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Verizon acquired Tumblr when it acquired Yahoo!. Now Verizon is clearing out Tumblr's adult communities to attract more advertising.
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/4/18126112/tumblr-porn-ban-verizon-ad-goals-sex-work-fandom
Tumblr isn't a porn site, although it has a great deal of erotic and sexual content. After all, anyone looking for hardcore free pornography has lots of opportunities online to find typical porn. Tumblr was a community based site, and the majority of its "NSFW" communities were fan driven or by independent sex workers looking for a safe space in which to operate and an opportunity to create erotica/porn that is not focused on the typical mass market of male straight/gay/fetish porn.
But for advertisers, porn is porn is porn is porn. And advertisers don't want their products on platforms associated with porn -- which had become part of Tumblr's broader reputation. So Verizon is doing the logical mass market thing -- "sanitizing" Tumblr in an effort to attract more advertising.
This is an illustration of the broader homogenization of culture that comes from consolidation. Platforms that become popular get acquired by larger companies. These companies shape these platforms to maximize advertising revenue. That means sanding off the rough edges that make a platform less attractive to advertisers. The result is that we have a platform ecosystem with a handful of hardcore porn sites catering to the pornography mass market, a variety of platforms that avoid sexually explicit content entirely (or try to), and no place in between.
The standard answer is to say that the Internet supports the development of alternatives. After all, many credit Blockbuster's refusal to carry pornography with saving local video stores, who survived by carrying adult content in addition to competing conventional video fare. Dreamwidth has announced that they will continue to have an open policy, so refugees from Tumblr may come to Dreamwidth. Or, as happened with Gaba, individuals may create their own alternative platforms for their controversial content.
But as those of us who fled Livejournal for Dreamwidth can attest, transferring from one platform to another is not easy. It is highly disruptive. Communities are broken up. The enormous investment of years in building a specific brand and developing social capital is destroyed and must be rebuilt. People who continue to use Tumblr may not be willing to add yet another platform simply to follow one particular community or individual. Nor is the Internet environment what it was years ago, when Tumblr was initially forming. It is now much harder to attract attention, gain a reputation, or pull people from the crowd of other existing platforms -- even if those platforms do not provide the same kind of independent content. In the "attention economy," rebuilding a base means competing not merely with similar content, but with all the demands on human attention. And unlike ten years ago, many of these competitors are now giant platforms with massive resources dedicated to attracting and keeping attention. Platforms that eschew the sort of sanitized guidelines needed to attract mass advertising are simply not going to be able to match the ability to attract eyeballs of their more commercial and safe for work competitors.
Like any gentrification project, it only impacts the community that used to live there. In the aggregate, however, it is a loss for all of us. Much of even the mass culture we consume has its roots in more diverse, often marginalized, cultures that are considered not safe for the mainstream. "Edgy" content challenges convention and helps to keep mainstream culture dynamic as ideas and innovations in art flow between "la boheme" and "les bourgeoisie." As consolidation continues, the space for controversial creativity shrinks, and we are all the poorer for it.
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/4/18126112/tumblr-porn-ban-verizon-ad-goals-sex-work-fandom
Tumblr isn't a porn site, although it has a great deal of erotic and sexual content. After all, anyone looking for hardcore free pornography has lots of opportunities online to find typical porn. Tumblr was a community based site, and the majority of its "NSFW" communities were fan driven or by independent sex workers looking for a safe space in which to operate and an opportunity to create erotica/porn that is not focused on the typical mass market of male straight/gay/fetish porn.
But for advertisers, porn is porn is porn is porn. And advertisers don't want their products on platforms associated with porn -- which had become part of Tumblr's broader reputation. So Verizon is doing the logical mass market thing -- "sanitizing" Tumblr in an effort to attract more advertising.
This is an illustration of the broader homogenization of culture that comes from consolidation. Platforms that become popular get acquired by larger companies. These companies shape these platforms to maximize advertising revenue. That means sanding off the rough edges that make a platform less attractive to advertisers. The result is that we have a platform ecosystem with a handful of hardcore porn sites catering to the pornography mass market, a variety of platforms that avoid sexually explicit content entirely (or try to), and no place in between.
The standard answer is to say that the Internet supports the development of alternatives. After all, many credit Blockbuster's refusal to carry pornography with saving local video stores, who survived by carrying adult content in addition to competing conventional video fare. Dreamwidth has announced that they will continue to have an open policy, so refugees from Tumblr may come to Dreamwidth. Or, as happened with Gaba, individuals may create their own alternative platforms for their controversial content.
But as those of us who fled Livejournal for Dreamwidth can attest, transferring from one platform to another is not easy. It is highly disruptive. Communities are broken up. The enormous investment of years in building a specific brand and developing social capital is destroyed and must be rebuilt. People who continue to use Tumblr may not be willing to add yet another platform simply to follow one particular community or individual. Nor is the Internet environment what it was years ago, when Tumblr was initially forming. It is now much harder to attract attention, gain a reputation, or pull people from the crowd of other existing platforms -- even if those platforms do not provide the same kind of independent content. In the "attention economy," rebuilding a base means competing not merely with similar content, but with all the demands on human attention. And unlike ten years ago, many of these competitors are now giant platforms with massive resources dedicated to attracting and keeping attention. Platforms that eschew the sort of sanitized guidelines needed to attract mass advertising are simply not going to be able to match the ability to attract eyeballs of their more commercial and safe for work competitors.
Like any gentrification project, it only impacts the community that used to live there. In the aggregate, however, it is a loss for all of us. Much of even the mass culture we consume has its roots in more diverse, often marginalized, cultures that are considered not safe for the mainstream. "Edgy" content challenges convention and helps to keep mainstream culture dynamic as ideas and innovations in art flow between "la boheme" and "les bourgeoisie." As consolidation continues, the space for controversial creativity shrinks, and we are all the poorer for it.
