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 person in query on different platforms and shared non-public particulars about her account in public.
The controversy started when a person with the weblog identify predstrogen was banned. Earlier than the ban, she was pissed off with Tumblr as a result of the platform didn’t take motion when she reported that she was being focused with transmisogynistic harassment. This led her to submit that she hopes that the CEO “dies a endlessly painful loss of life involving a automobile coated in hammers that explodes quite a lot of occasions and hammers go flying all over the place.”
In accordance with Mullenweg, predstrogen was banned for posts that threatened violence towards Tumblr employees, and particularly cited the “endlessly painful loss of life” submit. He additionally claimed that her clothed transition images weren’t what yielded grownup content material violations.
“We usually don’t touch upon particular person circumstances, however as a result of there appears to be mass misinformation round this, I’ll make an exception and touch upon predstrogen,” he wrote on his weblog, photomatt. He added, “Tumblr has quite a few LGBT+ together with trans individuals on employees, they usually see issues from the within totally, they usually’re not protesting this case.”
Some customers mentioned that Mullenweg was overreacting, because the language is so cartoonish that it couldn’t be taken critically. However Mullenweg took the submit as a menace.
“Threats of violence are by no means okay. Threats of violence are usually not protected speech,” he wrote on his weblog. “We’ll work with police and FBI the place acceptable, although to be clear predstrogen’s case hasn’t warranted that thus far. I’m referring to what we could probably do for different threats.”
Tumblr didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Mullenweg took the talk off platform to X, the place he commented on a submit from the person who was banned on Tumblr. Then, on one in every of his Tumblr posts, Mullenweg shared quite a few of her aspect weblog names, which isn’t public info (Tumblr customers usually make empty aspect blogs with no content material with a purpose to squat on URLs).
“On the grownup content material mistagging, I added context to say it has nothing to do with clothed transition images, she had 20+ different blogs and a number of accounts with names so specific I can’t submit them right here with out a mature tag,” Mullenweg wrote, then itemizing a number of the accounts by identify.
Except for Elon Musk since he took over Twitter (now X), it’s unusual to see the CEOs of social platforms commenting immediately on particular person content material moderation choices. It’s much more unusual for these CEOs to share non-public details about that person’s account.
Bluesky confronted the same state of affairs final 12 months, nevertheless it performed out in an reverse method. One person mentioned that they hoped a outstanding Black person would get pushed off of “someplace actual excessive.” In that case, Bluesky’s crew determined it wasn’t a professional loss of life menace, which strained the burgeoning platform’s relationship with its Black customers.
“Correctly or not, many individuals use violent imagery once they’re arguing or venting,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber posted on the time. “We debated whether or not a ‘loss of life menace’ must be particular and direct with a purpose to trigger hurt, and what it might imply for individuals’s capacity to have interaction in heated discussions on Bluesky if we prohibited this type of speech.”
When juxtaposed, these two moderation choices present the issue that platforms have in making choices about sure forms of speech. Whereas Bluesky deemed that getting shoved from “someplace actual excessive” is hyperbolic, Tumblr determined that “a endlessly painful loss of life involving a automobile coated in hammers that explodes quite a lot of occasions and hammers go flying all over the place” is a sound menace.
Tumblr is in an prolonged downward spiral. Tumblr was acquired by Yahoo (now TechCrunch’s mother or father 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 every year, and later, he reassigned nearly all of Tumblr’s employees to different initiatives inside Automattic. However nobody on the belief and security crew was reassigned, so these moderation choices probably weren’t impacted by the corporate shake-up. Nonetheless, Tumblr has a nasty observe report for content material moderation choices, particularly these involving trans individuals.
“We did have an exterior contract moderator final 12 months that was making transphobic moderation (and in addition promoting moderation, criminally),” Mullenweg wrote on his weblog. “As quickly as we had been conscious that particular person was fired, and we later terminated the complete relationship with that contracting agency and have introduced virtually the whole lot in-house (at nice value).”
Mullenweg pinned a submit to his Tumblr titled “My Beliefs and Rules,” the place he addresses the claims that he’s transphobic. He’s at the moment on sabbatical till Might.
