You’re an artist having a wonderful day posting your art to Tumblr dot com. You don’t always get a ton of attention, but that’s okay. But then one day somebody reblogs one of your posts…
You’re super excited! Someone appreciates your hard work. Then you see the profile picture, and it’s something like this…
[Screenshot of a Tumblr notification that shows an icon that looks suspiciously like a white girl in a bikini showing off her butt, though it’s so small it’s hard to tell. “axpgthglewut reblogged your photo.”]
You’re suspicious at this point, but mildly optimistic. Maybe someone likes both T&A and your Steven Universe fan art. Then you go to their blog and…
[Screenshot of my drawing of Lapis Lazuli. My original description was replaced with the text “you want to fool around?” and a link that leads to God knows where.]
It’s happened. Again. For some bizarre reason a p/orn bot is using your completely safe for work art to get click throughs to something that’s definetly not safe for work.
You desperately want at least your attribution back, but since Tumblr is so horrifically set up you’re very sure there’s no way to do that.
Except you can!
Tumblr allows you to report copyright violations which includes removing your description and injecting their own link. But how to do this?
Step 1: Report them
Go to that human icon, click it to go to the drop down, and select “Report”.
Step 2: Select “Community Violation”
This behavior is explicitly against the Tumblr terms of service so that’s where it goes.
Step 3: Select “Misuse of your identity or work”
Step 4: Select “Misattribution or non-attribution”
Step 5: Select “yes”, this is your work that’s being misattributed.
Step 6: Select “yes”, you posted it to Tumblr.
Step 7: Select “Someone reblogged it and injected a link to their own blog.”
Step 8: Put in the link to your original post, the link to their reblog, and your email. Then submit!
You can get it the link to the reblog without going to their blog directly by going to the dash view of the blog, hovering over the top right corner, right clicking and selecting “copy link address.
While all of us here on this trash website enjoy picking on staff, in my experience they take care of this kind of thing relatively quickly (usually 2-3 days).
I hope this has helped at least some of you, and remember: only you can stop bot reblogs. [insert gif of Smokey the Bear here]