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Michelle Fegatofi

The recent attack of adult content on social media sites and the internet reminded me of certain periods in human history where society attacks things that scare them, they don't agree with, or simply don't understand.
If we take a look back through out recorded history, you can see a pattern where the majority in society, condemned, hunted, imprisoned and/or slaughtered groups of minorities whose beliefs called into question the moralistic ideals of the time.

With the recent attacks on the BDSM and Adult content pages on Facebook, Google and now Tumblr, it seems like a new Moralistic movement is taking shape. Is it the religious groups that deem Adult Content and BDSM as immoral? Is it the feminist groups that do not like pictures or descriptions of women in submission? Or is it society that does't understand the real deep meaning of a BDSM relationship and is therefore scared of it because it is so different from the way the majority of Western society was raised?

Since 2009, Google has been celebrated for publishing transparency reports on government requests to take information offline. Each time a government official asks for a search result to be blocked or a YouTube video to be removed, Google marks down the request and discloses the number of such take downs each nation has asked for every six months or so. In many majority-Muslim countries requests for censorship remained relatively rare until the latter half of 2012, when YouTube take down requests citing "religious offenses" spiked.

I and most people that I know, can agree that pictures of abused women and children should definitely be banned if they are posted. But, when governments start talking about banning all Adult Content sites, that is where they cross the line on Freedom of Speech. 

I get many comments and messages on various sites I administer accross the internet from people that say things such as "you are a sick person" or "only perverts look at this". I get others that say "you are going to hell" and so forth. You get the picture. 

One of the foundations of being a Christian is to "judge not lest ye be judged" meaning Don't judge others unless you are prepared to be judged also. So, I throw this out to all of you that call yourselves "good Christians"; how can you sit in judgment of a lifestyle that adults consent to live or practice while hurting no one and still say you are a Christian when you are going against one of the vary principals you are supposed to follow? It's hypocritical.

In the UK, authorities are introducing pornography filters switched on by default to home broadband subscribers by the end of the year. This new legislation is being headed up by none other than Prime Minister David Cameron. No other EU countries are currently introducing any such laws. 

Under current law, Internet Service Providers are obliged to freely provide access to all content unless it is illegal. Most EU countries state it is misdirected and ultimately ineffective to try to tackle this issue through the internet infrastructure providers. Parents should be the ones censoring what their children are allowed to view. 

The latest victim to fall to the new moralistic movement is Twitter. After pressure from the UK government and their Anti-Porn campaign, they will now be adding a "report abuse" button. Twitter UK said it was adding staff to help handle abuse reports. It also said an in-tweet "report abuse" button currently available on the Twitter app for iPhones would be added to the Twitter website and to platforms used on other mobile devices.

If any of you admin pages or groups on FB or Google+, you already know this button is going to be abused because every moralistic vanilla person is going to be using it against anything they don't like. 

So, are you going to stand by and take whatever the Moralists decide and allow your freedom to view whatever you want be taken away or are you going to do something about it? It's up to you people! Let your voices be heard just as loud as those that would censor our lifestyle and our freedoms!

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Michelle Fegatofi

I tried logging into my tumblr account michellefegatofi.tumblr.com today and it was gone.

I sent an email to their help desk and they said it was deleted because I used an affiliate's tag and was now considered a spammer. So, apparently, using the same hashtag is a no no. Lesson learned.

I decided to open a new account and rebuild my followers. When I was adjusting the settings, I got a big surprise! The now-Yahoo-owned blogging network made a significant change to the way adult-themed blogs could be discovered on the site, which even further hid their content from public consumption. 

One of the best things about Tumblr was that if you knew how to utilize hashtags properly, you could get your name, business, or internet site indexed on the web much faster and acquire many more followers faster. Now with their new settings, only followers can search your content. Adult themed blogs will not be searchable within Tumblr or on the net. So, now I am on the fence if I even want to bother with populating the new account. 

Despite promising users that it "wouldn't police porn," Tumblr has already made changes to the way adult or NSFW content shows up within its network. Although Tumblr won't actively police content and ban users from uploading nude or NSFW photos, the company has made some significant adjustments to how users can discover and view that content.

It makes sense that Tumblr may not want to index NSFW content — especially if the company wants to sell ads on more content — but rather than putting up faux walls for discovery or denying access to certain terms in mobile apps, the company should create an explicit opt-in setting that allows users to decide if they want to see potentially adult or NSFW content in search. Turn it off by default if you want. This wouldn't be unlike how Google allows users to omit NSFW or adult content from their settings.

If Tumblr isn't careful about how it handles the community response to its new policies, it could backfire.

What do you think of Tumblr's new policies? Are you outraged or is this much ado about nothing? Let us know in the comments.

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