Porn Ban Hits Tumblr Where It Hurts

After child pornography was found on Tumblr in November and subsequently pulled from the App Store, the microblogging and social networking site, owned by Verizon Media, was forced to make a big decision. Starting December 17, Tumblr banned all pornographic and adult content from its site. As figures from SimilarWeb show, this move caused a massive fall in traffic, going from 521 million in December to just 370 in February.

Tumblr claims it had been considering such a ban for a while and, in response to traffic figures, a Tumblr spokesperson reportedly said: "We made a strategic decision for the business that better positions it for long-term growth among more types of users. This was the right decision." Only time will tell if this decision bears the fruit that was hoped for.