
Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th - phoe-krk
https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/3/18123752/tumblr-adult-content-porn-ban-date-explicit-changes-why-safe-mode
======
pdimitar
If Verizon bought Tumblr with the sole purpose of having one more service to
serve ads to, and if banning the adult content move aims to please the
advertisers then oh boy, are they in for a nasty surprise.

Tumblr will become a ghost town in days.

~~~
nickthegreek
Agreed. So many artists, photographers and models used tumblr to showcase
their work. It was also easy to link your blog to a .com with little to no
webdev experience.

The only other social media network out there with a following that allows
near the same level of expression is twitter and I have already seen posts
from artists directing their followers there. But twitter is no real
substitute to what tumblr offered.

I imagine tumblr's bandwidth costs are going to shrink exponentially.

~~~
debaserab2
I'd say instagram is the other big one for artists, not twitter. Instagram has
all the functionality of tumblr with even more accessibility.

~~~
nickthegreek
I've known several photographers who have lost 25k, 100k+ followings by being
banned from instagram for posts that did not break the ToS. This has been
devastating to their careers as freelance artists. I wouldn't recommend
leaving a more tolerant platform (tumblr) to put all your eggs in a FB owned
basket. With instagram, it all seems to depend on who the mod is who got
assigned the reported photo to look at. Many of these artists now run a backup
instagram and promote it on their primary account about once every 2 weeks to
keep a solid follower count on it in case their main gets the hammer.

~~~
code_duck
Same with all sorts of legal cannabis business related pages. I see a lot of
seed companies, dispensaries, culture/meme accounts with fallback accounts and
bios saying ‘deleted at 25k...’, etcetera. It’s the same situation as
consumers have long faced with Facebook, Twitter, Etsy and so forth - they
don’t seem to care that other people invest time and money in their accounts,
which the company tosses aside so easily.

------
buboard
Alternative Title:

"Tumblr will lose 80% of its visitors come December 18th"

Another one:

"Tumblr preparing to shut down"

~~~
b1r6
This is exactly correct. Sure there are "clean" portions of Tumblr, but from
what I can tell the real purpose is to host adult content. And there's nothing
wrong with that! It's a fantastic magnet for eyes, with which to show ads.
They're basically killing themselves with this.

~~~
x0x0
The vast vast majority of advertisers do not want to be displayed next to
porn.

Think of tumblr as nothing but a way to get pageviews for Cheerios and Volvo
ads. It explains their decisions perfectly.

~~~
buboard
> The vast vast majority of advertisers do not want to be displayed next to
> porn.

This i dont understand though. Who wouldn't their product to be subconsciously
associated with sexual satisfaction?

~~~
ams6110
Subconscious is fine. It's overt porn they don't want.

~~~
notyourday
[https://www.google.com/search?q=we+are+slingers](https://www.google.com/search?q=we+are+slingers)

------
crazygringo
Seeing as everyone seems to agree the whole point (if we're being real) of
Tumblr is adult content, that there's at least some acknowledgement that
there's real societal value in having a safe space for various kinds of
healthy adult sexual kinks that are non-mainstream, and that with this move
Tumblr will surely pull a Digg and probably disappear for all intents and
purposes...

...why isn't Verizon managing to sell it to someone who wants to support that,
instead of effectively shutting it down? Financially it doesn't make sense to
me. If free porn sites make money, I really don't see how a porn-embracing
Tumblr wouldn't do the same?

Or just split the site in two automatically based on analysis of each
account's contents, decide whether the "Tumblr" brand is more valuable for
clean content or adult content, and sell off the adult side with or without
the name. Sure splitting a site isn't technically the easiest thing, but I
can't believe it wouldn't still make sense financially.

Banning this much content seems like literally burning piles of money and just
destroying value. Whatever happened to stockholder value... for real? How can
a board approve this, or allow it to happen? Looking it up now, MindGeek owns
PornHub and so many other sites... surely it would fit perfectly in their
portfolio?

