In the wake of Tumblr’s censorship of various NSFW-friendly tags from its mobile app, we decided to take a closer look at the types of banned content to see if we could trace patterns.

Unfortunately for Tumblr’s mobile users, there seems to be inconsistency with regard to what tags are banned and why. For instance, the widely used fandom tag #yaoi is banned, but its counterpart, #boyslove, is not. Meanwhile, tags with general meanings like #facial and #amateur are banned, but #necrophilia and #kinky are not banned.



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Tumblr user gahayi reported that she was seeing banned tags redirecting to “safe” tags:

I just tried searching for “#gay.” It changed automatically to “#lgbtq.” I tried searching again, and again it changed. The same thing happened to “#bisexual,” “#lesbian,” and “#QUILTBAG.”

And some tags seem to be banned inexplicably, like “depression,” “blood,” and other terms related to mental illness and self-harm.

Screengrab via Tumblr

To give you an idea of what’s now missing from your mobile dash, here’s a list of tags that are currently censored on Tumblr’s mobile platform. Click through for what they look like (warning: NSFW!) on the Web.

1) sex

2) porn

3) gay

4) lesbian

5) bisexual

6) transsexual

7) twinks

8) BDSM

9) breasts

10 & 11) penis, vagina, and various synonyms thereof

12) bitch

13) MILF

14) facial

15) yaoi

16) hentai (similar tags like guro and yiff are not banned)

17) panties

18) suicide

19) butts

20) BBW

21) Topless Tuesday

22) threesome

23) jailbait

24) fetish

25) depression

26) cutting

27) ana (anorexic)

28) blood

29) lolita



Here are some that are OK:



1) necrophilia

2) boys love

3) guro

4) yiff (and furry-yiff)

5) kink

6) tentacles

7) squicking

8) asshole (though it looks like the mobile app does filter some porn)

9) douche

10) self-harm

Illustration by Fernando Alfonso III