Tumblr’s banning “self-harm” blogs that promote eating disorders and suicide

http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/23/tumblrs-banning-self-harm-blogs-that-promote-eating-disorders-and-suicide/

by lambtron • 14 years ago

24 54 14 years ago

venturebeat.com

jrockway• 14 years ago

The lubricant has been applied to the slope...

drivebyacct211• 14 years ago

Oh here, let me try based on what I learned from the reddit/cp discussion that took place here, what, last week:

- slippery slopes don't exist, they're apparently some sort of imaginary fallacy

- If you argue that Tumblr shouldn't remove content at their own arbitrary discretion, that must mean you want people to have eating disorders and commit suicide. I will call you disgusting and imply that even having a discussion about censorship or suppression of content is akin to defending child porn, I mean, suicidal content.

On a less sarcastic note, I really do want to hear how people are going to tell me this isn't a slippery slope. "“that actively promotes or glorifies self-injury or self-harm.”". My [imaginary] Tumblr talks about how I deprive myself of sleep working long hours, use marijuana for stress relief and recreation and how I don't like to wear my helmet when I ride my motorcycle, better find a new blog (or whatever Tumblr is) platform.

blantonl4• 14 years ago

There is no "slope" when it comes to private establishments. Just like McDonalds reserves the right to not serve you if you aren't wearing shoes or a shirt, Tumblr reserves the right to limit whatever content they see fit.

Freedom of speech does not apply when participating on a private organization's platform.

drivebyacct211• 14 years ago

Why does the term "slippery slope" only apply to public rights? Again, no one is making this a legal thing. No one here is saying that Tumblr is legally required to let me blog about my suicide. We're saying that it's concerning as a [potential] user to see a provider like this arbitrarily suppressing content.

potatolicious4• 14 years ago

I don't think this is necessarily a slippery slope.

AFAIK (I may be wrong though) this isn't due to external pressure or some PR fiasco (coughreddit), this is something Tumblr has decided did not reflect their company ethic, and wants off their platform.

The difference between this and reddit's last run-in with offensive content is that Tumblr has shown no weakness here, whereas Reddit more than proved that a sufficiently large PR catastrophe is all it takes to change site policy.

What Reddit has encouraged is more boycotts and more PR shitstorms from 3rd parties hoping to affect change on the site. Tumblr, by acting proactively, has not opened these doors (yet). They are still their own arbiters of good taste, as opposed to opening the floodgates of mob-rule.

drivebyacct211• 14 years ago

Inventing a new company policy in response to something you found distasteful and then enforcing that upon your existing user base screams slippery slope. Especially given there is even less of a brightline standard of what violates Tumblr's policy than when we were considering reddit. It's much easier (not to trivialize it) to determine if something is child-related and sexual of nature than the entire realm of things contained in "self-injury".

As I implied in my other comment, things like "self-injury" are very arbitrary and vary person-to-person. (Not that I should have to disclaim this, but I don't think things like suicide or eating disorders are "good" or healthy).

kstenerud3• 14 years ago

I seriously doubt people will quit Tumblr en masse over the site falling afoul of someone's pet cause.

This is Tumblr as a company applying its morality upon the blogs it hosts. And in doing so it is completely within its rights.

pjscott8• 14 years ago

There are two things here that I wish were not socially accepted: the demonization of even small amounts of body fat, and banning content you dislike "for their own good".

ahelwer2• 14 years ago

It's not for their own good. It's for the good of the impressionable and emotionally unstable teenagers that would have found these communities and latched onto them as their negative impulses were validated.

pjscott8• 14 years ago

You're right, of course. I must have spent thirty or forty seconds looking for a more accurate phrase, but settled on "for their own good" because it flowed better.

Now, those pro-anorexia blogs are creepy and disheartening; I looked through some a while back, and they really are as sad as they sound. If Tumblr's goal is to prevent more teenagers from latching onto that subculture, there are a few things they might try. They could stick warning banners up on the blogs in question, visibly registering their protest without going so far as to remove content. Or they might shrug regretfully and say there's not much they can do, since they hardly have a monopoly on the blogging platform market, which would be true. Setting themselves up as censors was not their only option, and as far as I'm concerned, it should have been pretty far down on the list of ideas.

In general, I'm uncomfortable with the impulse to try to stop people from saying messages that you don't want others to hear.

BadCookie2• 14 years ago

How do you feel about someone livecasting their own suicide, then, to take your position to an extreme?

jQueryIsAwesome• 14 years ago

Promoting suicide ≠ snuff films

tweak2live• 14 years ago

I feel like censoring it would be unethical, while refusing to host it would simply be poor form.

Livecasting of own suicide: freedom of expression + freedom to make choices with regard to own life.

Edit: This is not to imply that Tumblr is not entitled to do whatever they damn please with their own website. But, should someone build a website specifically for livecasting suicides I would very much disagree with its censorship.

pjscott8• 14 years ago

I consider suicide extremely sad, and would not feel particularly inclined to watch the video. Why are we even thinking about censorship in this hypothetical scenario? What good would censoring the video do?