~~~
corvos
4chan just split the SFW parts into 4channel for advertiser reasons, so its
clearly a feasible idea

~~~
vharuck
One should wait a year or so to see if 4chan's split was a good decision. That
site doesn't have a history of good financial decisions.

------
LeeCyriaca
there are a lot of jokes being made along the lines of "there goes their
userbase" but for me personally this is a huge loss.

especially for those of us who have certain kinks, Tumblr to this day has been
the only place to ever exist where women could safely express their sexuality.

it allowed us to meet like-minded people, it allowed us to break the taboo and
it ended the isolation that many of us felt.

Tumblrs main asset has always been it's community,and I'm deathly afraid this
new policy will take all of this away

~~~
rajacombinator
This is the new reality of the internet, best get used to it. Free speech is
dead.

~~~
ajkjk
This seems like the opposite of free speech being dead. A website shut down
and you can just... go... make or use another one, anytime you like, without
having to worry about it even being illegal.

~~~
bredren
I also see this as a market opportunity for a startup to adapt / improve on
tumblr and fill the void. An unexpected, and permanent content restriction on
a major platform is a disruptive event.

~~~
Apocryphon
Yesterday's BitChute discussion [0] brought up the unfortunate fact that many
ostensibly free-speech zone sites such as Voat and Gab just end up being
havens for far right bigots and conspiracy theorists. Made me wonder if that
toxic stew could be balanced if far _left_ activists brigaded those platforms.
With this story, it'd be even more amusing if amateur erotica creators and
kink community people migrated from Tumblr to those places as well.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18583211](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18583211)

~~~
JBReefer
Far Right + Far Left !== somewhere good, you just get Reddit (or WW2). You
need sane people to have sane conversations.

~~~
Apocryphon
Oh, I hardly think it'd be much more than a toxic cesspool. But at least it'd
be a multipolar, _interesting_ cesspool.

------
bvinc
My daughter at 12 got sucked into Tumblr and developed an eating disorder. She
was in this gigantic web of pro-ana tumblrs with crazy diet plans that tell
you to eat like 100 calories a day. Then the app would just keep suggesting
more, "skin and bones", "thinspo", "meanspo". Holy crap there are some scary
corners of Tumblr.

I of course am more mindful of what she looks at, but she was hiding it and I
can't monitor everything.

It's hard to balance my love of free speech with the responsibilities of
myself, these bs Tumblr pages, and the app suggestions.

From what I've seen, Tumblr can be a very toxic place and I could understand
why advertisers would have problems with the content that ends up next to
their ads.

I wish them luck trying to figure out this mess.

~~~
ASalazarMX
I knew pro-anorexia groups use slang like "your friend Ana" to hide their
actions, but had to google "thinspo" and "meanspo".

Thinspo (thin inspiration) is positive anorexia reinforcement, like anorexic
role model pictures.

Meanspo (mean inspiration) is negative anorexia reinforcement, like aphorisms
demonizing fat or destructive critic.

Why are young girls so vulnerable to mental disease trends? What can we do
better as a society to strengthen the resilience of kids?

~~~
api
It's not a gender thing. Young people in general are vulnerable to all kinds
of negative groupthink because they don't have a fully formed identity,
experience, or adult critical thinking skills. The nature of the toxic
material seems to differ a bit by gender.

Loads of teen boys are sucked into toxic online cults too including neo-
Naziism, extreme misogyny, other kinds of toxic political radicalism, gaming
addiction, self-help cults, etc.

~~~
ASalazarMX
I think you hit the nail in the head. Kids (and many grownups) are very
vulnerable to groupthink, The only solution I see is encouraging common sense
through critical thinking.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
Considering most of these groups rally around conspiracy theories, which by
definition start from a position of questioning commonly accepted facts (i. e.
"critical thinking"), maybe we have actually gone too far with the critical
thinking?

~~~
api
We teach the idea of critical thinking but not the intellectual disciplines of
doing it honestly and effectively.

~~~
ASalazarMX
It could be taught in schools, but it has to be taught at home too, by
example. I wonder if enough parents would be willing to let their kids
question something as basic as their religion and indoctrination?

------
dictum
Even Digg didn't set out to die overnight.

