While there’s been a lot of attention on Facebook and Twitter’s role in the spread of Russian propaganda, they are not the only platforms used to influence the U.S. presidential election. Tumblr was also used, but the company’s response sets it apart from the others by being more transparent (or at least it seems to be).
In an official blog post, Tumblr was pretty straightforward; they didn’t try to downplay the facts, and leaders seem to want to take the problem seriously. There’s one big difference here: Tumblr gives specific information!
Second, we’re going to start keeping a public record of usernames we’ve linked to the IRA or other state-sponsored disinformation campaigns. We’re committed to transparency and want you to know everything that we know.
We’ve decided to leave up any reblog chains that might be on your Tumblrs—you can choose to leave them or delete them. We’re letting you decide because the reblog chains contain posts created by real Tumblr users, often challenging or debunking the false and incendiary claims in the IRA-linked original post. Removing those authentic posts without your consent would encroach on your free speech—and there have been enough disruptions to our conversations as it is.
And they won’t delete your posts that interacted with the Russian accounts, which I think can be a good thing. It makes it easier to search your history to see if you shared any of the Russian content, and what it was.
This is very different from Facebook and Twitter, who have been quite reluctant to give more specific information to users about what disinformation they may have seen. In fact, NBC News has been more helpful with the release of 200,000 Russian tweets that they acquired themselves—but it still doesn’t tell users what they saw back in 2016.
Tumblr definitely is setting an example by being more direct with users. They didn’t just notify them about interacting with the propaganda; they also shared specifics so users can be empowered to see the information for themselves. It doesn’t look like they have anything to hide, which definitely makes me feel more trustful of the site.
Considering all the ill will stirred up against Facebook and Twitter, CEOs Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey should take heed.