10 ms·

Tumblr didn't do it because they wanted to. They were forced by Apple removing their app from the App Store.

favorited 8y ago
That was (according to reports) because of the prevalence of child pornography on their platform, which they apparently didn't have the tools or staff to police. A blanket ban on pornographic content was cheaper and/or easier.
- deogeo 8y ago
  Presumably child porn was already banned on Tumblr, so how does banning all other porn as well help?
  - protomyth 8y ago
    Flagging all skin is much easier than determining age of person showing skin.
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      If they cared about making the filtering easy then I'm not seeing why they banned drawings too.
      - protomyth 8y ago
        If you look at a lot of this IDing software, it grabs drawings too. Add some ok drawings in Photo in iOS and watch it add it to the faces list.
        Dylan16807 8y ago
        It can but it makes the classification job significantly more complicated.
        protomyth 8y ago
        Interesting, because it seems like it will pick up drawings for free because it doesn’t distinguish between photos and drawings (Photo on iOS for example will pick up line drawings of people). I actually thought it would a harder problem to exclude the drawings based on some of these facial id programs.
        Dylan16807 8y ago
        A lot of drawings don't look at all like photos, and they are banned too. That's definitely not for free.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    Since people don't go through a visually obvious physical change at the moment of attaining legal adulthood, banning all porn leaves less cracks for child porn to get through. I'm not saying it's necessarily the right policy, but it does.make a difference.
  - retsibsi 8y ago
    I believe they're using some automated filtering (see e.g. https://www.wired.com/story/tumblr-porn-ai-adult-content/ https://www.wired.com/story/tumblr-porn-ai-adult-content/). I assume it's easier to train an AI to recognise pornography generally, rather than a specific kind -- and now that I think about it, the process of training an AI to recognise child porn sounds extremely unpleasant and legally dubious.
    - chimeracoder 8y ago
      > I believe they're using some automated filtering (see e.g. https://www.wired.com/story/tumblr-porn-ai-adult-content/ https://www.wired.com/story/tumblr-porn-ai-adult-content/). I assume it's easier to train an AI to recognise pornography generally, rather than a specific kind -- and now that I think about it, the process of training an AI to recognise child porn sounds extremely unpleasant and legally dubious. Quite the opposite - it's much easier to allow pornography and ban only child pornography than it is to create an automated system to detect pornography. PhotoDNA makes it easy to find matches, which can then be used to uncover the networks of people posting child pornography, which are then added back to the database. It doesn't require any computer vision at all. By contrast, banning all pornography does require computer vision of some sort, and that's much more difficult, as evidenced by how terrible the new Tumblr NSFW content detector is.
      - retsibsi 8y ago
        Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but PhotoDNA seems to be a tool for identifying reposts and edits of already known illegal images -- those that have previously been found and had their hashes entered into the database. So if Tumblr had a problem with original content (which could include underage users posting explicit pictures of themselves, as well as the worse things we think of when we hear the phrase 'child porn'), I don't think that would help. edit: I found this quote from an article[1] published last November: "In its updated statement, Tumblr said that while every image uploaded to the platform is “scanned against an industry database of child sexual abuse material” to filter out explicit images, a “routine audit” discovered content that was absent from the database, allowing it to slip through the filter." So it looks like they might have already been using PhotoDNA. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18104366/tumblr-ios-app-child-pornography-removed-from-app-store https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18104366/tumblr-ios-app-...
vilhelm_s 8y ago
Apparently they had already decided to do it before the App Store thing happened. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/4/18126112/tumblr-porn-ban-verizon-ad-goals-sex-work-fandom https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/4/18126112/tumblr-porn... > But a former staff engineer, who recently left Tumblr and asked to remain anonymous for professional reasons, tells Vox that the NSFW ban was “in the works for about six months as an official project,” adding that it was given additional resources and named “Project X” in September, shortly before it was announced to the rest of the company at an all-hands meeting. “[The NSFW ban] was going to happen anyway,” the former engineer told me. “Verizon pushed it out the door after the child pornography thing and made the deadline sooner,” but the real problem was always that Verizon couldn’t sell ads next to porn.
- iknowstuff 8y ago
  Why do companies refuse to have ads on a well known website on which some posts happen to be porn? Is it an american thing?
  - jdavis703 8y ago
    It’s not an American thing, most advertisers also refuse to advertise next to content that references extreme violence (think ISIS beheadings) and gambling content. I worked on the ads team at a company, and we constantly had to tweak our filters to ensure ads didn’t get served next to “adult” content.
    - subpixel 8y ago
      Meanwhile I have to watch a pre-roll ad to see reportage about a terrorist attack.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      > most advertisers also refuse to advertise next to content that references extreme violence Apparently the Daily Mail Online is running this morning's NZ murder video on its front page. Right next to the ads.
- 8y ago
eridius 8y ago
Tumblr's porn ban has literally nothing at all to do with the App Store. The porn ban is because of SESTA/FOSTA.
- philpem 8y ago
  Sounds like it was planned much earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19395370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19395370