Come to think of it, of all decade-plus websites, Tumblr is exactly the one
for whom suicide is an entirely expected ending.

Moody, unique, too obscure for the mainstream but popular enough among the
kind of people who would appreciate you. You were the kind to enjoy poetry and
inspirational images, but those inspirational images just couldn't give you
enough dopamine. You sought a higher high, and would happily do so unnoticed,
until some higher-up found the hidden closet.

~~~
sparkie
Digg's demise was due to its failure to police their content and to leave it
up to the users. I remember it being a fun place, and then it became overrun
by do-gooders we called the "bury brigades". Anything remotely interesting or
creative got killed and you were left with press-releases from a few big media
outlets. A dull news feed.

Many people moved to reddit, but /r/politics is pretty much exactly what
became of Digg. If reddit didn't have diversity in its sub communities (and
different people moderating them), it would've probably suffered the same fate
by now.

~~~
scelerat
> but /r/politics is pretty much exactly what became of Digg

Could you say some more about what you mean by that?

~~~
sparkie
A filtered news feed of the political left.

The difference is /r/politics has a whitelist of "acceptable" domains.
Essentially anything left of Lenin is OK, and anything else is deemed "far
right".

The bury brigades still exist in the comments.

~~~
freehunter
Yeah, you know those bastions of Communism known as Fox News, The Hill,
Breitbart, Conservative Review, Military.com, Right Wing Watch, The Daily
Caller, The Federalist, TheBlaze, CATO Institute, The Heritage Foundation, and
all those other left-wing news outlets on the whitelist.

"Left of Lenin" get out of here with that nonsense.

~~~
sparkie
Just looked in "new", and every one of those you've listed which are there are
downvoted to zero.

Care to prove my point further?

~~~
freehunter
Just because they're not popular doesn't mean they're not on the whitelist.
Care to move the goalposts further?

~~~
sparkie
Well, my original comment was making a point that r/politics has become
exactly what Digg became. A cesspit of bury brigades with a political aim.

I wasn't entirely sure what was/wasn't on their whitelist because I don't
waste my time in that cesspit.

I'd be willing to bet money that they're not just "unpopular", but that
there's a functional army of bots equipped to down-vote those domains
automatically.

It doesn't matter anyway. It's not like somebody expecting a nonpartisan
commentary will bother going to r/politics anyway. Anyone can clearly see it
is full of only left opinions, and anything remotely right-leaning is heavily
downvoted.

~~~
Noos
You're right, pretty much everyone knows r/politics is too left for most
leftists, but people will defend to the death that it is balanced because only
conservatives can be unbalanced; everyone else is a "centrist."

Though this forum is getting it's own tropes. Good luck being pro-copyright,
not entirely convinced the war on drugs is a massive failure, and a person who
likes living in the suburbs and owning a car.

------
zerealshadowban
Interesting how the presentation of healthy sexuality and eroticism in US
culture increasingly suffers under a joint assault by neo-puritans, radical
feminists, middle-of-the-road advertisers, and gender-smashing warriors. By
the gods, even at the gym the vast majority of Americans feel they must cover
their body with towels when walking to/from the showers, and those who don't
are eyed with suspicion. Similar trends are present in e.g. Sweden and France
where the depiction of beautiful women in ads is now a socio-political
problem.

I wish for our cultures to look for inspiration to the Ancient Greeks'
fundamental love of the human body and soul; some of which we can observe in
the sculptures that have survived (not the beefy Roman copies); and some of
the perspectives one may gather from surviving poetry, tales of normal nudity
in social activities, and benevolent jokes about sex.

~~~
awakeasleep
"Presentation of healthy sexuality" is a pretty mixed up way to look at online
pornography

~~~
jplayer01
This is literally the viewpoint that is the problem. Just because you don't
like the kind of kinks and fetishes that other people have doesn't mean it
isn't healthy or valuable. Especially on a place like tumblr, where
communities are built around these sexual interests. It isn't some industry
imposing artificial expectations on an unwilling populace. It's people who are
genuinely into such a crazy variety of things and want to share that interest
with other people. What could be more wholesome than that?

~~~
awakeasleep
I don't believe that. There is research showing that online pornography
distorts people's views of sex, making people less satisfied with their real
life partners, and pushing their fetishes into more extreme territory.

This is sex negative, and harmful. And I believe we can see the results of
this with all the headlines talking about how people are having less sex. A
larger and larger percent of orgasms are happening online, to unrealistic
scenarios.

