* This statistic shows the number of global unique visitors to the social network Tumblr.com from February 2018 to October 2018. As of that month, the social website had over 558 million unique visitors worldwide, down from 617 million in April 2018 (source)
I started @purgethebots in July when porn bots started to poison this platform. It seriously impacted my Tumblr experience. I can imagine that’s why so many people left Tumblr and the numbers above back this up.
Porn is not a bad thing. But it is a HUGE market and people who want to make money go where they can reach their target audience. Most social media do not allow porn because there are always people who will abuse the platform using bots. Now, Tumblr didn’t mind adult content and the moderate amount of bots at first. According to the statistics, the number of unique visitors seemed steady until July. But then BAM, le Porn Bot Apocalypse.
I think this is the real reason why staff has decided to ban porn: to save Tumblr. It just didn’t work out that well. And the content filter is TERRIBLE.
It’s sad there isn’t a better way to fight the bots. Even Youtube, worth billions, don’t know how to combat the spam in the comment section. Porn is not the problem. The bots are.
Personally, I will stay on Tumblr. I understand why many people are leaving. But I wasn’t on Tumblr for adult content, and I think a Tumblr with fewer bots will improve my overall experience. Though I am going to miss the occasional porn on my dash. A lot.
A lot of people leave Tumblr because of the bots. A decline in users results in a decline in ad revenue as companies pay for eyeballs. And of course, it’s about the ad revenue. Tumblr is a for-profit business. It has nothing to do with ethics and companies not wanting to advertise on a platform were porn prevails. If that was the case, Tumblr would have made this change years ago. The decline in users and the porn bot apocalypse happened at the same. I doubt that is a coincidence.
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