Welcome to Dreamwidth, Tumblr folks!

[denise]

With the new update to Tumblr's community guidelines announcing that they will no longer permit adult content on their site, we'd like to take a moment to reassure all y'all that we have your backs. With a very few exceptions (such as spam and the like), if it's legal under US law, it's okay to post here. We're 100% user-supported, with no advertisers and no venture capitalists to please, and that means we're here for you, not for shady conglomerates that buy up your data and use it in nefarious ways.

Tumblr's definition of "adult content" seems to be inherently visual, and I also wanted to remind people that we do have basic image hosting. (It's definitely not as slick and easy to use as Tumblr's, I won't lie, but it does exist.) If you want to include images in your posts, you can upload them and the site will give you HTML that you can paste into your entry. Or, if you have post-by-email set up, just attach the image to the end of your email and it'll be posted. All users have a 500MB image hosting quota right now. I know that's small for people looking for a place to host NSFW image blogs, but we are reviewing usage statistics to see if we can increase it, or at least make it possible for people to pay for more quota like you can for more icons.

For those asking whether we have a mobile app: we don't at the moment! There are many (soooooo many) prerequisites that we have to do first, which we've been working on but haven't yet finished, because we're dealing with a lot of systems and architecture decisions that were made nearly 20 years ago by now. (A mobile app would also be subject to the same censorship pressure Tumblr faced -- it's looking pretty good that Apple taking the Tumblr app out of the App Store was the proximate cause of Tumblr's content guidelines change, and Apple is notoriously strict on apps for sites that allow user-generated content -- so even once we have one, it's even odds on how long it'll be able to stay available for certain platforms.) We've been trying to improve the website's experience on small screens in the meantime, and that's an ongoing project that we'll do our best to devote some more attention to over the next few months.

Feel free to use the comments to this post to recommend communities to join and to make new friends, whether you're here for the first time as a Tumblr refugee or have been here since the start (and any range in between). To the newcomers: we're happy to have you join us. Welcome aboard!

(Comment notification emails may be delayed for an hour or two, due to the high volume of emails generated by a dw_news post. This was posted at 2105/9:05PM EST (see in your time zone). Please don't worry about delayed notification emails until at least two hours after that. I also apologize to anyone who gets a notification for this post twice; we're trying to figure that one out.)

Comments

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[veritas_poet]

So you allow pornographic images here and you're proud of that fact?

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[stefanina]

So long as it is legal and not exploitative, why not? DW folks don't strike me as the morality police...

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[numb3r_5ev3n]

And if DW ever gets its image hosting/sharing on the level of Tumblr, I can guarantee you people will come flocking back to an actual blogging site rather than a glorified image hosting service. Yes, even the porn artists. People have wanted Tumblr to take on more bloggy aspects for years. If DW manages to do both, they'll be the bona fide Tumblr killer.

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[veritas_poet]

It's extraordinary, how bold people are about their filth.

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[rougharoundtheseams]

Nobody has to look at anything they don't want to.

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[attie]

That was one of the founding principles of dreamwidth, yes... there were some notable moments in dreamwidth history where we couldn't buy paid accounts for months because DW got kicked off every major payment processor for refusing to ban "adult content"...

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[nicki]

You've had an account for 9 YEARS and didn't realize NSFW was OK? How did you end up here? Did you not arrive due to strikethrough?

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[nilpotent]

This person is a dedicated right-wing troll. I guarantee you they're just trying to stir shit up.

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[lady_ganesh]

NINE YEARS? That is...that sure is a thing.

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[kore]

if it's legal under US law, it's okay to post here

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[conuly]

Is there any reason they shouldn't be?

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[chomiji]

That's an interesting tone you're taking.

What's your definition of pornography?

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[maplepancakes]

I mean.

Dreamwidth accepted the people fleeing livejournal when livejournal did this exact same thing (censoring adult content) six years ago.

Regardless of your stance of 'pornographic images', it's not like this is in any way new behavior from the Dreamwidth creative team.

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[mysockstotoro]

You've brought this up before haven't you? You seem familiar.

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[elf]

She has, yes. From what I can gather, she likes the freedom of the platform, and the lack of commercial interference, but is appalled by the neighbors.

