Tumblr, the social media platform founded in 2007 that has long provided a safe haven for porn fans, and people who share their own homemade porn content, will be porn-friendly no longer. The change starts on December 17, according to a statement by Tumblr CEO Jeff D’Onofrio issued Monday titled “A better, more positive Tumblr.”
“Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr, and we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to reflect this policy change,” D’Onofrio wrote. “We recognize Tumblr is also a place to speak freely about topics like art, sex positivity, your relationships, your sexuality, and your personal journey. We want to make sure that we continue to foster this type of diversity of expression in the community, so our new policy strives to strike a balance.”
But Free Speech Coalition Executive Director Eric Paul Leue called the Tumblr announcement "extremely concerning."
"Corporations have become the arbiters of free speech, deciding with their shareholders what is and isn’t acceptable," Leue wrote on his Twitter account. "Sexual health content will get wrapped into this."
The new policy appears to define “adult content” as "photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts."
The new blanket ban on porn or any images of “real-life human genitals” apparently comes in response to the sudden deletion of Tumblr’s app from the Apple iTunes store just last month, a removal that happened because illegal images of children were slipping through the app’s content filters, according to a report by Apple Insider.
But while the company said that it had been working on a fix to the content filter that would stop the illegal images from being upload to the microblogging platform, Tumblr finally took the step of simply issuing a blanket ban on all porn.
The country of Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim country of 260 million, banned Tumblr in 2016 over the platform’s liberal approach to porn. In 2017 the platform added a “safe mode,” making it harder for users to access adult material on the site, according to Engadget.
Posts that include nudity in the context of breastfeeding or as part of erotic art or newsworthy events will continue to be permitted by Tumblr, though the company has not made clear how its automatic content filtering tools will determine what counts as “newsworthy” or “art.”
"We know there will be mistakes, but we've done our best to create and enforce a policy that acknowledges the breadth of expression we see in the community,” the company’s statement said.
Users whose previously posted adult content is removed by Tumblr will be allowed to appeal the deletions, according to the company.
Photo by Today Testing / Wikimedia Commons
