Tumblr CEO Transphobic Moderation Controversy

About

Tumblr CEO Transphobic Moderation Controversy refers to criticism levied against WordPress co-founder and Tumblr CEO Matt Mullenweg, whose online handle is PhotoMatt, for banning the Tumblr account Predstrogen and, according to some users, for allegedly encouraging content moderation with an anti-trans tilt on the website. Matt issued several public responses to the questions posed by disgruntled Tumblr users in February 2024 and cited a post in which Predstrogen describes him dying in a car explosion involving hammers that "go flying everywhere" as the reason for Predstrogen's ban. The incident led to numerous Tumblr users sharing memes about cars and hammers and discussing the various times they believe Tumblr demonstrated anti-trans moderation practices.

Background

Various Tumblr users expressed their discontent with Tumblr's moderation policies leading up to February 2024, with many accusing Tumblr of censoring specifically transgender bloggers and mislabeling their content as explicit material. Tumblr^[6] user @unlettered-heathen posted one example of such moderation on August 3rd, 2023, gathering over 77,000 notes in six months (seen below).

On February 20th, 2024, Tumblr^[1][2][3] CEO Matt Mullenweg posted a series of responses to questions about content moderation practices on Tumblr, notably stating that he was addressing it due to "mass misinformation."

Many of the questions posed to him revolved around the banning of the Tumblr account Predstrogen, operated by a trans woman (shown below).

In the post, Matt denied that Tumblr has an anti-trans bias in its content moderation, saying that Predstrogen was banned for issuing a threat against him. The threat was a post by Predstrogen in which she wrote, "I hope photomatt dies forever a painful death involving a car covered in hammers that explodes more than a few times and hammers go flying everywhere" (seen below).

In an email correspondence with Know Your Meme on February 21st, 2024, Mullenweg stated that the account was not suspended for a single threat. Mullenweg listed the reasons for Predstrogen's suspension as follows:

* Mis-tagging adult content against Tumblr's community guidelines, repeatedly.
* Harassment of numerous other Tumblr users, not just me.
* Multiple threats of violence, not just the one I shared.

Mullenweg also acknowledged that his sharing one example of Predstrogen's "multiple threats of violence" may have confused readers and that he considers the phrase "I hope photomatt dies forever a painful death" a "very scary thing to read."

Predstrogen / Rita's Response

On February 22nd, 2024, the person behind the username Predstrogen posted images of herself to her X / Twitter handle @mAD_h0PZ. The photos were titled, "Literally too much for Tumblr to handle."

Tumblr CEO Matt Mullenweg responded^[9] to Rita's post, saying "When will you be honest with your followers? That repeated adult violations were not pictures like this, but likely ones on your other accounts." Mullenweg went on to list various Tumblr handles purportedly attributed to Predstrogen, many of which had explicit usernames. Mullenweg has since deleted his reply (seen below, left).

Rita responded to Mullenweg (seen below, right),^[10] writing, "a man worth $400,000,000 followed me to another website to publicly out me as owner of the tumblr username 'showersharts' on my selfies over internet drama," adding, "for the record, half of these were blank and were just funny urls I had on a sideblog in case I wanted to change to it. even then, the man said I was banned for harassment, not sexual content. hes backtracking and seeking me out."

Online Reactions

On February 20th, 2024, Tumblr^[4] user Elerium posted a screenshot supposedly showing PhotoMatt direct messaging people who responded to the aforementioned posts addressing Tumblr moderation. The post gathered over 6,000 notes in a day (seen below, left). Elerium also claimed that Matt messaged "dozens" of other people.

Also on February 20th, Tumblr user stratomod^[5] shared an example of Tumblr's allegedly biased anti-trans moderation practices, with the thread gathering over 190,000 notes in a day (seen below, right).

Also on February 20th, 2024, Tumblr^[6] user Problemnyatic posted a meme showing Mr. Krabs from SpongeBob SquarePants saying, "We used to kill people with hammers for saying things like that." The meme was in reference to Predstrogen's car-hammer-explosion post and gathered over 12,000 notes in a day (seen below, left).

Later on February 20th, Tumblr^[7] user blackjack-void posted an Oh That's Real Nice meme commenting on the controversy that gathered over 12,000 notes in a day (seen below, right)

Search Interest

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External References