But the Community Lives On...

Once again our community faces a hosting crisis. The majority of links on our MBS blogroll are for spanko blogs that reside on Tumblr. In a week, that will change, and not for the better.

The corporate geniuses at Verizon apparently decided that they wanted to appeal to a broader range of advertisers, even if that means a significant reduction in traffic. So they invented artificial community standards for a community that once embodied freedom of expression. Compulsory content censorship is becoming a central feature of the Tumblr platform.

Nipples seem to be a big deal to these white-shirted bluenoses. After all, they argue, seeing boobs might harm children. Never mind the actual purpose of nipples.

Nudity is another target. How dysfunctional is it that we humans are so ashamed of our own bodies that they must not be seen? Do we really have to pass this hangup to another generation?

Worse yet, they have an AI-driven porn filter that also tags all manner of innocent photos. It's possible, I'm told, to appeal to human overseers. But many bloggers will decide that it's just not worth it.

Like other platforms before it (remember Delphi, MSN, Yahoo Groups, or MySpace?), Tumblr may ultimately be abandoned and forgotten due to a faulty business calculation. We spankos will again take our clicks and our eyeballs and our interesting content elsewhere. I'm not sure who is going to see all of those new Hobby Lobby and Amway ads on Tumblr, but it won't be me.

Some will say, "This is what you get when you trust a free service." Perhaps so, but this has always been a two-sided transaction. The host gives bloggers a home to present their content. Bloggers give the host a steady stream of traffic they can use to sell advertising. I am not exploited. Nor am I a free rider. I enter this relationship with full knowledge that it can be ruined by arbitrary censorship. And so it is with Tumblr.

I will be removing Tumblr blogs from the blogrolls as they perish, but it will take a long time to sort out everything, especially during this busy holiday time. I will also be restoring relocated blogs as they return to life elsewhere. We've never seen an extinction event on this scale before, but our community has survived similar situations in the past. I am confident we will weather this storm as well.

If you have a new or moved blog, please leave me a comment or send me an email. I will get your links updated as soon as I can.

Hang on, everybody, we're going to get through this!