OnlyFans is following Tumblr and banning sexually explicit content
ONLYFANS has announced it will be banning adult content, similarly to how Tumblr did in 2018. With the regulation changes coming into effect from October 1, there’s questions how users will react, and if it will change how the platform is used. What happened to Tumblr after they banned adult content? Tumblr was noted for […]
ONLYFANS has announced it will be banning adult content, similarly to how Tumblr did in 2018.
With the regulation changes coming into effect from October 1, there’s questions how users will react, and if it will change how the platform is used.
What happened to Tumblr after they banned adult content?
Tumblr was noted for its sizeable amount of pornographic content, with a reported 16.45% of blogs exclusively contained pornographic material.
On December 17, 2018, Tumblr banned adult content – of which included pictures, GIFs, illustrations and videos that “depicts sex acts”.
After this, all content that Tumblr’s sensors flagged as violating their policies was set to private and could then only be seen by the blog’s creator.
The news generated shock and anger among users since as up until then, porn was tacitly allowed on Tumblr since its founding in 2007.
It impacted a large proportion of its user community who use the platform to share erotic and NSFW imagery including everything from fanart to sex education.
The ban particularly affected those representing LGBT communities who felt underrepresented by mainstream sites and use it as a safe haven share creative work with adult themes.
Within a year of the “porn ban,” traffic to Tumblr and app downloads dropped drastically.
In 2019, Tumblr was bought by the WordPress owner Automattic for less than $3 million, compared with its once-$1.1 billion price tag.
Why did Tumblr ban adult content?
It seemed very like that Apple forced Tumblr to make the move.
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In November 2018, Apple removed the blogging platform from its app store over child pornography issues.
In a statement, Tumblr said that while every image uploaded to the platform is “scanned against an industry database of child sexual abuse material” to filter out explicit images, a “routine audit” discovered content that was absent from the database, allowing it to slip through the filter.
This led to a sitewide crackdown on pornography and eventually the banning of adult content.