Tumblr‘s 2018 porn ban was a massive blow to the platform’s culture, blocking a wide array of content from hardcore porn GIFs to LGBTQ+ media, fan art, and innocuous images that the anti-NSFW filter wrongly interpreted as nudes. This led to a mass exodus of users, and while Tumblr is still active, it’s often perceived by outsiders as a has-been platform. This week, though, Tumblr took a step back toward its former glory: Lifting the ban on nude images.
After weeks of speculation about a potential end to the porn ban, Tumblr announced its new community guidelines on Tuesday. While “visual depictions of sexually explicit acts” are still banned, Tumblr users can post content with “nudity, mature subject matter, or sexual themes.” This kind of material should be tagged with the appropriate “community label” so other users can filter the content they don’t want to see—like violence, sexual imagery, or drug addiction.
In other words, one of the most notorious elements of the porn ban—the rule against “female-presenting nipples”—is now gone. However, it’s only a partial relaxation of the rules. The new guidelines are still very unfriendly toward sex workers, which was one of the main controversies surrounding the 2018 ban. While users can now post nudes without fear of censorship, they’re not allowed to accompany them with links to “adult-oriented affiliate networks,” or ads for erotic services.
These new guidelines are being met with a predictably mixed response on the platform, with some users celebrating the return of nudes while others question Tumblr’s ambiguous definition of adult content. As with the original 2018 porn ban, it will take a while for users to figure out how these rules are actually implemented.
This announcement arrived with amusing timing alongside the recent developments at Twitter. Following Elon Musk’s takeover, a lot of Twitter users are either considering leaving the platform or are simply preparing for Twitter to collapse outright. Tumblr is one of the more obvious alternatives, and the idea of a Tumblr comeback is pretty amusing in context.
Tumblr’s new community labeling system could theoretically pave the way for further relaxation of the NSFW guidelines, but Tumblr users shouldn’t get too optimistic. The platform is still subject to outside influences like advertisers and the App Store, which blocks explicit adult content. In the words of Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Tumblr’s parent company Automattic, “no modern internet service in 2022 can have the rules that Tumblr did in 2007.”
