TUMBLR

As I mentioned in a re-post t'other day Tumblr is in real trouble since they sold out and anyone with art history blogs or even posting mild erotica on there is dreading the 17th Dec after the NSFW censorship come into play and people are predicting (including me) an almost total collapse of what was a really good idea and while I prefer E blogger here hands down for lots of image sharers it was and is invaluable 

So far there have been images flagged with warnings that make no sense at all and how the Tumblr bots are going to police it is beyond me

I have selected a few here:

It's by Salvador Dali for pity's sake! and it barely shows a bottom but its a PAINTING!

It is a shot of the night sky!??!

it is a beetle!?

I am lost for wards "female presenting nipple" anyone??

oh come on puhlease!

REALLY?

Are your bots mad? Maybe try turning them off and back on again!??!

I give up??!

Now you're making fools of yourselves

! 

REALLY? It's art! Can YOU see a nipple that you wouldn't want a child seeing!?! 

No, thought not!

Now this is interesting this report of a painting by artist Euan Uglow who I adore and if this is really offensive to anyone you have REAL problems! It is a life study admittedly and shows the part of the female anatomy that feeds every child on the planet and I defy you to try and find any child who thinks this is rude, offensive pronographic or even mildly erotic or in some way upsetting. The is an age old argument that the extreme Christian right MAY (I say MAY) find objectionable but they are in the minority surely?

These are from a variety of Tumblr sites I visit for images and the offending sentence that seems to have stuck in most people's craw is 'female-presenting nipple" which no-one I have shared with seems to understand and I certainly don't. As evidenced above there are diagrams and artworks that may fall foul of this ludicrous censorship. I assume these are tasing the bots but please! What on earth has it come to? If this is any indicator of the cultural stands of the take over of Tumblr I precept it's complete collapse. Also I would help support the call for boycotting for the first day and encourage everyone to log out of Turmbltr upon that day. Many pages have already gone in anticipation but I would also support the sites I visit to hang on and see but heck it doesn't look good.

A VERY useful article was posted the other day and I re-post it here as it contains some sound advice and link. Personally I would recommend E-blogger and if you are posting erotica you can protect them from young or juvenile prying eyes very simply.

this post will be updated as I find more websites to add! please check with the original before reblogging to see if there’s an updated version, and message me with corrections or more suggestions if you have them!!

websites in red have explicitly forbidden the posting of NSFW content. websites in orange allow certain types of NSFW content or have questionable / unclear guidelines.

for general use

* friendproject.net - built on myspace, great blog customization

* gab.ai - added for completeness, but has a huge alt-right + racism issue

* joinmastodon.org - basically like if twitter and discord had a child??

* mewe.com - privacy-focused, has groups and private messages

* minds.com - allows you to exchange traffic for being promoted (??)

* myspace.com - yes, it still exists, i’m just as surprised as you

* nibblebit.com - similar to tumblr with reblogs / likes / customizing of blogs

* pinterest.ca - easy sharing and collecting, but has many issues with theft

* swarmr.com - an exact tumblr clone down to the default images (??)

