me: i don’t want to see jellyfish so i will blacklist the tag #jellyfish
people with no common sense: je11yf1sh, je11¥fi5h, j*llyf*sh, je//ÿf!sh, j3ï||yf¡sh, gel lee fisk
result: cannot account for the sheer amount of possible ways to alter the word jellyfish
conclusion: i have to see jellyfish now.
Once again, tumblr is not tiktok, tag properly.
I think it's important to acknowledge that on tumblr we do have a history of censoring some words sometimes, but for very different reasons than tiktok users.
the first, which is now no longer needed, was to prevent trolls from finding and reblogging personal vent posts. for a long time it was a rule of thumb here that if a post was tagged 'do not reblog,' you should obviously honour that person's request, as they want to vent to their followers but not have that post blow up beyond their circle. but for awhile there was a trend of malicious users trawling the 'do not reblog' tag and deliberately reblogging people's personal posts to upset them. so adding asterisks or slashes (d/o n/ot re//b/log) would prevent their posts from being found by non-followers. now that we have the ability to disable reblogs, that's not really a problem anymore.
that brings me to the second valid reason to censor something on tumblr, which is still relevant: complaining about something you dislike.
most commonly this might be a fictional pairing or a particular fandom. the way tumblr searches work now, it's not enough to just leave a post untagged, because a word appearing in the body of your post can still make it appear in searches or on the dashboard of someone who doesn't follow you but does follow that topic. for this reason, it's common courtesy that you'd censor the word (ex: s*ns *ndertale) so you can freely complain to your followers in peace, while people who like that thing and want to seek fan content don't have to see your negativity.
a third and related reason for censorship was to prevent p0rnbots from finding you and leaving spam on your posts. I still censor some relevant words out of habit, because I don't know if $ugar d*ddy bots are still a thing but I'd rather not tempt fate, personally.
note that all of these are workarounds intended to prevent being found by non-followers, in order to maintain a relative sense of independence and privacy while also respecting others' need for the same. none of these involve censoring triggers that people have in their blacklists.
