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Community => Society and History => Topic started by: ironbite on December 03, 2018, 04:14:31 pm

Title: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: ironbite on December 03, 2018, 04:14:31 pm
So, after it was discovered by Apple and Google that Tumblr has a massive child porn problem, they pull the app from the app store.  So Tumblr, it's staff waking up from a massive coma, decide the best thing to get back in the good graces of the app stores.

Nuke the whole thing from orbit and salt the ashes (https://www.newsweek.com/tumblr-adult-content-ban-adult-content-purge-1241587)

So first, they delist all forms of "adult" content from the search engine.  Ie all the porn.  Now, they're just going to remove all of it wholesale.  The userbase is understandably upset.  Mostly because it seems they're being rather puritan in how they define what is and is not "adult content".

Ironbite-looks like tumblr's gonna go the way of Livejournal in terms of social media.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Tolpuddle Martyr on December 03, 2018, 06:49:18 pm
With the number of niche sexual pursuasions on Tumblr that's demonstrating a really high level of awareness of their target market, like-really high.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: niam2023 on December 03, 2018, 06:52:38 pm
Ah, prudes - the kind of people who desperately want everything not "wholesome" Christian, White and Conventionally Straight banned from everything.

Anything adult oriented is "literally the same" as child porn because they say so. Just conveniently ignore the right wing's presence on a notorious kiddie porn peddling website, just ignore that, for the sake of public decency.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Art Vandelay on December 03, 2018, 08:41:31 pm
I don't think they're being puritans. They probably figure it's the only way to quickly and visibly get rid of the child porn and get themselves back in Apple and Google's good graces. Hell, with a site as massive as Tumblr, they're probably right.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Tolpuddle Martyr on December 03, 2018, 11:01:26 pm
Agreed, it's a carpet bombing solution but it's still ill advised if you wipe out all of Tumblr land trying to hit a single target but, it's how most social media companies react. Anything to avoid hiring moderators.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: RavynousHunter on December 03, 2018, 11:27:27 pm
Wanna know what else is easy?  Using machine learning to identify child porn and flag potential offenses for review.  It's not like the technology is hard to implement; there's detailed tutorials for all but absolute neophytes.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Katsuro on December 04, 2018, 03:31:11 am
Is there anything on Tumblr other than porn?? Anything worthwhile that is.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: ironbite on December 04, 2018, 03:30:13 pm
There's some social justice movements that absolutely need tumblr to even take off and survive.  But the majority of the platform is for porn.  And by that I mean for sex workers.  So by kicking them off, all tumblr's left with is the alt right.

Ironbite-and we know how far that's gonna get 'em.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Tolpuddle Martyr on December 04, 2018, 10:16:57 pm
This article (https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/4/18126112/tumblr-porn-ban-verizon-ad-goals-sex-work-fandom) is a nice summary of the clusterfuck.

Quote
WHOSE FANDOMS WILL VERIZON SELL ADS AGAINST ONCE FANS CAN NO LONGER EXPRESS THEMSELVES?

This quote foreshadows why Tumblr will tumble into the abyss.

And then, there's this:

(https://i.imgur.com/8o1Q73y.png)
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Cloud3514 on December 05, 2018, 01:59:38 am
I think it should be noted that Verizon is desperate to sell Tumblr. These kinds of social media sites (including Tumblr and Twitter) don't exist to be their own thing, they're there to flip for a profit. The problem is that no one is buying. Twitter has a NAZI problem they refuse to do anything about and Tumblr has a child pornography problem that lead to them doing this hilariously ham fisted nuking of both adult and "adult" content. And I fucking guarantee you it won't work.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Askold on December 05, 2018, 03:49:34 am
If they had managed to kick off the Nazis and the CP stuff then they could find a buyer easily. Or keep it and make money. Now they try to do SOMETHING that would make it easier to sell it, doesn't matter if they throw out the baby with the bath water if it they find a buyer, then it will be the new owner who needs to find users again.

...As it is though, they might find some Nazi-friendly rich dude who would take the site and use it to spread Nazi-propaganda in the name of FREE SPEECH or something.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Tolpuddle Martyr on December 05, 2018, 07:39:34 pm
If they had managed to kick off the Nazis and the CP stuff then they could find a buyer easily. Or keep it and make money. Now they try to do SOMETHING that would make it easier to sell it, doesn't matter if they throw out the baby with the bath water if it they find a buyer, then it will be the new owner who needs to find users again.

...As it is though, they might find some Nazi-friendly rich dude who would take the site and use it to spread Nazi-propaganda in the name of FREE SPEECH or something.
Of course, causing the user base (and their ad dollars) to evacuate could put off some buyers. All in all it's an interesting window into the "thinking" that goes on in some boardrooms.

