At WordCamp Canada 2025, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg called Tumblr his “biggest failure,” noting the challenge of maintaining the platform’s half-billion blogs while it remains unprofitable. Though plans to migrate Tumblr to WordPress infrastructure are on hold, Mullenweg said he hasn’t given up.
Porn on tumblr was an early victim of credit card companies not wanting to be associated with that filthy filth, like what happened recently with videogames. Iirc, they pressured app stores to take the tumblr app down.
I can’t verify the truth of it, but I heard that the catalyst to the porn ban was a meeting where they were pitching Tumblr advertisements to some company, and wanted to demonstrate how tags and engagement works, so they pulled up the #McDonalds tag live to demonstrate and they got a screen full of Ronald McDonald porn.
It was Apple. Or rather, regulators and partnering companies leaning on Apple to manage the content on their app store better, including the content that you could find via those apps.
Could say something about how the app stores are a monopoly power, and the chilling effect these wide ranging and heavy handed content policies have, and why the open web (and web apps) are a better option. But we also handed the web over to Google anyway, so it’s not that much better.
as a long time tumblr user it’s so very ironic to me that short after the 2018 porn ban you see the rise of fan sites, and still after that tumblr tried to monetise by adding tips, and various ways to pay your favourite bloggers and just… you already had users willing to post hot original porn, and later you had ways to monetise it, but no, they did it in the wrong order wtf
Ahh that makes kinda sense!
Tho I’m not interested much in porn - I am very pissed about credit card companies deciding for the users of what they can purchase or not. I believe crypto will help a lot with these overreaches in the future.
Porn on tumblr was an early victim of credit card companies not wanting to be associated with that filthy filth, like what happened recently with videogames. Iirc, they pressured app stores to take the tumblr app down.
I can’t verify the truth of it, but I heard that the catalyst to the porn ban was a meeting where they were pitching Tumblr advertisements to some company, and wanted to demonstrate how tags and engagement works, so they pulled up the #McDonalds tag live to demonstrate and they got a screen full of Ronald McDonald porn.
Should have been filtering out nsfw in the board room
ronald mcdonald definitely fucks
I don’t care if this is debunked in the next millisecond, this is my head canon from now till the end of time.
That sounds absolutely plausible and is thus now incorporated as Truth into my memory of the goings-on.
I’m loving it
It was Apple. Or rather, regulators and partnering companies leaning on Apple to manage the content on their app store better, including the content that you could find via those apps.
Could say something about how the app stores are a monopoly power, and the chilling effect these wide ranging and heavy handed content policies have, and why the open web (and web apps) are a better option. But we also handed the web over to Google anyway, so it’s not that much better.
as a long time tumblr user it’s so very ironic to me that short after the 2018 porn ban you see the rise of fan sites, and still after that tumblr tried to monetise by adding tips, and various ways to pay your favourite bloggers and just… you already had users willing to post hot original porn, and later you had ways to monetise it, but no, they did it in the wrong order wtf
tumblr devs adding all sorts of useless monetization vs 1 xkit developer
To be fair, IF tumblr had added the tipping feature while porn was huge on the site, it might have became Onlyfans.
OF wasn’t always a porn site. It was trying to be a Patron that allowed adult content, but it became just a porn site.
I argue something similar would have happened to tumblr
Ahh that makes kinda sense!
Tho I’m not interested much in porn - I am very pissed about credit card companies deciding for the users of what they can purchase or not. I believe crypto will help a lot with these overreaches in the future.