That was (according to reports) because of the prevalence of child pornography on their platform, which they apparently didn't have the tools or staff to police. A blanket ban on pornographic content was cheaper and/or easier.

deogeo 8y ago
Presumably child porn was already banned on Tumblr, so how does banning all other porn as well help?
- protomyth 8y ago
  Flagging all skin is much easier than determining age of person showing skin.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    If they cared about making the filtering easy then I'm not seeing why they banned drawings too.
    - protomyth 8y ago
      If you look at a lot of this IDing software, it grabs drawings too. Add some ok drawings in Photo in iOS and watch it add it to the faces list.
      - Dylan16807 8y ago
        It can but it makes the classification job significantly more complicated.
        protomyth 8y ago
        Interesting, because it seems like it will pick up drawings for free because it doesn’t distinguish between photos and drawings (Photo on iOS for example will pick up line drawings of people). I actually thought it would a harder problem to exclude the drawings based on some of these facial id programs.
        Dylan16807 8y ago
        A lot of drawings don't look at all like photos, and they are banned too. That's definitely not for free.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  Since people don't go through a visually obvious physical change at the moment of attaining legal adulthood, banning all porn leaves less cracks for child porn to get through. I'm not saying it's necessarily the right policy, but it does.make a difference.
- retsibsi 8y ago
  I believe they're using some automated filtering (see e.g. https://www.wired.com/story/tumblr-porn-ai-adult-content/ https://www.wired.com/story/tumblr-porn-ai-adult-content/). I assume it's easier to train an AI to recognise pornography generally, rather than a specific kind -- and now that I think about it, the process of training an AI to recognise child porn sounds extremely unpleasant and legally dubious.
  - chimeracoder 8y ago
    > I believe they're using some automated filtering (see e.g. https://www.wired.com/story/tumblr-porn-ai-adult-content/ https://www.wired.com/story/tumblr-porn-ai-adult-content/). I assume it's easier to train an AI to recognise pornography generally, rather than a specific kind -- and now that I think about it, the process of training an AI to recognise child porn sounds extremely unpleasant and legally dubious. Quite the opposite - it's much easier to allow pornography and ban only child pornography than it is to create an automated system to detect pornography. PhotoDNA makes it easy to find matches, which can then be used to uncover the networks of people posting child pornography, which are then added back to the database. It doesn't require any computer vision at all. By contrast, banning all pornography does require computer vision of some sort, and that's much more difficult, as evidenced by how terrible the new Tumblr NSFW content detector is.
    - retsibsi 8y ago
      Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but PhotoDNA seems to be a tool for identifying reposts and edits of already known illegal images -- those that have previously been found and had their hashes entered into the database. So if Tumblr had a problem with original content (which could include underage users posting explicit pictures of themselves, as well as the worse things we think of when we hear the phrase 'child porn'), I don't think that would help. edit: I found this quote from an article[1] published last November: "In its updated statement, Tumblr said that while every image uploaded to the platform is “scanned against an industry database of child sexual abuse material” to filter out explicit images, a “routine audit” discovered content that was absent from the database, allowing it to slip through the filter." So it looks like they might have already been using PhotoDNA. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18104366/tumblr-ios-app-child-pornography-removed-from-app-store https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18104366/tumblr-ios-app-...

vilhelm_s 8y ago

Apparently they had already decided to do it before the App Store thing happened. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/4/18126112/tumblr-porn-ban-verizon-ad-goals-sex-work-fandom https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/4/18126112/tumblr-porn... > But a former staff engineer, who recently left Tumblr and asked to remain anonymous for professional reasons, tells Vox that the NSFW ban was “in the works for about six months as an official project,” adding that it was given additional resources and named “Project X” in September, shortly before it was announced to the rest of the company at an all-hands meeting. “[The NSFW ban] was going to happen anyway,” the former engineer told me. “Verizon pushed it out the door after the child pornography thing and made the deadline sooner,” but the real problem was always that Verizon couldn’t sell ads next to porn.

iknowstuff 8y ago
Why do companies refuse to have ads on a well known website on which some posts happen to be porn? Is it an american thing?
- jdavis703 8y ago
  It’s not an American thing, most advertisers also refuse to advertise next to content that references extreme violence (think ISIS beheadings) and gambling content. I worked on the ads team at a company, and we constantly had to tweak our filters to ensure ads didn’t get served next to “adult” content.
  - subpixel 8y ago
    Meanwhile I have to watch a pre-roll ad to see reportage about a terrorist attack.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    > most advertisers also refuse to advertise next to content that references extreme violence Apparently the Daily Mail Online is running this morning's NZ murder video on its front page. Right next to the ads.
8y ago

eridius 8y ago

Tumblr's porn ban has literally nothing at all to do with the App Store. The porn ban is because of SESTA/FOSTA.

philpem 8y ago
Sounds like it was planned much earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19395370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19395370