Community Labels

One quick note: We’ll be discussing and showing different types of community labels in this article, but none of the content we’re using in our example posts would require a label on Tumblr. They’re just fun placeholder images.

Overview

There are two sides to community labels on Tumblr: The post creation side and the post viewing side. When you’re making a new post, editing an existing post, or reblogging a post while including your own content, you’ll have the option to add a community label. On the post viewing side, you can adjust your settings so that posts with community labels are completely hidden for you, shown with an overlay, or visible like any other post.

There are currently four community label categories for NSFW content: Mature, drug and alcohol addiction, violence, and sexual themes. You can read more about the different categories here.

Why Do We Need Community Labels?

Broadly speaking, our goal is to give people more control over the type of content they’d like to see (or not see!) on Tumblr. Tumblr is whatever you want it to be, after all! Community labels give creators more control over who can see their post (only those who want to see it, or only those over 18, for example). On the post viewing side, community labels allow anyone on Tumblr to omit categories of posts from their dashboard completely if they so choose. They can also blur the posts or simply choose to have them show up like normal.

We want to encourage creativity, self expression, and exploration, but we also want to make sure that folks can avoid content they’d rather not see.

Before community labels, you’d need to trust that the person publishing or reblogging a post would add the correct tags so that your filtering options would hide the post. This has worked okay for years, but it can be tricky (if you’re filtering the #ferengi tag, you’d still see a post with the tag #tw ferengi, for example). The addition of community labels makes browsing Tumblr a more consistent experience.

Tag and content filtering aren’t going anywhere, by the way. They are essential tools for curating your Tumblr experience.

Adding Community Labels

You can add a community label when creating a brand new post, when editing an existing post, or when reblogging a post. You’ll be able to go back and change or remove your community label too, as long as it was not added by our moderators.

Community Label Categories

There are four categories of community labels.

Mature

The Mature community label is a catch-all and the default community label. It can be used on its own or in conjunction with one of the other categories. Any post with a community label will also have the Mature label (for example, it isn’t possible to add the Violence label and not the Mature label).

If you feel like none of the other categories apply but you think there should still be some kind of NSFW warning on the post, Mature is probably the right one to select.

Drug and Alcohol Addiction

A post with a Drug and Alcohol Addiction community label might contain a discussion of substance abuse or addiction experience that may be dangerous to or trigger those at risk.

Violence

A post with a Violence community label might contain violent or graphic content similar to what you might see in a movie.

Sexual Themes

A post with a Sexual Themes community label could contain content such as nudity, erotic writing, or sexually suggestive subject matter.

Adding Community Labels on the Web

The option to add a community label is located just below the space where you’d add tags to your post:

Need to add Community Labels to multiple posts at once?

You can use our Mass Post Editor to do it faster!

The mass post editor opens an archive view of your blog and allows you to make changes to several posts at once. You can also mass delete posts using this tool.

Here’s how to access the mass post editor:

• Click “Account” on the left.
• Select the desired blog below that.
• Click “Mass Post Editor” on the right.

Note that it’s only possible to access it using a web browser (not the apps).

In the Mass Post Editor, select posts by clicking on them. Then select “Edit Community Labels” in the top bar and choose the label(s) you wish to apply to the selected posts to apply them. Please note that’s it’s currently not possible to remove Community Labels from posts using the Mass Post Editor.

Adding Community Labels in the App

• Tap the people silhouette icon to bring up the community label categories.
• Tap “Mature” to apply the default label.
• Optional: Tap any additional labels that apply.

Once you close the community label pop-up, you’ll see the different label options just below the tag area so that you can easily make any adjustments.

What Happens to Posts With Community Labels?

What happens to a post with a community label will mostly depend on the preferences of the person viewing the post, but there are some notable exceptions. First, let’s cover the basics with a scenario:

Community Labels: Search and Tags

Adding a community label to a post won’t cause it to be hidden from search or tag results. Search and tag results will show, hide, or blur community label posts depending on how someone’s settings are configured. For example, if your mutual isn’t seeing your posts in the tags, you should have them check their community labels settings.

What If I Don’t Add a Community Label to a Post That Needs One?

Maybe you didn’t know about community labels until you found this article. That’s okay! If you don’t add a community label to a post that should have one, you can always go back and add the appropriate one(s) by editing the post.

Other folks who see your post can also suggest a community label. That suggestion goes to our own team of moderators, not you. If our moderators determine that the post should have a community label, they’ll add one. Once your post has been given a community label by our team, you won’t be able to change or remove it. You can however request that we re-review it.

It’s your responsibility to label your content appropriately. If you don’t apply a community label to a NSFW post that should have had one, we may apply one for you.

Controlling What You See

Your community label preferences can be found in your account settings in the “Content you see” section.

You can choose to show, blur, or hide posts with any community label or customize your preferences for each specific label.

The hide option will completely remove posts with a community label from your feed. You won’t see them at all.

If you’ve chosen to blur posts with a community label, the post will appear in your dashboard with a blurred overlay. You’ll be able to click through and view the post.

Selecting the show option will make posts with community labels visible in your dashboard by default. You’ll still see when a post has a community label, and you’ll have the option to hide that post.

Missing Community Labels

If you encounter a post that is missing a Community Label, review our reporting instructions in our dedicated Help Center article.