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If you haven't heard by now, the latest update to the iOS tumblr app includes a long list of banned tags. Some will show no content, others are explicitly censored. And boy, the list is both long and stupid. Check it out.

Speaking as a huge pervert, I immediately spot several gaping holes in this list of banned tags. If their goal is to prevent the dissemination of objectionable material then they've missed some big ones.

Also some of them seem rather innocuous. We can't have tags on bones? Queue?

And why is Kim Doyeon singled out among all singers? And why is Alec Lightwood singled out among fictional characters?

....I'm sorry, you can't tag "babe" or "big"? Talking about "addiction" is off limits? I'm at a total loss on how this is supposed to help anyone or anything.
Isn't tumblr suppsoed to be a social network where you can talk with people and connect and get help/information?
Blocking "The Empire State Building is amazing! how #big are these buildings?" and "I'm afraid I may be suffering from my overuse of X, anyone have any support on how I can learn to manage my X #addiction" but allowing "Boy #preteen girls are just better than #teen girls am I rite Icarus?" is stupid.

Besides, blocking hashtags or key words has been proven time and time again to be completezly useless. I mean, I see "lolita" among the blocked words. I don't think any actual pedophile has used that tag in years - it was listed as being "followed by the FBI for concern" sometime in the early '00s. It's been followed by, what: nubile, virginteen, lolipetite, superpetite, supertight, and probablty a dozen others, better hidden. And that's coming from a very much NOT-pedo.
If a word is blocked, people will work around it. Keep it hidden and low profile, monitor the problematic tags, work closely togezther with law enforcement to pick out those users who are potentially problematic. Hiding will not help anyone, least of all vicitms.

Bubble181 said:

Hiding will not help anyone, least of all vicitms.

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You think they care about victims? This is to better cater to advertisers and other corporate interests.

Wife spent some time informing me of the kerfuffle last night. Wife is a big champion of 1st Amendment rights and I can't fault her judgement on the issue, nor would I even try since I essentially feel the same about it. Tumblr user sreegs made the following post explaining the whole thing, here:


At the risk of being branded "Halforums' resident Apple Fanboi" yet again, this isn't a "Fuck Apple!" so much as it's an "Apple needs to be more transparent (and potentially less casual/capricious) about their review process." And until the SCOTUS commits to some explicit ruling standardizing what constitutes "explicit" content (which they will never do), we're going to continue to have this inconsistent mishmash of "Does a bikini-clad model constitute 'porn?' How about if the bikini is on a man? Or a dog? Or is just lying by itself on a bed?"

Putting restrictions on what can/can't be posted on any site that contains UGC is already pointless (and just incentivizes people to switch to stupid semi-steganographic crap like "Let's go, Brandon!" anyway), but when you pile on the requirements and demands made by other countries' laws and customs, it becomes a truly impossible task.

bhamv3 said:

We can't have tags on bones?

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Isn't there some kind of prohibition on exposed bones in Chinese culture?

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Wife spent some time informing me of the kerfuffle last night. Wife is a big champion of 1st Amendment rights and I can't fault her judgement on the issue, nor would I even try since I essentially feel the same about it. Tumblr user sreegs made the following post explaining the whole thing, here:


At the risk of being branded "Halforums' resident Apple Fanboi" yet again, this isn't a "Fuck Apple!" so much as it's an "Apple needs to be more transparent (and potentially less casual/capricious) about their review process." And until the SCOTUS commits to some explicit ruling standardizing what constitutes "explicit" content (which they will never do), we're going to continue to have this inconsistent mishmash of "Does a bikini-clad model constitute 'porn?' How about if the bikini is on a man? Or a dog? Or is just lying by itself on a bed?"

Putting restrictions on what can/can't be posted on any site that contains UGC is already pointless (and just incentivizes people to switch to stupid semi-steganographic crap like "Let's go, Brandon!" anyway), but when you pile on the requirements and demands made by other countries' laws and customs, it becomes a truly impossible task.

Isn't there some kind of prohibition on exposed bones in Chinese culture?

