After a brief hiatus, the blog is back up and running! Your comments welcome.
*****
The other day in class we came across the topic of internet
and the way people use it as a comfort for issues such as self harm and
suicide. It is easy to access thousands of groups and websites that are meant
to help people in times of extreme stress, depression, or confusion. If used
correctly, the internet can be extremely beneficial. Anti-suicide campaigns, a
kind person, or detailed stories may be just what a person needs to reconsider
taking their own life or harming their own body.
Although the internet has very valuable, positive resources,
it is not guaranteed they will be found. Sami and Alyssa said that they saw
someone tweet a depressing, worrisome message. One of the first comments on it
was, "go kill yourself already." We have thousands of wonderful
people on this planet that work hard to try and make a difference in people's
lives by proving they are worth something, but the first thing this poor girl
has to see is this comment? What is the point of having all of these resources
if someone is going to see the hate from others first?
We also talked about one of the trends on twitter about a
year ago: #cutforbieber. Young girls were posting images of themselves
self-harming in order to try to persuade Bieber to stop smoking marijuana. This
trend grew out of control and did not go unnoticed. The same issues still
happen everyday, however. People on Tumblr post images of themselves with deep
gashes on their arms and bleeding wrists. There are numerous amounts of people
that encourage the end to self harm on the website. There are also people that
promote this behavior and use the site to enable each other. I have seen some
of the strangest, absurd quotes, such as "blood never looked so pretty
until its coming out of your wrists."
I recently found out
that Tumblr has set new policies:
One of the great
things about Tumblr is that people use it for just about every conceivable kind
of expression. People being people, though, that means that Tumblr sometimes
gets used for things that are just wrong. We are deeply committed to supporting
and defending our users’ freedom of speech, but we do draw some limits. As a
company, we’ve decided that some specific kinds of content aren’t welcome on
Tumblr. For example, we prohibit spam and identity theft.
Our Content Policy has not, until now, prohibited blogs that
actively promote self-harm. These typically take the form of blogs that glorify
or promote anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders; self-mutilation; or
suicide. These are messages and points of view that we strongly oppose, and
don’t want to be hosting. The question for us has been whether it’s better to (a)prohibit
them, as a statement against the very ideas of self-harm that they are
advancing, or (b)permit them
to stay up, accompanied by a public service warning that directs readers to
helplines run by organizations like the National
Eating Disorders Association.
We are planning to
post a new, revised Content Policy in the very near future, and we’d like to
ask for input from the Tumblr community on this issue.
So what do you think? Is Tumblr taking a step in the right
direction? Or is this situation similar to our blog situation with the word
rape? Who determines what line is crossed with freedom of speech? What else
could Tumblr and other sites do to prevent people from promoting self-harm,
suicide, and eating disorders?
