R.I.P Tumblr, Which Just Banned Porn

Farewell, forever-looping GIFs of ladies touching tongues. Goodbye, meticulously curated sub-niches, like Kawaii BDSM. And, probably, “rest in peace” to Tumblr itself, which just decided to get rid of the only thing the Yahoo-owned microblogging platform had going for it: porn.

As of December 17th, Tumblr will start censoring the site according to new community guidelines, which prohibit “images, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples.” Female-presenting nipples! Can we get over boobs already. The policy allows for some rare exceptions: “Certain types of artistic, educational, newsworthy, or political content featuring nudity are fine.”

The rationale for the decision is unclear, despite a lengthy blog post from CEO Jeff D’Onofrio on the subject. It seems vaguely to do with protecting people from the porns, even though the site already makes it fairly difficult to find the porns. This decision follows Tumblr’s recent removal from the Apple iOS App Store over a failure to fully filter out child pornography. This led to the removal of some NSFW accounts, according to The Daily Dot. And now this.

“As Tumblr continues to grow and evolve, and our understanding of our impact on our world becomes clearer, we have a responsibility to consider that impact across different age groups, demographics, cultures, and mindsets,” writes D’Onofrio. “We spent considerable time weighing the pros and cons of expression in the community that includes adult content. In doing so, it became clear that without this content we have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.”

Just as long as that self-expression doesn’t involve “female-presenting nipples,” whatever that means.