I am seeing a litany of blacklisted pics pop up, is this because the blacklist section in your profile is broken, because I have nothing blacklisted, or is it because those are pictures that have been deleted for various reasons and nobody can see them?

It may have to do with the picture's score count.
Under your account options
xbooru.com/index.php?page=account&s=options
try setting the 'post threshold' to '-9999'

thank you, I will try that