#Community Labels

[staff]

Thanks for all of the recent feedback around Community Labels being incorrectly applied to content. In particular, we appreciate the input we’ve received from the LGBTQIA+ community and understand the frustrations from folks who felt that their content was unfairly labeled. When we realized this was happening, we immediately investigated and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again.

The LGBTQIA+ community makes up about a quarter of the Tumblr community. It is important for us to support all Tumblr users, especially those whose safe spaces are under threat in certain parts of the world.

As you know, alongside of the rollout of Community Labels we also expanded the types of content allowed on Tumblr as a way to welcome more creativity, art, and self-expression. Our goals remain the same today. Human error happens and we apologize to anyone who has been impacted by these mistakes.

We are working to better understand what happened and will follow up with more information soon.

[messylustt]

just a reminder to those who report works for being too sexual. if you feel uncomfy or dislike the work don’t put a community label on it, instead don’t read it. most writers put content warnings on their posts. read them before venturing further, please. and if you dislike something on there, again don’t read any further. smut etc. isn’t for everyone, that’s perfectly fine. but don’t do that to a writers hard work. please and thank you.

[catgirl-kaiju]

reminder that i have also had nonsexual photos of me tagged as explict and sexual. i rarely post even any nudity and when i do, i put them on a side blog and voluntarily put community labels and filterable tags on them. any time i post an appeal, it never gets answered. i'm not even able to appeal community labels on those photos any more, and it breaks my heart because those are some of my favorite photos of myself. i've straight-up stopped posting selfies on here partly bc i've not taken many that i enjoy enough to share recently, but also because it's just too much of a hastle.

i've had this same blog continuously since 2012, since before i came out. over a decade now. if i lost it, i would be devastated. i also have meticulously curated side blogs for all of my art and comics, and my headmates also have their own blogs under this account. all of that would be lost.

predestrogen did not deserve this, she did nothing to violate tos. and it very easily could have been me or any other transfem person on here.

i've met friends and lovers on here. my art has found an audience on here. i've been able to crowdsource financial help on here when i've been at my lowest. i don't know if i would still be around if this website wasn't available to me. the thought of some staff member just erasing my presence from here is legitimately terrifying to me.

i'll repost every sfw image i've ever gotten a community label slapped on here and i fucking dare staff to do it again. i fucking dare you.

i'm lucky that it's not very many, but it's still true that none of these are mature content. none of these are images a cis woman would get flagged for. fuck you @staff for your blatant transmisogyny. fuck you for never taking my harassment reports seriously. fuck you for letting terfs and nazis just keep on existing here no matter how many times they're reported for violating tos.

[thatdogmagic]

Remember this smug as hell post?

Well, keep it in mind.

I'm going to give some people here the benefit of the doubt and go into this post with the assumption that they genuinely don't know how fucking awful the Tumblr """"porn filters"""" are for images deemed - or reported by users as - 'NSFW.'

This is a rehash of everything I wrote out before, but it's going over all of it in one big post, because this issue with community labels moves well beyond debates over what is and isn't NSFW. There are doublestandards within doublestandards, and no way at all for artists and creators to know for sure if their post is going to get blacklisted.

We're not merely talking about the fact that these filters exist. We're talking about the fact that they are wildly inconsistent, and that reported images aren't seen initially by a person so much as an extremely stupid algorithm. That's why there's the option to say 'this ruling was made in error.'

There are literally no set guidelines for what qualifies as NSFW, and what doesn't, when it comes to nudity, and to what characters those guidelines actually apply. Staff rulings do not match up to one another. They legitimately do not make sense. You cannot divine how a ruling is going to end up, and it is infuriating that staff is jerking us around like this when the platform very clearly wanted artists like us back.

Not only that, they were, yes: that fucking smug about it. In case you forgot, that 'cheater' picture is talking about people who fled the NSFW ban specifically.

Examples follow:

Both of these images were caught by the filters, and then appealed. The first one was (visibly, as you can see) downgraded to Everyone, in spite of the character showing more secondary sex characteristics than the first (breast, visible nipple).

Similarly, a male character showing a pube fluff was left alone, even in spite of being cited in my appeal on the second image.

