This then leads to @staff - either by acting on false reports without looking, or by employing bots to act on their behalf - to terminate innocent blogs. Due to staff being overworked and possibly understaffed, it also means that appeals get overlooked and delayed.I wouldn’t mind this so much, if reasons could be given for why terminations took place beyond standard/copy-paste emails.
What examples of rule-breaking? What posts?Which blog?
It leads then to a climate of fear, as people who have been terminated - based only on false/mass reports - can’t speak out, as they fear their appeals will be overlooked (many appeals are, and I have friends who - months or years later - still haven’t been given reasons for their terminations). It also means people are afraid to use the site in general, as no one knows what will lead to a termination, as no reasons are given for existing terminations.
Amidst all this -? The harassers get off scott-free.
One today I saw was labelled something like “youarenotamapyouareapredator”, which is encouraging people to mass report with false reports, and has created a campaign to false report even aesthetic blogs. These people - along with porn-bots, hate speech blogs, and illegal blogs - are allowed to remain, while people engaging in debate or discourse and abiding site rules are banned.
People need evidence for any accusations laid against them.
People need examples of any alleged violations.
It’s unethical to terminate without proof.
You have created a system in which people can start campaigns, as that user has started, to erase any dissenting voices that they dislike, while innocent people are afraid to speak up lest they be terminated, too. I broke no rules, but I was terminated. I was not given reasons or examples or evidence. Meanwhile, my harassers continue with their campaign to target other innocent users. Why are ToS being selectively applied?
Added to that:
Why is the entire account deleted, not just the accused blog? Why is a person forced to lose contact to friends, their follow and followed lists, and all their content … without proof or evidence, simply based on mass and unfounded accusations? Why not just suspend the accused blog until evidence can be ascertained, without terminating the entire account?
The harassment is the part where they called a staff member a child rapist. The random nonsense they brought up as an excuse for making such an abhorrent claim is irrelevant.
People are trying to frame this as “saying staff reads harry potter is bannable” but no.
Saying staff rapes kids because they read harry potter is bannable.
As it should be. Because lying about someone raping children because you don’t like what books they readisfucking harassment.
friends, to say that “staff is full of terfs” is really, deeply upsetting to the many trans people who work here, myself included.
The criticism was you guys not banning actual terfs and claiming lack of tools then using said tools to nuke someone who pointed out that a public profile linked by you is a hp fan not staff “being full of terfs” lmfao
Staff made a bad choice in deleting all the partyjockers posts because it ended up amplifying the attention this was getting (aka the Streisand Effect). They definitely fucked up there, but I can wager a guess that their rationale for doing so was that someone on staff was being actively harassed. This has happened to Staff members in the past, and the best course of action was just to ignore it until their attention went else where.
Since this is the first case of a harassment campaign under Automattic, presumably they don’t even have a plan of action for Staff being harassed (because they never owned a social network). So they fucked up by trying to wipe the site of these posts. Just drew more attention to it.
Comparing the deletion of the harassment posts to TERF activity on the site (or any site, for that matter) is erroneous for a number of reasons, most obviously:
1. These posts targeted a specific person and were the same thing over and over again, thus easily identifiable. Conversely, TERFs change their language and posts general, vague things to blend in (like all fash).
2. One account was leading the charge of this harassment, and was being extremely vocal about it. Comparatively, TERFs are a whole group of people who will try to hide their hate behind other language, or manipulate the message so it’s hard to identify as explicit transphobia.
3. The accusations being flung were completely false. They were, “since a staff member likes HP, they must be a TERF and a fascist that are single-handedly making sure that these people are given safe harbor on Tumblr.” So it was ultimately a harassment campaign by an angry fandom poster who will hopefully look back at their behavior and cringe someday, not any sort of legitimate activism.
(reiterating my opinion from a previous post: I, too, think HP is terfy/racist bullshit and JKR is a TERF, but I also know that people sometimes just consume media and that doesn’t automatically make them a raging TERF too. Not everything is black and white once you poke your head outside of your bubble)
Moreover, since this was a very acute and active, targeted campaign against one person, it was very easy for Staff to spot and delete these posts (again, reiterating, I think this was a bad idea for Staff to do this, just explaining the mechanics of it). You can use photo dna to ban images very easily, it will have the same checksum every time.