~~~
ux-app
>There is research showing that online pornography distorts people's views of
sex

I'd cautiously agree with this wrt commercial porn, where the negative
effects, coercion etc are well documented and "sex negative" as you describe.

Tumbler is full of OC. How on earth could this be seen as "sex negative"?
These are adults, freely sharing their kinks. Not sure there's much room for
outrage here.

~~~
awakeasleep
They're still in a market, and the market rewards (with reblogs and followers
if not money) more extreme and more addictive forms of whatever product is
being sold.

------
vortico
Isn't that the point of Tumblr these days? I honestly don't know of any non-
adult Tumlbr pages. It seems to consist entirely of premium camgirl pages,
NSFW LGBT discussion, furry and hentai art, and artistic nude photography.

~~~
qwerty456127
They should really just have made another site (which could be fairly easy
given they already have the technology developed, just get a new domain, set
up a new server instance, tweak the design and that's it) if they want a
"clean" one. Tumblr is essentially a porn site, banning all the porn from it
to compete with Instagram makes as much sense as banning all the porn from
PornHub to compete with YouTube.

~~~
paulddraper
Reddit is vastly varied.

There are mountains of politics and hobbies on Reddit.

~~~
qwerty456127
I meant Tumblr, sorry. And I know Tumblr actually is varied too, although in a
smaller degree probably.

------
Karrot_Kream
For folks leaving Tumblr, the Fediverse is a great alternative. You can host
your own instance if you want assurance that content will not be banned, or
join one of the many existing instances that already exist around Tumblr-like
and LGBT-like interests.

------
zxcvbn4038
I worked at Tumblr up until the Verizon merger so this story drew my interest.
Most of the people who work there are too young to remember Betamax but that
sounds like the direction things are going. Good news is that the government
of Turkey can finally stop complaining to Tumblr about all the gay porn --
they are REALLY good at finding it (Short KMB!) Seriously though Tumblr never
made any money on the adult content - they refused to run advertising on it -
it was questionable that the adult content brought eyeballs that stayed around
for the non-adult content. It was just a matter of time before the accounting
people started wondering how much less their monthly S3 bill might be without
the petabytes of un-monetizable porn. Now the question is, can Nyan Cat memes
and a Minecraft blog support the business and justify the merger. Maybe Justin
Timberlake is still in the market?

~~~
joshstrange
> Seriously though Tumblr never made any money on the adult content - they
> refused to run advertising on it

I can't believe this, I only follow(ed?) NSFW blogs and I see ads and
sponsored content all the time.

------
istorical
I have been archiving many of my favorite tumblr's for some time now, but will
have to go in and refresh my downloads.

Highly recommend this app called TumblThree for archiving (also TumblTwo)
[https://www.jzab.de/content/tumblthree](https://www.jzab.de/content/tumblthree)

The UI is a little annoying and takes a little discovery to figure out, but
the actual setup / install is painless.

Edit: after reading more about the shutdown, it appears Tumblr may have their
own export tools, they could be superior if you are exporting your own
content, I'm not really sure.

~~~
eigenstuff
Thank you for this! I had a pretty successful Tumblr where I posted all my
crazy, colorful class notes from my math and physics classes and I've been
wanting to get all those scans off there and into another place for safe back
up. I had hundreds of posts on there, this will actually make it feasible to
do this.

~~~
solarkraft
Hey, since you mentioned it, could you tell me where to find your blog?

------
azizinnn
Well, there is a healthy community concerning a particular obscure kink I have
been 'given', that is not present anywhere else. I wonder what are suitable
places to migrate to.

