In December Tumblr announced it would begin banning porn on its platform. The move was an attempt to help the site gets its app back on Apple’s App Store. At the time of the ban’s announcement there were quite a few halfhearted jokes on social media that “Tumblr is for porn” and without it, no one would use the site.
Turns out, that’s not entirely wrong. As CNet reports, data from web analytics firm SimilarWeb shows Tumblr took a massive hit in monthly age views after it banned porn. The final month porn was allowed on Tumblr, that is December 2018, the site had 521 million page views. Just 30 days later the site’s monthly page views dropped by over 100 million–a 17% decline.
In response to SimilarWeb’s report on Tumblr’s traffic loss after the porn ban, the company told CNet, “We made a strategic decision for the business that better positions it for long-term growth among more types of users. This was the right decision.”
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