Government Information Requests
| Country | Number of requests | Percentage of requests where some or all information was produced | Number of accounts specified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brazil | 3 | 0% | 1 |
| Equador | 1 | 0% | 1 |
| Germany | 1 | 0% | 1 |
| Hungary | 1 | 0% | 1 |
| India | 1 | 0% | 1 |
| Malaysia | 6 | 0% | 45 |
| Singapore | 1 | 0% | 1 |
| United Kingdom | 4 | 25% | 5 |
| United States | 118 | 87% | 213 |
| Total | 136 | 76% | 269 |
| Country | Total | Privacy | Sites specified | Disclosed due to request |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Germany | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0% |
| Hungary | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0% |
| Total | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0% |
Notes
- With regards to Disclosure Requests Received from EU Member States, this data provided is according to the requirements of the DSA, Article 15, “Transparency reporting obligations for providers of intermediary services.”
- The information provided is for the total number of disclosure requests per country, broken down by type of reported content at issue.
- We are also reporting the median time (in hours) that it took to confirm receipt and take action on reported content.
Government Takedown Demands
| Country | Court orders | Requests from government agencies or law enforcement | Number of sites specified | Percentage of requests where content was removed due to a violation of our policies | Percentage of requests where content was removed solely in response to the demand |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Australia | 0 | 2 | 3 | 100% | 0% |
| Brazil | 0 | 1 | 1 | 100% | 0% |
| Indonesia | 0 | 5 | 7 | 100% | 0% |
| Malaysia | 2 | 95 | 368 | 100% | 0% |
| Pakistan | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0% | 100% |
| Republic of Korea | 0 | 30 | 3187 | 100% | 0% |
| Russia | 0 | 46 | 31 | 89% | 2% |
| Turkey | 17 | 17 | 373 | 76% | 12% |
| Total | 19 | 197 | 3,971 | 95% | 2% |
Notes
- With regards to Takedown Demands Received from EU Member States, the data provided is according to the requirements of the DSA, Article 15, “Transparency reporting obligations for providers of intermediary services.”
- The information provided is for the total number of takedown requests per country, broken down by type of reported content at issue.
- The table also provides the percentage of the total amount of orders where we complied and the percentage of orders resulted in action taken due to a violation of our guidelines.
- We are also reporting the median time (in hours) that it took to confirm receipt and take action on reported content.
Recent Examples
Here are a few recent examples of takedown requests that we received from government sources.
Russia:
- The majority of Russian government requests relate to content that violates our Terms of Service under spam and violent threats. We have received takedown demands that are critical of Russia’s stance on the LGBTQ+ community and other minority groups within Russia; we evaluate each request individually and strive to uphold content that is not in violation of our Terms of Service.
Copyright and Trademark
Copyright
| Month | Total notices received | Valid DMCA requests (%) | Accounts affected | Posts removed | Content removed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| July | 393 | 56% | 1,515 | 64 | 340 |
| August | 456 | 51% | 1,351 | 125 | 254 |
| September | 424 | 62% | 1,300 | 168 | 273 |
| October | 447 | 54% | 2,150 | 208 | 408 |
| November | 475 | 59% | 1,608 | 243 | 321 |
| December | 532 | 35% | 844 | 156 | 221 |
| Total | 2,727 | 52% | 8,768 | 964 | 1,817 |
Addendum
Beyond the notices listed above, Tumblr also received 17,341 additional notices related to gambling spam content, which were mass-created between July 1 and December 31, 2024. None of these notices resulted in content removal for copyright infringement.
Notes
- The table above indicates the number of copyright infringement notices we received during each month of the reporting period. Each notice may cover more than one blog and/or piece of content. Some notices identify dozens of allegedly infringing materials.
- As a US company, Tumblr requires that all copyright notices be submitted in accordance with the DMCA. When we receive non-compliant requests (including non-US requests), we ask the complainant to resubmit their request in accordance with the statute.
- Tumblr processes notices pursuant to the DMCA. Under the DMCA, there are a number of conditions a complaining party must satisfy:
- Identification of the work or material being infringed;
- Identification of the material claimed to be infringing, including its location, with sufficient detail so that we can find it and verify its existence;
- Contact information for the notifying party, including name, address, telephone number, and email address;
- A statement made under penalty of perjury that the information provided in the notice is accurate and that the complainant is authorized to make the complaint on behalf of the copyright owner;
- A statement that the complainant has a good faith belief that the material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or law; and
- The complainant’s physical or electronic signature.
