Tumblr's adult content ban has had no affect on porn bots, users say

NOTE: For all latest, breaking news related to Tumblr adult content ban as well as its alternatives, head here.

There are already a lot of examples that show how poor Tumblr’s implementation of its adult content ban has been. To name a few, posts are being wrongly flagged, users are finding loopholes in the way Tumblr is censoring posts, reviews of the Tumblr app are allegedly being manipulated, and Tumblr’s own examples of allowed adult content got flagged.

And now, it’s coming to light that one of the biggest issues that Tumblr users face – porn bots – still persists. In fact, users say porn bots have become even more aggressive after the December 17 ban. Take a look at some of these reports:

https://twitter.com/bitterghosts/status/1079925416939249665
https://twitter.com/DatBoi24638934/status/1080013096813506560
https://twitter.com/MokonaHikaru/status/1079905468292710402
https://twitter.com/caseyquil/status/1079856924286423041
https://twitter.com/almightyramtha/status/1080066968672100352
https://twitter.com/jaybird1812/status/1080022637118599168
https://twitter.com/nockergeek/status/1078383920025124864

Those are just a handful of reports. To get a better feel of how widespread the problem is, head here.

Then there are other annoying problems that users are facing. Like, if someone re-blogs a post and Tumblr’s censoring bots detect a policy violation in that, then the original post is being flagged.

Even a reblog of Tumblr’s own announcement post was flagged.

Among other things, recently users also reported that the appeal button, which one could use in case they felt their post or blog was wrongly flagged as explicit, has been removed.

While many are looking for alternatives (here’s our list), a section of Tumblr users have been protesting against the ban. The first phase included logging off from Tumblr for 24 hours, and the recently concluded second phase involved mass tweeting to Tumblr, Tumblr’s CEO, Verizon, and Yahoo.

There’s currently no information on what impact (if at all) these protests have had.

Follow @PiunikaWeb

PiunikaWeb is a unique initiative that mainly focuses on investigative journalism. This means we do a lot of hard work to come up with news stories that are either ‘exclusive,’ ‘breaking,’ or ‘curated’ in nature. Perhaps that’s the reason our work has been picked by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and more. Do take a tour of our website to get a feel of our work. And if you like what we do, stay connected with us on Twitter (@PiunikaWeb) and other social media channels to receive timely updates on stories we publish.