Confusion Over Tumblr Porn Ban Reigns As Image-Blocking Begins

The social media platform Tumblr, previously a safe haven for adult material and sexual self-expression, announced earlier this month that it would ban all porn—or whatever it defines as porn—and the ban took effect on Monday. But the rollout of the new anti-porn policy, according to media reports, was marred by confusion, a haywire filtering bot that screened out images the company itself defined as acceptable, and a new apology from the Tumblr management for the chaos. “First and foremost, we are sorry that this has not been an easy transition and we know we can do a better job of explaining what we’re doing,” the Tumblr management said in a public blog post. “We knew this wasn’t going to be an easy task and we appreciate your patience as we work through the challenges and limitations of correctly flagging tens of billions of GIFs, videos, and photos.” The tech news site Gizmodo tested the new porn banning bot by reposting images that had earlier been posted by the Tumblr management itself, as examples of posts that would not be banned under the new policy, which now prohibits “female-presenting nipples.” But images that show “female-presenting nipples” are permitted under the new Tumblr policy if they are part of posts containing medical information, such as mammogram posts, or political statements. But when Gizmodo posted two images taken from the Tumblr management of a mammogram, and a topless political protest, both images were blocked by the Tumblr porn filter. Even prior to the December 17 ban taking effect, as AVN.com reported, the Tumblr bot was already flagging images of Jesus and the comic book character Wonder Woman as banned porn. Despite the blanket ban on adult content, Tumblr in its public statement insisted on Monday that it remained “a place to explore your identity. Tumblr has always been home to marginalized communities and always will be.” But writing in the online magazine Slate, Elanor Broker wrote that, “Tumblr showed me that life as a trans woman was possible. But the platform’s ‘adult content’ ban will throw us out along with the porn.” Broker described her own dismay on learning that the once-welcoming online Tumblr community would ban all adult material. “I saw a community crucial to my own story suddenly under threat,” she wrote. “Put bluntly, the policing of porn—and all the other forms of nudity and sexual expression that are inevitably being swept up with it—on Tumblr threatens the ability of queer and trans people like me to share and define our own stories, and it does so at a particularly dangerous moment in history.” Image via Wikimedia Commons Public Domain