Counter Notices
| Month | Valid counter notices | Accounts affected with restored content | Posts restored | Pieces of content restored |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| July | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| August | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| September | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| October | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| November | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| December | 25 | 25 | 25 | 84 |
| Total | 29 | 29 | 30 | 88 |
Notes
- Under the DMCA, a user can formally challenge a notice of copyright infringement by submitting a counter notice. When we receive a counter notice, we forward a copy to the individual who submitted the original DMCA notice and restore access to the content if no further action is taken.
- In accordance with the statute, a valid counter notice must contain:
- The user’s physical or electronic signature;
- The user’s name, address, and phone number;
- Identification of the material and its location before it was removed;
- A statement under penalty of perjury that the material was removed by mistake or misidentification;
- The user’s consent to the jurisdiction of a federal court in the district where the user lives (or the federal district court located in New York County, New York, if the user lives outside of the US); and
- The user’s consent to accept service of process from the party who submitted the takedown notice.
Trademark
| Month | Number of notices received | Number of notices where some or all content was removed | Percentage of requests where some or all content was removed |
|---|---|---|---|
| July | 13 | 0 | 0% |
| August | 29 | 1 | 3% |
| September | 11 | 1 | 9% |
| October | 17 | 0 | 0% |
| November | 23 | 1 | 4% |
| December | 36 | 0 | 0% |
| Total | 129 | 3 | 2% |
Addendum
Beyond the notices listed above, Tumblr also received 13,425 additional notices related to gambling spam content, which were mass-created between July 1 and December 31, 2024. None of these notices resulted in content removal for trademark infringement.
Notes
- Handling trademark issues (either potential infringement or instances of confusion) is complex, especially for neutral platforms like Tumblr, and consequently requires additional analysis compared to copyright infringement. We first require documentation of a live federal or international trademark registration—often the name of a business or brand, or its logo. We look at various factors to determine if reported content or a URL is misleading to users or causes confusion, and what action to take in these cases. Among them:
- If there is a live US or international trademark registration;
- How the reported term is being used;
- Content found on the blog;
- The registered goods and services;
- Landscape of similar marks related to the reported term; and/or
- When the reported term was first used.
- If a user uses a misleading URL, we may require them to change it. We notify the URL holder and allow them to change the URL on their own before we change the URL to something generic on their behalf.
- Alternatively, we may request that a user include a disclaimer on their blog.
- Sometimes, we remove specific posts that use a term to create confusion. Like all content takedowns on the site, we always notify the user when we remove any of their content and include as much information as possible regarding the claim made against their post.
Top Complainants (Jul – Dec 2024)
| Reporting organizations | Number of notices |
|---|---|
| Giftcardmall | 13 |
| Roku | 8 |
| Airtel | 7 |
| Phonepe | 4 |
| Aquaguard | 4 |
| Amtrak | 4 |
| Vaydra | 3 |
| Tinder | 3 |
| Starbucks | 3 |
EU Terrorist Content Removal Orders
On June 7, 2022, the European Union’s regulation on preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online came into effect. This regulation introduces new requirements related to content removal, preservation of account information, and transparency reporting, specifically regarding materials that an EU member state believes to have been created for terrorist purposes.
The information below represents the number of content removal orders we received, as well as data related to user appeals of terrorist content removals from Tumblr.com based on both EU removal orders and our standard moderation practices.
Totals
Identifying and Removing Terrorist Content
Content created for the purposes of terrorism, violent extremism, or calls to violence is prohibited on Tumblr.
Like most online hosts, we do not pre-screen the content that millions of users post to our services. We evaluate reports of content that violate our Community Guidelines or Terms of Service and take some limited measures to proactively surface other abusive content that is posted to our services. We try to make the process for reporting abusive or illegal sites as transparent and simple as possible. If you see a site that you believe violates our policies, please report it here.
Additionally, we partner with a number of industry coalitions, such as the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism and Tech Against Terrorism to proactively locate, identify, and remove violent extremist content. We also work closely with law enforcement and other government agencies around the world to address quickly any illegal or otherwise abusive content discovered on our platform.
We do not automatically remove websites from Tumblr; a (human) member of our Trust & Safety team reviews each report and makes a decision on whether it violates our policies. While we are legally required to remove all content that is the subject of an EU Regulation content removal order, we still manually review each order to ensure accuracy and validity.
