Hashtag #NSFW #Tumblr: What the Tumblr Ban Means for Platform Migration

• In Event: Digital Border Practices

Abstract

In light of the American public’s privacy reckoning, technology companies’ value systems, mores, and policies are becoming more visible. Consecutively, platform participants are starting to migrate when they face existential threats or do not feel welcome any more. Tribal grouping around particular belief systems and ideologies triggers people online to leave, and to regroup at alternative online venues. In late 2018, the social networking and microblogging site Tumblr announced a ban on content displaying nudity on the platform, a venue regarded by many as a safe space to explore one’s sexuality and identity. The ban led to the mushrooming of alternative platforms, and users began to migrate, taking their content elsewhere. Migration is also a useful concept to discuss other platforms: In the vein of the so-called “Alt-Right” in the United States, the opposite holds – platforms themselves with distinct (neo-Nazi) ideology are at times forced to migrate from one space to another, as providers on an infrastructure level want to disassociate with their ideology and speech. This paper traces Tumblr and the corresponding discourse that erupted as the platform announced to change its policies through a framework that emphasizes, expands on, and theorizes platform migration within science and technology studies. As the social construction of technology that is embedded in platforms and their policies and the imaginaries of their own users mismatch, platforms may trigger migration. This paper seeks to theorize such ‘platform migration’ to provide a useful toolbox for future scholarship in this area.

Author

• Martin Johannes Riedl, The University of Texas at Austin