Yesterday, Tumblr announced that it will ban all adult content starting December 17th. As users logged into their accounts, they have seen that some of their posts now have a red banner across them, marking them as flagged for explicit content. The problem is, a lot of these posts are hilariously far from being pornographic.
Itās pretty clear that these flags are being done based on an algorithm, and the algorithm is finding false positives. Hereās a list of things that got flagged: a fully clothed woman, a drawing of a dragon, fan-art of of characters from the anime Haikyu!!, art from the childrenās book The Princess Who Saved Herself that the author of said book posted, a drawing of a bowl of fruit with mouths, a video of abstract blurs, Garfield.
I am sure that some porn got flagged as well, but a lot of what the algorithm flagged doesnāt look very āexplicit.ā
Tumblr managed to flag everything but the single, solitary 2014 nipple on my entire blog. pic.twitter.com/MIO3w4XWSZ
— Alisa! (@alzuna) December 3, 2018
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1069691390399930369
humorously, one of the only things flagged on my tumblr was this…car boys…animation… pic.twitter.com/4SWPKzehyP
— Louie Zong (on bluesky now) (@everydaylouie) December 4, 2018
Hey here's why tumblr's purge of NSFW will not work. Here is what was flagged as NSFW from my art blog ( a thread ) pic.twitter.com/mUTvbKVfaF
— cryptids 'r' us (ā¢Ģāā¢Ģ) // over on š¦ (@mothmanners) December 3, 2018
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1069695308253212672
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1069682327771668480
I havenāt logged into my Tumblr for a year but I had to check which posts had been flagged. pic.twitter.com/dhQpJu5M6v
— Kieran (@KingImpulse) December 4, 2018
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1069681893346566144
Look at all the explicit sex and nudity in these dragons and dinosaurs I drew. @tumblr your tech is terrible at this. So many of my illustrations are flagged, even ones that have appeared in actual childrenās books nationwide. pic.twitter.com/Czd2jBBozI
— RJ Palmer š Gen Con AS-77 (@arvalis) December 3, 2018
YEAH!!!! OKAY!!!!! MY PAINTING OF FRUITS WITH FUCKIN TEETH GOT FLAGGED LMFAO!!!!!!!! #Tumblr pic.twitter.com/cYAfPhgRnZ
— ā RB ā (@RBtheARTISAN) December 4, 2018
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1069813487407374337
I was looking through tumblr to see which posts have been flagged and I can tell that I'm in for a ride pic.twitter.com/RWkALdAGw6
— rinne (@soulravaging) December 4, 2018
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1069738092494446592
Cooooolllll, so much fun to log into Tumblr and find all my drawings with girls in them to be flagged as adult content!!!! Nice!!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/hYRfveo1Bx
— Kat Tsai (@Chuwenjie) December 3, 2018
went to Tumblr for the first time in 2 years to check if anything got flagged, and it was this
(cc: @nocontextCV ) pic.twitter.com/2xeCcaLihB— Jon "@jonthered.bsky.social" the Red (@jontheredrc) December 3, 2018
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1069714594141274114
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1069735473202032640
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1069703550870142977
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1069707003927384064
Oh, and hereās an image that was not flagged. This oneās not safe for work, if you can believe it.
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1069812704402059264
Out of curiosity, I hopped on my own, barely used Tumblr to see what, if anything was flagged. This reblog was.
https://www.tumblr.com/gossipgita/175305098495/
This wasnāt.
https://www.tumblr.com/gossipgita/177023416545/
Getting rid of the porn bots and pedophilia is a good move for Tumblrās parent company and investors. Their algorithm could use some work, though.
