Some changes at DHTiSH

Back in November, I came to the conclusion that after eight years, it might be a good time to call it a day with DHTiSH.

Blogs on Blogger have pretty much run their course, and I had launched Krab With a K on Tumblr.  And let's face it, Tumblr is a great source of "artistic" images.

But then, last Monday, Verizon, which bought Yahoo! and Tumblr in 2017, and then folded the two into a holding company called "Oath:" to keep it separate from its ungodly expensive cell phone business and its landline business, and its FIOS cable business, finally forced Tumblr to eliminate all of the adult content on the platform.

Here's my problem with that.

Verizon knew what it was buying when it bought Yahoo! and Tumblr came with the deal.  Even at the at the outset, market and industry watchers said that Verizon was going to address it.   They could have spun off a platform for the adult Tumblrs, but no, they wanted everything.  Well, on December 3, 2018, they "fired" every Tumblr contributor, artist and community member that contributed to the adult community.

What does that mean?  EVERY Tumblr member was given two weeks notice that on December 17, the site was taking down everything identified that contains sexual content.  We were all given two weeks notice.  Since then, images on my Tumblr's had been flagged, and that includes Krab With A K, which is a "G" rated Tumblr.

We weren't given a month, we weren't given an option, everything is going if their bots and people find it to be of an adult nature. 

What brought this one?  Apparently, it was child pornography found on an APPLE app for Tumblr, which was then banned from the Apple Store. 

Now, let me be perfectly clear - Child Pornography has no business being anywhere or existing at all, period. There should be no safe haven for that at all.  I even get uncomfortable thinking about a couple of nude pictures taken of me when I was a toddler by a professional photographer hired by my parents. Never mind that the guy penciled out my "stuff" so I looked like a sexless childs toy baby doll.  I don't want some creep buying those at an Ephemera Sale in the future.

But pictures of adults, who pose for those for that media, is not legal to own in the U.S.

So what happened, in a nutshell, was that Apple got a complaint, dropped the app, which gave Verizon the reason to ban the LEGAL adult content. 

But also what happened is that Verizon, Oath, and Tumblr have killed communities.  There were groups of men and women, in the leather communities, in the S&M communities and other fetish groups (did you know that there are people turned on at the thought of being in a dental chair?) have been sidelined. 

These communities have to find a new place to go because Verizon got its knickers in a bunch.

Now think about this.  White Power and ProNazi groups weren't banned.  Pictures of mutilated bodies, murder victims lying in pools of there own blood, big game animals being slaughtered, pictures of war, starvation, and Tumblrs that are hate groups that target LGBTQA, races, religions and people from other nations weren't banned. 

But adult nudity was.

ALL of this means that we all have to rethink what an online community is, and who owns that ability to congregate online.  If you have a community on Facebook, that means it exists only through the benevolence of the people driving the platform.  They, not you, have the right to flip that switch and destroy your online community.  You have no say in it.

So, for the meantime, DHTiSH will continue to be online.  And it also means that I am heavily involved in helping several of these communities and their members stay in contact with one and other as new platforms are developed.  (And for the record, Cookie is not turned on by any Dentistry Fetish.  Just not my thing, but if it yours, go knock your socks off.)

Is Tumblr going to reverse itself?  No.  You can send all the petitions and all the communications you want to the evil empire that owns and runs it.  Nothing is going to change.

What I do know is that something will fill the void and provide the service.  Who and what that is unknown and when it will be up and running, no one knows. But it also presents one heck of an opportunity for someone.