Tumblr suffers 150 million drop in traffic after porn ban
LGBT+ protesters promised to abandon Tumblr if the porn ban wasn’t revoked. (Tumblr and twitter)
Tumblr traffic has reportedly dropped by more than 150 million since the website banned porn.
The social platform prohibited all “photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples” on the site from December 17.
A month later, Tumblr’s traffic fell from 521 million monthly page views to 437 million, according to analytics site SimilarWeb.
Tumblr has suffered a big drop in traffic, according to data from SimilarWeb. (piktochart)
Another dramatic drop from January to February left the platform with 370 million monthly page views.
This was 151 million fewer page views than Tumblr had in December—a 29 percent decrease.
The Tumblr ban on porn has sparked outrage and protests
In December, LGBT+ pornographers told PinkNews that Tumblr’s porn ban would “further marginalise” the queer community.
Artist and filmmaker Courtney Trouble, who was a major figure in the birth of the queer porn movement in the US, said: “The Tumblr ban on adult content will affect queer and trans users by taking away a vital social component to a community that is bound together by their sexual orientation and sexual desire.”
She added: “Without social media that allows this kind of exploration, we are losing a lot.”
“Tumblr provided a community and access to porn for LGBT+ and POC people.”
— Paulita Pappel
Paulita Pappel, a queer-friendly pornographer who runs homemade porn company Lustery, told PinkNews that Tumblr’s ban would disproportionately hit the LGBT+ community, as well as people of colour.
“Tumblr provided a community and access to porn for LGBT+ and POC people that would escape the sexist, homophobic and racist standards that other platforms unfortunately reproduce,” she said.
The site, which faced outrage from the LGBT+ community last year when it was revealed that its new safe mode blocked LGBT+ content, took the step to ban porn after its app was removed from the App Store following the discovery of child porn on Tumblr.
Floods of queer people organised virtual demonstrations after the announcement.
The #logoffprotest on December 18 lasted 24 hours and its leaders urged participants to permanently delete their accounts if the ban wasn’t lifted.
The protest was mainly concerned with “the flagging system Tumblr uses, and how it directly targets content creators. Oftentimes, content creators’ posts are flagged as NSFW (Not Safe For Work) even when SFW.
“This prevents others from seeing the post, damaging their audience. Not only is art incorrectly flagged, but memes are as well. Simple pictures of cats are being flagged as NSFW,” the protest’s leaders claimed.
“The ban is good in principle, but in practice it is ineffective and damaging to the community as a whole.”
