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Tumblr has announced that from 17 December all adult content will be blocked on the platform. It specifically concerns porn and images of human genitalia and female nipples.

There are, however, a number of exceptions to the rules. For example, images of female nipples are allowed when it comes to images of breastfeeding, childbirth and moments after childbirth. This is also permitted in health-related situations. Furthermore, the blockade does not apply to written text, which means that erotic texts remain visible. In addition, naked images are allowed if they are related to politics, news or art.

The content does not disappear completely. The images that are no longer allowed on the platform will be set to private. That means they’re only visible to the owner of the blog. Affected bloggers will receive email notifications as of today. Users who do not agree with the blog website may appeal against the decision.

According to a 2013 report by SimilarWeb, about which ZDNet writes, the step means that about 11.4 percent of the content of the most popular blogs will disappear. That report also revealed that about a fifth of all traffic to the site came from adult websites and came from pornographic messages. The figures are now outdated, but show that the blockade affects a large part of the content.

Child pornography

The step comes after Tumblr found it difficult to identify and remove child pornography and content about forced prostitution. For example, two weeks ago Apple removed the company’s app from the App Store. Apple stated that the platform had not recognized child pornography and therefore it was still live. Apple then decided to delete the app completely.

Tumblr now says it uses a combination of automated tools and people to detect pornographic content.

This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.