Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

dailydot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 155 posts

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

#131

Post by thetricia »

gmmeyer wrote: post #122
thetricia wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a big fan of this meme of porn being bigger than what it is. Tumblr was never about that and Snapchat wasn't and isn't a sexting app. The adult content that showed up was pretty annoying, especially on some tags that were seemingly less censored. Like, most LGBT tags were clean, but some would have a lot for whatever reason. I'd welcome the change back then (which was around acquisition time). But even then i…

Last time Tumblr broke out the numbers porn was 11% of the biggest blogs. More than 1 out of 10 blogs is a porn blog. That's a huge portion of their user base and will likely cause it to totally crash.

As long as the overlap with regular users is small there's no reason for why that would cascade [0].

That kind of content is usually banned/censored on most mainstream services, just letting it be will get you a non-insignificant number. I've seen people claim 3% for twitter, no clue if true or not, but few would say that about Twitter here. Too many people in tech are in the core user-base to fall for this.

[0] unless shut down this will be a loooong slow death no matter what happens. I still have a semi popular account on one of the dead sites of the era. Everybody knows it's dead but these communities are a bit like families, hard to completely ghost them.

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

#132

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #26
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's what you get when you want to be PC I don't understand this statement. Tumblr's user base, at least the portion who disagree with the site operators on this, are usually the ones accused of being “politically correct”?

I think the statement meant the company is trying to enforce PC, starting with porn, to the detriment of the existing userbase. It's as dumb a move as you can possibly make; I don't know what the decisionmakers behind were smoking, but it must have been something strong.

I know what they meant, I'm confused at the accusation of it being politically correct.

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

#133

Post by newen »

pixl97 wrote: post #114
newen wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a terrible argument. I know plenty of fat people who eat three times a day and are obsessed with food. And I'm sure there are lots of skinny people who eat twice a day and don't think about food that much. I have gone weeks like that. Women who do prostitution and pornography do so because they have few choices. Prostitution and pornography are also markers for human trafficking. Because both prostitution and…

You know what, it's a great idea to both reduce usage and create a terrible black market that brings far more harm than the original problem . Regulating vice is a very dangerous road to travel on. Your good intentions pave the path to hell.

At least we have a decent argument here. That regulating something might lead to even worse consequences. Then the discussion should be on which is worse, a world where it is made illegal, or a world where it is regulated, or a world where it is unregulated. Saying that regulating or making illegal something is bad is itself is a terrible argument.

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

#134

Post by newen »

phailhaus wrote: post #113
newen wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a terrible argument. I know plenty of fat people who eat three times a day and are obsessed with food. And I'm sure there are lots of skinny people who eat twice a day and don't think about food that much. I have gone weeks like that. Women who do prostitution and pornography do so because they have few choices. Prostitution and pornography are also markers for human trafficking. Because both prostitution and…

> I know plenty of fat people who eat three times a day and are obsessed with food. You're taking the analogy in the wrong direction. The point is that the person who is trying to stop eating is obsessed with food, not that "people who eat three times a day are never obsessed with food". The point is that sex is a part of life, and trying to stifle pornography and prostitution is as misguided and counterproductive as…

I don't buy your analogy at all. I think a sex obsessed culture is a result of an overly sexualized media. And it's not like I'm saying ban sex. I'm saying ban pornography and prostitution, which are abuses of sex.

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

#135

Post by tonysdg »

fphhotchips wrote: post #130
jonathanstrange wrote: post #4

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

There's only going to be one blog left, and it's going to be called "Bring back the porn".

Scrubs?

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

#136

Post by tonysdg »

newen wrote: post #134
phailhaus wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know plenty of fat people who eat three times a day and are obsessed with food. You're taking the analogy in the wrong direction. The point is that the person who is trying to stop eating is obsessed with food, not that "people who eat three times a day are never obsessed with food". The point is that sex is a part of life, and trying to stifle pornography and prostitution is as misguided and counterproductive as…

I don't buy your analogy at all. I think a sex obsessed culture is a result of an overly sexualized media. And it's not like I'm saying ban sex. I'm saying ban pornography and prostitution, which are abuses of sex.

> abuses of sex

I think that's where the breakdown is occurring here: this is ultimately a values-based judgment. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but I think both sides of this debate would do well to recognize that this will ultimately come down to one's own personal beliefs on the subject matter.

Put more explicitly: there are those who will consider pornography and prostitution immoral regardless of the specifics, and there are those who have no issues with it assuming it's regulated (and such regulations are strictly enforced/policed) so that only informed, consenting adults can take part. Convincing either of these individuals of the other's position is likely futile.

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

#137

Post by Latteland »

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.

Gaah! Yahoo bought Tumblr, Oath/aol/verizon stupidly bought Yahoo for some reason. So Oath is desperate to put more ads on the hunk of junk that was Yahoo. But Oath should be concerned about all the other messy things they bought as Yahoo Inc.

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

#138

Post by aussieguy1234 »

My Tumblr blog of 2 years (future-tech) with 20K followers was summarily terminated today. There is no NSFW content on it. The termination happened shortly after I started protesting Tumblrs new policy. I did notice, however that some benign posts were incorrectly flagged as NSFW.

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

#139

Post by xte »

newen wrote: post #134
phailhaus wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know plenty of fat people who eat three times a day and are obsessed with food. You're taking the analogy in the wrong direction. The point is that the person who is trying to stop eating is obsessed with food, not that "people who eat three times a day are never obsessed with food". The point is that sex is a part of life, and trying to stifle pornography and prostitution is as misguided and counterproductive as…

I don't buy your analogy at all. I think a sex obsessed culture is a result of an overly sexualized media. And it's not like I'm saying ban sex. I'm saying ban pornography and prostitution, which are abuses of sex.

So what kind of media Vikings have in the past, when nearly nobody even know how to write/read? And even before in Celtic population? Did you know Halloween origin? Did you know that a traditional Celtic fest in which people of a village start to form semi-random couples and live together for an year, if it work they remain together if not another (semi-orgiastic) turn? Or ancient Roman's Baccanals? Or ancient Greeks orgy, often homosexual and/or pedophile?

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

#140

Post by furicane »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #132
TeMPOraL wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the statement meant the company is trying to enforce PC, starting with porn, to the detriment of the existing userbase. It's as dumb a move as you can possibly make; I don't know what the decisionmakers behind were smoking, but it must have been something strong.

I know what they meant, I'm confused at the accusation of it being politically correct.

You're not confused, and you felt the irony in my post. I wrote it's trying to be PC, and I didn't touch base upon what PC actually means - it's a broad term, different in everyone's eyes. Yes, Tumblr is bowing down to someone's standards, I called that PC, you are bothered by that statement - let's agree we disagree but you got the big picture and that's what matters.
Post reply on HN