Freedom of Expression
All reports of terrorist content are investigated by a member of our staff.
One important reason we review each report is to guard against the removal of material posted to legitimate blogs (e.g., citizen journalists) that discuss terrorism or terrorist groups. In another context, some of the materials they publish may qualify as terrorist propaganda or calls to violence, and would be removed under our policies. Although it requires additional effort to review each report, we do so because we take the task of protecting legitimate speech and expression seriously.
Privacy Reports
Requests Received
Notes
- Tumblr is required in some circumstances to provide copies of the information it has about someone if that individual requests it, and to facilitate the electronic removal or restriction of personal information should a person wish to have their information deleted. Additionally, under the GDPR, Tumblr must sometimes obtain the expressed consent of individuals when transferring or processing their personal information.
Tumblr’s Data Deletion Process
Users have the ability to request removal of personal information held by Tumblr at any time. Visit Tumblr’s Help Center for a more detailed description of the data deletion process.
Tumblr’s Data Access Process
Users can use their privacy settings to see and manage many aspects of how their information is used. Users can also request to obtain and download data associated with their Tumblr account. Visit Tumblr’s Help Center for a more detailed description of the data access process.
Additionally, users can contact us to obtain information about the categories of information we are processing about them, the categories of uses for that information, and the categories of third parties with whom the information is shared.
Right to Opt Out of the Sale of
Personal Information
Limiting Tumblr’s Use of Personal Information
Tumblr selectively runs advertisements so we can provide Tumblr content for free. To help select which ads to show users, we may share some information with our advertising partners, or allow advertising partners to “collect” certain information. Residents of some US states, have a right to opt-out of having data sold or shared for advertising purposes. Although Tumblr never sells data in the traditional sense, the personalized advertising we do could be considered a “data sale” under these states’ privacy laws.
Digital Services Act
Summary
The Digital Services Act (DSA) is an EU regulation that governs the obligations of online platforms like Tumblr towards our users.
At Tumblr, we value transparency and are aligned with the DSA’s goals of advancing transparency about policies and practices. We’ve proactively published reports about government information requests and takedown demands since 2013 (which you can read right here on this Transparency Report site!), and we share information about our content moderation rules and processes in our Help Center.
We employ a combination of automated processes and human moderation to manage content on our platform. This hybrid approach allows us to leverage the strengths of both machine-learning classification and human judgment to effectively moderate content at scale. If you send in a report, a human being will review it.
Our automated content moderation system utilizes industry-standard automated tools, including hashing, spam classifiers, and machine-learning based detection, to identify the dissemination of prohibited content, as well as to detect and filter out spam, phishing, and other technologically malicious activities. If you appeal a moderation decision we’ve made on your content, a human being will review it.
We are committed to promoting freedom of expression while creating a safe, healthy online space. We dedicate significant time, thought, and resources to ensuring our content moderation processes are fair and transparent, and it’s an area we’re continuously working to improve.
In accordance with the DSA’s requirements, we’re sharing information about Tumblr’s average number of monthly active recipients in the EU over the past six months. This information allows European regulators to determine which platforms have over 45 million average monthly active recipients in the EU and are classed as very large online platforms (“VLOPs”).
EU Notices of Illegal Content
On February 17, 2024, the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) came into effect, establishing rules for how service providers manage user interactions and content, with a primary focus on content moderation. Article 16 of the DSA specifically outlines the obligations of online service providers to evaluate and respond to notices of illegal content.
This report provides a comprehensive overview of the Illegal Content Reports we have received since the DSA’s inception.
For more detailed information, please select a time period from the menu.
| Type of content reported (violation types) | Number of notices received per violation type | Percentage of violation types out of total notices received |
|---|---|---|
| Deceptive links | 3 | 3% |
| Election interference | 0 | 0% |
| Harassment | 4 | 4% |
| Harm to minors | 10 | 11% |
| Hate speech | 17 | 19% |
| Human trafficking and prostitution | 2 | 2% |
| Non-genuine social gestures/schemes | 10 | 11% |
| Privacy violation | 9 | 10% |
| Promotion of self-harm | 4 | 4% |
| Sexually explicit material | 9 | 10% |
| Spam | 7 | 8% |
| Terrorism | 9 | 10% |
| Violent content, threats, gore & mutilation | 6 | 7% |
Notes
- The data provided is according to the requirements of the DSA, Article 15, “Transparency reporting obligations for providers of intermediary services.”
