If you’ve been anywhere near a wifi-optimated device in the last week, you’ll have heard the news: Tumblr is dead — or it might as well be. Granted, if you type ‘tumblr.com’ into your search bar, you’ll still bring up the familiar dark blue background of alt blogging platform. The site still exists, but it’s a shell of its former self.
Rewind to November 16th, when Apple announced it would stop carrying Tumblr in it’s app store after images of child pornography were found on the platform. Since then, the social network has been waging war on adult content, with moderators attempting to scourge the site of any NSFW images. On December 3rd, execs officially announced a blanket ban on pornography which would remove all adult-orientated content by December 17th. It goes without saying that images of child pornography should not be permitted, but sites should be capable of flagging and removing content like this whilst still allowing adult content to flourish. However, pressure from Apple (note Google Play never dropped Tumblr) has overwhelmed the blogging platform with a wave of anti-sex censorship that fundamentally threatens its legacy.
As a queer person in my early twenties, Tumblr was a vital part of my teen experience. Before brands had worked out how to sanitise and sell diversity, there just wasn’t representation of queer bodies in media. Fiercely closeted, completely removed from the LGBTQ+ community and frankly frightened of some of my sexual impulses, Tumblr provided the DIY sex-positive landscape I needed. It was the first time I saw casual reference to queer subcultures, and it provided access to adult content creators depicting themselves as sexual beings on their own terms, outside mainstream beauty standards. My own blogging was disingenuously vanilla (I was on a whole other level of self-denial) but Tumblr afforded a proximity to kink, fetish, and queerness which ultimately helped shape my sexual identity.
And I’m certainly not alone in this. For millennials, Tumblr thrived as a radical pocket of the Internet away from the panopticon of traditional social media. The blogging platform afforded a level of anonymity allowing millennials to be radically vulnerable on the Internet, without having to present a polished front for exes, snooping family members, or future employers. It was on Tumblr that you could ask a stranger about how to safely get into BDSM, or gain the education in queer sexual health not covered by the school curriculum. With this kind of content now being systematically flagged and removed, an important learning archive and resource has now been lost forever.
And for adult content creators, Tumblr’s new censorship rules are devastating. Tumblr was a space where groups marginalised by the mainstream porn industry — namely POC, trans people and the differently abled — could profitably create and sell content independently. It created a micro digital landscape where sex workers, no matter who they were, were able to celebrate their beauty away mainstream porn’s hegemonic standards. Allowing adult content to flourish alongside art, film and meme content helped destigmatise sex work and remove it from the shadows of censorship. Not only was Tumblr important for creating a conversation around sex and sex work, it was also vital for some content creators’ livelihoods. Communicating directly with fans, the platform gave content creators an alternative to the larger, corporate porn sites taking an exploitative cut of profits. In a climate where whorephobia is still rampant, even in supposedly “feminist” milieus, a necessary safe space is now being ripped away.
With these new censorship measures, the platform as we have come to know it, is no more. Inclusion and sex-positivity were fundamental components of the site’s DNA from the off-set; without them, it’s just a continuous scroll of pretty images. So, yes, Tumblr hasn’t officially passed away, but the end is nigh — and I, for one, won’t be coming to the funeral.
Header image: Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013) dir. by Abdellatif Kechiche, Artificial Eye.
