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Feminism

Tumblr Banning ‘Adult Content’ And ‘Female Presenting Nipples’ Is Not Only Stupid, It’s Actively Damaging Online Communities

Literally how is alienating all the horny bloggers good for business?

Starting December 17, explicit adult content will no longer be welcome on Tumblr. It is quite possibly the stupidest decision the blogging platform company could make, and it just really sucks.

The amendment to the community guidelines was announced by Tumblr’s CEO Jeff D’Onofrio on Monday in a blog post titled “A better, more positive Tumblr.” His claim is that the company is looking to foster “more constructive dialogue among our community members.”

But these guidelines are sh*t. Sorry, had to say it.

“We’re taking another step by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions),” said D’Onofrio.

‘Adult content’ includes “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.”

In case you have not had the pleasure of wading into the deeply explicit waters of Tumblr porn, just know that it’s a big part of the platform. And porn as a concept isn’t in itself bad at all – in fact the Tumblr porn community was considered a relatively safe space to explore sexuality. Until now Tumblr was looking like a pretty sex positive social platform.

But now Tumblr is literally alienating a whole chunk of horny users. Not exactly the recipe for success???

The ban on “female-presenting nipples” takes away one of the best things about Tumblr, and now aligns it with the same sexism that plagues Instagram. It’s a step backwards. Female nipples don’t need to be sexual, and they should be allowed to exist online (and anywhere) if we want them to.

https://twitter.com/jrfactora/status/1069652245317324800?

There’s also the issue that this ban is damaging heaps of communities that use Tumblr to share empowering content. These rules alienate groups that are sex-positive, queer, artists, and also sex workers, who are already being driven off platforms like Instagram.

What makes things worse, is that Tumblr has a lot of content that needs to be censored, but it’s not this. There are so many blogs and posts that promote hate speech, eating disorders, bigotry, violence, the list goes on. And yet they are coming after the nips, of course.

Finally, the cherry on top of this whole mess is that the censorship process seems thoroughly flawed, and people are having all kinds of posts flagged that don’t even come close to being explicit.

So this really could go down in history as the decision that killed Tumblr. RIP.