Tumblr to allow nude images; ‘sexually explicit’ ones still not OK

By Trudy Ring

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    LOS ANGELES (Advocate Channel) — Blogging site Tumblr will now allow images of nudity, the company announced Tuesday in conjunction with an update to its community guidelines.

“We now welcome a broader range of expression, creativity, and art on Tumblr, including content depicting the human form (yes, that includes the naked human form),” the announcement reads.

The site, however, will continue to prohibit “visual depictions of sexually explicit acts,” along with “hate, spam, violent threats, or anything illegal,” the company notes.

The decision to allow nudity comes after Tumblr announced in September that it was instituting community labels that let users filter the content they viewed. “It was our first step toward a more open Tumblr,” the Tuesday announcement explains.

Tumblr still bans depictions of sex acts because of logistical problems. “Tumblr used to have a policy around porn that was literally ‘Go nuts, show nuts. Whatever,’” Matt Mullenweg, CEO of parent company Automattic, explained in a September post. “That was memorable and hilarious, and for many people, Tumblr both hosted and helped with the discovery of a unique type of adult content.”

Tumblr, which allows users to post multimedia content to its blogs, previously had been an online resource for many in the porn, LGBTQ, kink, and queer artist communities since its founding in 2007.

In 2018, when Verizon owned Tumblr, it banned much adult content. Now Automattic is opening that up a bit, but allowing certain sexually explicit material runs isn’t feasible because credit card companies and app stores won’t serve sites that have any content that would be considered pornographic, Mullenweg wrote. He explained that it is also impossible to verify that everyone who sees that content is of legal age and has consented to view it.

“I am personally extremely libertarian in terms of what consenting adults should be able to share, and I agree with ‘go nuts, show nuts’ in principle, but the casually porn-friendly era of the early internet is currently impossible,” the CEO noted at the time.

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