So a while back ago I pondered whether I as a NSFW content creator should use Community Labels on my NSFW text posts. From what I had seen Community Labels were poorly executed and I feared using them would tank my reach. However, there is also the ethical conundrum of protecting people who don’t want to see your content or shouldn’t see your content so I asked a couple of NSFW content creators how they felt about it. Should you, use Community Labels on Tumblr?
So back in September 2022 Tumblr introduced Community Labels to the platform. At first the feature was received relatively positive but later it turned out to be a mixed bag. On one hand you have users who were tired of seeing content with a sexual nature on their dashboard and tags and happy with the new feature. On the other hand you had creators freaking out about the fact that Tumblr executed the introduction of the feature poorly, effectively killing their reach.
See, Community labels were set to ignore all mature flagged posts by default and there was only a single tumblr post from staff mentioning this. There was no sticky pop-up like you see with shoelaces or whatever silly stuff is for sale in the Tumblr shop.
By blocking mature content by default and barely doing anything to notify users of the fact that they did this they’ve killed the reach of many NSFW content creators already.
Alright, sucks for the content creators you might think, but it also sucks for people who genuinely don’t want to see mature content on their dashboard. Because due to community labels being so poorly communicated, many NSFW creators are hesitant to actually label their content as containing mature content. Resulting in mature content still being able to seep into dashboards of people who don’t want to see it. So in the end, no one is really happy with Community Labels at the moment.
Not to mention the content that falsely gets flagged for containing mature content while not doing so, pissing of creators even more.
How many people even use Community Labels?
I asked a bunch of NSFW creators how they dealt with Community Labels and this is what I got. (article continues under image)
Despite the sample size being rather small with 54 creators voting, I still think it is a rather insightfull poll.
As you can see, only a combined 31.5% of NSFW creators actually uses Community Labels at the moment. 14.8% of them tried it but reversed their decision after noticing massive drops in their engagement. The latter likely due to Tumblr not communicating their feature well enough, leaving many followers in the dark about where their favourite NSFW creator suddenly went.
Meanwhile 53.7% of NSFW creators doesn’t use community labels, and presumably hasn’t tried either, out of fear for drops in engagement.
The Arguments for and against
To paraphrase some of my followers on both sides.
“Even though I only post NSFW texts, as in fanfic, I don’t label my posts because they completely hide my work which makes it even harder to find readers. The community label is unnecessary and harms a lot of creators. Not to mention when a post gets wrongfully flagged it takes forever to get it appealed”
A NSFW content creator that doesn’t use Community Labels.
“I use labels and strongly encourage everyone to do the same with the exception for text based nsfw posts. Community labels make my posts inaccessible to minors and people who don’t consent to seeing that content in a way that tags will never do. I’ve noticed lower engagement but it is a trade off I am willing to make”
A NSFW content creator that does use Community Labels.
Both sides here make valid points and arguably the idea that minors shouldn’t see content that isn’t meant for them is an idea pretty much everyone can get behind. NSFW creators are known to heavily tag their posts and to thoroughly block minors or people who don’t put their age in their bio.
It’s just that the execution of Community Labels was done so poorly that it stops people who would want to use it, from using it. It is not too late for Tumblr to fix this though.
If Tumblr follows up with adequate communication about Community Labels and offers more transparency about what happens to posts that get labeled I am fairly certain they can get the majority of creators behind this feature.
Because lets not forget that Tumblr sadly has a history of hurting content creators. The infamous ‘Female presenting nipples’ ban ruined the livelihood of many creators who were often from marginalized groups.
A huge part of queer culture was taken away from us with this ban and with the looming threat of creators being decimated by community labels we risk losing yet another significant part. Not to mention the domino effect consequences of creators leaving the platform due to their limited reach.
The reach of creators using community labels is a very worrying and real problem on the platform and right now Community labels fix nothing about the problems they’re supposed to fix. In order to not alienate people on both sides of the issue Tumblr needs to communicate the feature better. This shouldn’t be too much to ask and it would make everyone happy. If Tumblr can pull that off creators would likely be less hesitant to use the feature.
So should you use Community Labels as of now?
It still remains a hard question to answer but I hope this article has given you some food for thought.
Personally I don’t use Community Labels yet because I don’t want to annihilate my Tumblr account. I really want to use Community Labels but not until they’re communicated better and thus more likely to be widespread.
I mean I get that it sucks that some people get to see content that they don’t want to see or shouldn’t see but I do my best to tag my posts adequately to ensure that doesn’t happen. I feel like this a responsible current course of action for as of right now.
As for images, gifs and videos that is a lot harder to advice on as I don’t post those myself. On places like Reddit and Twitter it is fairly easy, NSFW content creators label their content as mature and that ensures that people who don’t want to see it don’t have to see it.
It doesn’t really ensure that minors don’t see the content as anyone can lie about their age when registering. However, that does bring me to a point that is widely accepted on the internet in general. We shouldn’t childproof the entire internet to safeguard children, that’s a parent’s job and the same applies to Tumblr.
We shouldn’t childproof the entire site to safeguard minors, it would be great if Community Labels could help out with that but right now it does more harm than good. So don’t feel bad about posting nsfw content without using community labels until Tumblr comes with an actual fix to the problems caused by it.
If you liked this article and want to see more. Feel free to leave a comment, share this article or to shoot me a message on Tumblr. It always fills me with joy knowing that readers enjoy what I write.