After banning adult content, the traffic from the blogging platform plummeted.
The blogging platform Tumblr has lost nearly a third of its traffic three months after setting up a porn filter. According to SimilarWeb Tumblr recorded in December still 521 million visitors, in February there were only 370 million more – which corresponds to a decline of almost 29 percent. The highest level in the previous year in July and March, where each recorded 642 million visitors.
Tumblr set up a porn filter the previous year and banned the uploading of adult content. These include, according to the US platform, all content “the genitals of real people or bared female nipples show” and “show the sexual acts”. This sparked fierce community protests as Tumblr was one of the last major platforms to allow such content. “There is no shortage of websites on the Internet where you can find such content,” said Tumblr CEO Jeff D’Onofrio the previous year, suggesting that users who do not like the changes could switch platforms. An offer that was apparently accepted by many users.
Tumblr has been under pressure in recent years because of its pornographic content. Among other things, Indonesia threatened the 2016 platform with a national ban if it were not filtered. In addition, the official Tumblr app flew out of the App Store for a short time, because child pornographic content appeared and was not deleted fast enough. At the same time, the automatic filter for “adult content” caused unfortunate misunderstandings and removed accidentally unobjectionable images of Garfield and Super Mario.