~~~
LinuxBender
Hosting your own server gives you full control. That said, it puts more
responsibility and liability on you to do content moderation, assuming you
make it public.

Some people do a hybrid approach. A public forum/board to share content, with
some rules. Then another private server for a smaller group of friends to
share anything.

You can also create a Tor Hidden Service.

~~~
tazjin
The thing is that for the more niche kink communities on Tumblr the fact that
everyone was using it was what made them work.

You will never get that kind of activity on a Tor service. If you look at the
more obscure, older fetish-related networks which often still have active IRC
channels and such you'll notice that a large portion of people there are quite
techy.

I don't think that's true for the wider kink community at all, it's just that
the barrier of entry & discoverability of such communities will exclude the
less techy folks.

~~~
LinuxBender
I agree. If something isn't happy-clicky and already works from their existing
browser, most won't bother. Perhaps you could develop a simple innovative way
to make Tor easy for that community to adopt. Maybe a small number of them try
it out at first.

------
jhcl
American indecency running wild again. When does that bunch of religious
extremists make a difference between social unacceptable behavior and physical
lust.

Go ahead with your KKK, QAnon and anti-feminist meetings but keep your tighty-
whities on to avoid shocking people. What a sick bunch of religious
extremists.

------
CPLX
This bit, within the linked story, seems relevant:
[https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18104366/tumblr-ios-
app-...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18104366/tumblr-ios-app-child-
pornography-removed-from-app-store)

~~~
chipotle_coyote
While this may well be a factor in their decision, it seems highly unlikely to
me that (a) Apple was _entirely unaware porn existed on Tumblr_ for the years
the app was in the store before November 2018, and (b) the only way Tumblr
could ensure there was no child porn on their servers was to ban everything
that smacks of NSFW-ness down to "female-presenting nipples." Tumblr's CEO
said they've been considering this move for months, and I don't see any reason
to doubt him.

Tumblr has never made money, as far as I know, and Yahoo's new corporate
parent Oath seems to be a lot less mellow about that sort of thing. I suspect
this is a necessary step before they open the advertising floodgates and see
if they can get Tumblr to start paying for itself. Losing a massive amount of
their userbase is an acceptable outcome as long as there's still _enough_
users there for more advertising to turn a a profit.

~~~
PurpleBoxDragon
b might not be so insane if you consider that tumblr is used by a lot of
people who posts selfies. That would include a lot of teens/tweens. The
problem with selfies is that they wouldn't be in anything like photoDNA and
thus impossible to catch by any of the modern day algorithms except for the
ones designed to catch porn in general. They might not have any better
solution (of course they would ban stuff as it was reported, but that might
not be good enough) and apple's move forced their hand. Guess the question is
what caused apple to do what it did now.

------
keketi
"Tumblr bans all of its content"

------
51lver
The way things are going with centralization, pretty soon the web itself will
be unsuitable for adult media. Maybe we need a xxx:// protocol instead of the
.xxx domain suffix.

~~~
ravenstine
Someone make a Github repo so we can design this new protocol!

~~~
LinuxBender
It does exist. It's not a new protocol, you can use (just about) anything that
supports tcp. The domain names all end in ".onion"

~~~
ravenstine
For such purposes, Tor would be pretty inefficient. I suppose one could say
that the inefficiency is a "feature" that makes the system self-limiting,
curbing porn addiction. LOL

~~~
jstarfish
It'll be like 1996 all over again, only without the added titillation of
listening to the screams and shrieks of a 28.8-baud modem in heat.

