I know that "i accidentally reported you" is a scam but a few times on Tumblr I've unintentionally reported someone via a misclick, misreading the comment, etc (like if a comments section has a lot of scam/spam comments I might mistake a legitimate comment for a scam one, like on an art post I may mistake a genuine compliment as one of those commission bots at first)
It'd be nice if Tumblr had the ability to un-report a comment in the case of misclicks or misinterpretations of a comment.
The majority of Tumblr's reports are viewed by human staff (although people would like to say otherwise...) unless it's around a holiday, so if you made a mistake I'm certain they'd be able to tell if it was on accident. They are usually pretty good on seeing if something is a genuine comment compared to a scam one.
If you report something that needs to actually be reported and they don't remove it, you can go to their Appeal Reports section of the abuse form, it's at the very bottom. :)
The text on the Appeal Reports form reads:
If you previously reported to us that a user or piece of content violates our policies, and you believe the outcome from that report (our decision) was incorrect, you can appeal our moderation decision here. Please only use this form if we have already responded to your report — we won’t be able to reply to new reports sent via this form.
In order to re-evaluate your report (and yes, a human being will take a look!), we’ll need you to provide additional context about why you believe the user or content you reported violates Tumblr’s policies. You can review Tumblr’s User Guidelines here.
In order to connect your submission here to your original report, please provide the email that you used to submit your report.
I wish more people would use this form, especially when you've got the 'I accidentally reported your account' scam going around, and (what I assume are) likely bots that are targeting people and mass reporting them for either being LGBTQIA+, or after a scam was attempted in DM.
And before anyone says anything, yes, I do believe that this is the case, the point being this DM I had gotten this morning where a user had been mass reported.
And yes, they did appeal and get their account back!
A lot of people say 'once you're banned you're banned' or 'staff will not unban you' but I honestly don't.. think this is true? I just think people don't use the appeal form or maybe even know it exists.
And just to get this out there: I really don't want to get into the whole 'tumblr is just banning people for no reason' argument, but this is honestly something I think people need to be aware of.
There has to be something going on for a ban to happen, and it's a known fact that there are scammers targeting trans people, specifically, trying to sell them HRT / Testosterone.
People shouldn't rule out the possibility of:
a) An account getting hacked by a scammer and becoming a scam via DM's/comment account, resulting in a ban for spam/scamming.
b) A failed scam attempt possibly resulting in a mass reporting by bots by the scammer.
Again, i'm not gonna get into the 'staff wrongfully banning people for no reason' stuff going on right now, I'm LGBTQIA+ myself, and that's all I'm going to say on that matter.
Everything happens for a reason, even if people don't immediately realize it, (if it was genuinely no fault of theirs like a mass report) or they just choose not to accept they did something wrong. (ie something like harassment in asks/dm's/communities and they chose to tell people otherwise iykyk.)
But! With that all said, I'm sure staff knows it was a mistake. If someone you know was banned for 'no reason', have them appeal it. Have them ask staff why they were banned. I'm sure they'll give them the answer they're looking for.
Sorry for rambling @lunathewafflelord, thank you for the ask and I hope you have a fantastic day!