In keeping with the OP title of Tumblr shitting beds, they've banned explicit user content but still have NSFW ads (https://piunikaweb.com/2018/12/03/tumblr-allowing-nsfw-ads-despite-blocking-everything-explicit/). What a fucking mess!
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: rookie on December 05, 2018, 08:45:38 pm
Well, yeah they still have NSFW adds. Tumblr took their money, didn't they?
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Askold on December 06, 2018, 03:09:18 am
Driving off a lot of the userbase will drop the value of Tumblr BUT if the stunt had also driven off all the undesirables it would have at least meant that the amount of potential buyers goes up.

This is basically them setting the garage on fire to get rid of rats there and hoping that the fire doesn't spread to the house. It did and they aren't sure if the rats are even gone but it was the only easy and quick idea they had.

Hiring a massive amount of mods or buying a machine learning automod are expensive, take time and are unreliable. If they wanted to really keep Tumblr they could do it but if they just want to dump it on someone else and run away with the cash then any money spent on fixing things means less money for them.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Tolpuddle Martyr on December 06, 2018, 05:14:23 am
Driving off a lot of the userbase will drop the value of Tumblr BUT if the stunt had also driven off all the undesirables it would have at least meant that the amount of potential buyers goes up.
Nah it's just the sexy undesirables. (https://twitter.com/Nash076/status/1070208743818842112)

(https://i.imgur.com/qzZBvIo.png)

If you're a clean, buttoned up Aryan lad you're good to go!
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Askold on December 06, 2018, 06:16:39 am
Like I said. They fucked up in their attempt to fix a problem.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Katsuro on December 06, 2018, 07:14:45 am
Like I said. They fucked up in their attempt to fix a problem.

This is what happens when you take your problem solving solutions from 1980's action movies and your answer is to nuke the whole thing from orbit. Apparently they've never heard that expression about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Art Vandelay on December 06, 2018, 07:45:45 am
I think we're forgetting that their goal isn't to get rid of all of the bad things on the site, it's to get back on Google and Apple's store fronts. Those two only cared about porn, so only porn is on the chopping block. No one powerful seems to be giving them problems about white supremacists, so no doubt they're happy to take their ad money and data.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Katsuro on December 06, 2018, 09:49:11 am
I think we're forgetting that their goal isn't to get rid of all of the bad things on the site, it's to get back on Google and Apple's store fronts. Those two only cared about porn, so only porn is on the chopping block. No one powerful seems to be giving them problems about white supremacists, so no doubt they're happy to take their ad money and data.

Indeed, but Tumblr's own justifications about it amount to, "Won't someone think of the children!" and, "We want to make Tumblr a nicer, cleaner place." with no mention of Apple and Google's stores. So when they do nothing at all about such things as Nazi's using their platform to spread hate and advocate violence it's not exactly surprising that people will accuse Tumblr of being more than a little...disingenuous, shall we say, and having their priorities out of whack..
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: RavynousHunter on December 06, 2018, 10:05:52 am
Driving off a lot of the userbase will drop the value of Tumblr BUT if the stunt had also driven off all the undesirables it would have at least meant that the amount of potential buyers goes up.

This is basically them setting the garage on fire to get rid of rats there and hoping that the fire doesn't spread to the house. It did and they aren't sure if the rats are even gone but it was the only easy and quick idea they had.

Hiring a massive amount of mods or buying a machine learning automod are expensive, take time and are unreliable. If they wanted to really keep Tumblr they could do it but if they just want to dump it on someone else and run away with the cash then any money spent on fixing things means less money for them.

No real need to BUY a neural network.  I'm not joking when I say that rolling your own is insanely easy.  Hell, the hardest part would be gathering training data, and even then, it can learn unsupervised once it's initial training is completed.  You'd need, like...three guys, tops.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Askold on December 06, 2018, 11:08:23 am
Somehow I doubt it really is that easy.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Tolpuddle Martyr on December 06, 2018, 02:13:12 pm
I think we're forgetting that their goal isn't to get rid of all of the bad things on the site, it's to get back on Google and Apple's store fronts. Those two only cared about porn, so only porn is on the chopping block. No one powerful seems to be giving them problems about white supremacists, so no doubt they're happy to take their ad money and data.

Indeed, but Tumblr's own justifications about it amount to, "Won't someone think of the children!" and, "We want to make Tumblr a nicer, cleaner place." with no mention of Apple and Google's stores. So when they do nothing at all about such things as Nazi's using their platform to spread hate and advocate violence it's not exactly surprising that people will accuse Tumblr of being more than a little...disingenuous, shall we say, and having their priorities out of whack..
Well, they can't exactly say "we need to sell this turkey and we'll do whatever it takes" or "we're amoral, corporate shitheels that only give a fuck about ostensible morality when our bottom line is threatened."
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: RavynousHunter on December 06, 2018, 08:48:50 pm
Somehow I doubt it really is that easy.

