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

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story (published on January 01, 2019) follows:

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:

so i’ve gotten about 22 followers on tumblr in the past two and a half weeks and 21 of those are porn bots. please explain. they ban porn but not the bots ? @ god, please send help (Source)

I have the same problem. In the few years I’ve been on Tumblr I only got about 6 bots. Now since the “ban” I’ve been gotten about 15 bots touching my shit. (Source)

The funny thing is, more porn bots have subbed to my tumblr account in the past two months than in a year when their policy wasnt changed (Source)

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.

Tumblr has removed the button that allows you to appeal when its pornbot misclassifies your posts as NSFW (Source)

so not only does @tumblr not email you (like they sed they would), they even flag posts by hiding them if you aren’t on your dash and they “forgot” an appeal button…or visible flag. (Source)

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.

02:52 pm (IST): Fresh reports suggest that the issue where porn bots are following user accounts has resurfaced. Support has acknowledged the problem and said that they are working to fix it.

Hey! We’ve had quite an uptick and are working on a fix. You can help by reporting them as often as you can. (Source)

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