Instead of watching hour-long videos in 1080p, you get to watch a single JPEG
download and render line-by-line until the connection drops right at the
exciting part.

~~~
LinuxBender
Tor hidden servers can push around 40mb/s with a tiny bit of tweaking. They
were working on support for the concept of sharding, but you could do that
yourself by having multiple tor nodes. Actually, it's been a while since I
toyed around with it. By now it's probably faster.

------
bliblah
It's a shame because there are some genuinely talented artists there that
partake in NSFW art. A lot of the people I follow seem to be moving their work
to pixiv and taking commissions through patreon. Some are straight up
uploading porn on twitter which is funny considering it is even more public
than tumblr.

To be fair though, there some artists push boundaries far harder than others
especially concerning the "age" of the imaginary character. However I find
these groups far more tame than some fandoms of shows like Stranger Things
that straight up sexualize real life kids such as Finn Wolfhard and Millie
Bobby Brown.

------
rmoriz
FetLife should offer an migration assistant to Tumblr authors and collect the
free business.

------
crankylinuxuser
I figured the writing was on the wall with that whole garbage static page,
along with "Disabled due to safe-mode".

Of course, you had to have an account and all its bullshit to 'turn off' safe
mode.

Whereas, reddit, imgur, pornhub, and all of them have no safe-mode garbage.
Reddit has a click-thru if you hit a sub on a work machine (and then you can
bail out).

But yeah, this is setting a "dead by" date probably 6 months from now. Talk
about killing a property.

~~~
basic1
I still haven't figured out how this works, Tumblr smashes the page to 1/3 the
screen and displays stuff I don't care about in the center 2/3.

~~~
sincerely
It confuses me too. Is there a way to turn it off?

~~~
dnhz
It’s called dashboard view, and some blogs choose to force it.

------
fabricexpert
If you think you can code a tumblr clone in a weekend, this is your
opportunity. You have 2 weeks, go!

~~~
qwerty456127
It's possible to code this fast but hardly possible to host it the way it
would handle the load without a million dollar invoice or to find an investor
that would pay it this fast.

------
Rjevski
So adult content is apparently immoral, but stalking their visitors by leaking
their data to over 100 “partners” (according to their non compliant GDPR
forced “consent” screen) is okay? Lol.

------
phreack
Surprisingly, the thing I'd been using it most for, was that it's the only
major social media website I know that still shows posts in chronological
order.

~~~
Groxx
The app is rather insistent about showing me the same post 20x while hiding
new things though :\

I'm _very_ sad to see chronological continuing to disappear.

------
BlueAThrow
Apple is calling the shots here. Tumblr was not going to be allowed back on
the app store while adult content was on the site.

~~~
jphalimi
Isn't Reddit allowed on iOS?

~~~
Mindwipe
Reddit has been removed from the app store more than once.

------
amaccuish
This sucks. I just deleted my profile since it'll all get deleted anyway. It's
hard to get out there with particular fetish interests in the gay community.
It was a great way to meet some genuinely awesome people. Now all I've got is
Recon, which is aimed more at dating.

------
bookbinder
Honestly, I'm surprised it took this long. I'm assumed Yahoo would have
banned/purged adult content immediately after buying Tumblr.

~~~
ams6110
I have this vague memory that they did, and then had to backtrack, but I could
be thinking of another service.

~~~
sincerely
No, I think you're right. I remember them announcing they would be banning it.

------
elsonrodriguez
Advertisers are being given undue influence in the evolution of our culture.

