
Tumblr announced Monday that it would take down any blogs and posts of nudity and sexual activity, among the site’s more popular subject matters. The platform, which was launched in 2007, had gained a reputation for being one of the few mainstream social platforms that allowed nudity and images of consensual sex.
No longer. Tumblr said that starting Dec. 17 sexually explicit content would be removed, and it has been notifying users who have posted that type of content. “Adult content primarily includes photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples,” Tumblr said in a blog post. “And any contentincluding photos, videos, GIFs and illustrationsthat depicts sex acts.”
The site, which claims to host 449.3 million separate blogs comprising 167 billion posts, would still allow artistic expressions of nudity like in paintings, drawings and images of sculptures, and also breastfeeding pictures. The announcement was met with widespread surprise that a platform built on free expression–one where pornography circulated widely–would effectively nullify its point of differentiation.
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