That's the point the parent poster is making: tumblr had incredible growth at the start and stayed popular, but it was difficult to monetize because of the nsfw content.

It was difficult to monetize because rather than resetting advertiser expectations for what it means to engage with tumblr's user base, they destroyed their product instead.

We don't have the internal charts of advertisement revenue and engagement. What if they had tried a lot and that line kept shifting down and down, with small bumps here and there with limited sales successes? What if the execs at Verizon were like, "We don't want to keep going down that route .. we don't want those types of advertisers .. we need to not be afraid of associating this more with the Verizon brand?"

I have a feeling there was a lot of internal push back and fourth, but they were either losing too much money or only getting advertisers they weren't comfortable with.

It's more complicated that just advertisers expectations.

Apple locked NSFW off Tumblr via it's App Store lockdown.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90304153/seven-weeks-after-nsfw-...

From my understanding this was due to excess or unreasonably long times to remove child sexual abuse content.

You say that, but I'm sure many platforms have tried doing that for a long time. 4chan, for example, struggled with this from the start and as far as I know, they haven't come up with a solution that isn't porn ads.

> "resetting advertiser expectations for what it means to engage with tumblr's user base"

If the only way to save your platform is to reform society, then your platform is already dead.

Doesn't change that the NSFW content was the glue for the community. Without a community, you don't even have a chance at monetiztion.

Well, that's also the question -- if they hadn't allowed NSFW content in the beginning, would a different community (an easier to monetize community) have arisen? There's no way to know.

Tumblr was dying the moment they began relying on nsfw content. Like a soaking wet arctic explorer who feels warm because his body has begun shutting down bloodflow to his limbs. The sensation of thriving/warmth masks the reality; that the situation is already incompatible with survival and it's only a matter of time before he collapses, no matter how great he feels in that moment.

They still had large communities of people independent of porn; lots of left leaning, LGBTQ audiences .. lots of young adults and high school kids oddly ... but they had always allowed NSFW content, so that segment kept growing as well. It's hard to separate the two at that point.

And that's what did them in. It was inevitable from the beginning, what happened was only a matter of time. Porn kills monetization and having a userbase that insists on having porn will consequently kill your platform. It may seem to be running smoothly for a while, but that's just borrowed time.

hmm .. so do you think Reddit is going to hit the same issue soon? I wonder if Reddit will ban all NSFW subs within the next year or two.

It's not clear to me how important porn is to reddit; it's possible reddit could ban porn without upsetting most of their users. Not every site with porn is doomed.

In the long run though, I expect reddit to ban porn. It might be a few more years, there are a lot of factors in play, including the patience of their investors and whether or not an influential media company decides to do an exposé on reddit hosting amateur pornography without vetting peoples' ages and/or hosting professional pornography in violation of copyright law.

It's bizarre that porn kills things that seem to only die when the porn leaves, and the most successful non porn content is softcore porn.

Why NSFW contents became problem for both Tumblr and now Imgur? Anything specific?