It was Khalaf who - as I reported at The Verge last year - led a controversial all-hands meeting at Tumblr last May, saying that the question of whether Tumblr would continue to publicly support net neutrality protections (in direct opposition to the political leanings of its new corporate overlord) was a question “above his pay-grade.” (It could still be manually switched off.)īoth D’Onofrio and Karp had been reporting to former Yahoo VP Simon Khalaf, who became head of media brands during the acquisition. In February 2018, “Safe Mode” - a previously optional feature that filtered NSFW results out of Search and the Dashboard and launched in tandem with the Verizon acquisition of Yahoo - was turned on by default for all accounts. Marissa Mayer and David Karp announcing the Yahoo acquisition of Tumblr for $1.1 Billion in 2013. Karp left the company in November 2017, and was replaced by D’Onofrio, then Tumblr’s COO and formerly an executive at post-Google-acquisition Zagat. Then, in June 2017, Yahoo was acquired by Verizon for its ad business and merged into a punchline media company called Oath, smashed up against AOL - acquired in 2015, also for its ad business. If Tumblr didn’t exactly blossom under Yahoo, it was at least left mostly alone. The following quarter, citing projections for the company’s future possible ad revenue, they wrote it down again - this time by $482 million. Three years later, after it failed to reach advertising goals set by former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Yahoo wrote down $230 million of Tumblr’s value. Tumblr, founded in 2007, was acquired by Yahoo in May 2013 for $1.1 billion despite sustained protest from its user base, including one petition with more than 170,000 signatures. Why would Tumblr ban porn after 11 years of porn? It also speaks to Tumblr’s larger problems as a creative platform that could not have survived without founder David Karp selling it to a larger company, and has since been contorted and stifled by what it’s had to do to keep existing. Yet despite D’Onofrio’s assurances, the NSFW ban will directly affect artists, sex workers, and others who rely on the platform as a welcoming and inclusive space to discuss and depict diverse expressions of sexuality. The post further promised that users whose content would be affected by the change would “get a heads up from in advance, and steps they can take to appeal or preserve their content outside the community if they so choose.” The move comes after the Tumblr app was removed from the App Store in late November, due to the presence of child pornography on a number of private blogs.ĭ’Onofrio wrote that Tumblr recognized its importance as “a place to speak freely about topics like art, sex positivity, your sexuality and your personal journey” and promised that explicit text posts would not be affected, but continued: “Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content.” That means no more sex acts, no more nudity, and no more “female-presenting nipples,” whatever that means. On Monday, Tumblr CEO Jeff D’Onofrio announced in a post on the staff blog that explicit visual content will be banned from the site starting on December 17.

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