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Tumblr’s anti-porn algorithm is flagging basically everything as NSFW

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Re: Tumblr’s anti-porn algorithm is flagging basically everything as NSFW

#61

Post by shaklee3 »

loudmax wrote: post #38

I read a lot of posts on Reddit bemoaning Tumblr's decision to stop carrying adult content. A lot of people there and here feel that this decision spells the end of the company. That may be the case, but I never understood how Tumblr was profiting from hosting all that adult content to begin with. I presume they're selling ads, in which case disassociating themselves from anything that could be considered pornographi…

Keep in mind Reddit users also predicted the death of Reddit during the pao/banning fiasco. It's only grown since then.

Re: Tumblr’s anti-porn algorithm is flagging basically everything as NSFW

#62

Post by Eric_WVGG »

keypusher wrote: post #5

Oath is desperate to put more ads on Tumblr, because they massively overpaid for it ($1 billion) and have been throwing money at it ever since (100s of millions). I guess because of the way the content is displayed they can't just segregate nsfw stuff into a demonetized stream, but if they think they can turn Tumblr into a mainstream site that shows family-centric ads, they clearly don't understand what they bought.

nitpick: Yahoo paid $1 billion for Tumblr; Verizon/Oauth paid $5 billion for Yahoo, and it’s a bit difficult to guess how much of that is Tumblr.

(IMO they paid billions of dollars for the privilege of being the email provider for my parents.)

Re: Tumblr’s anti-porn algorithm is flagging basically everything as NSFW

#64

Post by pbhjpbhj »

keypusher wrote: post #5

Oath is desperate to put more ads on Tumblr, because they massively overpaid for it ($1 billion) and have been throwing money at it ever since (100s of millions). I guess because of the way the content is displayed they can't just segregate nsfw stuff into a demonetized stream, but if they think they can turn Tumblr into a mainstream site that shows family-centric ads, they clearly don't understand what they bought.

Reddit seem to be mainstreaming to some extent, nowhere near this though - perhaps they're navigating a better line?

Re: Tumblr’s anti-porn algorithm is flagging basically everything as NSFW

#65

Post by criddell »

keypusher wrote: post #5

Oath is desperate to put more ads on Tumblr, because they massively overpaid for it ($1 billion) and have been throwing money at it ever since (100s of millions). I guess because of the way the content is displayed they can't just segregate nsfw stuff into a demonetized stream, but if they think they can turn Tumblr into a mainstream site that shows family-centric ads, they clearly don't understand what they bought.

> they clearly don't understand what they bought.

I think they know exactly what they bought. They are going to see if they can change Tumblr. If that succeeds, great! If not, shut it down.

I bet the price of Yahoo including Tumblr and the price of Yahoo excluding Tumblr was more or less the same number.

Re: Tumblr’s anti-porn algorithm is flagging basically everything as NSFW

#66

Post by pbhjpbhj »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #4

Tumblr is dead. I give it three months before it's forgotten by the majority of its former user base.

So the question is where will that userbase go, now might be the time to position yourself to accept them if you're a similar site .. I probably wouldn't be here [on HN] if Slashdot/Digg/etc. hadn't screwed up in the past.

Re: Tumblr’s anti-porn algorithm is flagging basically everything as NSFW

#68

Post by pbhjpbhj »

benmmurphy wrote: post #10

I'm not sure how this proves the algorithm is doing a poor job. Any NSFW classifier is going to have a non-trivial error rate. Tumblr hosts LOTS of images. So if you have a non-trivial error rate and multiply it by LOTS of images you are going to get LOTS of images being misclassified incorrectly. It's not surprising someone was able to write a story about a bunch of images being misclassified. This doesn't seem to t…

I wonder how successful demanding self-classification would be? I'd imagine it would be better than an AI, and you could have user-reporting, AI monitoring, random employee sampling, SERPs monitoring to catch those who purposefully misclassified and apply the ban-hammer.

Re: Tumblr’s anti-porn algorithm is flagging basically everything as NSFW

#69

Post by zimpenfish »

DavidVoid wrote: post #20
furicane wrote: post #3

I wouldn't label the algorithm as anti-porn. I'd label it "how to lose user base and drive the company to a hole" algorithm. It's not likely that it detects actual porn, it's basically failing miserably and the result is abandonment. That's what you get when you want to be PC and yet another "me too, I do cool stuff too" company. There are lessons to be learned here, and for that - thank you Tumblr :)

> That's what you get when you want to be PC I'd hardly consider this "trying to be PC". https://i.imgur.com/cgGx4JR.png This is more about bowing down to America's backwards views on sex and nudity, most likely in order to appease advertisers and/or Apple.

> and/or Apple

Apple has nothing to do with this. Tumblr was removed from the app store specifically because of child porn; plus, if the anonymous sources are to be believed, Tumblr have been working on this for >6 months, predating the app store snafu.

Re: Tumblr’s anti-porn algorithm is flagging basically everything as NSFW

#70

Post by JulianMorrison »

jamesholden wrote: post #55
AJ007 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is clearly Tumblr's Digg moment. They are going to have a 100% write down on this one. It is also worth adding Twitter has built a reasonable ad business and they are full of just as much porn as Tumblr. Google actually shows ads for porn and other adult services on their platform. If any of the higher ups at Verizon are reading this: - Fire everyone involved in the NSFW filtering. Clearly this wasn't even teste…

- Fire everyone who thought NSFW material had to be purged from your platform. I mean, can't they see that a lot of traffic flows through tumblr via those interests? Do they not know how much of a loss of usage that this will cause? I legitimately have zero other reason to use tumblr.

On the contrary, it's probably a small part of their service. The nature of Tumblr is to make it easy to find like minded people, and construct a subset of the site that's full of what you're into. So it's very easy to feel "Tumblr is all left-wing teens" or "Tumblr is all porn" depending on what you go looking for. But Tumblr is a galaxy of niches and I doubt porn was their mainstay. This fact probably caused them to underestimate the disruptive effect of banning it.
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