Tumblr goes overboard censoring tags on iOS to adjust to Apple’s tips

An update to Tumblr’s iOS app censors an extended checklist of tags to adjust to Apple’s strict safety guidelines. The platform explains that it’s altering iOS customers’ potential to entry delicate content material, affecting their expertise in relation to looking for content material, scrolling by way of the “Stuff for You” and “Following” sections of the dashboard, and will even forestall entry to blogs which are flagged. Tumblr says it has to “extend the definition of what sensitive content is” to “remain available within Apple’s App Store,” and evidently Tumblr stretched it fairly far.

Tags are what make posts searchable on Tumblr; posts with censored tags gained’t seem on a customers’ dashboard, nor will they present up on the platform’s search web page. A Twitter thread introduced consideration to among the absurd tags that ended up getting filtered out on iOS, together with the tag “submission.”

The attention-grabbing half, although, is that Tumblr applies that tag robotically when a publish is submitted after which revealed to a weblog on the platform. Users on iOS who obtain a submission to their weblog gained’t even be capable to view it because the “submission” tag is already added, as proven in a post by one Tumblr user.

Another Tumblr person, aptly named “bannedtags,” has been preserving monitor of all of the blocked tags in a Google Doc. The user notes that almost all of those tags have been banned on iOS —not on all units — and that the listed tags are topic to alter. Some banned tags are blatantly associated to sexual, violent, or dangerous content material, however others don’t appear to belong on the checklist, and may very well do extra hurt than good by staying on it.

For instance, “girl,” “sad,” and oddly sufficient, “Alec Lightwood,” an actor from the present Shadowhunters, has been banned (as a result of even Tumblr can’t deal with these eyes). “Single dad,” “single mom,” “single parent,” “suicide prevention,” and “testicular cancer” are additionally on the checklist, probably harming those that wish to search assist in any of those areas.

To make issues even weirder, Tumblr blacklisted some tags that mainly operate as unstated social cues on the positioning. “Me” and “my face” are blocked, each of that are tags that bloggers use to label their selfies (oh, and did I overlook to say that “selfie” is banned, too?). The platform seems to have blocked “queue” as nicely, a tag that’s sometimes utilized to posts that have been positioned in a queue and serves as a sign to followers that they is probably not on-line in the mean time.

Tumblr began having points with Apple in 2018 when its app was unexpectedly faraway from the App Store after little one pornography was discovered on the platform. As a consequence, Tumblr banned grownup content material altogether, a significant shift from the platform’s beforehand laissez-faire insurance policies on NSFW posts. When Tumblr first applied the change, harmless posts have been regularly flagged for express content material, and it looks as if we’re seeing historical past repeat itself, however another way.

Tumblr says it’s engaged on “additional features for a less restricted iOS app experience,” however there’s no info on when or how this will probably be applied. Users on Android or on the browser-based model of the positioning stay unaffected by this alteration. It stays unclear why Tumblr banned so many tags or if Apple was concerned in any approach. The Verge reached out to Apple with a request for remark however didn’t instantly hear again.