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The reason they banned porn, is not because of some sudden guilt about porn. It's because, apparently, there had been a lot of child porn that was getting publi

The reason they banned porn, is not because of some sudden guilt about porn. It's because, apparently, there had been a lot of child porn that was getting published. Tumblr seems like it doesn't have the resources to fight off child porn, and AI is too dumb to know what is underage or not. So now they are just banning all porn. That's why Apple banned their app from the app store recently. The bad thing is that, this will absolutely kill the platform. Porn and porn gifs have always been popular on Tumblr for as far as I can remember. I'm not a Tumblr user, but this is just a fact anyone that has ever even casually browsed it knows.

krapp 8y ago
If they have the capability to effectively ban all porn, they have the capability to fight child porn. This is something every legal site which allows image uploads has to deal with - every platform capable of hosting images will be used to host child porn, that's axiomatic. Yet somehow 4chan, Reddit and other large image-centric sites are at least willing to put in the effort without banning adult content wholesale. And, just like Youtube suddenly "discovering" an entire industry of exploitative child videos on their platform, I have a difficult time believing Tumblr's owners didn't know this was an issue, given how widespread NSFW content is on their platform. The truth is, Tumblr was willing to look the other way on child porn until it directly harmed their monetization efforts.
- friedman23 8y ago
  > If they have the capability to effectively ban all porn, they have the capability to fight child porn. Why do people insist on spreading their uneducated unsubstantiated opinions? Do you know this is true? Why don't you link some papers showing how porn detection neural nets can accurately detect age as well.
  - shadofx 8y ago
    It's probably possible, but you'd need gigabytes of child porn to train a NN to detect child porn versus porn in general.
  - chimeracoder 8y ago
    > Why do people insist on spreading their uneducated unsubstantiated opinions? Do you know this is true? Yes, I do know it's true. It's actually easier to detect child porn than it is to detect all porn, because there's a standard tool[0] that's used by ~all major platforms, along with a database of known images of child pornography managed by ICMEC[1]. As new images are discovered, those are added to the list as well. Source: I personally know engineers who have worked on detecting child pornography for platforms like Tumblr and Facebook, for the purpose of filtering them out and reporting potential child abuse. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Centre_for_Missing_%26_Exploited_Children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Centre_for_Missi...
    - altec3 8y ago
      I think the issue is that most of the underage content is self published, and not coming from other parts of the web. This makes checking against the ICMEC database worthless, as the content is brand new and has never been online before.
      - chimeracoder 8y ago
        > I think the issue is that most of the underage content is self published, and not coming from other parts of the web. That actually doesn't matter; it's straightforward to find the networks of people sharing underage content. It is very rare that someone will only be sharing fresh, self-published content which is never shared or reposted by anyone else who also shares content in the ICMEC database at any point. If you're analyzing content in a sheer vacuum, yes, this would be a problem, but you're not - you're analyzing content which is spread across a social network, and you're looking for networks which are intentionally seeking out and sharing this material. It is a much more straightforward problem than most people realize; it just requires the right staffing and resources (ie, problems which are directly solved by money). > This makes checking against the ICMEC database worthless, as the content is brand new and has never been online before. On the contrary; that's the exact mechanism by which the ICMEC database gets expanded. This is why even the DOJ opposed SESTA and FOSTA - websites that are used by sex workers are also great places to find and rescue victims of sex trafficking. Most sex workers aren't trafficking victims, but a large number of trafficking victims are listed on those sites as well. It was one of the primary ways that the DOJ would rescue victims and prosecute traffickers. With those sites gone, traffickers have gone underground, and it's much more difficult to find them.
  - ocfx 8y ago
    No reason to, if you read the rest of the comments you would have found plenty of sources.
