The news that the website "Tumblr" is to introduce a ban on adult imagery is the latest indication that we are currently experiencing a historic swing away from liberal values towards conservative values.
The revealing thing about this news is that the linked article mentions how the decision was provoked by an Apple technical glitch, resulting in inappropriate (and illegal) imagery being sent to the website. So it appears it was Apple's error, resulting in the "Tumblr" app being removed from Apple's software, that was the cause of the problem.
As the article describes, this leaves a whole segment of adult society who used Tumblr for a variety of personal reasons, without a place to share and communicate with other like-minded souls. As the article says, the website served as a "safe space" for some of the more unorthodox people in society to express their sexuality.
Without a place like Tumblr, the only other known online venues for such activity would in the realm of pornographic websites, which bring with it a whole different type of behaviour and interaction: the type of "behaviour" that Tumblr was there to avoid.
In this way, the inherent assumption by those behind the decision is a lazy labeling of diverse and unorthodox subcultures and communities into the broader label of "porn". In other words, it makes no real attempt to distinguish one form of sexual expression from another, which is as intellectually-lazy as assessing all people that have mental health issues as being "crazy".
Thus, it feels as though we are regressing back decades into a socially-conservative world were everything must be labelled and neatly boxed, where sexuality cannot be something ambiguous or imaginative, and everything is either blanketed as "porn" or "not porn".
Likewise, for those communities and subcultures that have been able to feel safe and at ease in their own identity by using facilities like Tumblr, it leaves them feeling as social outcasts. By just assessing their content as "pornographic" - and thus with the same label as the most "hardcore" content online - it implicitly defines them as being somehow freaks, perverts and amoral exhibitionists.
Subverting free-will
The reason it came to this is due to a steady subversion of liberal values by the "new right".
One of the evident trends in recent years, and exacerbated by social media at times, is how free speech and the issue of "causing offense" has become conflated. This has then been exploited by the "alt-right", resulting in a wave of moral outrages and a backlash against what is seen by conservatives as moral degradation.
The root of this stems from the time of the financial crisis, when the "alt-right" saw its birth on the back of perceived indulgence of both "liberal" establishment values and the campaign for greater equality of rights by the LGBT community.
At the same time as the TEA Party was growing in strength in its desire to redefine "liberal" values, the "alt-right" was conducting an undercover culture war against what it saw as an indulgent and morally abject society.
The "alt-right" was able to label itself as a "victim" of free speech at a time when "political correctness" made their views unpalatable or offensive. In reality, the views expressed by many in the "alt-right" were racist, misogynistic, homophobic and hateful; their views were deemed offensive because they spread hate. They were being deliberately provocative in many cases - a classic technique of Fascist movements - in order to be offensive and gain notoriety and attention. They succeeded.
But by twisting the same "liberal" values against the establishment itself, the "alt-right" were able to argue that their "community" was thus as "oppressed" as those marginal and unorthodox communities had been in the past (and in some cases, still were). Thus their ringleaders argued that the white community was now being "oppressed", that men were being "oppressed", and that the establishment was being led by the interests of "minorities" at the expense of the majority.
It is in this climate that pressure builds on the media and social media to "reflect reality". This explains how Trump's outrageous lies and exaggerations were never seriously challenged by the media, but were allowed to be disseminated freely, as long as the "opposing view" was given as well. In Britain, the same was true with the lies that were used by the "Brexit" campaign, and the wider culture wars that now consume Anglo-Saxon culture on both sides of the Atlantic.
So now the pendulum seems to be swinging in the favour of the conservatives and the reactionaries. Culture wars across social media have resulted in "echo chambers" on both sides, with the result that anything that someone might find disagreeable is termed "offensive content".
The only winners out of this are ultimately those who wish to restrict self-expression: the reactionaries and social conservatives.
The concept of free-will has been turned on its head, and used as a weapon by those, such as the alt-right, who seek to remove it.
Social media has thus become risk-averse as a means of financial self-preservation. At a time when news, comment and artistic content has become monetized, the result is an erosion of free-will. Whereas at one time, it was thought that technology would result in greater freedom, the reality has proven to be somewhat different.
The actions of "Tumblr" thus fit into this wider trend. The trend now is towards a wider consideration of social morality; the realm of the social conservative.
Whereas at one time people were encouraged to think about the effects of their actions on the environment, that same mindset has infected the social mores of the online world: now people are policed by social content and the nature of their posts, and asked to consider what effect their internet activity might have on wider society. This means the internet is no longer about free-will, but about social morality; the precise opposite to its original meaning.
It is this climate that leaves very little space for those who have unconventional or alternative lifestyles, as those who use "Tumblr" are now finding out.
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