casper-the-ghoul:

Can we take a second to appreciate how badly @staff has screwed themselves over?

Rather than immediately jumping on the problem and containing it before it became such a large issue, they turned a blind eye to a rampant infestation of bots accounts and child predators openly expressing a desire to exchange illegal material for months.

Apple finally brings the ban hammer down on the official Tumblr app in the App Store, saying they need to get things sorted out because the app has become a safe haven for predators.

The Tumblr staff panics, because if their app isn’t on the App Store, they won’t be able to update and fix their notoriously bug ridden and barely functional mobile app.

Trying to appease Apple and have the mobile app put back on the App Store, the staff hastily programs a bot designed to detect and delete bot accounts, then proceeds to unleash it on the site, giving it authorization to immediately delete any bot accounts it detects without requiring a staff member to review whether the account is indeed a bot or contains illegal material.

The bot deletes a large portion of the bot accounts, but in a programming error that was obviously overlooked as the staff rushed to program and release it, the bot also deleted every account that has ever had a bot interact with it via a reblog or like.

Which, given this is an issue that’s been occurring for months, is a large portion of tumblr.

TL;DR

Tumblr staff chose to ignore a rampant problem with child predators and bot accounts for months, and Apple removed Tumblr from the App Store as a result.

Tumblr staff panicked and released a bot to try and nuke the accounts of the bots causing problems, which accidentally nuked the accounts of everyone the bots reblogged from as well.

Well done.