Tumblr updates its hate speech policy to remove reblogs of suspended posts

Social media platform Tumblr on Monday announced an update to its hate speech policy to minimize the reach of harmful content on its platform.

The update includes removing all reblogs of content violating its hate speech policies, specifically targeting speech from supremacist groups.

“We’ve listened to your feedback and have reassessed how we can more effectively remove hateful content from Tumblr. In our own research, and from your helpful reports, we found that much of the existing hate speech stemmed from blogs that have actually already been terminated,” Tumblr said in an official post.

“While their original posts were deleted upon blog termination, the content of those posts still lived on in reblogs. Those reblogs rarely contained the kind of counter-speech that serves to keep hateful rhetoric in check, so we’re changing how we deal with them,” it said.

The micro-blogging platform had identified almost a thousand blogs that were previously suspended for violating its hate speech policies.

The social media platform has now started removing all reblogs stemming from the original posts on previously suspended blogs. This accounts for 4.47 million reblogs being removed from Tumblr.

“Moving forward, we will evaluate all blogs suspended for hate speech, and consider mass reblog deletion when appropriate,” Tumblr said.

The microblogging platform is also consulting with outside experts and has put in place a dedicated Trust & Safety team. Users can report content that that violates the platform’s Community Guideline to the Trust & Safety team for review.

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