Porn on Tumblr is a complicated subject

Chokepoints, compliance, weakest links.

In 2018, Tumblr announced a ban on “adult content.” That call was made by Verizon, Tumblr’s erstwhile owner, and to call the resulting mess “a shitshow” is an insult to good, hardworking shitshows all over the world.

Verizon enforced this policy with an automated filter, which was charged with analyzing images and categorizing them as “sexual” or “nonsexual.” This is risible enough, like asking a computer to sort videos into “virtuous” or “sinful” but that was just for starters.

Verizon’s ban included a ban on “female-presenting nipples” — a canonically hard-to-define category — but included exceptions for non-sexual nipple images. Hard to imagine that any serious, disinterested computer scientist promising that an algorithm could cleave “female-presenting nipples” from “male-presenting” ones, let alone decide which ones were “sexual” or not.

The filters were…not good. Verizon posted a selection of images that were explicitly permitted under its policies. That post was blocked by Tumblr’s filter.

https://gizmodo.com/tumblrs-porn-filter-flags-its-own-examples-of-permitted-1831151178

It wasn’t just that Tumblr’s AI couldn’t turn its unblinking eye upon the nipples casting their shadows…