Tumblr bans non-consensual creepshots and deepfake porn Published duration 27 August 2018

image copyright Getty Images image caption Tumblr says more than 164 billion posts have been placed on its platform since it was founded in 2007

Tumblr is to ban content that results in the "unwanted sexualisation or sexual harassment of others".

In addition, it said it covers "deepfake" pornography, in which computer-generated images of a subject's face are transplanted onto explicit photos or videos of someone else's body without permission.

The rule-change is due on 10 September.

Other additions to Tumblr's community guidelines include the outlawing of "gore" posted solely to shock, as well as other "content that encourages or incites violence, or glorifies acts of violence or the perpetrators".

The blogging platform will still rely on its users to flag offending content to moderators.

New owners

But Yahoo struggled to manage the platform, and ended up writing down most of its value.

In 2017, Yahoo itself was acquired by the US telecoms firm Verizon, which placed Tumblr within a new subsidiary called Oath.

While other social networks that allow pornography - including Twitter and Reddit - had introduced tougher rules against so-called creepshots and deepfakes, Tumblr's rules remained more vague until now.

This led it to be singled out by the news site Motherboard in March, which revealed that not only was the network hosting such imagery but also advice on how to create it.

media caption WATCH: The face-swapping software explained

Tumblr says its staff will remain "fierce defenders of free expression" but added that the new rules were designed to protect that vision.

"Posting sexually explicit photos of people without their consent was never allowed on Tumblr, but with the invention of deepfakes and the proliferation of non-consensual creepshots, we are updating our community guidelines to more clearly address new technologies that can be used to humiliate and threaten other people," it said.

The move may help repair Tumblr's reputation, however it is likely that more will need to be done to reverse its decline.

One recent article about the platform likened using it to "hanging around a ghost town" despite the fact that Tumblr still claims more than 33 million posts are uploaded to its site a day.

The author - culture editor at The Outline, Jeremy Gordon - said Oath's current strategy seemed to be to make the experience of using Tumblr better for its remaining users rather than chasing new ones, at least at this point.

"It's hard to disagree with the value of discouraging hate speech, especially as we've seen how Twitter's total failure to address a similar problem has slowly shifted perception of the platform," he told the BBC.

"But as with all things like this it's in the execution - both consistency and the flexibility to understand not all situations are the same.

"At the very least, it's good to discourage any potential new users who'd only sign up to cause this kind of trouble."