Tumblr Porn: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

As almost every has noted, Tumblr has a problem with porn. A number of the blogs on the microblogging platform purchased by Yahoo in a $1.1 billion dollar deal, contain NSFW material, including lewd images and pornography. Here’s what you need to know about Tumblr’s porn problem.

1. Tumblr has a lot of Porn

According to TechCrunch, Tumblr has a huge amount of porn. How much exactly? Well, it almost 10% it seems. TechCrunch wrote about the specifics of 200,000 of Tumblr’s most-visited domains. Out of the 200,000 blogs:

—22,775 contain NSFW material
—Which is 11.4 percent of all blogs on Tumblr

2. Everyone’s Wondering Whether Yahoo Will Get Rid of It

When rumors about Yahoo acquiring Tumblr came to light, the first thing everyone wrote about — besides the business implications — was what Yahoo would do about Tumblr’s porn problem. Everyone from Valleywag, to Business Insider and Bloomberg Businessweek was worried that Yahoo didn’t understand the extent of NSFW content on Tumblr and, if Yahoo were to censor the content, how it would be change Tumblr and would there be a large defection of users?

3. Yahoo Doesn’t Really Care Though

But Marissa Mayer yesterday at an event in New York City, where Yahoo announced a massive NYC based headquarters in the middle of Times Square and a major Flickr redesign, that the Yahoo CEO doesn’t really care about NSFW material.

Mayer: “We don’t intend to” remove Tumblr’s NSFW content.

— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) May 20, 2013

So, clearly Yahoo has no issue with Tumblr’s porn and it really shouldn’t. Porn on Tumblr drives a ton of traffic  — considering the large percentage of blogs on Tumblr have NSFW material — and, in the end, that matters the most. The potential risk of losing out on millions of customers outweighs any benefit Yahoo may see in getting rid of the lewd images from Tumblr.

4. Many Are Worried It’ll Hurt Advertising and Revenue

Sam Biddle of Valleywag writes that the porn issue could hurt Tumblr’s efforts to monetize the site by introducing advertisements. Biddle argues that, if Tumblr/Yahoo continues to allow porn, they won’t make that much money because advertisers wouldn’t want to be associated with a site that allows such content. “Marketers try to avoid that sort of thing whenever possible, and it’ll be a hump between here and profitability—there’s a reason why Facebook keeps an iron wall up against ‘adult content.'”

5. But It Won’t

Here’s an interesting section from Tumblr’s Terms of Service agreement:

Unflagged NSFW Blogs. Tumblr is home to millions of readers and bloggers from a variety of locations, cultures, and backgrounds with different points of view concerning adult-oriented content. If you regularly post sexual or adult-oriented content, respect the choices of people in our community who would rather not see such content by flagging your blog (which you can do from the Settings page of each blog) as Not Suitable for Work (“NSFW”). This action does not prevent you and your readers from using any of Tumblr’s social features, but rather allows Tumblr users who don’t want to see NSFW content to avoid seeing it.

So, the NSFW tag must be applied to any content remotely adult-oriented, or else Tumblr will take them off. So, with advertisers who don’t want their brand associated with Tumblrs like We Want Porn (yes, it’s a Tumblr blog of porn…click at your own risk), Yahoo and Tumblr could offer an “opt-in” service for advertisers: if you’re ok with being associated with adult content on Tumblr, you select an option that says so. Otherwise, your ads will be run on blogs that have no adult-content. Problem solved right? This way, Yahoo can monetize Tumblr without having to worry about how advertisers would feel about adult content and can keep users happy by not restricting their content. Win-win!