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) 79
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.
Probably worse than that (Score:3)
"Site visits" is a very vague metric.
If someone went to Tumblr before December, they'd probably end up looking at a lot of different pages, for a lot of page views.
Now? "Hey, that artist I used to like is gone, I guess I'll hit Newgrounds or Discord again..."
I wouldn't know (Score:2, Insightful)
All I get from them is a cookie wall that doesn't work, and so I can't even tell them about it. I wonder if they count "end up following a tumblr-link, get redirected to the blank page that is the cookie wall, give up" as a "site visit".
Re:Probably worse than that (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
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You know, you can always register your own domain name, rent server space, and use some kind of content management or blogging software that's either open-source or commercially available. So long as your content isn't so egregious as to attract legal challenge or to make the news for being abhorrent then your provider will probably be fine with taking your money for as long as you wish to maintain the site.
It's those that have decided that they're going to use someone else's platform that have found thems
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Trying to read everything of a subject from the Internet is like drinking from a firehose.
Posting on the Internet is like shouting at people as they go past on a roller-coaster.
Archiving the Internet is like washing toilet paper.
The lesson is to not take away. (Score:5, 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.
Re:The lesson is to not take away. (Score:5, 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.
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Or at least enhance its NSFW protections.
Re:The lesson is to not take away. (Score:5, Funny)
cumblr
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Tumblr, like many such sites, had two big problems they were unwilling to solve. Child pornography and rape videos.
Their first thought was to force people to sign up to access the NSFW parts. That of course didn't remove this illegal content, it only hid from the general public who didn't have a Tumblr account.
When that didn't work, and because of their new owners, they said they would ban any NSFW content. Which only moved the same content to a different source but also crushed their views.
They'll still
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> I see many pics which have a timeless, classic, sexy look without being "Here's my open legs!" which are a dime a hundred nowadays.
If you were only using Tumblr for "here's my open legs!" pics, which are indeed a dime a hundred nowadays, then you were doing it wrong.
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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.
They had no problem with serving "adult content". The reason they banned pornography was that people would upload child pornography. This was a significant business problem because it meant they had to police the site vigilantly which requires humans which you have to pay. Instead of doing this, their solution to remove all pornography was optimal for them because it could be automated. Creating a second site would simply cost them money.
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In what way would detecting & removing child pornography be more difficult than regular pornography? If you're using ML, then the process is exactly the same. If you're relying on user reports, then it's almost certainly going to be fewer reports of CP for you to go through, which requires much less effort.
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You either misunderstand the content they had to deal with or the viability and ability of ML.
As best I understand the issue, it wasn't (generally) people posting naked pictures of pre-pubescent children. It was often 14-17 year old children posting their own nudes. Forget machine learning, even actual humans have a difficult time telling the difference between someone who is 17 (illegal CP call the feds) and 18 (yawn, another dime-a-dozen crotch shot) ... oh, and let's not forget the gray area of 'here's
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Fark.com tried that in 2006 or so with a new domain name for a site called Foobies, but in the end they still discontinued it. Not sure that a separate site would work when the primary site is largely based on a combination of vanity publishing and counter-culture content including sexual content.
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Maybe.
You cannot actually know this for sure without knowing their costs. Based on this article, they lost 28.8% of their traffic. If that 28.8% cost significantly more to maintain than the other 71.1%, then this move makes sense. They should focus on the profitable customers.
So, if all things are equal, then don't take away. If the thing you are taking away consumes something like 70% of your resources, then take it away as quickly as possible, or figure out a way to make it cost less.
When I acquired anoth
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You can't seriously be suggesting that young bucks with their tongues hanging out of their wallets are the less lucrative constituency of their user base.
Re:The lesson is to not take away. (Score:4, Insightful)
Its entirely possible that the adult audience was harder to sell ads to, or far more enthusiastic in their use of adblockers. Total traffic should not and does not imply monetized traffic.
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Its entirely possible that the adult audience was harder to sell ads to, or far more enthusiastic in their use of adblockers. Total traffic should not and does not imply monetized traffic.
If adblockers were that effective then FB and google would cease to exist. And, without some citation to back your claim, I disagree that selling effective ads to people watching porn is particularly difficult. Quite the opposite if anything.
And while total traffic might not directly equal monetized traffic, it must be a pretty accurate indicator since virtually every. other. website. based on ad revenue tracks this way. Even direct sales websites track views and visits.
