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Comment by Terretta | Hacker News Reader

FTA:

“A longtime popular place to socialize, blog, participate in fandoms, and more, Tumblr originally exited to Yahoo (also TechCrunch’s parent) for north of $1 billion under then-CEO Marissa Mayer’s leadership in 2013. The hope at the time was to transform Tumblr into another social media powerhouse and to grow its ads business. However, the subsequent years were rough on Tumblr, as sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit dominated the space.”

That last sentence just skips the whole story.

Verizon bought Yahoo in 2017, thinking the way to "grow the ad business" was to dump the "and more" part of Tumblr in 2018. It took less than a year for Verizon to look for a way to avoid being reminded of this miscalculation. Asking 0.3% of Yahoo's price did the trick in 2019.

This isn't so long ago. The omission is interesting.

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Didn't get what you're saying. What is "and more" part of Tumblr?

Namely adult content. They began heavily moderating this kind of stuff, leading to a mass exodus, in particular to twitter which was amenable to it.

To me, it wasn't just moderating adult content, it was the way they went about it. They used an AI to review every existing post, which resulted in many false positives, and deleted everything it deemed inappropriate.

I was drawing a lot at the time, and many of my portraits with no nudity at all were deleted. That was my sign to leave.

Where did you go to?

Not to Reddit?

I hardly ever saw adult content on Twitter.

Oh, there's a boatload of adult material on Twitter. It's also one of the main clearnet sites used to share CSAM links, unfortunately.

Twitter is kind of a cesspool, really. Even more so post Musk.

>It's also one of the main clearnet sites used to share CSAM links, unfortunately. [...] Even more so post Musk.

Even 4chan removes child sexual abuse material at lightening speed. There isn't any major social media site that allows this. If it's even more now, would you be able to name an account that shares such stuff? Or are we supposed to believe this without evidence?

And as far as porn goes sure. The thing about Twitter is you wouldn't see porn unless you specifically go and look for it. Which is why I always find it amusing when people complain about this "problem". There is no porn in people's feeds by default, one has to train the algo to show it by searching for it and interacting with porn accounts. It's especially funny since on Twitter itself there are always conservative or Christian accounts complaining to Musk that they see too much adult content and that he needs to ban it.

You want me to share CSAM accounts? You realise you're asking me to commit a crime, right?

I don't know any such accounts because I don't go looking for such things. It's just a well known fact that Twitter has a CSAM problem. A quick google search will show you plenty of media coverage on that fact. It's also well known that moderation on Twitter has suffered under Musk due to massive layoffs.

Of course, most of this porn stuff is never seen by most users because it's not favoured by The Algorithm. I'm just pointing out it's definitely all there. As far as legal porn I'm generally in favour of it being allowed on most platforms.

You claimed the problem got worse but if you've never seen it yourself, what data are those "well known" facts based on?

Also naming names of criminals is not illegal, I'm confident you know this.

You're welcome to do your own research.

As for naming accounts, it's not just "naming criminals". It's effectively equivalent to sharing CSAM if I'm telling people specifically where to find it. Even if I knew where, which I don't, I'd prefer not broadcast that information. And I'm not sure why you're so eager to learn specific account names. It's a pretty weird thing to ask for on a public forum, honestly.

> You claimed the problem got worse but if you've never seen it yourself, what data are those "well known" facts based on?

Not everyone has solipsism at the core of their epistemological worldview. Even without knowing your jurisdiction, I would discourage you from seeking out CSAM; the laws do not have an exception for curiosity.

I hate commenting on downvotes, but I really, really hope I'm being downvoted for my first sentence, and not the second one.

Hard to know why people downvote, but I just want to reiterate how ridiculous it is for someone to make a claim, provide no data or other evidence, admit they have never personally observed this and finish it off with "do your own research" when someone questions it. It seems like a completely indefensible position to me but if you have a rational argument why we should believe the claim I'm open to it. It just has to have substance. Nothing to do with solipsism, it's just common sense. It would be stupid to simply believe every random thing people write online, don't you think?

Twitter has more lax content moderation - boosting blue-checks resulted in a torrent of OnlyFans porn spam that took several months to resolve (P-U-S-S-Y--I-N--B-I-O)

If Twitter didn't have a handle on porn in general, what makes you confident they had CSAM under control?

Virtually all pornography creators have a significant presence on Twitter.

That's because Twitter, in a weird twist of "that... makes sense?" doesn't algorithmically push sexual content out to the masses. It's a rare case of a feed algorithm actually keeping the right content away from you.

Don't most feed algorithms adhere to keeping certain content away in favour of others?

That's literally what a feed algorithm does, yes.

Reddit still has a lot of adult content, but AFAIK you can't find it unless you know where it is.

> Reddit still has a lot of adult content, but AFAIK you can't find it unless you know where it is.

When Reddit made its infamous API changes over a year ago that caused many third-party apps to shut down, a less-publicized part of the change was that NSFW content would no longer be available in the API at all, even for apps that paid for the API access.

There was a analysis done a while back which showed the impact that this had on overall posting behavior, because of how Reddit's algorithm works (a drop in visibility across the board will effectively downrank large NSFW subreddits more than small NSFW subreddits, because Reddit artificially boosts lower-volume subreddits in your frontpage so they don't get drowned out). You can also compare total vote counts from August 2023 to June 2023 to gauge the difference too.

At least on old.reddit.com, underneath the searchbar is an expandable help section that, among others, explains the nsfw: search parameter. I'd hardly call that hidden.

As an added "bonus", old.reddit.com bypasses the age verification too. You have to click a button, but you don't need to sign in or make an account or verify anything.

interesting...

Needing to know about old reddit seems pretty hidden to me

Was for me. But...er...thanks.

On a lark I tried r/boobs and that'll do ya.

https://reddit.com/r/OnlyFans :)

I generally Google for the genre I'm interested in on reddit and it finds results easily enough.

I know the search in Reddit is absolute trash, but let’s not pretend such silly things, okay?

Don't you need to toggle the setting on if you use the official app? Plenty of folk will never look there.

Plenty of folk won't want adult content to show up in their search results. I'd wager that those that do are capable enough to check their settings, given that they should know concepts like safe search from google.

And now they've reversed track and allow adult content again if you self-tag it NSFW.

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