Don't Do That.

brianvan:

antikris:

And it looks like many agree with me on this possible censorship

Whoa, words in my mouth! I noted that I liked the post, not that I fully agreed with you.

Before you and Ben run out any buy any more tinfoil for headgear, I’ll confirm all your muckraking and say that undisclosed sources have confirmed to me that these anonybloggers were being watched for abuses and that The Tumblr Corporation, Inc. intended to moderate and/or delete known abusers through a top secret program, Operation FYL Assholes. The first step was taking the blogs out of the reblog flow (their reblog notifications were filtered by the system - though I’m not sure if it worked) and then continued abuse would trigger deletion. This information has not officially come from the company, but my observations of their presence on Tumblr and the eventual disappearance of these sites confirms what I was told. Now…

Free speech is a fine concept, but no one has to facilitate publishing it, or tolerate it in a web-hosted social network. And the general idea is that abuses are damaging to the community, and it’s good policy to eliminate abuses through guidelines and disciplinary actions. Keep in mind that there were many months of intolerable behavior coming from these assholes (it was specifically hateful and antagonizing, there was never an ounce of intent to accomplish anything else by those users) and no one wanted to associate with them. They poisoned the community, maliciously. Now they will have to pay for web hosting elsewhere if they want to continue speaking out against us, but we don’t have to read about it here anymore.

Had they added any value whatsoever to the community, if this were a case of a critical but respectful person being deleted for a one-time offense, I would understand the discomfort among speech advocates. However, their behavior indicated unrestrained mental illness that was corrosive and ruinous. You know, churches and hospitals and government offices don’t have to let proven maniacs run free in their buildings and communities, either! No, you can’t yell “FIRE!” in a movie theater, you can’t just follow around anyone you want 2 feet behind them all day if you’re distressing them (and they convince a judge to put a restraining order on you), and under similar rules in general society - even OUR society - it is unacceptable to reblog everything that I post by deleting my text and saying, “When are you going to get a job, loser?”

A small amount of fair moderation is good for this community, and beneficial for each of us. And believe me, it would have been fair if we’d found them IRL and whipped them with the soap sock. They got away easy.

I might add, it’s also a little inconsiderate to use someone else’s tools on someone else’s property as a guest, and then tell them they’re not allowed to have rules of conduct for their tools and property. Even as paying customers, we’d all be beholden to their terms of service. I respect that. I think we all should. If not, you’re free to be someone else’s blog service customer. Wordpress is nice, I hear!

 
We’ve been seeing this a lot (in bold). It’s the Tumblr equivalent of “Don’t like America? You can leave!” It’s the refuge argument of those who can’t defend the actions of their heroes, and so resort to staunchly defending them while telling detractors to “git on out.”

Also, we’d say that a few of those snark blogs added quite a bit to the community; namely, an injection of self-awareness into a day care center of spoiled children.