Ex-Tumblr iOS engineer details the company's struggles with App Store adult content policies, as communication between reviewers, devs, and Apple is discordant

sreegs 2021-12-29

Context & Ripple Effects

This insider account retroactively explains a crisis the coverage already documented: in November 2018, Tumblr vanished from the App Store amid speculation its iOS app was pulled over inappropriate content, before the company disclosed that an audit found child porn images slipping through its detection tools. Weeks later Tumblr announced a permanent, platform-wide adult content ban to buy its way back into distribution.

The engineer's account adds the missing layer: behind that removal was discordant communication among Apple's reviewers, Tumblr's developers, and Apple itself — meaning the ban wasn't just a moderation failure response, it was a developer operating blind inside an opaque review process.

First-order effects

Tumblr's developers faced review decisions they couldn't reliably interpret or appeal, with no consistent channel to Apple — the direct cost being weeks off the App Store and a total content-policy reversal announced on December 17, 2018.
Apple's review team effectively set Tumblr's product policy: adult content, once core to the platform's identity, was eliminated because the risk of another removal outweighed any internal moderation fix.

Second-order effects

Every developer running user-generated-content apps learns from the Tumblr case that App Store removal risk forces preemptive, blunt moderation — over-censoring is cheaper than negotiating with a review process that communicates inconsistently.
Apple faces a credibility problem with its own developer base: if reviewers and the company can't coordinate internally, developers have no way to know what compliance looks like until their app disappears, pushing disputes toward public disclosure by former employees rather than resolution through official channels.

Third-order effects

If distribution gatekeepers shape content policy this way, platform moderation rules increasingly originate from App Store review incentives rather than each service's own community standards — a governance structure where the store, not the platform, is the final arbiter of acceptable speech.
The pattern strengthens the case for external scrutiny of App Store review consistency, since opaque, discordant enforcement at scale is exactly the kind of conduct regulators examining app-store market power tend to target.

The trend: App Store review processes are quietly becoming the de facto content-moderation authority for mobile platforms, with developers absorbing opaque enforcement through blanket policy bans.

