With Facebook and other social media platforms having a complete ban on nude and suggestive imagery, many nude and glamour photographers have turned to Tumblr as an outlet for their photography. But that’s going to change as Tumblr bans all adult content, including “female-presenting nipples” from December 17th.
Of course, not all of that “adult” imagery on Tumblr is tasteful art nude photography. Some of it is flat out pornography; Around 22% according to a 2013 Techcrunch report. And they’ve been fighting that porn battle on Tumblr ever since. I guess they finally got sick of trying to police their previous policies and have simply decided to ban the lot, and anything else that even vaguely fits the description – which includes regular art nude photography.
Some forms of nudity will still be allowed on the site; Forms which are somewhat in line with policies on other social media sites, like Facebook. Even though illustrations are still allowed, they’re not allowed to be very good! If you’re one of those insanely talented people who can produce photorealistic paintings and pencil drawings, you won’t be allowed to post your nude art, either, if it could be mistaken for a photograph. Tumblr blogs that already contain offending content will see those posts reverted to a private setting, only viewable by their creator, and those people will be notified by email. And, of course, they won’t show up in search results. You can read Tumblr’s complete community guidelines here. Moves like this are why photographers can’t rely on 3rd party platforms to host their content. They can disappear or change policy overnight, making all your work and time spent on those platforms over several years null and void in an instant. Get yourself a domain name (they’re cheap, less than $10/year) and your own hosting account. Somewhere over which you have complete control. Do you use Tumblr? Where will you share your work now?