  - DuskStar 8y ago
    I would say that CP is a strict subset of porn, therefore if you have the ability to ban all of the latter you have the ability to ban all of the former. This ability is rather useless in this discussion though, since we'd really rather have the ability to ban all the CP while leaving the rest of the adult content alone.
- partiallypro 8y ago
  It's possible it is also related to trying to lure more advertisers, but I see that as a losing strategy. It's an unfortunate truth that porn is a big user driver for Tumblr. I'm not sure it will be worth it. I honestly would almost bet they back track on this.
ransom1538 8y ago
"It's because, apparently, there had been a lot of child porn that was getting published." OR! It is pisses off advertisers. Large advertisers don't want their ads on a page with porn and will yank budgets if it happens. Having to police which UGC tumbler page uses porn + ads is also impossible.
tomatotomato37 8y ago
You don't need an AI to fight child porn, the FBI publishes a huge database of hashes that make it very easy to fight it, and if I remember the Tumblr reponse to the Apple ban correctly, they've been using it for a while. That being said, I also believe the apple ban wasn't explicitly because of cp, but also because an app known for NSFW conflicts with their "image", in the same manner ad companies also refuse to associate with it, but couldn't use that as the reason due to the PR backlash Tumblr is getting now
- bagacrap 8y ago
  Hashes of what, the image or video content? Wouldn't those be ridiculously easy to circumvent by uploaders via, e.g., changing one pixel?
  - wl 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA
    - groovybits 8y ago
      > PhotoDNA is a technology developed by Microsoft [...] Some other services by MS that might build on this: * https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services * https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services
- tfolbrecht 8y ago
  I don't think it's that kind of child pornography. It's more the self produced, coming of age, scantily clad variety that is non-trivial to moderate. The most offensive to modern sensibilities (and advertisers) isn't the naked people, but the gore, self harm, and extreme fetish communities.
  - verroq 8y ago
    Can you imagine the irreparable harm caused to society by teenagers taking half naked selfies?
jacquesm 8y ago
There is a free anti CP tool fielded by Microsoft, PhotoDNA.
- altec3 8y ago
  I said this elsewhere, but I believe the problem is that underage Tumblr users are posting photos of themselves. As far as I know, that tool detects photos that have been previously identified as underage, not the age of the person in the photo, and whether or not it contains lewd content.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    That's true, PhotoDNA identifies existing pictures even through many transformations (crop, rotate, scale, flip).
chimeracoder 8y ago
> The reason they banned porn, is not because of some sudden guilt about porn. It's because, apparently, there had been a lot of child porn that was getting published. It's not because of child pornography. It's because Congress passed a law that makes the platform criminally liable[0] if sex workers use the platform (even if said sex work is legal). Child porn is a solvable problem (it takes some engineering work and some money, but as stated in other comments, it's a solved problem[1], which is why most other sites don't struggle with it). On the other hand, there is literally no way for a site like Tumblr to comply with SESTA and FOSTA at that scale without effectively banning all pornography and other content that could be construed as facilitating sex between people. [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/how-congress-censored-internet https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/how-congress-censored-... [1] From the point of view of the platform, that is, not that child porn doesn't still exist
dspillett 8y ago
> It's because, apparently, there had been a lot of child porn that was getting published. Not directly. CP has been a problem on Tumblr for long time. I've seen many complaints about them not being fast enough to stamp on it when reported (presumably due to a lack of resources, policing image content on such a site must be a gargantuan task). What has changed now, and what many believe is the driving force behind this policy change, is in part the threat of their revenue steam being affected due to advertisers taking notice, and more pressingly ATM app stores getting wary. Specifically Apple dropped their app from the iStore in November.
whateveracct 8y ago
I read that 1% of tumblr content falls under the ban and only ~20% consumes it.

