Tumblr is bringing back the female-presenting nipple, allowing the formerly forbidden cherrilets as well as other flavours of nudity to return to the platform. It’s an enticing lure to both former and potential new users, and fortuitous timing considering the currently proposed mass exodus from Twitter prompted by Elon Musk’s takeover.
Though Tumblr had a thriving NSFW community in its heyday, its 2018 ban on adult content gutted the blogging platform and led to a drastic drop in traffic of nearly 30 percent. Today’s announcement appears to be trying to undo some of that damage, and re-establish Tumblr as a sex-positive place where nudity is allowed and embraced.
“We now welcome a broader range of expression, creativity, and art on Tumblr, including content depicting the human form (yes, that includes the naked human form),” Tumblr said in a post on its staff blog.
“So, even if your creations contain nudity, mature subject matter, or sexual themes, you can now share them on Tumblr using the appropriate Community Label so that everyone remains in control of the types of content they see on their dash.”
Introduced in September, Community Labels allow Tumblr users to mark their content as depicting drug and alcohol addiction, violence, or sexual themes — including “erotic writing or imagery.”
“Nudity and other kinds of adult material are generally welcome,” reads Tumblr’s Community Guidelines, newly updated today. “We’re not here to judge your art, we just ask that you add a Community Label to your mature content so that people can choose to filter it out of their Dashboard if they prefer.”
This doesn’t mean Tumblr is letting users go balls to the wall on posting porn. “Visual depictions of sexually explicit acts” as well as “content with an overt focus on genitalia” are still firmly forbidden, so any actual action will have to remain implicit. However, the platform does make an exception for “historically significant” images of people going at it, such as those you might find in a “mainstream museum,” as long as the appropriate Community Label has been applied.
It’s unclear whether this pass extends to historically significant art that depicts bestiality, such as 1814 Japanese block print The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife or an See source
