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Tumblr's Web Traffic Has Dropped From 520 Million Page Views in December 2018 To 370 Million Page Views in February This Year Following Adult Content Ban (independent.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the repercussions dept.

Tumblr's ban on pornography and adult content has led to an estimated fifth of its users deserting the platform. From a report: Tumblr's ban on pornography and adult content has led to a fifth of its users deserting the platform, figures reveal. The ban, which came into effect on 17 December, provoked a backlash from users who claimed it would penalise sex-positive, LGBT and NSFW art communities. Visits to the Tumblr website fell from 521 million in December to 437 million in January and 370 million in February, according to data from web analytics firm SimilarWeb. Tumblr's decision to update its content policy came after the discovery of child sexual abuse imagery on its blogs.

3 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. The lesson is to not take away. by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If your business model is based on numbers and traffic, (to show advertising) taking away content will normally bite back.
    It allowed Adult Content, it blocked it, there is a population who used the platform for that content, and now no longer uses it. Thus less add content.

    If Tumblr never allowed the content to begin with, users wouldn't have used the site for such content, and they wouldn't have such a dip in users.

    In general a cut in revenue is worse, then having a slow steady rise in revenue. As any of you who had pay cuts or got fired from your job know. We buy housing, and transportation based on what we are able to support, If we make more money we will usually get a more expensive one. With a price cut, we have a lot of large expenses that is difficult to trim down quickly. That house mortgage is still there, you may still have car payments, It will take time to sell your house and your car may be too devalued to make it affordable to trade in for a cheaper version.
    Tumblr probably now needs to figure out how to run more lean, as a lot of their resources were needed in the past and now they don't need as much anymore, costing them more to operate with less revenue in.
     

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:The lesson is to not take away. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      They should have made an adult spin-off site. Served both markets, resolved the issues for advertisers who don't want to be on a porn site.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Re:Probably worse than that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Most of us migrated to Newgrounds / Twitter but yeah it's DEAD on tumblr now, I check my feed every couple of days and there's not much content being pumped out at all. The main trouble is users who were banned for adult content usually only ran NSFW side-blogs so you didn't just lose porn you lost SFW content they contributed as well.

    Granted I was only there for the shitposts and art (SFW and otherwise) but the whole place is an empty shell of itself.

    Like I say most of us have moved to twitter for our microblogging and Newgrounds to post are lewd content and so far the experience has been a good one. Tumblr was a real trip, I've been using it for 9 years now but its time is over.

    Conspiracy theory time: it's well known within the Tumblr community that Verizon wasn't making heaps of money with it, some of us think this may have been a self-sabotaging move to make it so unprofitable Verizon just dumps it after a year or so