Discussion

@quantian1 Quantian on x
Wait lmao if this is correct, the entire reason for Tumblr nuked their site and fell 99.7% in value was because Apple demanded it to keep their iOS app in the App Store. Lmfao just walk away my dudes, tell Apple to shove it and keep your core biz intact. https://sreegs.tumblr.com…
@blackamazon @blackamazon on x
Semiotics is a thing is a thing is a thing semiotics is a thing and we're failing https://twitter.com/...
@film_girl Christina Warren on x
I know from my own past reporting that Apple has been hurting Tumblr for going on a decade. Everyone blamed Yahoo for the pr0n shit, but it always goes back to the App Store. https://sreegs.tumblr.com/...
@tomgara Tom Gara on x
Reddit is swarming with porn and seems to have no issue with the App Store - did Apple just apply this selectively to Tumblr? Or is something else going on? https://twitter.com/...
@quantian1 Quantian on x
There seems to have been a failure of communication here, because Tumblr's management thought they were running Pinterest the whole time when in fact they were running Hustler right up until they suddenly had no business
@anildash Anil Dash on x
Capricious and opaque App Store policies destabilize and threaten lots of sites and communities. Building for the open web makes for more resiliency over time. https://twitter.com/...
@foone @foone on x
FUN FACT: so tumblr has added more strict tag filtering for their iOS app, and now won't let you see posts with certain tags in the app. They of course keep this blacklist secret, but tumblr users have been figuring out the list. Here's the funny part:
@ourielohayon Ouriel Ohayon on x
Replace “porn” by “crypto” and you have a faithful equivalent of what crypto developers who build for mobile apps live regularly If you build for crypto (web) and not for mobile (native mobile apps), you have no idea what pains you are saving. https://sreegs.tumblr.com/...
@onlyannamaria @onlyannamaria on x
this thread is wild. it seems like every time i check back on tumblr, it's found a new way to crash and burn. it's a shame because nothing has really filled that void yet. in 2022, i'm anticipating the launch of a new platform-something that is to tumblr what tiktok was to vine. …
@benjanun_s Benjanun Sriduangkaew on x
Apple products: it just works! https://twitter.com/...
@freyjaerlings @freyjaerlings on x
The takeaway from the Tumblr ban isn't necessarily Tumblr failing, but rather the fact that Apple has such severe, prudish restrictions on human communication online and can impose it on a mass scale
@matthewdaddario Matthew Daddario on x
Was this list created by a machine process, where you gathered the words most often associated with content that shouldn't be on your site, or was it put together by a team sitting around a desk? Depending on the answer to that, I have further questions. https://twitter.com/...
@finduilasclln Ine on x
@MatthewDaddario ... Love that you're addressing this but you should probably be addressing Apple instead of Tumblr. The ban is coming specifically from the Apple app store that holds the Tumblr app and not Tumblr itself. (On Android and desktop those words aren't banned. It is s…
@matthewdaddario Matthew Daddario on x
Hi @tumblr and @Tumblrsupport! How y'all doing. I'm going through the list of banned tags that was just recently compiled for your site... and I see that Alec Lightwood is on there. Which got me thinking...
@ponettplus Bobby Schroeder on x
based on info from a former tumblr engineer it sounds like what's happening is someone at apple is just checking random tags now and if they find porn in it they're like “we can't allow this on the app store. hide this” so tumblr is just hiding entire tags from ios app users
@ponettplus Bobby Schroeder on x
okay there's a lot of posts going around about the tumblr situation so for people who aren't still using tumblr i will clarify that tumblr is only hiding posts with certain tags for users of the ios app because of apple's insane content policies
@foone @foone on x
but the other thing is TUMBLR WILL AUTOMATICALLY ADD THAT TAG FOR YOU
@carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on x
Tumblr will now filter posts based on innocuous tags like ‘beard,’ ‘cream,’ ‘me,’ ‘mine,’ ‘girl’ & ‘self’ and others from their iOS app. A former Tumblr engineer shares the Kafkaesque app review process that led to this and you can see why devs hate Apple https://sreegs.tumblr.co…
@hbmmaster jan Misali on x
the reason is that it's so the app can stay on the app store. tumblr staff is just comically bad at everything so this is what it looks like when they try to follow content rules. all other versions of tumblr are unaffected by this
@hbmmaster jan Misali on x
this was not tumblr's decision. I doubt any humans at any point were involved in making this decision. apple said “hide the nsfw content or we'll take the app down” and tumblr staff, who are incompetent, said “you got it” and hid a whole bunch of normal common tags
@hbmmaster jan Misali on x
still a better experience than twitter though 100%
@hutch2muchowo @hutch2muchowo on x
@hbmmaster following iOS rules is genuinely so easy and some apps just refuse to do it well
@foone @foone on x
Google should capitalize on this. Android: the mobile operating system for #girls
@foone @foone on x
Anyway the fun thing is that Tumblr users are going to weaponize this nonsense immediately. Remember back when they used a username glitch to stop android users from reading their blogs? Well, now you can hide your posts from iPhone users... Just tag everything #girl
@hbmmaster jan Misali on x
the word “girl” is not banned. girls are not banned. it's only if a post contains “girl” (or one of the other blocked tags) as a tag. the post still exists and your account isn't blocked, it's just not visible on the ios app, unless you're linked to it directly