Put a warning on it saying that it's NSFL, maybe run a free banner ad next to it for a suicide prevention hotline. Those things are reasonable, productive responses. Censorship of the video would be as symbolic as waving a flag, and about as useful.

rooshdi2• 14 years ago

Yea, it almost always works this way. Some entity in power thinks it's for the greater "good" to censor content from people and the slippery slope of censorship begins. Why can't Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, or any of these other social media outlets have enough faith in humanity to allow people to make their own informed decisions? Boggles my mind how these sites preach freedom of expression yet censor anything they don't agree with.

jfoutz5• 14 years ago

"Slippery slope" is not a rhetorically valid argument. (just sayn')

I agree with you, it's awfully two faced of the popular organizations. Historically, if you really wanted freedom of speech, you pretty much had to own the printing press. I think the same thing is largely true now. You gotta own the server that hosts the blog. no one out there will protect you.

rhizome• 14 years ago

Yet Tumblr still looks like crap on Android.

blantonl4• 14 years ago

There will certainly be folks that decry this move as limiting freedom of speech, but the reality is this:

Freedom of speech does not apply when you participate on a private organization's platform.

For those that strongly oppose these types of policies from social networks, I'm very much in favor of you starting your own social network to cater to tastes and generes that suit what you feel is appropriate for your community.

rooshdi2• 14 years ago

Why does anyone have to decide what is "appropriate" for a community? Why can't a community just be?

kstenerud3• 14 years ago

Because everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, has an axe to grind at some point.

jfoutz5• 14 years ago

That's true. You can't talk politics in the mall. OTOH if you actively encourage loitering then get pissed off when people loiter - you're a hypocritical asshole, and i think your property rights should be diminished.

edit very first line from http://www.tumblr.com/about

"Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything."

which is a bold faced lie.

blantonl4• 14 years ago

Do you think Tumblr allows you to share child porn? I know, "think of the children", but seriously let's not be pedantic.

noahc• 14 years ago

I think you're being a bit too liberal in your understanding of the word 'anything'.

I am all for free speech, but there is a long list of things like child porn, state secrets, copyrighted material, etc that I think we would all agree is not in Tumblr's best interest to not be shared effortlessly.

drivebyacct211• 14 years ago

Who brings up free speech? The only time I see free speech in these discussions is when someone is trying to discredit opponents before they even chime in. No one argued against reddit for "free speech". It was about implementing arbitrary new policies because something was deemed "inappropriate" by a sole authoritative source, which is what has happened here as well.

Tumblr is free to do whatever they want. Users are free to ditch Tumblr because "self-injury" isn't defined and Tumblr gets to be the sole decider of what is or isn't allowed based on their arbitrary rulings.

(Hm, downvoted for pointing out that the only person here who brought up free speech... is someone who preemptively and unnecessarily argued against using free speech as an argument. Literally, no one here is saying Tumblr is required to allow this for free speech reasons.)

discodave• 14 years ago

You americans get way to hung up on this freedom of speech thing, it's not some all trumping right that overrides everything else.

Libel laws for example, limit our free speech. Another definition of rights is set out in the UDHR, article 5 states:

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

The case can be made that promoting eating disorders and other forms of self harm is a cruel and degrading way to treat your fellow humans. Even if the perpetrator believes themselves to be acting in everybody's best interests.

drivebyacct211• 14 years ago

So we should hire you to help us censor all of our user content that you deem "cruel"?

Is it cruel to find a gay kid's tumblr and tell him to kill himself? What if I simply say gay teen should kill themselves? How about that they're sinners and are going to hell? What about simply saying that I think marriage is between one man and one woman? Where does untasteful become cruel enough to ban?

pjscott8• 14 years ago

Please don't try to inject nationalism into the discussion. At the very least, it's rhetorically rude.

(I know this isn't a reply to your actual argument, but I don't have the authority to delete epistemically dangerous posts, so I figured posting this was more appropriate than trying to get myself set up as a censor. :-) )

(Also, is there a commonly agreed-upon way of putting a :-) emoticon at the end of a parenthesized region? The apparent paren mismatch bothers me.)

orbitingpluto3• 14 years ago

Anyone see an emerging problem here?

1)Increasingly the only places to talk are privately owned.

2)Private interests can control and prevent speech if in their domain.

Also, just wondering if Tumblr is going to be removing Tumblr blogs that have their own domains?

blvr2• 14 years ago

> 1)Increasingly the only places to talk are privately owned.

What public places did we have to talk in forty years ago that we don't have now?

> 2)Private interests can control and prevent speech if in their domain.

If you own an newspaper/magazine/website/whatever you have a right to exercise editorial control over it. That's always been the case.

orbitingpluto3• 14 years ago

1) Perhaps I should have said proportionally. More importantly, online speech didn't exist 40 years ago. And it's all happening on someone else's privately owned infrastructure to some degree.

2) We live in a world where community events are now happening in malls. Formerly publicly owned halls have been sold off. Parks have been turned into condos with civil planning concessions of 'public' play areas and child care provisions. This should be increasingly apparent where population density is higher and/or the funds to maintain public spaces is harder to come by.

nmridul2• 14 years ago

And the pity is, there are very less private spaces online. Even if you buy your own domain name and host your own site, you are still only leasing the name. And the domain and the site could well get seized when you start speaking things that the powers don't like.

nmridul2• 14 years ago

Now they should also ban start-up founders who brag about working without sleep continuously for days. It also promotes living disorders and there could be teens out there that would copy this and put their health in danger.

Edit - Working sleepless nights may seem normal in the HN community. But, this is also something that puts the health in danger (sometimes even more than eating disorders). Now who is going to decide what is bad and what is not bad ?

Tumblr’s banning “self-harm” blogs that promote eating disorders and suicide

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