Tumblr responds to complaints about censorship
staff.tumblr.com
staff.tumblr.com
Blocking tags on the mobile app is a separate issue, they don't really have a choice here. Apple will pull their app if they don't.
Edit: Salon.com did a feature on the best porn Tumblrs: http://www.salon.com/2013/05/26/the_best_of_tumblr_porn/ It appears a large proportion of the Tumblrs featured there have also been marked as adult and removed from Google search.
Edit 2: I think they've basically marked all porn-heavy blogs as adult and forcibly delisted them from search, exactly like they originally said they were going to do and regardless of how spammy they are.
> As some of you have pointed out, disabling Safe Mode still wasn’t allowing search results from all blogs to appear. This has been fixed.
> If your blog contains anything too sexy for the average workplace, simply check "Flag this blog as NSFW" so people in Safe Mode can avoid it. Your blog will still be promoted in third-party search engines.
"Flag this blog as NSFW" so people in Safe Mode can avoid it. Your blog will still be promoted in third-party search engines."
...which implies you CAN search for NSFW tumblr blogs, with google?
Or am I wrong/confused?
See this table for details: http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/nsfw
So what? nobody owes you a free search engine listing.
Microsoft doesn't "owe" you a start bar. If your mother complained about it missing in the initial Windows 8 release would you tell her "So what? nobody owes you a start bar."?
Would you tell people in the 80s "So what? nobody owes you classic Coca-Cola."?
Yes...as a matter of fact that's one reason I have not bothered to upgrade from Windows 7.
Would you tell people in the 80s "So what? nobody owes you classic Coca-Cola."?
I'm petty sure I did tell people that. I'm a big believer in voting with your wallet. Of course, your examples involve things that people pay for, whereas setting up a Tumblr page is free (thus giving you even less of a claim on Yahoo's actions.)
I don't think you would really tell your mother that. Maybe you would tell your mother to stick with Windows 7 after trying out Windows 8 in the store, but I do not believe for one second that you would say anything to the effect of "Microsoft doesn't owe you that" in response to her reacting to the change.
Vote with your wallets and complain. Why the hell not?
> "Of course, your examples involve things that people pay for"
Admittedly yes, in the Windows 8 case (outside of trying it out in the store). Not so in the New Coke case. Nobody bought a lifetime subscription of Coke. People were upset because they could no longer buy the old Coke, not because they were duped into buying New Coke (well, not for more than a few cents anyway).
Nobody was owed the ability to buy classic Coke. Complain they did though, and can you really fault them for that? Really?
Why not? My mother's no idiot; she may not understand the intricacies of her computer works but she doesn't expect Microsoft to automatically accommodate her tastes any more than she expects Volvo to keep making her favorite model from the 80s. If anything she helped instill this attitude in me when I expressed disappointment about my favorite kids TV shows going away. As a consumer I don't expect producers to be sentimental about their offerings; if I think some particular change is foolish then I argue that on economic grounds (but if it turns out to be the profitable thing to do, then I have to accept I was wrong).
I mean, there are certainly choices I'd like corporations to make - I'm into synthesizers, for example, and I really wish that Roland corporation would start issuing TB-303s again, especially now that their competitors have chosen to resissue some of their classic designs at affordable prices. But after analyzing the numbers and potential profit margins, I'm 99% certain that it's Not Going To Happen no matter how much I and my fellow synth geeks beg for it. It's not worth the risk involved, and they don't owe me such a product. (On the other hand, it would make good economic sesnse for them to reissue certain classic drum machines...)
Not so in the New Coke case. Nobody bought a lifetime subscription of Coke.
They bought bottles and cans of Coke, and when they discovered that they didn't like the taste of New Coke I presume the they stopped purchasing it. I guarantee that Coke executives paid a great deal more to consumers' behavior than whatever it was they said.
I doubt you would speak to your mother that way because, frankly, it is an rather anti-social reply. She's not dumb, she knows she is owed nothing. In the hypothetical complaint she was not claiming to be owed anything. Your quip is clearing nothing up.
