By Levon Baghramyan
We can’t in good conscience condone or support Tumblr’s recent decision to arbitrarily remove and censor any and all content they deem “adult” in nature! Especially since their definition is so broad, that anything remotely resembling naked skin is potentially subject to censorship and deletion. They have already begun rolling out their faulty algorithms, and so far we have had several posts “flagged” that didn’t even come close to depicting anything “adult”, let alone nude.
Nudity in and of itself is not sexual. The naked human body has been portrayed in art throughout all the ages of Man - at least since the Upper Paleolithic over 30,000 years ago. It is the single most common depiction of the Human Being in all art forms since the very dawn of civilization. While we absolutely understand the need to crack down on unlawful pornographic material, tumblr’s decision to wipe out nudity in all its forms across the site is an act of extreme overreaction and overreach. It takes away the very freedom of artistic expression which attracts people to this site in the first place. And to add insult to injury, they leave this monumental task of grotesque censorship to a mindless code - an algorithm that can’t even tell the difference between a human foot and someone’s naughty bits.
Is this what the internet will ultimately come down to in the end? 30,000 years of human expression stomped out by a line of corporate computer code, because a bunch of frightened shareholders are more prudish and uptight than the entire Victorian temperance movement put together?
We foresee that this awful decision by tumblr will vastly reduce the number of users and ultimately spell the end of the site down the line. We can only recommend that anyone who disagrees with this destructive choice, voice their objections directly to the staff as we have done.
And spread the word!