- The information provided includes the total number of notices we received during this time period, as well as the number of those notices that resulted in us taking action on the reported content.
- This is further separated by how many reports resulted in action taken due to a violation of our guidelines, compared by how many reports resulted in action taken due to a valid report of illegal content.
- We have listed the most common violation types reported, and the number of reports received per reported violation type.
- Article 22 of the DSA specifies that EU member states can approve organizations as trusted flaggers. Trusted flaggers are special entities under the DSA who are experts at detecting certain types of illegal content online. The current list of trusted flaggers is available here. Above, we are reporting how many reports we received from a trusted flagger during this time period.
- We must also report the number of notices processed by using automated means. At this time, we do not use automated means for these reports. They are reviewed manually.
- The last metric we are reporting is the median time (in hours) that it took to respond to these notices and/or take action on reported content.
EU Account Suspensions
Notes
- The data provided is according to the requirements of the DSA, Article 23, “Measures and protection against misuse.”
- The first section is for the total number of Tumblr accounts suspended for frequently posting manifestly illegal content we received in this time period.
- The second section indicates the number of times we suspended processing a complainant’s reports, including those submitted under DSA Articles 16 and 20.
Information on EU Out-of-Court Dispute Settlements
Notes
- The data provided is according to the requirements of the DSA, Article 21, “Out-of-court dispute settlement.”
- The information provided is for the total number of out-of-court dispute settlements we received in this time period.
EU Number of Appeals
On February 17, 2024, the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) came into effect, introducing new regulations for how service providers manage user interactions and content, with a particular focus on content moderation.
Article 20 of the DSA mandates that online service providers must provide users with two key types of appeals:
User Appeals: the ability to appeal moderation decisions that affect a user’s content or account.
Report Appeals: the ability to appeal decisions related to previously submitted reports.
Tumblr has long upheld the practice of offering User Appeals, providing users with the ability to challenge moderation decisions and appeal actions taken on their blogs or accounts.
However, with the implementation of the DSA, the additional “Report Appeal” option was introduced, allowing users to request a re-evaluation of decisions made on reports they filed in the past.
When filing an appeal, users select the category from a dropdown list in the appeals form that most accurately represents the basis of their appeal. Additionally, users may provide additional context in the form’s text field, allowing them to create a distinct and detailed report for their appeal.
In line with the DSA’s requirements, Tumblr is reporting data on both types of appeals.
This report not only reflects our ongoing commitment to transparency but also provides a comprehensive overview of all appeals received, as mandated by the DSA.
For more detailed information, users can select specific time periods from the menu.
Report Appeals
| Total appeals received | Percentage of total appeals | |
|---|---|---|
| Approved | 0 | 0% |
| Rejected | 2 | 1% |
| Invalid | 133 | 99% |
Notes
- The data presented aligns with the requirements of the DSA, Article 20, “Internal Complaint-Handling System.”
- The information reflects the total number of Report Appeals received, which are appeals based on decisions made on past reports. It also includes the median time (in hours) it took to respond to these appeals.
- The table provides additional details on the outcomes of these appeals, including the number of appeals that were approved, rejected, or deemed invalid. Approved appeals resulted in either reversing a moderation decision, or altering a decision made on a past report. Rejected appeals indicate that we upheld our original action or decision. Appeals classified as invalid typically involved new content reports or new appeals rather than addressing a past report.
User Appeals
| Total appeals received | Percentage of total appeals | |
|---|---|---|
| Approved | 3,460 | 47% |
| Rejected | 3,111 | 42% |
| Duplicate | 813 | 11% |
Notes
- The data presented complies with the requirements of the DSA, Article 20, “Internal Complaint-Handling System.”
- The information reflects the total number of User Appeals received, which are appeals related to decisions affecting users’ content or accounts. It also includes the median time (in hours) it took to respond to these appeals.
- The table provides additional details on the outcomes of these appeals, including the number of appeals that were approved, rejected, or identified as duplicates. Approved appeals resulted in a reversal of the original moderation decision, while rejected appeals indicate that we upheld our initial action. The duplicate category tracks instances where we received multiple reports for the same issue during this time period.
Automattic Transparency Reports 