------
qwerty456127
I wish the could just tag particular subtumblrs as NSFW or something and
filter these by default. Users should be let to choose for themselves. Banning
adult content is ridiculous.

~~~
Laforet
There is already forced login for tagged adult subs, as well as a quarantine
mode that embed the affected subs to your timeline rather than accessible as
its own subdomain. If anything this has already killed much discoverability
because search engines are prevented from crawling and their in-house search
is useless anyway.

------
solarkraft
Tumblr was a great place for porn. This is a great opportunity for a
competitor to snap up the community and I wonder who it will be.

------
Wowfunhappy
I think this should be considered the original source, as opposed to the Verge
article?

[https://tumblr.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/231885248-Sensi...](https://tumblr.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/231885248-Sensitive-content)

------
aw3c2
Keep an eye on
[https://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Tumblr](https://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Tumblr)
or join #tumbledown on EFNet to join ArchiveTeam's coordinated, collaborative
effort in saving things.

------
IkmoIkmo
I don't really get it. Reddit can do porn and has an iOS app. A blanket ban
just doesn't seem necessary, especially if it's a large part of your community
and technically Tumblr isn't a particularly novel product in 2018, community
is all you have.

------
antidaily
I havent blogged on Tumblr in 6 years but I bookmarked some really great
curated photography/art sites that were 99% SFW. Safe Mode login loop thing
was so annoying I gave up on checking them. I noticed a couple other Tumblrs I
enjoyed moving stuff to instagram.

------
leppr
_> Community members with content that is no longer permitted on Tumblr will
get a heads up from us in advance and steps they can take to appeal or
preserve their content outside the community if they so choose._

That's the big positive from this announcement. Giving ample prior warning,
and even helping the transition will certainly atenuate the feeling of
betrayal community members have when being ousted.

I sure wish Yahoo did this during the first "advertiser cleansing", back when
they acquired Tumblr.

Instead, I remember the dread as I scrolled through my blog to find 5 to 10%
of the carefully curated pictures on it had been censored out, with no warning
whatsoever.

------
danimal88
If only we demanded more of the violence industry rather than the sex policing
industry.

------
m-localhost
Anybody remembers the AI generated porn? Yahoo's experimental porn filter is
the basis of beaches and dunes getting flagged as adult content.

[https://open_nsfw.gitlab.io](https://open_nsfw.gitlab.io)

------
bjornstar
They really downplayed the effect of Apple removing the tumblr app from their
app store. With the tumblr app is still gone from the Apple app store for 3
weeks now, it's very hard not to see this move as being directed by Apple.

I think it's disappointing that they chose to block all adult content rather
than filter adult content in the iOS app. The world would be much better off
without Apple dictating what we can put on our websites.

------
olivermarks
There's always demand for 'adult content' so my assumption is sites like
steemit and minds are going to get a sudden population rush, especially given
Steemit's monetization model, on December 18. Oath I'll assume are shuttering
sites they can't data mine for marketing intel on users, and to not be
associated with the terrabytes of 'adult content' they currently host...

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m-p-3
It's like if 4chan was bought by someone who wanted to make it more family-
friendly and get rid of /b/ or /s/.

That will not go well.

~~~
jasonjayr
4chan recently split SFW & NSFW boards onto separate domains ...

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stevenicr
I wonder if tumblr will keep the content available for some time after the
17th and if the API (and dashboard) will still work for blogs that have been
flagged as NSFA.

The main wordpress importer depends on the tumblr API to connect and pull
posts and pics and such I believe. So it would be nice if that was an option
for some time after the shutdown.

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qwerty456127
That's exactly the thing it was useful for. There was just so much beauty (as
well as so much weirdness neighboring it but I didn't mind) RIP Tumblr.
Anybody capable and interested please back-up and re-upload to some
alternative (what are any, BTW)? I was so glad such a censorship-free place
existed.

------
bcheung
Anyone have stats on how much of Tumblr is adult? My impression was that it is
a huge percentage of it.

~~~
mrlala
I've never been on a tumblr that wasn't adult..

Also, I believe on mobile you "had" to use their app if you wanted to see 18+
content users.

So they were indirectly promoting their app with nsfw content...

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rmykhajliw
Half or more Tumblr traffic comes for adult content, without this, it's just
another platform to publish your I don't even know the purpose of Tumblr now:
images, thoughts ? I suppose the market for Tumblr has changed and died -
Medium has replaced tumblr everywhere.

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largehotcoffee
RIP Tumblr.

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mimixco
This is sad. Tumblr was one of the last few places that adults could share
explicit photos. Without them, everything will be paid sites. :-(

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ourcat
This strikes me as a heck of an opportunity to create a system (with a tumblr
importer) specifically replicating Tumblr, but for pr0n.

"fumblr" ?

~~~
intrasight
Given that the porn industry basically invented the monetized internet, I
assume that the "opportunity" was seized long ago.

~~~
ourcat
I don't think the adult industry has truly been able to simplify things as
much as products like tumblr (and other social media networks.)

Fetlife probably does a good job for certain 'niches'.

What I mean is, all the 'tumblrees' and "their" 'content' ( so much air-quote)
will want to go somewhere. En masse. Soon. Most likely in protest.