--Patrick

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There's so much on this list that is clearly beyond simply "explicit content." That's only a minor part of it. But what it all has in common in what I already posted, things that will offend corporate entities and sources of income and investment

Ravenpoe said:

There's so much on this list that is clearly beyond simply "explicit content." That's only a minor part of it. But what it all has in common in what I already posted, things that will offend corporate entities and sources of income and investment

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Money = speech, corporations = people, ergo the biggest companies have the loudest voices. The good old days of the free internet are pretty much gone, and we're moving towards a full on cyberpunk future of corporations fully controlling speech and thought.

Ravenpoe said:

things that will offend corporate entities and sources of income and investment

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This does seem to be an increasingly common theme just about everywhere, doesn't it?

"You must acquiesce or else we* will inhibit/blockade your incoming revenue (cut off ads/funding, remove payment processing, restrict your industry) OR magnify your expenditures (fines, lawsuits, onerous regulations/registrations/fees). Or both."

Nobody The majority doesn't care about Mr. Smith or Mr. Rogers any more. They only want the attention of Mr. Franklin & Mr. Jackson.

--Patrick
*whoever "we" happens to be...a company, a government(al body), a lawyer and/or entire firm, a special interest group, a sect, a sports franchise, a copyright/trademark holder, etc.

PatrThom said:

They only want the attention of Mr. Franklin & Mr. Jackson

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Or it appears in this case, Mr. Yuan, Mr. Mao, and Mr. Xi.

I was not limiting "the majority" to any particular people/persons, corporate or otherwise. I was just saying that too much priority is currently being placed on money and on controlling the direction/intensity of its flow. Corporations yank governments, governments yank companies, people yank companies, governments yank people, and so on, and it's all a petty competition over whose team can amass/control the largest quantity of cash. Our civilization is literally on the brink of collapse, but rather than do anything about it, we're still fighting over who has to pay to keep it going...or rather fighting to somehow make the other guy pay for it lest our own pile dwindle. I am so tired of the endless "Me first!" folks.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Tumblr user sreegs made the following post explaining the whole thing, here:

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Many other people reacting to sreegs' post here:

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Corporations yank governments, governments yank companies, people yank companies, governments yank people, and so on, and it's all a petty competition over whose team can amass/control the largest quantity of cash.

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Wow. Not a great time to be an Apple shareholder, that's for sure. Or a board member, for that matter.

--Patrick

At this point I'm mildly pleased that I have not owned an Apple product since the iPod Nano.

bhamv3 said:

At this point I'm mildly pleased that I have not owned an Apple product since the iPod Nano.

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Same. Never owned a single Apple product.

I doubt Samsung is much better as a company, but at least their phones aren't as ludicrously expensive.

Samsung, however, doesn't have a stranglehold on the Android market, enforcing a walled garden around the Google Play store. I've been an Android guy since the first one (well, the second if you count the Sidekick 3 as a smartphone) - the Motorola Droid... which ok, was actually the second Android phone but the Google G1 doesn't count... but anyway the point here is, my first one was motorola, my second one was LG, my third and fourth ones were Google branded (which is technically Foxconn-manufactured but that's just the hardware stamper). Samsung is no more the "Android" company than IBM, Dell, or HP is the "PC" company. There's competition in the marketplace. Unlike the iOS ecosystem.

I know that Apple likes to maintain a tight hold on their properties and markets, but I have a really hard time believing the antitrust lawsuit is being served entirely "for the greater good." I feel like a (large?) part of it is more about how Apple has repeatedly refused to play ball with Congress over things like unblocking iPhone passcodes, weakening end-to-end encryption, etc., and this is the government's way of telling Apple, "You see, Timmy? You see??? THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FIND A STRANGER IN THE ALPS, TIMMY!"

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

I know that Apple likes to maintain a tight hold on their properties and markets, but I have a really hard time believing the antitrust lawsuit is being served entirely "for the greater good." I feel like a (large?) part of it is more about how Apple has repeatedly refused to play ball with Congress over things like unblocking iPhone passcodes, weakening end-to-end encryption, etc., and this is the government's way of telling Apple, "You see, Timmy? You see??? THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FIND A STRANGER IN THE ALPS, TIMMY!"

--Patrick

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Or they missed a "campaign contribution" they'd been making for the last 20 years or so.

I like my MacBook Pro. But I am all android for mobile, yeah.