Since I heard about Tumblrs new policy a week before it was implemented, I've been hard at work building Libr (https://librapp.com) to replace it.
A large amount of art that isn't porn, but that qualifies as "adult content" under the new policy has been all but purged from the internet.
It's impossible to ban adult content in a cost effective way without also banning a large amount of legitimate art.
Libr is about two thirds of the way there (source is on GitHub) and I have posting, content search, blog feeds and content authoring of video/images and text posts done. Following, liking and the main feed are next.
This will be a Progresive web app - No app store needed, meaning no app store bans.
Are you going to federate with other content-sharing app via ActivityPub? Several other Tumblr alternatives have popped up as Fediverse instances and you might want them to interoperate with your project.
Make it easy to report child porn, clearly illegal content. Tumblr actually made that tedious - multiple clicks, copy and paste after searching for the report page.
What's considered art vs adult content is a very big gray area that's open to interpretation from multiple perspectives. From a platform's point of view, it's safer to ban anything remotely that might considered adult content to avoid false negatives that could land them in trouble.
But to make it sustainable, it needs to generate money. Advertisers don't like seeing their brands next to pr0n, so they won't come to your site. Unless, of course, you open it to adverts from people selling sexeh stuff, who can't get an ad to appear anywhere normally.
Of course, you could charge for it... but people have been trained to expect internet services for free. Hopefully that's changing, because it needs to.
I have a plan for this. I know of an ad network that will let me run ads on Libr that supports both SFW and NSFW ads.
When you sign up for Libr you have to say if your blog is NSFW or not. Then Libr flags all content you post as NSFW or SFW depending on what you choose.
I can detect what content is on a page, then run SFW ads around SFW content and relevant NSFW ads around NSFW content. Google used to do the same thing if you turned off safe search with their AdWords ads.
I'd run the SFW ads near NSFW if it were possible, but it's not.
mastodon already does this? how are you going to differentiate? also all these types of sites are typically flooded with porn if they become in any way popular...
Ah yes, anti-harassment tools are automatically censorship; next you're going to tell me every feminist has blue hair, hunting men at tech conferences (you know, it's sort of a game, who can break the highscore?).
Often anti-harassment tools are literally censorship, it’s just censorship people have collectively agreed is morally worthwhile. I feel like the Internet has shown society enough examples where free speech can have negative consequences that many people are unsure whether completely free speech is really a good thing. I’m not going to add my personal opinion to this about whether it’s good or bad, but let’s at least agree on a technical level that it is censorship by definition.
It doesn't work like this on the internet. You're not owed a podium to speak from. Most websites aren't public places. You can't treat them like that.
Is it suppression of free speech if you don't let in some jehovah's witnesses to your house? Would anyone ever fathom I'd even have to ask such a ridiculous question?
I'd agree if there was a complete lack of unmoderated spaces and no infrastructure provider would want to take your money. But there is.
If you want to be an edgelord online, go to a chan or gab or minds or some free speech fediverse server or whatever, you have options, you just don't have a guarantee that people will listen to you.
I assume you're referring to "liberals"? I'm pretty sure that historically "liberals" have been more anti-censorship than others. Even now you're much more likely to encounter censorship from conservatives than liberals, it's just that a vocal minority seems to think that "free speech" translates to "consequence free speech". You can say whatever you like, but there may be consequences. If you yell fire in a crowded theatre, you will likely be arrested.
> This will be a Progresive web app - No app store needed, meaning no app store bans.
Why do you call it an app instead of a website?
The word 'app' to me strongly implies that whatever the service does can only be meaningfully accessed via an app on Android or IOS, and that the publisher has reasons (often for monetization purposes) to keep the software client proprietary and exclusive.
This usage of “app” I believe denoted the category of websites that would have been desktop applications ten years ago. For instance, Google Docs is a web app.
Given that the content is only available with Javascript enabled (ie. code served by Libr gets run on my computer), it's closer to an application than a website.
> It's impossible to ban adult content in a cost effective way without also banning a large amount of legitimate art.
Are you saying that adult content is not legitimate art?
If so, I think you may be part of the problem, not the solution. English is not my first language, so please correct me if I am wrong.
By adult content, most of us think "porn". But as has been said, there's also violence and other things that some culture do not want their children exposed to.
There's no way to ban nudity or other things one may dislike without having to put some kind of filters in place. And once those filters are in place, they are abused to filter legitimate content. Every. Single. Time.
We have to rely on education, the best filter is in our brains.
That's the cost to real freedom of speech.
>Are you saying that adult content is not legitimate art?
No, the commentator seems to imply the exact opposite: that a large amount of 'legitimate' art is also adult in nature, which lead to its illegitimate removal during the purge.
A large amount of art that isn't porn, but that qualifies as "adult content" under the new policy has been all but purged from the internet.
It's impossible to ban adult content in a cost effective way without also banning a large amount of legitimate art.
Libr is about two thirds of the way there (source is on GitHub) and I have posting, content search, blog feeds and content authoring of video/images and text posts done. Following, liking and the main feed are next.
This will be a Progresive web app - No app store needed, meaning no app store bans.