In the three days since my last Operation Highlord post, a whole lot of groundwork has happened with not much to show on the surface for it. But make no mistake: we have been working.
First, a recap: the blogging website tumblr.com has been overrun with Nazi users who target Jewish and Romani bloggers with antisemitic messages. The least offensive of these that I, personally, have seen is "you need a shower" in reference to the cyanide showers used by the Third Reich to commit genocide against twenty million people; the largest plurality among these were Jewish people. The most offensive is something I can't post on this website due to its graphic nature, but it involves sending gory images to Jewish and Romani bloggers (and their supports) as Submits. In one of these images sent to myself, a beagle appeared to have been impaled and then sawed partially in half.
Although Tumblr staff have been informed literally hundreds of times about this problem (literally in the literal sense, not the figurative one) by dozens, if not hundreds, of bloggers, they have done nothing even though such actions are clearly in violation of their own User Agreement and Community Guidelines. And so, some Tumblr users have decided to step up and squeeze Tumblr where it hurts: their wallets.
Follow me under the curlies for more.
Named in honor of the Normandy invasion codenamed "Operation Overlord," Operation Highlord intends to hold Tumblr accountable by contacting advertisers and asking if they're aware that Tumblr has given free reign to "nationalists," "traditionalists," and even those who straight up call themselves Nazis, so much so that these users are comfortable compiling lists of their own names to form "white power armies." Our intentions are threefold:
1) Force Tumblr to begin honoring and enforcing its own User Agreement and Community Guidelines, and begin deactivating users who choose to engage in hate speech--especially against minors.
2) Get Tumblr to create an actual department to oversee its abuse and harassment claims. As of right now, those claims are routed through customer service; many claims are never even answered.
3) Get Tumblr to begin IP-blocking users who choose to engage in hate speech. Some Nazi bloggers have indicated all they have to do to get their blogs back after being multiply reported for harassment and hate speech is write to the support team and ask for their blog to be reinstated--at which point they continue to terrorize other users.
In the last three days, groundwork has been laid to help us achieve these goals. If you would like to help Operation Highlord, you can take part in the following actions:
A change.org petition to Tumblr has been set up here.
The Operation Highlord list of advertisers and contact information can be found here, along with a list of known Nazi blogs. All those with confirmed incidences of harassment are clearly marked. Please be aware that many blogs on this list make free use of racial slurs and death threats.
Please help us change the face of Tumblr, and make it a safer place for young minority bloggers!