An automated moderation error left Tumblr users panicked
Tumblr users found themselves in a difficult situation Wednesday after dozens of accounts were banned the same afternoon by an automated system. Many users contacted The edge about the incident, saying the wave of bans appeared to have a disproportionate impact on accounts run by users who identify as trans women, many of whom were given no specific reason why their accounts were closed. Screenshots of the email some users received informing them of the ban state that: “This action was taken following an internally generated report. Automated means may have been used to identify the offending content.”
Chenda Ngak, head of communications at Tumblr parent company Automattic, confirmed the bans in a statement to The edgebut said many were wrong and canceled. “We are continually working to maintain the health of the platform and adapt our systems to prevent bad actors from spreading harm. During this process, our automated system falsely flagged several users, including but not limited to members of the trans community. We have disabled this system and restored these users while we improve it. We sincerely apologize to everyone who was affected by this error.”
Wednesday’s wave of bans came just a day after Tumblr rolled back a controversial change to its reblogging system earlier this week, sparking outrage among many of the platform’s users. Some of the users who contacted The edge suggested the bans could be a response to posts expressing opposition to the change, but Ngak said “the reported closed accounts are not related to the recent reblog discussion.” Ngak also added that “there is no evidence that trans users were disproportionately among the fewer than 200 affected accounts.”
However, several users who contacted The edge has expressed concerns about a history of moderation issues on Tumblr, some involving trans users in particular. In 2024, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg got into a public argument with a Tumblr user who went by the name predstrogen and identified as trans. Predstrogen shared frustrated posts about Tumblr’s lack of action in response to the alleged harassment she faced, leading her to ultimately post that she hoped Tumblr’s CEO would “die an eternally painful death involving a car covered in hammers that explodes more than a few times and the hammers fly everywhere.” Predstrogen’s Tumblr account was later banned, but the conflict continued on other social platforms, where Mullenweg shared details of his private account, including the names of Predstrogen’s parallel blogs on Tumblr.
This isn’t the first time Tumblr has had issues with automated content moderation, either. In 2022, it settled with the New York City Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) allegations of discrimination stemming from a 2018 ban on adult content, which, in addition to general accuracy issues, allegedly disproportionately affected LGBTQ+ content. The ban was put in place before Automattic’s acquisition of Tumblr in 2019, implemented by its former owner Verizon. The CCHR settlement required a review of Tumblr’s moderation algorithms and required Tumblr to make changes to its user appeals process to address algorithmic bias.
Automattic has scaled back its plans for Tumblr in recent years. In 2023, after the site failed to meet its growth targets, Mullenweg confirmed The edge that “the majority” of the platform’s non-support, security and moderation staff were being transferred to other divisions.