Last, there is, as noted, this readily available image of Felicia, that you can find by searching 'darkstalkers Felicia' on the search bar. Did people forget that she's bottomless, and those aren't panties?

Using fluff to cover junk is an age-old trick for characters like this. And it clearly isn't a problem with the male character.

Further, you can go through just about any archive and see a ton of images that were not subject to community labels, many of which are much more racy, and much more legitimately "NSFW."

So, yes, beyond the disgust of Tumblr staff treating any body like mine as filthy and inherently sexual in nature, this is also about a system that is arbitrary, penalizes artists for no good reason, and has deeply opaque standards. You never know when a piece of yours is going to run afoul of a bot, or what a staff ruling will ultimately be, or why the ruling is there in the first place.

And that's bullshit. If you think it's anything other than bullshit, you're being a contrarian ass. Especially since a forced label absolutely WILL kill your visibility, where compared to implementing the label yourself. It is punitive, it is punishing, and I will say again: it is completely unnecessary to jerk us around like this when the platform very clearly wanted us back.

And now that we are, we're back to being treated like garbage, constantly having to guess what the rules actually mean, how they apply, and to which sorts of bodies they apply, all while watching our viewcounts on contested posts eat ten kinds of shit.

tl;dr, do not talk to me about 'following rules' when the rules are so ill-defined as to be quite literally useless, to me, and to every other artist on this website.

[yourlocalgaymafia]

Just a daily reminder that it’s ok to have complex identities that no one apart from you understands. Always feel free to use as many labels as you like because your identity doesn’t exist to make sense to other people, it exists so that you can better understand yourself <3

[sreegs]

just a psa in case you didn't notice it: if people report posts as missing community labels that shit gets thrown into review and the OP may get stuck with a bullshit label for no reason. fuck that.

however: some people are reblogging posts and self-tagging them with community labels, and that only affects that post and any other post reblogged from that post. the OP is unaffected

i'm pointing this out because i've seen posts marked as mature and people tagging/commenting "why is does this have a mature label??" but if you go back to the OP it's fine

if you see a post flagged double-check the OP or go back through the reblog notes and see if it just flips to mature somewhere in the reblog chain. that's someone self-flagging for some reason

[rowiewritesstuff]

HOW TO BLOCK TAGS:A PSA

Hi there buddy chum pal friend buddy bro homie amigo (gender neutral) !

I see you don't like a certain tag. Let's learn how to BLOCK IT!

This goes hand in hand with my recent post, and I felt like I should share this for my peeps so y'all can be safe out there.

Only you can prevent cringe shit from coming across your feed.

Step Numbah 1: Go to your account

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Step Numberrrr 2: Look for "Content You See"

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Step Number Three: Filtered Tags VS Filtered Post Content

Filtered Tag: A filtered tag is something set by creator of a post. For example, if a post is cringe ass nae nae baby to you, you can type in "Cringe Ass Nae Nae Baby" tag and any post tagged with "Cringe Ass Nae Nae Baby" will say "This post contains filtered tags".

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Filtered Post Content: Now if you're uncomfortable with a certain word, you can filter it out via this. Keep in mind if any person's username, title, or post has this word anywhere in it, you will be unable to see it (unless you select to be allowed to). If a past reblog has said tag, it will also be filtered out.

Note: Tumblr will let you know which tags are filtered out and give you the option to view them if you wish.

Step #4: MAKE USE OF THE COMMUNITY FILTERS

Each of these is self explanatory- however Show, Hide, and Blur can be a lil silly.

Show- Straightforward, it will show you ALLL of these posts unless you have filtered tags.

Blur- If you have a community tag blurred, it will warn you that it has sensitive material. It gives you the option to view with the warning.

Hide- Hide will hide anything related to the community tag. For example gore out fall under violent, so it would be hidden completely.

[bucky-barnes-diaries]

I really hope more people will become vocal of how the Community Labels are doing nothing but killing interactions (which we’re already low from before) for content creators here on Tumblr 🙃

In theory? Yes the labels seems like a fantastic idea! It gives creators more freedom to post and express themselves however they want!