I've done it.  Granted, it doesn't do real-time video classification, but image classification is piss-easy.  The only real difficult part is getting it to work with images of varying dimensions, but one could just resize them to a specific set of dimensions and feed them into the network that way.

Allow me to go into details!

Okay, so for image classification (or anything where you need more variable pattern matching) you don't use a normal (termed "dense") neural network, but a convolutional neural network.  These take in patches of information at a time (say, a 3x3 pixel area) for each input.  This allows the network to notice patterns regardless of location.  Work this magic with a recurrent neural network (which is purpose built for time-series data like video) and you can have something that can classify any video it is given.

I've done convolutional nets before; they require no more than a few dozen lines of Python to get trained, if you use the right libraries, all of whom are totally free.

The only other challenge than gathering initial data for training, testing, and validation (which could be legally iffy, given the content in question), is tuning the network's topology to increase accuracy by allowing it to pick out the right set of features in any given image or video.  Once its done training and validating that it is actually accurate, running the thing is actually extremely quick.  Hell, my local Walmart uses it to detect moving people in a live CCTV feed.

Students learn this in an intermediate-level computer science course.  I learned this in an intermediate level computer science course.  Tumblr, with all the money it no doubt has, with all the developers its got on-call, could surely get a couple good servers with  high-end GPUs (this is why nVidia is raking in money like crazy, GPUs are insanely good with machine learning), have their trained monkeys spend a few moons (at the absolute most) creating, training, and optimizing classifiers for both static images and video to find and flag (not remove, just flag for human review) potential child pornography.

The resources are out there, and they're totally fuckin' free.  Tumblr just needed to get off its ass and spend some of that sweet, sweet advertiser cheddar to get it done.  But that requires time, effort, and money.  As we all know, that's the devil's work.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Art Vandelay on December 06, 2018, 10:04:42 pm
I think we're forgetting that their goal isn't to get rid of all of the bad things on the site, it's to get back on Google and Apple's store fronts. Those two only cared about porn, so only porn is on the chopping block. No one powerful seems to be giving them problems about white supremacists, so no doubt they're happy to take their ad money and data.

Indeed, but Tumblr's own justifications about it amount to, "Won't someone think of the children!" and, "We want to make Tumblr a nicer, cleaner place." with no mention of Apple and Google's stores. So when they do nothing at all about such things as Nazi's using their platform to spread hate and advocate violence it's not exactly surprising that people will accuse Tumblr of being more than a little...disingenuous, shall we say, and having their priorities out of whack..

Of course it's disingenuous. What, are there actually people out there who think corporate PR speak is sincere?
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Sigmaleph on December 07, 2018, 04:49:42 pm
Driving off a lot of the userbase will drop the value of Tumblr BUT if the stunt had also driven off all the undesirables it would have at least meant that the amount of potential buyers goes up.

This is basically them setting the garage on fire to get rid of rats there and hoping that the fire doesn't spread to the house. It did and they aren't sure if the rats are even gone but it was the only easy and quick idea they had.

Hiring a massive amount of mods or buying a machine learning automod are expensive, take time and are unreliable. If they wanted to really keep Tumblr they could do it but if they just want to dump it on someone else and run away with the cash then any money spent on fixing things means less money for them.

No real need to BUY a neural network.  I'm not joking when I say that rolling your own is insanely easy.  Hell, the hardest part would be gathering training data, and even then, it can learn unsupervised once it's initial training is completed.  You'd need, like...three guys, tops.

They *have* a neural network (well, they have some machine learning algorithm for detecting child porn. I'm assuming it's a neural network). It has a non-zero false negative rate, though, and they are failing at the follow-through they inevitably need to do.

They also have one for nsfw content in general and that one is performing pretty badly.

I think we're forgetting that their goal isn't to get rid of all of the bad things on the site, it's to get back on Google and Apple's store fronts. Those two only cared about porn, so only porn is on the chopping block. No one powerful seems to be giving them problems about white supremacists, so no doubt they're happy to take their ad money and data.

They were never out of the Google app store, only Apple's (which has stricter standards about content).

Anyway, it's not exactly all they care about. Verizon have noticed they are not making nearly as much as money as they'd like from tumblr and advertisers do not like their ads next to porn, they've been planning the adult content ban for a while. But then the child porn/apple store removal happened and they decided to move up the timeline. (source (https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/4/18126112/tumblr-porn-ban-verizon-ad-goals-sex-work-fandom))
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: RavynousHunter on December 07, 2018, 08:13:12 pm
Driving off a lot of the userbase will drop the value of Tumblr BUT if the stunt had also driven off all the undesirables it would have at least meant that the amount of potential buyers goes up.

This is basically them setting the garage on fire to get rid of rats there and hoping that the fire doesn't spread to the house. It did and they aren't sure if the rats are even gone but it was the only easy and quick idea they had.

