If you want to bring back porn, you should stop asking, because it isn't going to happen. Mullenweg posted a long explanation yesterday of why the ban on adult content won't be lifted. He said that the porn-friendly era of the early internet is impossible.
It doesn't mean that the policies will stay the same. Earlier this week, he said that Automattic wants to loosen the rules of its previous owner, and that's the same thing he's said before. The ban took out a lot of art and artists. The policy is still in place and the teams are trying to make it more understandable. The site is going to implement those policies soon, which will make it more in line with the platform.
There is no modern internet service that can have the same rules as Tumblr did in 2007, according to the author. It was called "go nuts, show nuts." The era of the early internet that was porn-friendly is currently impossible. That era produced a lot of unique, often queer, blogs. Many users were enthusiastic but premature celebrating the end of the site because of the ban.
If Apple banned the app from the store, we would probably have to shut it down.
It's impossible to return to that era. Intermediaries play a big part in how people access the internet. Payment processors have been leery of adult content for a long time and have stepped up enforcement recently because of concerns about child abuse and pornography. Since it was launched, Apple has been against it. Without those two pieces of infrastructure, it's hard to run a for-profit site. The service would probably be shut down if Apple banned it from the App Store. The Archive of Our Own fanworks site, for example, has remained web only despite years of requests for apps.
Porn companies have their own payment processing services, but they are more expensive than other services.
New rules about age verification and anti-sex work laws are adding to the problem. Some of these laws are intended to combat harmful phenomena, but they also add legal oversight.
If you reached this article through a social network, you might have a question about why it's okay to have a lot of porn on those sites. Mullenweg says to ask Apple. Although Apple has forced moderation changes for giant services like Facebook, he thinks that Tumblr and Reddit are too large to be banned.
This is the overall upshot.
If you wanted to start an adult social network in 2022, you’d need to be web-only on iOS and side-load on Android, take payment in crypto, have a way to convert crypto to fiat for business operations without being blocked, do a ton of work in age and identity verification and compliance so you don’t go to jail, protect all of that identity information so you don’t dox your users, and make a ton of money.
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I do hope that a dedicated service or company is started that will replace what people used to get from porn on Tumblr. It may already exist and I don’t know about it. They’ll have an uphill battle under current regimes, and if you think that’s a bad thing please try to change the regimes. Don’t attack companies following legal and business realities as they exist.
The policy on what "adult content" means seems to be in the process of being updated. It is trying to prevent people from speculating about the future of the site.
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