But in practice? The function is absolutely awful! As soon as a post gets a Community Label slapped on it, it’s basically dead! Shadowbanned! Censored! Nonexistent! This is most likely (I think?) due to not many people actually knowing that this function even exists so the content that they usually would enjoy is now completely hidden from them because the function was launched with the Mature Content being turned on for everyone automatically.

And the worst part of this function! PEOPLE CAN SUGGEST A COMMUNITY LABEL ON A POST! OTHER USERS! Not just Tumblr. This is going to get abused to bits (and definitely already is) by people that maybe just don’t like a creator so they want to see their content crash and burn.

I really hope Tumblr reconsiders this new function and make some HEAVY changes to it or just remove it altogether, because I wouldn’t be surprised if more and more people leave and quit this site because the content they put their heart, soul, blood, sweat and tears into dies within a few hours…

@staff @support @engineering @changes

[kazeo2se]

I reviewed your website and determined it sucks balls.

[wip]

How long does it take for a post to get out of "Community Label Review"?

I have one still stuck in there 11 days after being wrongly flagged as mature content. As a result of the flagging, people who reblogged it had mature content warnings appear on their blogs. And the post itself is hidden from view for most users. Now at 11 days old, it'll be so buried that those users won't see it anyway even if it's unflagged.

It's hard enough for gifmakers these days without our posts being flagged because a fully clothed network tv character put on his police badge in an impure way?? 😭

Answer: Hey there, @xofeno!

Thanks for reaching out to us, and we’re really sorry for the long wait. We have a very small team working hard to get through all of the requests for Community Label review that we receive, and we can only work through these in the order in which we receive them.

It’s important our human teammates review these requests rather than letting machines decide which of your posts should have a Label or not. So, depending on the number of requests that come through, it sometimes takes longer than we’d like. We apologize for the frustration and inconvieniance caused here, but know that we are doing all we can to get them answered as swiftly as possible. In the meantime, your patience is much appreciated!

Thanks for your question, and have a good day.

Best,

—Jon

[beansprean]

Update on the community labeled posts

Well, my faith that tumblr would see the error of their AI or whatever and remove the mature/sexual labels from all the posts was...apparently unfounded. Here are the posts that were "re-reviewed", they promise, by a human person, and determined to be too Mature for general audiences:

I don't even know where to start with this one. Are we running on club penguin rules now? Banned for saying cum??? (funnily enough, the post this art was based off of was NOT determined to need community tags.)

Unsexual nudity, no female presenting nipples. What's the problem?

Unsexual nudity, no female presenting nipples. WHAT'S THE PROBLEM??

only a recent reblog of this one got labeled, not the original??

I'm starting to think tumblr staff has something against fat guys.

OH! EXCEPT THESE POSTS WERE RE-REVIEWED AND GOT THEIR MATURE TAGGING REMOVED:

TUMBLR PLEASE TELL ME HOW THESE ARE DIFFERENT???? @support

AND while the label on the OG post above was removed, my reblog of it was determined to be mature???

QTP part 10 is STILL flagged and unseeable, which is the only one of all these posts that I might accept community tags on. it certainly doesn't need to be removed from view entirely! and no word back from them yet on having my whole blog in horny jail. this is all so ridiculous.

[verdantmeadows]

Is there a genuine reason people refuse to use Tumblr community labels (the feature that lets you mark a post as mature and then specify how it is mature)? To me, it seems like a great feature that allows you to easily warn people and stop people from seeing content they don't want to see.

I've seen people argue they don't show up when searching tags, but I have seen community labeled posts when browsing tags all the time. Some people say it may lower engagement, but I fail to understand how that is bad, because it means that the labeling is working as less people are seeing content they filtered and did not want to look at.

This feature was one of the few Tumblr features I was very excited by yet it feels as if people resent it for a reason I cannot fathom.

[michelleleewise]

Hahaaaaaa!!!! I have finally bested you you hellsite!!!!

[coockie8]

I think tumblr needs to remove the ability for random ass fucking people to add Labels to other people's content. This is so fucking easy to abuse.

[queer-trashmouth]

The thing about this whole community label debacle is that I’ve scrolled past porn and erotica with nary a label in sight, but the sheer number of trans positive posts and silly innocuous posts with “mature” labels is staggering