Yesterday, despite the manifest, glaring problems with its porn filter, Tumblr turned on mandatory porn-blocking for all its users’ content, so that anything that its bots identified a pornographic would be invisible.
Tumblr faced a backlash over its announcement that it would ban “adult content,” and not just because Tumblr had traditionally nurtured communities built around queer and marginalized sexuality — but also because the company defined “adult content” in part as being “female presenting nipples.”
In response to concerns about blocking breastfeeding images, breast-cancer awareness posts, and other “legitimate” uses of “female-presenting nipples,” Tumblr put up a post illustrating and explaining the kinds of “female-presenting nipples” the service would allow: “exposed female-presenting nipples in connection with breastfeeding, birth or after-birth moments, and health-related situations, such as post-mastectomy or gender confirmation surgery.
The images that accompanied the post? Blocked by Tumblr’s porn filter.
When Gizmodo posted the gif to Tumblr ourselves, it was immediately flagged as a potential violation and hidden by the platform’s filter. When the images shown in the gif were uploaded individually, two of the four examples—which appeared to show a breast ultrasound and a pro-choice protest, respectively—were similarly flagged and hidden.
Tumblr’s Porn Filter Flags Its Own Examples of ‘Permitted’ Nudity [Hudson Hongo/Gizmodo]
(via Beyond the Beyond)