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Tumblr removed from App Store because of child pornography

Neat

Neat

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
1,107
New York City
On Friday, niche blogging platform Tumblr became suddenly and inexplicably unavailable on Apple's app store, and since then users posting adult-themed content have claimed their blogs are being deleted by the site without warning despite no official statement from either Tumblr, it's parent company Oath, or Apple. The reason, as some had grimly suggested, was confirmed to be because of child pornography being hosted on the site.

The quote on their help page is as follows:

We're committed to helping build a safe online environment for all users, and we have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to media featuring child sexual exploitation and abuse. As this is an industry-wide problem, we work collaboratively with our industry peers and partners like NCMEC to actively monitor content uploaded to the platform. Every image uploaded to Tumblr is scanned against an industry database of known child sexual abuse material, and images that are detected never reach the platform. A routine audit discovered content on our platform that had not yet been included in the industry database. We immediately removed this content. Content safeguards are a challenging aspect of operating scaled platforms. We're continuously assessing further steps we can take to improve and there is no higher priority for our team.
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Not clear if Tumblr pulled the app itself or if it was Apple.

More at the link: https://gizmodo.com/tumblr-disappeared-from-the-app-store-because-of-child-1830553237
 

Deleted member 31817

Nov 7, 2017
30,876
Wait so why would unrelated blogs get deleted? Just an overzealous sweep (which is better than the alternative don't get me wrong) or what?
 
ry-dog

ry-dog

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,180
How do other social media websites avoid it?
 
Jintor

Jintor

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Member
Oct 25, 2017
32,425
Psychoward said:
Wait so why would unrelated blogs get deleted? Just an overzealous sweep (which is better than the alternative don't get me wrong) or what?
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gotta be a bot sweep right?

as usual, tumblr haven't bothered communicating any of their shit, so various communities - nsfw and sfw - are just getting their shit pulled with no warning and no reason given
 

Deleted member 47942

User requested account closure
Banned
Sep 20, 2018
1,495
I'm surprised something like this didn't happen sooner. Tumblr has been reckless with its content management for nearly a decade.
 
Kuro

Kuro

Member
Oct 25, 2017
20,658
orochi91 said:
Oh wow, I googled the story a few moments ago.

Seems legit, but why delete normal blogs tho?
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I've seen blogs get deleted for posting tiny 3mb gifs of TV shows. Tumblr fucking sucks and I'm still waiting for a proper replacement because I won't touch Twitter.

Also the bot problem is insane. I get followed by at least 3 porn bots a day and there's minors that use the site. Tumblr needs to implement captchas or something.
 
supremeplatypus

supremeplatypus

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,887
London
This is unfortunately a big problem with sites that host user generated content. The deletion of adult content definitely seems overzealous but it's more like a 'better safe than sorry' type thing. The lack of transparency is probably because they are working with the authorities worldwide and they don't want to tip off anyone who is uploading and sharing that kind of shit.
 
Tbm24

Tbm24

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
16,329
I doubt some were deleted? You just couldn't get to them through the app. The web version you could still find most. In my case some tattoo blogs disappeared on my app but were available on the web version.
 
deepFlaw

deepFlaw

Knights of Favonius World Tour '21
Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,496
No aspect of this surprises me. I haven't used Tumblr much for 4 or 5 years but they were always pretty terrible at 1. dealing with some of the horrible shit on their platform, and 2. communicating anything to their users (or making the features users actually wanted in the first place).

Though, given how much they always seemed to see the ideal user base as like exclusively... artists and photographers and such instead of mainly tons of teens, I'm a little surprised they weren't keeping a better eye on original image-focused blogs.
 
orochi91

orochi91

Member
Oct 26, 2017
9,816
Canada
Kuro said:
I've seen blogs get deleted for posting tiny 3mb gifs of TV shows. Tumblr fucking sucks and I'm still waiting for a proper replacement because I won't touch Twitter.

Also the bot problem is insane. I get followed by at least 3 porn bots a day and there's minors that use the site. Tumblr needs to implement captchas or something.
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This seems draconian af

Made a Tumblr account a while ago, but I won't bother with the platform if they're gonna be that heavy-handed.
 
GameAddict411

GameAddict411

Member
Oct 26, 2017
8,519
The way they handle these issues on Tumblr have always been a train wreck with zero communication. Tumblr must be panicking hard now because they were removed from the App Store. But that doesn't mean they should delete everything in sight.
 
WhiteRabbitEXE

WhiteRabbitEXE

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,603
Arizona
Must be why literally any even *potentially* NSWF searches are coming up completely empty right now, regardless of settings. They must have everything on lockdown. Wonder if they're finally just going to ban adult content after this, as they've been slowly edging that way for a while.
 
