Tumblr is bringing back nudity, reversing the infamous 2018 porn ban

Worried about the role Elon Musk will have in ruining Twitter? It looks like everyone’s old favourite social media platform is trying to lure back in its user base.

This week, Tumblr announced that it will revisit its content guidance rules, allowing nudity back on the platform.

“We now welcome a broader range of expression, creativity, and art on Tumblr, including content depicting the human form (yes, that includes the naked human form),” a Tumblr staff post announced.

Content that includes “nudity, mature subject matter, or sexual themes,” is allowed once again.

It’s not a full-on return to the days of porn being allowed on the platform though, as it goes on to state that “visual depictions of sexually explicit acts remain off-limits on Tumblr.”

Tumblr was in its heyday as the premier online blog platform in the early 2010s. It was a hivemind of popular culture GIFs, emotional outpourings, and… porn.

Porn was a crucial part of many Tumblr users’ experience, but in 2018, the site banned all nudity from the platform.

New CEO, Jeff D’Onofrio, arrived and removed all “photos, videos, or GIFs” or explicit material as well as “illustrations that [depict] sex acts.”

It was a catastrophic decision for Tumblr.

In 2013, at the height of its popularity, Tumblr was bought by Yahoo for €1.1 billion.

Within a year of the porn ban, Tumblr lost 30 per cent of its visitors and was sold for a paltry €3 million.

From a billion to millions in six years. Was the porn ban the main culprit? It certainly had its part to play.

At the time of the decision to ban explicit content, a massive part of Tumblr’s user base was LGBTQ+ communities.

Just a casual scroll through Tumblr would reveal an endless slew of GIFs and screenshots from TV shows and films with