Tumblr to ban adult content after issues with child pornography on site

Tumblr on Monday announced it will ban all adult content from its website, a move that comes just two weeks after it acknowledged child pornography had found its way onto the platform.

The microblogging and social networking site said in a statement that adult content will be not permitted on the platform starting Dec. 17 and that any adult content discovered on that date will be “flagged” and “reverted to a private setting viewable only by you.”

{mosads}Tumblr said the banned content will primarily consist of “photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts.”

The move comes just weeks after Tumblr was kicked out of Apple’s App store over issues related to child pornography. Verge reported last month that the Tumblr app hasn’t been in the app store since Nov. 16.

Tumblr confirmed on Nov. 20 that it was banned from the store after child pornography was discovered on its site. The company said the explicit images had slipped past its content filters.

“Every image uploaded to Tumblr is scanned against an industry database of known child sexual abuse material, and images that are detected never reach the platform,” the company said in a statement last month. “A routine audit discovered content on our platform that had not yet been included in the industry database. We immediately removed this content.”

Tumblr did not cite the child pornography issue as the reason for banning adult content.