Hiring a massive amount of mods or buying a machine learning automod are expensive, take time and are unreliable. If they wanted to really keep Tumblr they could do it but if they just want to dump it on someone else and run away with the cash then any money spent on fixing things means less money for them.

No real need to BUY a neural network.  I'm not joking when I say that rolling your own is insanely easy.  Hell, the hardest part would be gathering training data, and even then, it can learn unsupervised once it's initial training is completed.  You'd need, like...three guys, tops.

They *have* a neural network (well, they have some machine learning algorithm for detecting child porn. I'm assuming it's a neural network). It has a non-zero false negative rate, though, and they are failing at the follow-through they inevitably need to do.

They also have one for nsfw content in general and that one is performing pretty badly.

I figured.  Even the best tools are worthless in the hands of people with no desire or ability to use them properly.

They were never out of the Google app store, only Apple's (which has stricter standards about content).

Anyway, it's not exactly all they care about. Verizon have noticed they are not making nearly as much as money as they'd like from tumblr and advertisers do not like their ads next to porn, they've been planning the adult content ban for a while. But then the child porn/apple store removal happened and they decided to move up the timeline. (source (https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/4/18126112/tumblr-porn-ban-verizon-ad-goals-sex-work-fandom))

While advertisers have the right to determine what they feel is appropriate content for their ads to appear on, it is kind of disturbing how much sway they have over certain parts of the net.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: dpareja on December 07, 2018, 08:21:11 pm
They were never out of the Google app store, only Apple's (which has stricter standards about content).

Anyway, it's not exactly all they care about. Verizon have noticed they are not making nearly as much as money as they'd like from tumblr and advertisers do not like their ads next to porn, they've been planning the adult content ban for a while. But then the child porn/apple store removal happened and they decided to move up the timeline. (source (https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/4/18126112/tumblr-porn-ban-verizon-ad-goals-sex-work-fandom))

While advertisers have the right to determine what they feel is appropriate content for their ads to appear on, it is kind of disturbing how much sway they have over certain parts of the net.

Well, let's face it: hosting sites costs money, and the more storage space you need, and the more bandwidth you need, the more money it costs. Tumblr decided that they'd sell ads, and so advertisers necessarily have sway over what's allowed to be on Tumblr. There aren't many other options for raising the necessary funds.

Does it suck that advertisers have the sort of influence over content that they do? Sure. But it's just a reality.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Sigmaleph on December 07, 2018, 10:42:12 pm
They were never out of the Google app store, only Apple's (which has stricter standards about content).

Anyway, it's not exactly all they care about. Verizon have noticed they are not making nearly as much as money as they'd like from tumblr and advertisers do not like their ads next to porn, they've been planning the adult content ban for a while. But then the child porn/apple store removal happened and they decided to move up the timeline. (source (https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/4/18126112/tumblr-porn-ban-verizon-ad-goals-sex-work-fandom))

While advertisers have the right to determine what they feel is appropriate content for their ads to appear on, it is kind of disturbing how much sway they have over certain parts of the net.

Well, let's face it: hosting sites costs money, and the more storage space you need, and the more bandwidth you need, the more money it costs. Tumblr decided that they'd sell ads, and so advertisers necessarily have sway over what's allowed to be on Tumblr. There aren't many other options for raising the necessary funds.

Does it suck that advertisers have the sort of influence over content that they do? Sure. But it's just a reality.

There are other business models for social media. They have their own downsides, obviously, but lots of people have been looking at the kind of shit ad-driven social media tend to pull and trying to look for alternatives

Pillowfort, which does a lot to sell itself as Tumblr-but-better, aims for a subscription model (they're currently in a pay-once-for-an-invite beta). Mastodon, which tries to be Twitter-but-better, distributes hosting costs to whoever feels like setting up a server (and individually those usually run on donations if they grow too much).

Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Kanzenkankaku on December 09, 2018, 04:10:42 am
Woke tumblr children couldn't tell the difference between pedophilia and age gap shipping featuring two legal adults, so it's only fitting the woke tumblr bot flags random fully clothed people and funny dog pictures and shit.

Ah well, I'll still be over on mastadon, and I actually finally signed up for newgrounds instead of sometimes lurking that site. Used to be pretty dead but tumblrs lifeforce has now transfered into it. And by lifeforce I mean porn art.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: rookie on December 09, 2018, 07:44:41 am
I thought tumblr's life force was sheltered children complaining about white men.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: Kanzenkankaku on December 09, 2018, 08:04:56 am
I thought tumblr's life force was sheltered children complaining about white men.

Nah its the porn (and fanart/fic/fandom in general). The sheltered children were parasites along for the ride just like all the nazi accounts.
Title: Re: Trumblr shits the bed
Post by: rookie on December 09, 2018, 01:15:36 pm
Cool. So tumblrinas are a byproduct.