krapp 8y ago

If they have the capability to effectively ban all porn, they have the capability to fight child porn. This is something every legal site which allows image uploads has to deal with - every platform capable of hosting images will be used to host child porn, that's axiomatic. Yet somehow 4chan, Reddit and other large image-centric sites are at least willing to put in the effort without banning adult content wholesale. And, just like Youtube suddenly "discovering" an entire industry of exploitative child videos on their platform, I have a difficult time believing Tumblr's owners didn't know this was an issue, given how widespread NSFW content is on their platform. The truth is, Tumblr was willing to look the other way on child porn until it directly harmed their monetization efforts.

friedman23 8y ago
> If they have the capability to effectively ban all porn, they have the capability to fight child porn. Why do people insist on spreading their uneducated unsubstantiated opinions? Do you know this is true? Why don't you link some papers showing how porn detection neural nets can accurately detect age as well.
- shadofx 8y ago
  It's probably possible, but you'd need gigabytes of child porn to train a NN to detect child porn versus porn in general.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > Why do people insist on spreading their uneducated unsubstantiated opinions? Do you know this is true? Yes, I do know it's true. It's actually easier to detect child porn than it is to detect all porn, because there's a standard tool[0] that's used by ~all major platforms, along with a database of known images of child pornography managed by ICMEC[1]. As new images are discovered, those are added to the list as well. Source: I personally know engineers who have worked on detecting child pornography for platforms like Tumblr and Facebook, for the purpose of filtering them out and reporting potential child abuse. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Centre_for_Missing_%26_Exploited_Children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Centre_for_Missi...
  - altec3 8y ago
    I think the issue is that most of the underage content is self published, and not coming from other parts of the web. This makes checking against the ICMEC database worthless, as the content is brand new and has never been online before.
    - chimeracoder 8y ago
      > I think the issue is that most of the underage content is self published, and not coming from other parts of the web. That actually doesn't matter; it's straightforward to find the networks of people sharing underage content. It is very rare that someone will only be sharing fresh, self-published content which is never shared or reposted by anyone else who also shares content in the ICMEC database at any point. If you're analyzing content in a sheer vacuum, yes, this would be a problem, but you're not - you're analyzing content which is spread across a social network, and you're looking for networks which are intentionally seeking out and sharing this material. It is a much more straightforward problem than most people realize; it just requires the right staffing and resources (ie, problems which are directly solved by money). > This makes checking against the ICMEC database worthless, as the content is brand new and has never been online before. On the contrary; that's the exact mechanism by which the ICMEC database gets expanded. This is why even the DOJ opposed SESTA and FOSTA - websites that are used by sex workers are also great places to find and rescue victims of sex trafficking. Most sex workers aren't trafficking victims, but a large number of trafficking victims are listed on those sites as well. It was one of the primary ways that the DOJ would rescue victims and prosecute traffickers. With those sites gone, traffickers have gone underground, and it's much more difficult to find them.
- ocfx 8y ago
  No reason to, if you read the rest of the comments you would have found plenty of sources.
- DuskStar 8y ago
  I would say that CP is a strict subset of porn, therefore if you have the ability to ban all of the latter you have the ability to ban all of the former. This ability is rather useless in this discussion though, since we'd really rather have the ability to ban all the CP while leaving the rest of the adult content alone.
partiallypro 8y ago
It's possible it is also related to trying to lure more advertisers, but I see that as a losing strategy. It's an unfortunate truth that porn is a big user driver for Tumblr. I'm not sure it will be worth it. I honestly would almost bet they back track on this.

ransom1538 8y ago

"It's because, apparently, there had been a lot of child porn that was getting published." OR! It is pisses off advertisers. Large advertisers don't want their ads on a page with porn and will yank budgets if it happens. Having to police which UGC tumbler page uses porn + ads is also impossible.

tomatotomato37 8y ago

You don't need an AI to fight child porn, the FBI publishes a huge database of hashes that make it very easy to fight it, and if I remember the Tumblr reponse to the Apple ban correctly, they've been using it for a while. That being said, I also believe the apple ban wasn't explicitly because of cp, but also because an app known for NSFW conflicts with their "image", in the same manner ad companies also refuse to associate with it, but couldn't use that as the reason due to the PR backlash Tumblr is getting now

bagacrap 8y ago
Hashes of what, the image or video content? Wouldn't those be ridiculously easy to circumvent by uploaders via, e.g., changing one pixel?
- wl 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA
  - groovybits 8y ago
    > PhotoDNA is a technology developed by Microsoft [...] Some other services by MS that might build on this: * https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services * https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services
tfolbrecht 8y ago
I don't think it's that kind of child pornography. It's more the self produced, coming of age, scantily clad variety that is non-trivial to moderate. The most offensive to modern sensibilities (and advertisers) isn't the naked people, but the gore, self harm, and extreme fetish communities.
- verroq 8y ago
  Can you imagine the irreparable harm caused to society by teenagers taking half naked selfies?

jacquesm 8y ago

There is a free anti CP tool fielded by Microsoft, PhotoDNA.

altec3 8y ago
I said this elsewhere, but I believe the problem is that underage Tumblr users are posting photos of themselves. As far as I know, that tool detects photos that have been previously identified as underage, not the age of the person in the photo, and whether or not it contains lewd content.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  That's true, PhotoDNA identifies existing pictures even through many transformations (crop, rotate, scale, flip).

chimeracoder 8y ago

> The reason they banned porn, is not because of some sudden guilt about porn. It's because, apparently, there had been a lot of child porn that was getting published. It's not because of child pornography. It's because Congress passed a law that makes the platform criminally liable[0] if sex workers use the platform (even if said sex work is legal). Child porn is a solvable problem (it takes some engineering work and some money, but as stated in other comments, it's a solved problem[1], which is why most other sites don't struggle with it). On the other hand, there is literally no way for a site like Tumblr to comply with SESTA and FOSTA at that scale without effectively banning all pornography and other content that could be construed as facilitating sex between people. [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/how-congress-censored-internet https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/how-congress-censored-... [1] From the point of view of the platform, that is, not that child porn doesn't still exist

dspillett 8y ago

> It's because, apparently, there had been a lot of child porn that was getting published. Not directly. CP has been a problem on Tumblr for long time. I've seen many complaints about them not being fast enough to stamp on it when reported (presumably due to a lack of resources, policing image content on such a site must be a gargantuan task). What has changed now, and what many believe is the driving force behind this policy change, is in part the threat of their revenue steam being affected due to advertisers taking notice, and more pressingly ATM app stores getting wary. Specifically Apple dropped their app from the iStore in November.

whateveracct 8y ago

I read that 1% of tumblr content falls under the ban and only ~20% consumes it.