When Tumblr bans porn, who loses?
On Monday, Tumblr CEO Jeff D’Onofrio announced in a post on the staff blog that explicit visual content will be banned from the site starting on December 17. That means no more sex acts, no more nudity, and no more “female-presenting nipples,” whatever that means.
Two former Tumblr employees said they were alarmed when Khalaf chose Black Lives Matter as an example of a community that the company should focus on converting into Yahoo media consumers.
“Simon explicitly said that Black Lives Matter was an opportunity to [make] a ton of money.”
“[The NSFW ban] was going to happen anyway,” the former engineer told me. “Verizon pushed it out the door after the child pornography thing and made the deadline sooner,” but the real problem was always that Verizon couldn’t sell ads next to porn.
Porn on Tumblr is something Verizon needs to wipe out if it’s going to make any money off what it thinks is actually valuable about the platform — enormous fandom and social justice communities that, just before the Verizon acquisition, Khalaf was insisting the staff figure out how to better monetize.
The former employee also noted that Tumblr’s engineering team has been shrinking, with senior staff leaving for other jobs without hearing counteroffers from Verizon. Odd, because Tumblr would probably have an easier time growing if there were more investment in basic problems that a robust engineering team could address
The search feature is notoriously terrible, and the limited discovery features on the platform are virtually useless. Tumblr has struggled with porn bots and bad ads for years, but its tools for rooting them out are also widely considered to be far below the industry standard.
Fandom communities, sex workers, researchers, and all kinds of Tumblr users who use the platform for a range of artistic or personal expression will find themselves restricted by the new rules — and many say it will force them to leave the platform.
“To alienate this loyal and vocal part of the site is shocking to me. Yet, on the other hand, when I read ‘female-presenting nipples’ I realized [Tumblr is] just another site that hates the female form. Is there any woman out here in 2018, sex worker or not, that’s surprised by the ability of a company to demonize a woman’s body? I don’t think so.”
A transgender Tumblr user and sex worker who wished to remain anonymous tells Vox, “Tumblr was a safe place to work for me because it allowed me to self manage. It’s actually more difficult that people think to get into sex work successfully online. Many cam sites are sketchy, will take the vast majority of your profits and make you sign over the rights to your content meaning they can repost it anywhere. [And] content like what I made/make is only really appealing to others in the LGBT community — I’m not wanted elsewhere and it’s hard for me to look at a profit anywhere else.”
[Kate Hagen] points out that many of Tumblr users are women, much or most of the explicit content on Tumblr “was made by, for, and about women,” and that Tumblr’s “all porn” reputation stems from the fact that “women were thrilled to finally find porn that fit their interests, and wanted to foster that community as much as possible.” The decision to squash all that, she says, is gendered, and a major loss.
[Internet archivist Jason Scott says] “You will never say to me that a phrase like ‘female-presenting nipples’ comes from a place of thought and consideration and working with your community.”
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