We have gotten a number of comments and emails about an explicit image that has occurred on certain portions of RedState over the last couple of days. Allow me to explain how this happened.

RedState’s parent company uses an automated program that pulls in certain content to promote it across their brands. This program automatically selects posts, along with their featured image, and includes a thumbnail of that image in the promo.

In this case, it selected a post that was a user diary – not front page content – that had an explicit image. There was an editorial reason for the explicit image being in the post, but regardless, if I or anyone else involved with the site had seen it, it would have been deleted. This image was automatically pulled with the post into the promotional program, which is what is causing the image to be displayed. I have deleted the offending image from the post and we are working on getting the post in its entirety removed from the rotation so that this does not happen again.

We are also taking steps to ensure that only front page content gets pulled into the rotation, which will prevent this from ever happening again. Additionally, please note that any diarist that includes an explicit image in a post – for any reason – will be summarily banned. If for some reason it is necessary to refer to an explicit image, please include a link to the image somewhere offsite, with a clear explicit content warning.

Please accept our apologies and know that we are taking steps to prevent it from happening again.