Tumblr does ban TERFs and Nazis if you report them (IF you report them, there’s no passive mechanism scanning for TERFs like some internet metal detector. It doesn’t exist. Please just fucking hit the report button and fill out the form for hate speech, don’t just post about it).
Is there a site out there that has successfully dealt with the issue of TERFs and fascists on their platform? Is there a social network that’s free of those people? No, there’s not, because it’s a huge problem. There are lots of TERFs and Nazis, and there’s no effective way to filter them out automatically. It’s a manual process of reporting, reviewing, and acting on the reports appropriately. Unfortunately, too, is that these moderator teams are frequently understaffed, underpaid, untrained, and overworked. And when they do get it right and ban the fash, they just remake. Especially on a site like Tumblr where there’s a low barrier of entry for making a new account.
I’m not disagreeing with you, what i mean is the core issue of deleted fash posts still floating around after being deleted while that deleted post was deleted with all reblogs, something that was claimed to be impossible. And this being the only acknowledgment by staff of the situation feels like a try to derail the actual criticism by arguing with something that only a fringe group was claiming
No,staff has mass-deleted fash posts before. Why they don’t do this more often I can’t answer, I didn’t have any insight to this process. Nobody remembers this because it was good, and it’s more fun to just hate on Staff because they don’t know how to run a website (but they do know how to identify TERFs and make sure they don’t ban them, apparently).
Here is the callout of staff user /jezzuminahs in google docs form. Staff can’t touch this!
Does the writer of this have brain rot? Literally calling a staff member a Nazi and terf for liking attack on titan and Harry Potter? Are you fucking serious?
The “ship” art screenshotted can’t even count as evidence! It’s literally just two characters next to each other with the caption “I guess they learned how to smile” or some shit.
She’s not a nazi, pedo,or terf and anyone with any reading comprehension beyond middle school is able to see that. Everyone blowing this whole situation up needs to get off the internet.
Normally I wouldn’t touch this but I feel like it’s worthwhile to note that there are still trans friendly sections of the Harry Potter fandom because like, there are still trans Harry Potter fans who like, separate the art from the artist.
Also has op considered that maybe their post was taken down and the other person was removed for like, literally attempting a harassment campaign and to have a staff member removed on evidence so flimsy and laughable that not even a C-rate YouTube drama channel would be caught dead using it?
Then again op also replied to someone laughing at their clown ass for starting their takedown with “aot supporter” instead of “terf” or “pedo” by saying that aot is an anti-Semitic Nazi show so if you watch it you’re a Nazi so uh.
Clearly critical thinking isn’t a strong suit of theirs.
clicking on ‘callout posts’ here is wild because there’s like, a 90% chance it’ll be something like ‘they once reblogged a post from someone who follows someone who drew amethyst as white’ and a 10% chance that it will be like ‘stole a human being’s kidney in an alleyway’
honestly though there is something very deeply and sincerely odd about making posts or google docs or entire blogs linking screenshots of every slightly questionable thing a person has ever said, sometimes stretching back to their early teenage years, and using this as a sign that they are a Deeply Bad Person and that anyone in their radius is tainted by being in their presence. like. this is abnormal behaviour, folks.
some of you will make post after post about the importance of kindness and community and then suicide bait someone for using a questionable word a decade ago when they were thirteen years old and i need you to understand that you are not the good guy in these interactions
the original post forgot to include the last post in the thread, so i’m including it here :-)
This. So much this.
These reasons are the same ones that I cite when I talk about why I believe how harmful call out culture is.
An environment where any mistake is a total and unforgivable mistake is an environment that is not safe. And if give the choice, will consume the most vulnerable among us first. We fight that by refusing to create the foundation upon which it grows.
I will have to say its pitiful how we still have this callout culture. People cannot yet understand that thede are not to be used to get back at someone who hurt their feelings or for petty reasons even. Much more if the person has apologized for their deeds, what more do you want? Stop spreading hate against a single roleplayer, do you know the damage you’re making to that person? Callouts are intended for real crimes, in a police wise rank, not for people to whine about how butthurt they are.
