The Countdown to the End of Tumblr Begins

Where do you turn when you want to see some dick or tits? Most will say they do a Google search, which is fair. Most of the searches, though, will lead to a long list of Tumblr accounts that have the desired content that's being sought after. In the coming weeks, however, that will change as Tumblr has decided to ban adult content on the platform.

What's being banned? Erect penises, women's nipples and vaginas, and any depiction of sexual intercourse or acts that are a part of sex. All the good stuff will be deleted or moved to private so that it cannot be reblogged by the community. As of right now, this seems to only apply to pictures and films. The company is said to be holding the line when it comes to text (read erotic stories), but that seems to be the next thing that will go as the site tries to clean itself up and make it more family friendly.

What brought this on? There was a brief moment where the Tumblr app was taken off of Apple's App Store because of child porn. It needs to be said that the account (no one has mentioned what account it was) needed to be shut down. That led to quick action, however, where Tumblr began to immediately mark posts as porn and remove it from its community—even though they have a start date of December 17, 2018. While the first situation described above may have been the straw that broke the camel's back, this "cleaning" up of the social media app has been in the works for a while now.

In fact, some of the blogs had already started disappearing before that child porn scandal happened. One in particular, Video Thots, had been taken down weeks ago with no explanation for what happened to it or why. The real reason and the truth of the matter is probably already known: Porn is not friendly to advertisers, and it makes it difficult to monetize the website. Corporations want to make money.

Tumblr was bought by Verizon's Oath unit, and for a while, the company swore that nothing had to change. Yet, no way was that going to stay true forever. Verizon is a major company that doesn't want the appearance of being a porn supporter, but they didn't want to rock their social media goldmine either. When they were handed their chance to clean it up and try to compete with Facebook, they took it.

What happens now? Well, some of the people who used the platform to connect with fans are now encouraging them to follow them on other platforms like OnlyFans or following them on Twitter, which does allow nudity, but has to carry a warning. Nick Snyder, who was an early adopter of the platform and boasts posts that are regularly reblogged thousands and thousands of times had this to say on his Tumblr page:

“December 17th all adult content blogs will be removed. It’s been amazing sharing with you all! Sign up @ onlyfans.com/nicksecretsxxx or Twitter xnicksecretsx to continue following me on my journey!! ❤️ you guys!!”

And just like that, the popularity of Tumblr has started to disappear.

Will Tumblr survive this new incarnation? One that is not over the top with naked images and videos. Probably not. Look at other social media experiments that ended up in the realms of Myspace because they banned adult content. Even Instagram allows users to bare their butts and tease their naked bodies once in a while. This will be the beginning of the end for Tumblr.