Porn ban pulls down Tumblr site traffic by 150 million

Tumblr introduced a “safe mode” to filter “sensitive” images as a response to child pornography found on the website. This resulted in a drop in visits from 521 million in December to 369 million in February, as per data from analytics website SimilarWeb.

Tumblr defined 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 site was known for its adult content that was more than porn videos or images. Blogs were dedicated to discussing sex in healthy ways while some curated porn for specific communities. For instance, Bijouworld was dedicated to the history of gay porn, while Critique My Dick Pic put humor into dick pictures by grading them from A to F.

Users tried to rally the site to withdraw the ban with a petition that gained 600,000 signatures, but to no avail.

Tumblr also launched an anti-porn algorithm which has been criticized for flagging non-pornographic content, from illustrations of dogs to landscape photos.

My only #Tumblr that got flagged (I always forget to post on there so everything is quite old)

I mean

Those dogs ARE naked technically.

Watch out for slutty pooches y'all. pic.twitter.com/b8f1XvOX7R

— Monica (@Monica_ion) December 4, 2018

Some of my photos flagged as explicit by tumblr's new algorithm. I would say I'm impressed with how bad it is, but… Yeah this was about what I expected#RipTumblr pic.twitter.com/BF5xQx3xo0

— naye (@unnaye) December 4, 2018

The changes have been feared by users to be driving away artists who rely on the site to promote work and gain commissions.