Tumblr, once a beacon for artistic expression and often graphic images of nudity amid an ocean of various ships and television fandoms, seems to be sinking after it tried to clean up the boobs.
The site, now owned by internet giant Yahoo, introduced a “Safe Mode” late last year that essentially banned nudity and other content it deemed explicit. But removing adult content from the site seems to have negatively impacted its pageviews.
According to a story from Dazed, which used numbers from SimilarWeb, Tumblr has seen nearly a third of its traffic disappear since “Safe Mode” kicked in.
According to analytics site SimilarWeb, visits to Tumblr fell from 521 million in December to 369 million in February, following the roll out of its new – default – Safe Mode setting. The feature hides ‘sensitive’ images, including “real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples” – basically anything supposedly NSFW (men’s nipples, as always, are fine).
The “Safe Mode” was criticized by many parts of the internet, especially those who noticed even more mundane LGBTQ content was somehow considered unfit for hosting on the platform. And it certainly looks like those that were upset about the ban took their attention elsewhere. That doesn’t bring back the many who saw their work go behind the NSFW barrier when Tumblr updated their policies, of course, but it does look like the site is certainly paying the price for not giving Internet denizens what they want.