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[denise]

We sure do and we sure are!

That sounds like I'm being flippant, but the question of "what is pornography" has been, for hundreds of years, the tool used by societies, governments, and corporations as an excuse to censor and suppress anyone who doesn't match the societally-accepted attitudes on gender, gender presentation, sexuality, and sexual expression. Because of how "societally-accepted attitudes on etc etc" are formed, "pornography" as a label falls disproportionately on minority populations and their cultural practices and the cultural, social, and legal penalties for producing "pornography" follow.

US judicial precedent, for years, defined obscenity primarily by the classic "I'll know it when I see it" -- that is, personal, subjective opinion. (Today's definition of obscenity that's replaced it is less pithily-summarized but equally personal and subjective; one of the three elements for a judicial ruling of obscenity specifically includes community standards, although nobody has ever defined the "community" involved, and so it is equally subjective and equally inequitably-enforced; in practice, it's been impossible to get a conviction for obscenity in the US in years, precisely because of the vagueness of the definition.) Our goal from the beginning was to remove as many subjective judgement calls from ToS enforcement procedures as we could, because subjective judgement calls, especially on adult-content related issues, lead to the burden of enforcement primarily landing against those who are gender/gender-identity/gender-expression and sexuality minorities, such as LGBT folks, trans folks, gender non-conforming folks, sex workers, and the like.

We sidestep all that by saying, flat-out, that with certain limited exceptions that are necessary to preserve the quality of the service for everyone, such as spam cleanup, it's okay to post here unless it's inherently illegal under US law. This undoubtedly includes a lot of content that people think shouldn't be allowed to post, but everyone's line for "people shouldn't be able to post this!" falls differently, and by outsourcing our particular definitions to "inherently illegal under US law", it lets us have a single standard that involves very few subjective elements.

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[starsandsockgarters]

I wish I could like DW comments.

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[kore]

the question of "what is pornography" has been, for hundreds of years, the tool used by societies, governments, and corporations as an excuse to censor and suppress anyone who doesn't match the societally-accepted attitudes on gender, gender presentation, sexuality, and sexual expression. Because of how "societally-accepted attitudes on etc etc" are formed, "pornography" as a label falls disproportionately on minority populations and their cultural practices and the cultural, social, and legal penalties for producing "pornography" follow.

THANK
YOU

Beautifully said, and this comment is a great example of why I'm here, and why I stay here.

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[magnuschase]

I've been on this site for just a day and I already love the owners.

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[bikergeek]

<3 Thank you for standing up for free speech and freedom of expression.

I myself arrived here not in the wake of "Strikethrough", but when LiveJournal chose to move their servers to Russia, where advocating for LGBTQ rights and related causes is illegal, and forced their users to accept a binding TOS written in Russian, a language I do not read or understand, and to agree to the jurisdiction of Russian law in all their dealings with LJ. I NOPEd right the heck out of there.

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[digophelia]

Thank you.

(frozen comment) RP journal, but what the hell

[attackpatternbattista]

Can I say I love you guys and how you've got our backs.

And how you're extremely transparent about how all this shit goes on.

Unlike, say, Tumblr, who'd do some arcane sorcery to their site, and then make the announcement.

[purpleartifice]

Thank you. How did this puritan have an account here this long and then balk at the mere idea of anyone seeing porn here. As long as the pedophiles, porn bots, and nazis (a huge problem that tumblr refused to act on) are gone; I'm good.

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[purpleartifice]

wait. so you're on your blog (I went to see if it was just one of those bare-bones accounts that only ever pop up to complain about something) complaining about your favorite show "going pc" because it acknowledges that many sex assault survivors might feel uncomfortable being interviewed by men; but clutch your pearls at porn being...allowed? Not even a specific type, but porn in general?

It's not like it can just show up on your blog at will. You'd have to deliberately follow that person. I'm really not seeing the issue.

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[denise]

I'm gonna freeze this thread, btw, so that veritas_poet doesn't keep getting personally-directed comments when (IMO) the point's been pretty well made. If anybody wants to talk about our content policy and enforcement, you're free to make a new thread!