Candescence

Candescence

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,253
NSFW content has been a big part of Tumblr for a long time, it's why even Yahoo/Verizon has struggled to make it any kind of moneymaker without major backlash from the community. Still, the child porn problem must've become bad to really cause Tumblr and Apple to crack down like this.

I wonder if Tumblr users are just gonna migrate to Pillowfort.io eventually, especially if Tumblr decides to go all-in on shutting down adult content.
 

Rondras

Banned
Aug 28, 2018
538
User Banned (Permanent): Dismissing concerns surrounding the distribution of illegal sexual content depicting minors; History of severe infractions.
Tumblr died years ago.

Anyway, removing something because of child porn is stupid. Twitter is filled with child porn(and accounts that go after children/minors) and yet Twitter is available everywhere.
 
deepFlaw

deepFlaw

Knights of Favonius World Tour '21
Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,496
orochi91 said:
This seems draconian af

Made a Tumblr account a while ago, but I won't bother with the platform if they're gonna be that heavy-handed.
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That absolutely cannot be the case for the vast vast vast majority of blogs or there would be nobody on it, given how many gifs get made there. I fully believe it happened, but probably only arbitrarily to some people.

Though, wait till you hear about Twitter and the Olympics.
 
Aeriscloud

Aeriscloud

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,208
Florida
I reported some I stumbled on last month while looking for some bearish guys. I've never freaked the fuck out so hard or smashed the report button so fast.

The report said Tumblr would be in contact with me for follow up, but they never contacted me. That shit is scary.
 
lenovox1

lenovox1

Member
Oct 26, 2017
8,995
Rondras said:
Tumblr died years ago.

Anyway, removing something because of child porn is stupid. Twitter is filled with child porn(and accounts that go after children/minors) and yet Twitter is available everywhere.
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Tumblr's issues seem to stem from the fact that their base is young and posts and shares illegal content of themselves and others through the platform.

I adimittedly don't follow that many kids on Twitter, but kids on Twitter don't seem to be creating that type of content. They seem to be using the platform to share memes and other Internet content.
 
RROCKMAN

RROCKMAN

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
10,824
Is CP seriously that rampant? Like real CP, not that loli stuff thats also disgusting?
 
atomsk eater

atomsk eater

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,830
Tumblr admins seems to have a reputation for doing all kinds of dumb things and not being communicative at all, so most of the people I follow are just kinda like "welp here we go again" at the news that blogs were getting deleted. Blogs with pornographic content have been getting randomly deleted since weeks ago, if not longer and then reinstated when the blog owner contacted them before (happened to one person I follow). Shortly before this story hit people noted that outgoing links were causing there posts not to show up in the search at all, which was attributed to Tumblr trying to cut down on pornbots although they said it was just an error. Honestly I think if this gets fixed most people will maintain their Tumblr blogs anyway, but they'll look at other platform like IG and Pillowfort if they weren't already.

RROCKMAN said:
Is CP seriously that rampant? Like real CP, not that loli stuff thats also disgusting?
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I've never personally come upon it, but Tumblr's userbase is still pretty huge and a lot of it skews younger. Some porn blogs I follow have had issues with people who are under 18 following them and trying to interact even when told they were unwelcome, so not surprised if the issue extends to kids posting themselves (or adults trading that kind of shit).
 
Xiaomi

Xiaomi

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,237
Wow, had no idea that shit was going on there. I used to use tumblr just to post shit that I had seen throughout the day that I liked. I never really dug much further than people I personally knew. Sucks to lose an archive of previous writing and finds, but they had to make some kind of decision if that was what was going on in there. I wonder how other subcommunity-driven sites like Reddit are dealing with this with the existence of private subreddits and the like, and how deep the rabbit hole goes.
 
MoonScented

MoonScented

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
685
I never understood how to use tumblr. It always just seemed like a really bad mix of blogging, MySpace page, Pintrist(which I also don't get).
 
Pink Tape

Pink Tape

Member
Oct 25, 2017
951
Red Velvet's cookie jar
This is what happens when you don't properly manage a site. The porn spam bots are out of control and nothing is done about them even though tons of users have contacted the staff about the issue for years now.
 
lint2015

lint2015

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,811
Code Artisan said:
Tumblr will become a relic of the past soon enough; Distributed social networks are going to take over. Mastodon is already strong in Japan because twitter has banned prebubescent porn cartoon.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_social_network
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software)
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/...big-in-japan-the-reason-why-is-uncomfortable/
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Wait are you saying that stuff isn't banned on Mastodon? :|

entremet said:
I forgot that Yahoo sold Tumblr lol.
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You're probably thinking of Flickr. That was sold after Verizon bought Yahoo. Yahoo and Tumblr are still under the same company.
 
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