~~~
kinos
Why did you word that as if the poster didn't create the content within the
blog?

~~~
iamdave
Tumblr as a platform exists on shared content, and actively measures, and
provides to the user-measurements of "reblogs". In the context of _this_
discussion, so many user account blogs that could be tagged as 'adult content'
are full of reblogged sexual images that the account owner identifies with or
wants to advertise as the type of sexual activity they are interested in.

Many comments here are pointing out Fetlife as a refuge for some tumblr ex-
pats. Speaking as a Fetlife user, it's not hard to see why the 'their' is in
quotes. When you see a tumblr profile on someone's fetlife profile it's often
described by the profile owner as "you can see the kind of stuff I'm into on
my tumblr" with a small ratio of original content to reshared content. Either
images from a movie, online porn, or just "reblog" of another tumblr user's
content when not the blogger's own images that are being posted.

This isn't me taking a position on adult content on tumblr, denouncing it or
condoning it either way-but I think that bit of context might help answer your
question.

It doesn't define the entire experience for the entirety of the
porographically inclined userbase, but it's relevant.

~~~
kinos
Ah, that makes sense. I was seeing it from the point of view that reblogs are
seen as just that. A method of sharing, not a method of laying claim. Its a
way of saying "Look at this thing, and heres the source" thats pretty simple
to do.

To me, "Content" implies stuff you uploaded directly, being the source
yourself.

I can see the confusion now.

~~~
iamdave
_To me, "Content" implies stuff you uploaded directly, being the source
yourself._

You'll sometimes see someone tag a picture post, if they tag it at all, if
it's something the blogger actually created themselves with #oc for "original
content" or they'll just tell you as much in the caption. Not always, but
sometimes.

I'm not on tumblr for the porn (I read it for the articles, I swear), but a
lot of the mechanisms and meta-memes of how people use the platform are pretty
consistent across subgroups.

------
qwerty456127
BTW isn't there a viable distributed P2P alternative perhaps? Something like
Aether but without content life time limit?

------
t0astbread
What even is Tumblr at this point? Who would want to blog on a platform that
restricts your speech so heavily?

------
xhruso00
I think some of the content will move to Instagram and Twitter

~~~
bluetidepro
Instagram is extremely strict with NSFW content today because of Facebook.
Twitter, however, is def more lenient with it.

------
turtle408
As well, they turn off their half of the server fleet.

------
dimensi0nal
"Porn site bans porn"

------
perseusprime11
Take note, Instagram!

------
gammateam
as soon as the buyout news hit I said “well there goes all the porn”

Surprised the berkeley intern didnt put me on blast on social media

Or maybe she did but everyone said “he’s right tho”

------
therealmarv
Any alternative from China or Russia? This adult censoring from US (even
Google is doing that!) is driving me nuts as an adult European.

Or anything backed on IPFS ?!

------
Grue3
The real culprit needs to be called out here. Fuck apple and their puritanical
crusade against porn. Anyone who appreciates NSFW content needs to boycott
them.

~~~
intopieces
Huh? How does Apple play into this?

~~~
chipotle_coyote
Apple pulled the Tumblr iOS app after complaining to Tumblr about them hosting
_child pornography,_ not just NSFW blogs, and not seeing action being taken.

As I mentioned elsewhere, Tumblr stripping adult content is very likely a move
toward making their site advertiser-friendly, because Oath (their new
corporate parent) does not have the tolerance for losing money that Yahoo did.
I mean, yes, getting rid of all content from "female-presenting nipples" on up
should technically get rid of the child porn, too, but the breadth of Tumblr's
actions here make it highly unlikely this is primarily driven by getting the
app back in the iOS App Store. (I mean, hell, Tumblr doesn't _need_ an app,
and it's not like Apple blocks you from surfing to porn sites on Safari.)

------
nailer
Blog spam / Vox media.

Original URL: [https://tumblr.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/231885248-Sensi...](https://tumblr.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/231885248-Sensitive-content)

HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18590605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18590605)

~~~
nailer
Ugh the original source is now marked as a dupe and The Verge version is on
front page. Dang/sctb please do better!

