Mere weeks after the app was pulled from app store's because of inappropriate content, Tumblr has decided to change their community guidelines and to ban all "adult content." There are multiple problems with this.

While the internet has made a joke out of this change, there is so much more to it and it so problematic. To start, the definition of adult content is vague and subjective, leaving much to interpretation, and Tumblr's description of what is allowed and what doesn't make matters worse. The description on their website is barely a paragraph long, The guidelines specify that "female presenting nipples" are banned from the site, unless in certain contexts, which is incredibly offensive, given it separates female nipples from male presenting nipples. There is a much longer guide at their helpdesk, but it does not serve to be helpful, only more confusing.

Considering this comes after their app was yanked off the store, its enraging. For years, Tumblr users had complained about the porn bots that followed their accounts and of the various neo-Nazi accounts that plagued the site. It wasn't until their money and downloads were at stake that Tumblr decided to do anything about it.

To make matters worse, how is this going to be enforced? Posts are already being flagged and accounts being deleted, even when they only had safe for work content on them. It is most likely an AI system, which is ineffective, to say the least.

At the end of the day, this is not funny. This system will end up targeting minorities in a similar way that Youtube's system did, effectively erasing the LGBTQ+ community's content. While perhaps not intentional (I'm not saying Tumblr execs sat down and discussed a way to push the LGBTQ+ community out of Tumblr) it is an attack on the LGBTQ+ community.

I know that sounds nuts, at first, but please keep an open mind. When these adult content rules come into effect, it will affect people who aren't necessarily posting porn, including artists, cosplayers, streamers, and people heavily involved in fandom. This will effectively control what the LGBTQ+ community posts and therefore erase them from the site. If you cannot control the people, you control something else.

This news is not funny or meme-worthy. It is offensive, subjective, vague and indirectly discriminatory and made only worse by the fact that Tumblr let horrible accounts sit for years, and only decide to do something when their downloads are threatened.