All changes won’t happen overnight as something of this complexity takes time.Īnother thing, filtering this type of content versus say, a political protest with nudity or the statue of David, is not simple at scale. Community members with content that is no longer permitted on Tumblr will get a heads up from us in advance and steps they can take to appeal or preserve their content outside the community if they so choose. Starting December 17, 2018, we will begin enforcing this new policy. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community. 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.īottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We spent considerable time weighing the pros and cons of expression in the community that includes adult content. 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. It is our continued, humble aspiration that Tumblr be a safe place for creative expression, self-discovery, and a deep sense of community. We want to make sure that we continue to foster this type of diversity of expression in the community, so our new policy strives to strike a balance. We recognize Tumblr is also a place to speak freely about topics like art, sex positivity, your relationships, your sexuality, and your personal journey. Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr, and we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to reflect this policy change.
We can never prevent all bad actors from attempting to abuse our platform, but we make it our highest priority to keep the community as safe as possible. We also closely partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation, two invaluable organizations at the forefront of protecting our children from abuse, and through these partnerships we report violations of this policy to law enforcement authorities. To this end, we continuously invest in the enforcement of this policy, including industry-standard machine monitoring, a growing team of human moderators, and user tools that make it easy to report abuse. We’ve always had and always will have a zero tolerance policy for this type of content. Let’s first be unequivocal about something that should not be confused with today’s policy change: posting anything that is harmful to minors, including child pornography, is abhorrent and has no place in our community. Today, we’re taking another step by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions).
Some of that change began with fostering more constructive dialogue among our community members.
We’ve realized that in order to continue to fulfill our promise and place in culture, especially as it evolves, we must change. Over the past several months, and inspired by our storied past, we’ve given serious thought to who we want to be to our community moving forward and have been hard at work laying the foundation for a better Tumblr. To borrow from our founder David Karp, we’re proud to have inspired a generation of artists, writers, creators, curators, and crusaders to redefine our culture and to help empower individuality. Since its founding in 2007, Tumblr has always been a place for wide open, creative self-expression at the heart of community and culture.