So, there's been an exodus of artists from Tumblr recently as a result of Tumblrs new "Adult Content Ban". For a few years now I've had my art blog on Tumblr and enjoyed the site. It was easy to use and had a clean presentation, two things I like in a blog site. I'm predominantly a hentai artist. At the turn of the century I was one of the pioneers of adult webcomics with a little comic called Ghastly's Ghastly Comic. A webcomic about anime and hentai tropes. It was at the time a very popular weekly webcomic with almost 200K readers popping in each week to check it out.

When I started the webcomic I couldn't draw. I don't mean that in the "oh gosh, I'm such a hack" false modesty way that some artists say they can't draw. I mean I COULDN'T DRAW. I was shit at drawing. But as the years ticked on and with the help of many talented friends I made as a webcomic artists I began to absorb the skills neccessary to go from completely sucking at drawing to being okay at drawing. Now I'm in the "not so bad" catagory of artists and although my webcomic is now pretty much defunct I still enjoy drawing from time to time. I have a Galaxy Note Pro with a wacom stylus which I do 99.999% of my illustration work on and enjoyed sharing that work on Tumblr with the handful of people who still remembered who I used to be.

So why leave Tumblr for Newgrounds. Honestly I wouldn't have left if nothing at Tumblr had changed. I like the site and it was a good way to keep in touch with old friends. But then came the latest "Adult Content Ban".

Now Tumblr said that the ban wouldn't apply to artists it was just to get rid of explicit pornography. They made policy changes in the past and my art blog always got through them without being affected. Not so this time. Ghastly's Ghastly Image Dump had nearly every post flagged by the AI Bots that seek and destroy porn. Fair enough, that's to be expected. AI isn't too bright and can't make a judgement call and there is an option when your post has been flagged to have it reviewed by a real live human who would be able to determine critically if the post was compliant or not. So I sent all my flagged content in for human review. This is what happened.

By HUMAN review this flagged drawing of mine was considered complient with Tumblr's Adult Content policy and would not be banned.

A cheeky little bit of "trap hentai" but nothing overtly explicit. Good to know. Cheese cake drawings like that are acceptable under Tumblr's new Adult Content Policy. Now let's take a look at a drawing of mine that HUMAN review has determined is banned under Tumblrs new Adult Content Policy.

This picture is NOT compliant with Tumblr's new Adult Content Policy and is banned. Um... okay? The same elements are there, hentai boobies and dick, a cheeky pose, minimal clothing. There's nothing sexually explicit about this drawing, just like there isn't in the first one. So why is this drawing banned and the first one isn't? Compliance with Tumblr's Adult Content Policy seems completely arbitrary. But wait. It gets even weirder.