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Ad revenue is (number of ad impressions)*(price per ad)
To measure tumblr's revenue, you have to factor in the number of advertisers they had. More advertisers results in bidding up the price per ad impression. So a decrease in number of ad impressions could actually result in an increase in reve
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A lot of the more "normal" advertisers probably had a way to stop their ads from being served on NSFW pages in the first place.
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To be honest I don't understand why they wouldn't want their ads on NSFW pages. How many consumers would avoid a product because they saw it on a porn site? Obviously they themselves don't object to porn, or else they wouldn't be on that site in the first place.
Besides, the post-fap time period is when people are done with one activity and are ready to start another. It seems like a great opportunity to remind people to do stuff, e.g. get their oil changed, buy cereal or plan a vacation.
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To be honest I don't understand why they wouldn't want their ads on NSFW pages. How many consumers would avoid a product because they saw it on a porn site? Obviously they themselves don't object to porn, or else they wouldn't be on that site in the first place.
Unfortunately, it's the association, mainstream media publishing stories about how Mrs X was horrified to hear that Brand Y was advertising on a porn site which her husband accidentally tumbled across...
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Got a chat app and that is what your brand is known for? Dont remove the chat function.
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Probably more than that: people who get off on pictures of elderly folks, disabled folks - even full clothed - feet, cars (yes, that's a thing - google "mechaphilia") and whatnot can still get their kicks on Tumblr. It's not even discreet: some Tumblr pages I've seen clearly have "Sexy XYZ" in the title.
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I'm responding to an AC and I already know that is dumb but as someone who has run adult web sites, trans content is
1. Overwhelmingly consumed by self-identified straight people. There's almost zero interest in it among consumers of cisgendered male/male pornography.
2. Enormously popular. Easily a top-5 category by most metrics.
It isn't normalized to the degree that some other content is; we don't joke about it yet on daytime TV, but it wouldn't surprise me if norms change to that point by the time GenZs ar
Is porn "consumed"? (Score:3)
trans content is
1. Overwhelmingly consumed by self-identified straight people.
Why "consumed" as opposed to "viewed"? It's not as if viewing a slideshow of erotic photos of a trans person causes those photos to no longer exist in the same way that food is "consumed" [gnu.org].
Re:Is porn "consumed"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not all content is visual. Tumblr is a multimedia platform and some content can be audio or textual. Further, porn is "consumed" in the sense that for most people part of the engagement is deriving enjoyment then moving on to the next dopamine hit of novelty. It's unusual, especially on a platform that creates a never-ending stream of new content, to return to the same posts again and again. The choice of word was deliberate.
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Stop calling people who look at porn perverts.
Nobody saw that coming... (Score:3)
...because that type of content was banned!
ba-dump ching
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ba-dump ching
I think you need to get your cymbals fixed.
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Hilariously, post-ban, Tumblr has robo-filters in place that are really only functional for female (presenting) anatomy. If you want to watch see male parts or homosexual male pornography, content is available with almost no barrier on Tumblr. ... which means seeing a male coming is still A-OK so long as there's no titties in the media.
Yes, it's exactly as dumb as it sounds.
God bless America... (Score:5, Insightful)
God bless America...
Laaaand of the prudes...
Oh, and fuck every single senatwhore and congressworm who voted for SESTA/FOSTA. Yep, Dems and Reps alike are at fault, it's not a partisan issue here.
New Math Lesson for the day. (Score:1)
Today I learned that 29% == 1/5. Stupid "journalist" should have just gone for the "nearly" 1/3.
That's All (Score:2)
Re:That's All (Score:5, Funny)
I thought porn was about 90% of tumblr's business.
Turns out it was only a fifth. The other four fifths is outrage.
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Well, then they're fine. Outrage is a growth industry.
Maybe more than a fifth (Score:1, Troll)
You mean "alt-left" (Score:1)
The alt-left content on tumblr is overflowing with racism. And sexism. And genderism.
https://thoughtcatalog.com/joshua-goldberg/2014/12/when-social-justice-warriors-attack-one-tumblr-users-experience/
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So ... (Score:2)
That's a lot (Score:1)
of perverts!
The rest of the story (Score:4, Insightful)
Visits to the Tumblr website fell from 521 million in December to 437 million in January and 370 million in February,
300 million of those February visits were just to confirm the porn was gone. Good luck with March!
Surprised really (Score:2)
I would have expected it to have cost them more than 1/5 of the traffic