Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Tumblr proprietor Automattic, is meant to be on sabbatical. As an alternative, he’s arguing with Tumblr customers over a person content material moderation choice, which has sparked communitywide outcry and accusations of transphobia.
Over the previous few days, the state of affairs escalated to the purpose that Mullenweg has engaged with the consumer in query on other platforms and shared personal particulars about her account in public.
The controversy started when a consumer with the weblog title predstrogen was banned. Earlier than the ban, she was annoyed with Tumblr as a result of the platform didn’t take motion when she reported that she was being focused with transmisogynistic harassment. She additionally claimed her account had been suspended for posting clothed pictures of herself after getting gender affirming surgical procedure. This led her to submit that she hopes that the CEO “dies a forever painful death involving a car covered in hammers that explodes more than a few times and hammers go flying everywhere.”
In line with Mullenweg, predstrogen was banned for posts that threatened violence towards Tumblr workers, and particularly cited the “forever painful death” submit. He additionally claimed that her clothed transition pictures weren’t what yielded grownup content material violations.
“We generally do not comment on individual cases, but because there seems to be mass misinformation around this, I will make an exception and comment on predstrogen,” he wrote on his weblog, photomatt. He added, “Tumblr has a number of LGBT+ including trans people on staff, and they see things from the inside fully, and they’re not protesting this case.”
Some customers mentioned that Mullenweg was overreacting, because the language is so cartoonish that it couldn’t be taken significantly. However Mullenweg took the submit as a risk.
“Threats of violence are never okay. Threats of violence are not protected speech,” he wrote on his weblog. “We will work with police and FBI where appropriate, though to be clear predstrogen’s case hasn’t warranted that so far. I’m referring to what we may potentially do for other threats.”
Tumblr didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Mullenweg took the controversy off platform to X, the place he commented on a submit from the consumer who was banned on Tumblr. Then, on considered one of his Tumblr posts, Mullenweg shared quite a few of her aspect weblog names, which isn’t public data (Tumblr customers usually make empty aspect blogs with no content material so as to squat on URLs).
“On the adult content mistagging, I added context to say it has nothing to do with clothed transition photos, she had 20+ other blogs and multiple accounts with names so explicit I can’t post them here without a mature tag,” Mullenweg wrote, then itemizing a number of the accounts by title.
Apart from Elon Musk since he took over Twitter (now X), it’s unusual to see the CEOs of social platforms commenting straight on particular person content material moderation choices. It’s much more unusual for these CEOs to share personal details about that consumer’s account.
Bluesky confronted the same state of affairs final 12 months, nevertheless it performed out in an reverse method. One consumer mentioned that they hoped a distinguished Black consumer would get pushed off of “somewhere real high.” In that case, Bluesky’s group determined it wasn’t a official demise risk, which strained the burgeoning platform’s relationship with its Black customers.
“Wisely or not, many people use violent imagery when they’re arguing or venting,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber posted on the time. “We debated whether a ‘death threat’ needs to be specific and direct in order to cause harm, and what it would mean for people’s ability to engage in heated discussions on Bluesky if we prohibited this kind of speech.”
When juxtaposed, these two moderation choices present the problem that platforms have in making choices about sure forms of speech. Whereas Bluesky deemed that getting shoved from “somewhere real high” is hyperbolic, Tumblr determined that “a forever painful death involving a car covered in hammers that explodes more than a few times and hammers go flying everywhere” is a sound risk.
Tumblr is in an prolonged downward spiral. Tumblr was acquired by Yahoo (now TechCrunch’s mum or dad firm) for $1 billion in 2013, however the platform struggled to the purpose that Automattic purchased Tumblr for simply $3 million in 2019. Final 12 months, Mullenweg mentioned that the platform loses $30 million annually, and later, he reassigned nearly all of Tumblr’s workers to different initiatives within Automattic. However nobody on the belief and security group was reassigned, so these moderation choices probably weren’t impacted by the corporate shake-up. Nonetheless, Tumblr has a foul monitor report for content material moderation choices, particularly these involving trans folks.
“We did have an external contract moderator last year that was making transphobic moderation (and also selling moderation, criminally),” Mullenweg wrote on his weblog. “As soon as we were aware that person was fired, and we later terminated the entire relationship with that contracting firm and have brought almost everything in-house (at great cost).”
Mullenweg pinned a submit to his Tumblr titled “My Beliefs and Principles,” the place he addresses the claims that he’s transphobic. He’s at the moment on sabbatical till Could.