Yesterday, The Verge broke the news on Tumblr’s new ban on adult content that’s schedule to take effect on December 17th, 2018. The farcical far-reaching policy change comes as a result of Tumblr being removed from the Apple iOS App Store in recent days over child pornography and the passage of Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) into law earlier this year.

Shannon Liao at The Verge:

Tumblr will permanently ban adult content from its platform on December 17th in a move that will eradicate porn-related communities on the platform and fundamentally alter how the service is used. The ban includes explicit sexual content and nudity with a few exceptions, the company tells The Verge. The new policy’s announcement comes just days after Tumblr was removed from Apple’s iOS App Store over a child pornography incident, but it extends far beyond that matter alone. “Adult content will no longer be allowed here,” the company flatly stated in a blog post published on Monday. Banned content includes photos, videos, and GIFs of human genitalia, female-presenting nipples, and any media involving sex acts, including illustrations. The exceptions include nude classical statues and political protests that feature nudity. The new guidelines exclude text, so erotica remains permitted. Illustrations and art that feature nudity are still okay — so long as sex acts aren’t depicted — and so are breastfeeding and after-birth photos. After December 17th, any explicit posts will be flagged and deleted by algorithms. For now, Tumblr is emailing users who have posted adult content flagged by algorithms and notifying them that their content will soon be hidden from view. Posts with porn content will be set to private, which will prevent them from being reblogged or shared elsewhere in the Tumblr community.

Dave Lee at BBC News:

Founded 11 years ago, Tumblr is a platform where users can publish text, images and videos quickly, as well as share and comment on other submissions. The site’s popularity peaked in 2014. Yet as its use dwindled, its reputation as an alternative corner of the internet grew, not least as a place to find unique adult material. Unlike typical pornography sites, which overwhelmingly cater to men, and serve an often narrow definition of what is attractive, Tumblr has been a home for something else - content tailored at vibrant LGBT communities, or for those with tastes you might not necessarily share with all your friends. If society deems it acceptable for any porn to be on the internet, then that acceptance must surely be inclusive. Unlike most of those other sites Mr D’Onofrio speaks of, Tumblr has been a space where different body types are sexually celebrated, not degraded. [...] Many on Tumblr have been fearing a porn ban since the network was acquired by fading web giant Yahoo in 2013. That time, the adult content was allowed to remain. But in 2017, when Yahoo was acquired by Oath, the digital arm of telecoms giant Verizon, the writing was on the wall.

April Glaser at Slate:

Tumblr has been a safe and reliable place to look at pornographic images for more than a decade whether those images were drawings, GIFs, photographs, or short videos. But that’s changing in two weeks. The platform’s CEO announced in a lengthy Tumblr post on Monday that the service plans to ban all adult content. There will be some exceptions, like for art with nudity, but for the most part, the days are numbered for existing Tumblr posts featuring nudity or other pornographic content. The policy comes two weeks after Tumblr was kicked off the Apple App Store because some child pornography reportedly slipped through its filters. It’s unclear if Tumblr didn’t respond to just these reports of child porn fast enough, or if this is a long-standing problem. It’s certainly true that Tumblr, which now is owned by Verizon, needs to work vigilantly and hire people to make sure that its services aren’t used to abuse minors and traffic in child pornography. Pedophilic material is something that all live-to-post services need to seriously contend with and actively engage in rooting out, whether they are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter’s Periscope—where I found last year that apparent pedophiles were frequently preying on young users—or Tumblr. But the platform’s fix is the equivalent of hammering a nail with a skyscraper, only to have it slip through an open window. It’s an overreaching solution that won’t protect children who are victims of child pornography, seekers of which will all but certainly find another place to go. What banning “adult content” will do, however, is eradicate one of the few mainstream, safe, and non-taboo places where people could participate in communities that openly congregate around sex and sexuality. Sex is great, and it’s no wonder that people like to consume sexual images—much of the internet is dedicated to this. Knowing that one could roll onto Tumblr, a very popular social media site, find a blog dedicated to whatever flavor of porn one likes, and look at images that turn one on, made the whole ordeal of seeking sexual imagery less daunting, demeaning, and dangerous.

