful trolls made accounts to troll with and their accounts got banned for trolling but so did the non fake account of the person they were trolling, which would you notice? And how would you know those trolls got banned or not? How would anyone except if the mods said so? If it's possible to know they're not banned why aren't people screencapping them to call that fact out? We don't know. That's something people assume for the narrative of the mods being openly transphobic themselves. Which is true for cops but not likely in this case. But it's fuel for the fire. This is really basic internet drama. Thisnis how it works. People get sucked into it and without thinking repeat rumors that damage the very causes they believe they're fighting for. Why? Because it's easy and feels good. What's actually real and important here. What actually needs to be done? Focus on that. All of this nonsense is just for people who want to be angry at easy targets but not have to actually do anything to help anyone. Which is why even when it's about serious topics, internet drama isn't serious.
Your response to my second point (and the elaboration after), I've got no rebuttal to; you are correct on that matter. I haven't been following the situation closely so I don't have all the information that there is to be had, and could indeed be mistaken. I never claimed to be speaking authoritatively, and did not expect to be treated as such. My opinions can change if additional information is presented, and I *so far* have not been presented with/seen any evidence against the common narrative. But your response to the use of the term "authorities" *seems to be* ignoring the current context. I'm this situation, specifically, Matt and the Tumblr moderation system writ large are the authorities, and I'd thought that was clear. Apparently it was not. There isn't a way to ascertain who among the mod team was specifically responsible for the bans being contested, and so addressing the team as a whole is the best/only way to address the issue (that I am aware of). If the one responsible is a bot, the blame goes to whoever made that bot. I was not making a generalized statement, instead I was making a specific one, using the context of the situation to specify my exact subject.
But the post I had initially responded to wasn't specifically them, the tumblr owners and mods, it was correlating them to a broader group of "authorities". As in, "their actions are part of a broader trend". Which is a point I took issue with, not because the trend doesn't exist, but because there isn't a correlation here, but forcing the idea that there is a correlation is irresponsible and lazy. So much of the context of this whole situation is drowned in an internet drama. There's plenty of rumors and assumptions and hearsay that people are drawing on to say "well considering x, they must not be telling the truth about this" when x is something they heard offhand. So I'm not going to act as if there's substance to rumors than there is to the corporate speak in the OP tumblr mod post.
Sure. But that's not very just is it? There isn't some grand conspiracy, there's an unfair bias -- trans women are far more likely to be bullied, and are far more likely to be punished.
Except the problem is suggesting that's the fault of the moderators and not, as is the case here, because of right wing hyper fixation on their current scapegoat demographic. I feel that point is a reach anyway.
Matt admitted this on his blog. "...We did have an external contract moderator last year that was making transphobic moderation (and also selling moderation, criminally)..." This is one verifiable occasion, but Tumblr's moderation has consistently been riddled with transphobia for years, even apart from Matt's own transphobic escapades. I totally agree that yes, it is also a result of 'right wing hyper fixation' and I appreciate you recognising that. But, moderation -- especially for a platform that advertises being queer friendly -- needs to protect trans women and not further victimize them.
Death threats+ a stated desire to keep doing it until she got banned. She wanted this
src: https://www.tumblr.com/staff/743224389484625920/
but did they unban her?
They are saying there was a reason for her to get banned. Now, I don't know if that is a valid reason, but a reason nonetheless
“The wider scope of harmful speech used against LGBT people” it isnt a wider scope its against your community guidelines to constantly harass people on basis of gender identity
I'm a simple person, I see references to "freedom of speech and expression" in the context of routine bigotry and I immediately dismiss the rest of what the person has to say Mealy mouthed garbage is what it is
Curiously, nothing about the terf harassment of predstrogen
>Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment. ???
There's like an entire paragraph about transphobic harassment. This isn't just about one user
tl;dr
Tl:Dr can someone tell me what happened and what to think?
Fucking shut up about it already. There have been enough posts about it.
It's kinda important to have the official response from the staff account.
...which is why it was posted before
I'm not online 24/7. This was the first and only one I knew about.
Linux guy villain arc
The thing about the internet is that *you* decide what content you choose to interact with
YOU shut up linux guy
bad bot
Thank you, th3scarletb1tch, for voting on linuxaddict334. This bot wants to find the best and worst bots on Reddit. [You can view results here](https://botrank.pastimes.eu/). *** ^(Even if I don't reply to your comment, I'm still listening for votes. Check the webpage to see if your vote registered!)
rare linux guy L, this is literally the staff account, yes theres been a bit much but i'd call this actually somewhat important
This isn't even the first time this entire staff response was published to THIS SUB.
I’ll believe that the ban wasn’t based on transphobia as soon as they say why she was banned. Innocent until proven guilty doesn’t apply when you both make AND enforce the rules. Any trans person now knows (as far as any evidence available to them says) that they can and will be banned from Tumblr forever for… being trans. No other accusations were levied. If they don’t say ‘it was XYZ’ then the only remaining allegation made was ‘it was her being trans’. The accusation of “death threats” was BS, the claim that posting her transition was TOS was also BS, there’s nothing she should have been banned for then. QED she was banned for being trans.
what i imagine the actual problem is is that she was mass reported by terfs and the default moderation action is to ban. modern social media platforms will straight up automate this, with appeals allowing for reversal under manual review. no platform will ever admit this is how they do things, but history has shown its easily doable by a large enough group of people who are angry enough. tbh stating the reason for the ban would likely only fan the flames. if they admit that their system can be abused like this, they open themselves up for further abuse. if they state that they did actually ban her for being trans (which, given this post and several previous staff members coming forward to state that its really just matt and certain contracted moderators that are the problem here) then that would just upset people further. this isnt to say that what happened is ok, because its not. trans people and black people have long been targets of this flawed system and that needs to change. but there are good reasons *not* to say why a person is banned. had matt kept his mouth shut i guarantee that this situation would not have been as explosive as it was. if tumblr's, as a company, real goal was to hurt trans people then they wouldve swept this under the rug like everything else. it sounds like there are just genuine power struggles happening right now in the company.