Will Porn Be the Ultimate Victim of the Tumblr ‘Hack’ of 2013

LOS ANGELES— It is not surprising that in the aftermath of the “infrastructure failure” that struck Tumblr last night with fallout continuing througout the day, that the media has tended to focus on porn, which was but one type of content that Tumblr users reported showing up uninvited on their blogs. Tumblr, after all, has become practically synonymous with porn following its acquisition by Yahoo. But unleashing the porn hounds on unsuspecting blogs, especially when they can’t remove the content, is also a surefire way to piss some people off, which is exactly what happened starting last night. The incident was not a hack, according to Tumblr, but “an infrastructure failure lasting roughly fifteen minutes [that] led posts created in this window to become corrupt. No data was lost, but this has been causing inconsistent behavior for these affected blogs. Our engineering team is working quickly to correct the situation.” It’s just the sort of cringe-worthy episode that could compel Tumblr to reconsider its egalitarian ways regarding adult content while avoiding the blowback that would surely come if it outright ejected porn just to make advertisers happy. No one is fooled about what’s really at stake, however. TechCrunch went right there today. “Though not a hack,” wrote Sarah Perez, “the technical issue is concerning because of the nature of the content posted to some users’ blogs. Tumblr has a reputation for permitting adult content, which means that when the glitch occurred some of those NSFW posts were published to other users’ blogs. Some users also have their blog posts automatically shared to Facebook and Twitter, too, which makes the problem more public for them. “It’s also damaging for Tumblr’s brand,” she continued, “as the company is now trying to convince advertisers to create their own Tumblr blogs and posts in an effort to monetize the Tumblr user base. The now Yahoo-owned blog platform has been carefully implementing features which would allow that branded content to appear in users’ searches and dashboards, but not in situations where it would appear anywhere near the adult material on Tumblr.” Perez ended her line of reasoning with an implied warning: “This ongoing technical issue is an example of the problems that can arise from establishing a platform that’s home to NSFW material, while still trying to appeal to image-conscious brands,” she wrote. “That is, advertisers’ [on] Tumblr sites could have been affected by a glitch like this, though we haven’t yet heard that any were this time.” Not this time, but what about next time?