Maybe it is anti-social, but I don't feel bad about that. I have yet to receive a coherent answer to my original 'so what' question, about why Tumblr should enable NSFW content indexing on Google if they (Tumblr) feel that it's hurting their brand to do so.
I like apricots... so what? Taxis are yellow... so what? This T-Mobile coverage at the airport is shit... so what? Some people are displeased with recent tumblr changes... so what?
Why would you expect an answer to any of those "questions"?
I think this was perfectly clear from the context, and substituting arbitrary statements about nothing in particular to critique my original question (after having complained about how I would communicate with my mother or console a bereft cola drinker) suggests to me that it's you who doesn't have any particular point to make.
I found some of the other comments disagreeing with my viewpoint more enlightening, but I'm not clear on what your point is other than having a go at me.
If that is genuinely what you were not getting, then you have been anything but clear. My point is that you seem to be engaging in a sort of senseless anti-social comment sniping. I think that has been pretty clear, though I admit I could have done more to make my intentions plain.
How is this suppose to work. Voting with your wallet is a very course signal, saying no more than that you do not like some recent change. If you complain, then the company knows what it is that you do not like, and can make a better informed decision if they should continue to do it. This complaint can be backed up by voting with your wallet, but you need both.
A fine example of a thought-terminating cliché. You should add it to the list!
So this doesn't kill the blog as long as people spam links to the site on Reddit. They were never going to be found by (or linked to) google in the first place.
I follow a bunch of blogs which, very occasionally, post something NSFW, which they tag #NSFW. I want to see most of their posts, but filter out those tagged ones from my dashboard, whether I view it from my PC or phone. (in a web browser, it's possible to do this with an unofficial extension, which tumblr breaks every couple of weeks and then has to be patched. on your phone, you're stuck seeing the porn on the subway, with people looking over your shoulder.)
this is simple; a text field of blocked tags for each user, and then filter the input to their dashboard table (or whatever). There is no way to do this at present. (I've just checked my settings page, and still not there.)
(this doesn't just work for porn; it also lets people filter out stuff on a topic that they aren't interested in, but see the other stuff from those users. Twitter also lacks this feature, although many twitter clients do implement a "tag mute" setting.)
I guess it's about Apple's no porn policy, but I thought results returned by search were OK with a 17+ years warning. Or is it for pure browsing clients only, and platform owners' official app don't get the same privilege ? Am I missing something ? (not that Apple's policies are consistent or evenly applied, but still...)
I don't get why so many developers care so much about iOS.
I guess the TL:DR is that it's tough to get rich in the mobile app market unless you have enough users to make ads profitable.
With such a clear prior case, it feels like tumblr tried to play it safer than necessary for some reason (the app is 17+ anyway)
While it's true that a Tumblr app is a bit different from, say, a web browser, it's not really true that Tumblr has a high level of control over the content on their own service -- no more than a service like Twitter or even Facebook does.
Evernote Clearly
Readability's Read Now feature
InstaRead
viewtext.org (always extremely slow for me)
1) As with Facebook, people who will hate it will still hang on because a lot of existing content they've subscribed/favorited/bookmarked etc...
2) Getting the Tumblr userbase to do anything other than whine is like herding cats into dancing Gangnam Style (I mean real cats, not Psy with superimposed kitty faces).
If you're unhappy with whatever they're doing, a better option (IMO)would be to complain even louder until Tumbler actually changes things. Unlike FB, which is pretty deaf to complaints to begin with and is run by Satan-lite (Zuckerberg), Tumblr was only recently acquired and Yahoo investors don't want to sink the boat.
In addition to disabling search for adult blogs, Tumblr has enabled robots.txt (Disallow: /) for all "adult" blogs so they're not findable from the outside any more either. On top of all this, Tumblr removed its Erotica category, which was formerly released in January 2010 with much pride on their part.
This all changed sometime early this year, and began to be noticed by sex bloggers both on and off of Tumblr in mid-May.
This is like buying Starbucks and then getting the "brilliant idea" to stop selling coffee and to instead focus on selling coffee cakes.