@hbmmaster jan Misali on x
tumblr would be a great website if it wasn't such a bad website
@hbmmaster jan Misali on x
if you're wondering how tumblr is doing they just blocked all posts tagged with “girl” on the ios version of the app
@hbmmaster jan Misali on x
my guess is that they just looked at a bunch of nsfw accounts and checked what tags those accounts use a lot, without bothering to check what those tags actually are. they'll probably unblock most of them soon-ish, but it's tumblr staff. they don't know what they're doing
@verticalblank @verticalblank on x
The mystifying new banned words list on Tumblr is a great example why “I'll know it when I see it” is a terrible heuristic for determining whether something is pornography. https://twitter.com/...
@foone @foone on x
they blacklist the tag “submission”, presumably because there's a bunch of BDSM posts with it
@miyoung Darling Shade on x
i can add some additional vouching to this: was also with tumblr during the 2018 War On Porn. i was policy-side rather than development side as that person was, but the struggle was the same. apple makes arbitrary demands, rejects appeals to reason, and the dance begins https://t…
@tendership @tendership on x
i'm happy this person mentioned 1. apple's app store tyranny 2. that a lot of ongoing censorship rn is sourced from payment processors trying to distance themselves from porn https://twitter.com/...
@rayoverweij Rayo Verweij on x
the wild uncertainty around the app store review process is one of the main headaches for properly testing our app at work and we don't even serve any user-generated or explicit content. iOS needs sideloading which needs regulatory pressure from the US/EU & co https://twitter.com…
@foone @foone on x
They've banned the word “satin” It's like the satanic panic but by implemented by people who can't spell
@spacetwinks Colin Spacetwinks on x
@punished3liza you post a picture of your knee that activates an algorithm that mistakes it for a boob and your account gets locked, meanwhile some machine is just unloading hourly brazzers gifs and tagging them all SEX HOT FUCK PORN BABES HARDCORE CUM untouched
@punished3liza @punished3liza on x
i can still see all these tags on android, im plugging in my iphone to check the ios app now lol merry christmas im having so much fun this is awful
@punished3liza @punished3liza on x
ive been online longer than most of you, and people tend to make false dichotomies out of this stuff. these two things are both extremely true: 1. platforms make it increasingly difficult to post anything except anodyne puns and cat pictures 2. no one can actually stop porn
@punished3liza @punished3liza on x
@OS_MOTE @spacetwinks definitely not solved. human moderators make bad decisions and, more importantly, they get ptsd from looking at horrible shit all day
@spacetwinks Colin Spacetwinks on x
@punished3liza i think the funniest thing to me is that in all these incidents the thing that most avoid punishment are not people actively trying to swerve around algorithms but just porn bots looking damn near like they're trying to get in trouble on purpose
@os_mote @os_mote on x
@spacetwinks @punished3liza It's also infuriating because content moderation is a solved problem: You hire people to moderate content. But payroll is expensive and there's investors to worry about.
@punished3liza @punished3liza on x
in parasitology/evolutionary science this is called the Red Queen Hypothesis: directly competitive organisms evolve in sync so that one never actually catches up to or overcomes the other, creating a semi-stable detante (and sometimes eventually symbiosis).
@punished3liza @punished3liza on x
i agree with this, the 2018 purge didnt last either. same content was right back on the platform after a few week adjustment period https://twitter.com/...
@em_aytch @em_aytch on x
users are trying to reverse engineer which tags are specifically being target, one of the more ridiculous of which is apparently “girls” https://twitter.com/...
@elloitts @elloitts on x
the horrible thing is that they say that the tumblr porn ban started bc of a user report of CSEM and in the current state of fandom, i can't be sure if it was legit or just fanart of an “anime minor” Bc God know giant companies don't care, they just want to save their asses https…
@expensive_hoe @expensive_hoe on x
yuppppppp and what is insane about making ios apps is that because its up to apple what apps get approved and what ones don't, folks could spend a year making an ios app and then apple can do shit like this to make them do what they want or they don't get their app on the store h…
@carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on x
@KitCase3 Web apps usually has an app because of push notifications since Apple has not supported them in Safari. The widely held assumption among devs being this incentivized creating iOS apps.
@expensive_hoe @expensive_hoe on x
in the end its the consumer that ends up losing out bcuz yer spending yer money on a device you don't rilly own yer just borrowing it up from them
@em_aytch @em_aytch on x
anyway apple's app store remains an absolute blight on the industry
@punished3liza @punished3liza on x
explanation of what's probably going on with Tumblr iOS tag bans, from a former Tumblr developer: https://sreegs.tumblr.com/... archive: https://web.archive.org/...
@em_aytch @em_aytch on x
if you're unaware, apparently tumblr is going thru another massive purge due to apple's ios policies https://twitter.com/...
@kitcase3 Wiredog on x
@Carnage4Life For sites like tumblr, do they really need an app? I use Safari to read twitter and other sites that also have apps.

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