Jessica Roy at Los Angeles Times:

A 2017 Glamour article about porn on Tumblr pointed out the site’s GIF-heavy and largely artistic approach to pornography is part of its appeal to its majority-female user base. If Tumblr’s changes make the site no longer a pornography destination nor a welcoming space for young LGBTQ people, and with the general trend of young people turning to newer mobile-friendly apps like Instagram and YouTube, who’s left to even want to use Tumblr? A decade ago, LiveJournal made a similar pronouncement banning adult content. That site summarily deleted hundreds of blogs, and users abandoned the platform in droves.

Peter Bright at ArsTechnica:

Tumblr's relaxed attitude both toward adult content and to copyright infringement—a good proportion of the porn is simply lifted from commercial adult websites—created a safe space for adult content. So a wide range of communities—particularly those poorly represented in broadly heteronormative mainstream porn—took advantage of this atmosphere to publish their own pornography. Present-day Tumblr has substantial LGBT, kink, fetish, and BDSM representation, for example. This encompasses a mix both of the commercial (amateur models promoting their content) and the non-commercial (porn made for fun, for empowerment, for the sheer joy of exhibitionism). This is not to say that Tumblr has done nothing to limit porn before. Shortly after the site was purchased by Yahoo in 2013, blogs marked as not safe for work were hidden; they only became accessible to Tumblr users logged into their accounts. Such sites were also removed from Tumblr's search listings. Photographs have usually been published without problem, but many producers of adult content have noticed that publishing video to the site has become increasingly hit-and-miss, with pornographic video content routinely being pulled.

Emily Shugerman at The Daily Beast:

Tumblr, the blogging platform once heralded for its laissez-faire posting policies, is banning adult content. The change has spurred jokes about the loss of free porn GIFs and topless selfies, but the site’s devoted user base of sex workers isn’t laughing. They are worried about what the censorship will do to their community—and their bottom line. Porn stars, cam girls, and other sex workers have long flocked to the social media platform due to its relatively lax policy on sexual images. Unlike sites like Facebook and Instagram, which prohibit nudity except in highly restricted circumstances, Tumblr opted to simply categorize such content with “sensitive” or “explicit” filters—allowing sex workers to build an audience and market their products with few limitations. As a result, ads for phone sex lines and web-cam services existed side-by-side on the site with street-style photography and hand-scrawled amateur poetry.

On Twitter, Desiree (@brilliantnbored) correctly lays down what Tumblr rightfully ought to ban (pedophilia, child porn, white supremacy, pro-anorexia/bulimia, revenge porn) and what they wrongly choose to focus on instead to ban (breasts, BDSM, fetish, genitalia):

x things #tumblr should ban:



Ã¢ÂÂ¢ white supremacists

Ã¢ÂÂ¢ pro-anorexia/bulimia blogs

Ã¢ÂÂ¢ school shooter fandoms

Ã¢ÂÂ¢ serial killer fandoms

Ã¢ÂÂ¢Ã¢ÂÂminor attracted personsÃ¢ÂÂ aka pedophiles

Ã¢ÂÂ¢ the girl who stole those bones from the graveyard



what tumblr bans instead:



Ã¢ÂÂ¢ titties — Desiree (@brilliantnbored) December 4, 2018

Currently Nerdy’s Twitter (@CurrentlyNerdy) explains why Tumblr’s puritanical suppression of NSFW content harms all users of the site, especially LGBTQ+, POC, trans, and nonbinary folks:

x As it stands most porn platforms are geared for the straight white male gaze, offering little diversity for LGBTQ+, for women, for people of color, and other marginal communities from furries etc. Tumblr seemed a safe haven for members of those communities. #tumblrpurge — Currently Nerdy (@CurrentlyNerdy) December 4, 2018

Sara Coughlin at Refinery29:

I have three blogs on Tumblr, and the fate is uncertain for them:

Tumblr's far-reaching puritanical ban on adult content (likely aided by FOSTA/SESTA’s passage and removal from Apple iOS App Store) that is scheduled to take effect on 12.17.2018 flies in the face of common sense.

This farcical disgrace of a policy is straight up pro-censorship, anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQ, anti-sex worker, and an attack on marginalized communities that had a home on Tumblr, while the site continues to enable white supremacist/anti-Semitic/male supremacist/anti-Islam and other far-right propaganda blogs to go unchecked.

The site was one of the few places where porn that wasn’t straight white male-centric had a big following, and a major raison d’être for the site’s existence.