Tumblr CEO publicly spars with trans person over account ban, revealing non-public account names within the course of

Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Tumblr proprietor Automattic, is meant to be on sabbatical. As a substitute, he’s arguing with Tumblr customers over a person content material moderation resolution, which has sparked community-wide 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 other 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. She additionally claimed her account had been suspended for posting clothed pictures of herself after getting gender affirming surgical procedure. This led her to publish 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.”

Based on Mullenweg, predstrogen was banned for posts that threatened violence towards Tumblr employees, and particularly cited the “forever painful death” publish. 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 publish as a menace.

“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 publish from the person who was banned on Tumblr. Then, on one of his Tumblr posts, Mullenweg shared quite a few of her facet weblog names, which isn’t public info (Tumblr customers typically make empty facet 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 few of the accounts by identify.

Apart from Elon Musk since he took over Twitter (now X), it’s unusual to see the CEOs of social platforms commenting instantly 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 an identical state of affairs final yr, nevertheless it performed out in an opposite manner. One person mentioned that they hoped a distinguished Black person would get pushed off of “somewhere real high.” In that case, Bluesky’s group determined it wasn’t a official loss of life menace, 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 sorts 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 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 yr, he mentioned that the platform loses $30 million annually, and later, he reassigned the vast majority of Tumblr’s employees to different initiatives inside 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 nasty monitor file 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 publish 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.