* twitter.com - allows posting both text and photos in sets, allows retweets

geared towards writers and bloggers

* archiveofourown.org - specializes in hosting fic, excellent tagging system

* dreamwidth.org - a blogging site similar to livejournal or wordpress

* fanfiction.net - another big name in fanfic posting

* livejournal.com - technically an option, likely unsafe for LGBTQ peeps

* mibba.com - for creative writers, centered around community feedback

* quotev.com - decent website for original / fan fic and fandom quizzes

* royalroad.com - hosts webnovels and other fanfic, nice dark theme

* wattpad.com - modern pretty fic site with direct links to irl publishers

* wordpress.com - old and well-established, often considered the default

geared towards artists and photographers

* artstation.com - excellent website for posting professional art portfolios

* behance.net - meant for professionals posting various visual media types

* deviantart.com - huge community, allows posting art + sorting into folders

* flickr.com - great community for photographers, can join groups

* furaffinity.net - similar to DA but for furries, easy to display commish info

* galleria.emotionflow.com - very similar to pixiv, with imo better tagging

* instagram.com - photo and video posts, excellent tag search

* newgrounds.com - an oldie but a goodie, allows a ton of media types

* piczel.tv - allows both streaming and posting art / photosets to a gallery

* pixiv.net - huge anime art community, allows livestreaming

* vero.co - app only, similar to insta but with MUCH more privacy control

chat or forum based

* aminoapps.com - community-based, has blogs + chat, custom themes

* discordapp.com - great chat app, text + voice, can join infinite servers

* reddit.com - literally a community for everything, SO MANY CAT PHOTOS

18+ only

* bdsmlr.com - microblogging + social media for people into kink

* blogr.xxx - a tumblr clone created specifically for sharing porn

* fetlife.com - considered one of the biggest kink communities online

* libertine.center - beautiful + modern site for posting irl nsfw and kink stuff

* thefetlibrary.com - for posting of erotic stories, replaces bdsmlibrary

paid platforms

* patreon.com - subscription-based access to many diff types of content

* typepad.com - similar to wordpress but with reblogging and a dash

up-and-coming platforms

* pillowfort.io - closed beta. should function almost identically to tumblr but with many many improvements

* poizen.me - development alpha. gorgeous website for artists to post art AND track comms

    * this one’s still early in development but looks incredibly promising as a platform and super pretty to look at!! go snap up a username before all the good ones are taken! favouritism what’s that

* qink.co - pre-alpha. 18+ only. plans to be a kink-oriented replacement for tumblr.

defunct platforms

(so people will stop telling me i forgot them)

* jux.com - shut down in 2014 due to lack of funds

* shoandtell.me - now redirects to someone’s personal blog

* soup.io - more or less closed down this year due to GDPR issues

ways to save your current tumblr posts

* use the wayback machine! you do have to archive each page of your blog individually but once you do all the content, including media, will be saved exactly as it was at the moment you archived it.

* wordpress allows you to directly import whole tumblr blogs, and if i recall correctly it’s something both dreamwidth and pillowfort have said they are working on.

* tumblthree is a great tool with a ton of functions including downloading whole blogs, only posts tagged with a certain tag, all the posts you’ve liked, etc. etc. along with being able to download every type of media hosted on tumblr (pictures, videos, audio, everything). it also has a proper GUI so no computer knowledge required beyond downloading and running programs!

* 

I wrote as a Tumblr account holder and said the following in a faint hope of someone reading it and taking heed. So far I have heard nothing. Not a word.

Dear TUMBLRMany totally innocuous posts that Tumblr @staff @support ‘s new policy bots are flagging for removal, none of which violate the stated guidelines for removal are making you a laughing stock! Even if you put aside the validity of ‘pornography’ so called and/or nudity & erotica in general, the double standard regarding “female-presenting nipples”, any ” discrimination against sex workers”, the defiance of the wishes of the userbase, and the presence of nudity in non-pornographic art, cinema and culture in general, the difference between erotica and porn, your AI bots that you are employing to do this are a complete joke that’s flagging all kinds of artworks famous and otherwise and will destroy the site’s usability for everyone on the planetFurthermore if old masters, full clothed 18th century ladies and head and shoulders portraits of handsome men are all being flagged as inappropriate including thus far a photo of David Bowie with his shirt open! flagged for a Corot nude. COROT, for god’s sake. COROT?!, David’s Marat!?, a portrait head of a fashion model, antiquity’s John Hamilton Mortimer 18thC artists ‘Sea Monster with Fish’ in the Tate Gallery UKthe list goes on currently and is a huge embarrassment from your cultural standards and will result in the complete collapse of the Tumblr site and we may as well all quite now. If you wish to fall upon your sword please do so but perhaps you could heed the voice of your user base first. Ignore it at your peril.
Rather than this perhaps rather establish a second site that may cater to the tastes of the new right wing moralists, Brave New World and 1984 clones, sophomores or children (who of course we desire the protection of), without censoring industry standards of the history of artistic achievement universally acknowledged since the sixties and leave the adult’s material alone, then clearly you are about to lose all your significant users. Certainly it would seem to be a significant proportion at least in the majority even so can you not cater to the artistic standards of a minority? If not, the collapse of your company is imminent and all I have to say is to paraphrase Woody Guthrie 'So long it’s been good to know ya!'