controversial but in my many years as a minor on tumblr i’ve never seen a single sex worker. they always block minors, mark their blogs as nsfw, and don’t spam the popular sfw tags. even if you, as a minor, actually look for them, as long as you listed your age truthfully in the registration, you won’t be able to find them.
what i, instead, saw as a minor was:
porn bots (which could be stopped by: captcha, double confirmation for accounts, not allowing url shorteners, not allowing rebloggers to delete captions, i would even be ok with hyperlinks not being allowed in reblogs)
fetishes and kinksters (which could be stopped by: adding more tags to the nsfw filter, including fetishes/kinks that appear as sfw)
people who forget tag their shit (which could be stopped by: an auto-tagging system for sensitive tags that would work similarly to the current block for apparently nsfw posts, but can give the op the option to delete incorrect tags)
pro-ana, pro-mia, romanticization of self-harm (which could be stopped by: banning the whole tag, as it just happened)
nazi, terfs (just kick them out for hate speech like twitter does)
pro-map thankfully only appeared once i was already past 18 but of course you could just ban the whole community + tag as it just happened.
prevent usernames with words that hate and pedophilic groups use to flag from being chosen at blog creation.
while i know that tumblr is a 13+ website, nsfw content was hidden from minors last year. most cp was deleted + outlawed (both irl and drawn) for good not even last month. and while those are recent changes they did make tumblr, overall, 13+ appropriate.
i do not care much for porn, i just feel like they are solving the problem the wrong way and punishing a group of people who did nothing to harm minors. there were smarter solutions to this problem that were ignored in the favor of a very sloppy solution that doesn’t even cover stuff like sfw kink blogs, porn bots who don’t post pictures (most of them), people who just won’t tag their nsfw, hate groups and other non-sex related communities who are extremely dangerous for minors.
In response to the NSFW ban being enacted by Tumblr Staff, on December 17th 2018 I propose that we all log off of our Tumblr accounts for 24 hours.
The lack of respect and communication between staff and users is stark. Users have been begging staff to delete the porn bot outbreak, which has plagued the website for well over a year. The porn bots oftentimes send people asks and messages, trying to get them to go to a website full of viruses. They also spam advertisements on others posts.
Users have also begged that Tumblr ban neo-nazis, child porn, and pedophiles, all which run rampant on the site. The site/app got so bad that it was taken off the app store.
However, instead of answering the users, Tumblr has instead taken the liberty to ban all NSFW content, regardless of age. But users have already run into issues of their SFW content being marked as sensitive and being flagged as NSFW, not allowing them to share their work.
Not only does this discriminate again content creators, but it also discriminates against sex workers. Disgustingly, the ban will be enacted on December 17 which is also International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.
This ban is disgusting, and while I (and plenty of others) welcome porn bots and child porn being banned, the Tumblr filtration system is broken. It tags artistic work’s nipples as NSFW (when it is art), it tags SFW art as NSFW (when it is not), and does not stop the porn bots, neo-nazis and dozens of other issues.
This ban is discriminatory. This ban is ineffective. This ban is unacceptable.
To protest, log off of your Tumblr account for the entirety of November 17th. Log off at 12 am EST or 9PM PST and stay off for 24 hours. Don’t post. Don’t log on. Don’t even visit the website. Don’t give them that sweet ad revenue.
Tumblr’s stock has already taken a hard hit. Let’s make it tank. Maybe then they will listen to the users.
Kihaku-Gato's Garden Blog (tumblr import) 