Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Tumblr owner Automattic, is expected to be on sabbatical. Rather, he's arguing with Tumblr users over a private material small amounts choice, which has actually triggered communitywide protest and allegations of transphobia.
Over the last couple of days, the circumstance intensified to the point that Mullenweg has actually engaged with the user in concern on other platforms and shared personal information about her account in public.
The debate started when a user with the blog site name predstrogen was prohibited. Before the restriction, she was annoyed with Tumblr since the platform stopped working to act when she reported that she was being targeted with transmisogynistic harassment. This led her to publish that she hopes that the CEO “passes away a permanently uncomfortable death including a cars and truck covered in hammers that blows up more than a couple of times and hammers go flying all over.”
According to Mullenweg, predstrogen was prohibited for posts that threatened violence versus Tumblr personnel, and particularly pointed out the “permanently agonizing death” post. He likewise declared that her clothed shift pictures were not what yielded adult material infractions.
“We typically do not talk about private cases, however due to the fact that there appears to be mass false information around this, I will make an exception and discuss predstrogen,” he composed on his blog site, photomatt. He included, “Tumblr has a variety of LGBT+ consisting of trans individuals on personnel, and they see things from the within completely, and they're not opposing this case.”
Some users stated that Mullenweg was overreacting, as the language is so cartoonish that it could not be taken seriously. Mullenweg took the post as a hazard.
“Threats of violence are never ever alright. Hazards of violence are not safeguarded speech,” he composed on his blog site. “We will deal with authorities and FBI where proper, though to be clear predstrogen's case hasn't called for that up until now. I'm describing what we might possibly provide for other dangers.”
Tumblr did not react to ask for remark.
Mullenweg took the argument off platform to X, where he talked about a post from the user who was prohibited on Tumblr. On one of his Tumblr posts, Mullenweg shared many of her side blog site names, which is not public info (Tumblr users typically make empty side blog sites with no material in order to squat on URLs).
“On the adult material mistagging, I included context to state it has absolutely nothing to do with clothed shift images, she had 20+ other blog sites and numerous accounts with names so specific I can't publish them here without a fully grown tag,” Mullenweg composed, then noting a few of the accounts by name.
Aside from Elon Musk considering that he took control of Twitter (now X), it's unusual to see the CEOs of social platforms commenting straight on specific material small amounts choices. It's a lot more unusual for those CEOs to share personal details about that user's account.
Bluesky dealt with a comparable scenario in 2015, however it played out in an opposite way.