Mass Tweet @StumbleUpon (part two)

We did it!!

Our efforts to pressure StumbleUpon to end discrimination against LGBTQ communities was a fabulous success!  We had two main objectives: challenge StumbleUpon to (1) transfer LGBT culture tags from NSFW list to the safe list, and (2) present the labels for LGBT sex in an equitable manner (preferably renaming the labels to LGBT sexual health and transferring renamed labels to the safe list).

According to a representative from this popular online service, user-submitted websites tagged as LGBT sex mostly contain adult and pornographic content.  In the same NSFW list, the tag pornography contains adult entertainment primarily catering to the straight community. We attempted to persuade the contact person at StumbleUpon to at least rename pornography to straight sex so that it would match the LGBT sex tags. Unfortunately, this final request was denied.

StumbleUpon's mysterious methods of managing user-submitted / user-tagged websites made certain requests nearly impossible to fix without compromising the NSFW-free list. This information is important to understand: We respect their reasoning, as it would have been labor intensive, distracting their programmers from their ultimate goal of restructuring the entire tagging system.  So, the smart thing to do for StumbleUpon was to leave LGBT sex topics as is on the NSFW list.  This way, minors and those using computers in work settings or public places would not unintentionally stumble upon NSFW websites.

Regardless of any unfulfilled requests, our campaign produced a very exciting outcome! LGBT culture tags were transferred to the safe list (non-NSFW). This we can celebrate!! We raised awareness about blatant Internet segregation of the LGBT community. We successfully challenged a popular website aggregate service to treat lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender culture tags safe and included among the general audience.  Essentially, on StumbleUpon's website, LGBT culture tagged websites now share equal space with topics considered safe for all to view.  Once again, this is a huge step towards raising awareness about inequalities between straight and LGBTQ communities in connection with social media websites.

StumbleUpon has not given a specific time frame or details of their restructuring plan, except to say it should take a year.  It will be interesting to see how they practice equitable treatment of all tags related to LGBTQ communities. This is one project worth monitoring!

In sending out this final update for the campaign aimed at StumbleUpon, I personally want to thank all who signed and shared the petition, those who responded to questionnaires, and those who accepted challenges to take action.  Without this global community standing up for equal treatment among LGBTQ communities, one person's request most likely would not have achieved such a significant outcome.  Also, I personally want to thank the representatives from StumbleUpon who took the time to read and respond to several emails pinpointing specific concerns.  I appreciate their willingness to work with the people supporting this cause. Finally, I emphatically want to thank Kellen from Causes. She provided plenty of positive feedback along with suggestions on modifying segments of this effort in order for it to be more effective.  Together, all of those mentioned above made a difference benefiting the LGBTQ community!

~Suzanne Coleman