At WordCamp Canada 2025, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg called Tumblr his “biggest failure,” noting the challenge of maintaining the platform’s half-billion blogs while it remains unprofitable. Though plans to migrate Tumblr to WordPress infrastructure are on hold, Mullenweg said he hasn’t given up.
Porn on tumblr was an early victim of credit card companies not wanting to be associated with that filthy filth, like what happened recently with videogames. Iirc, they pressured app stores to take the tumblr app down.
I can’t verify the truth of it, but I heard that the catalyst to the porn ban was a meeting where they were pitching Tumblr advertisements to some company, and wanted to demonstrate how tags and engagement works, so they pulled up the #McDonalds tag live to demonstrate and they got a screen full of Ronald McDonald porn.
Since I am out of loop - my bias is still: why wouldn’t (furry) porn be profitable? :D
Porn on tumblr was an early victim of credit card companies not wanting to be associated with that filthy filth, like what happened recently with videogames. Iirc, they pressured app stores to take the tumblr app down.
I can’t verify the truth of it, but I heard that the catalyst to the porn ban was a meeting where they were pitching Tumblr advertisements to some company, and wanted to demonstrate how tags and engagement works, so they pulled up the #McDonalds tag live to demonstrate and they got a screen full of Ronald McDonald porn.
I’m loving it
I don’t care if this is debunked in the next millisecond, this is my head canon from now till the end of time.
That sounds absolutely plausible and is thus now incorporated as Truth into my memory of the goings-on.