Verizon neglect!
Though the prevalence of porn on Tumblr has been somewhat overstated by people who donβt use it, it is a sizable piece of the platformβs content. Prior to the Verizon acquisition, a commonly cited study found that 22 percent of Tumblr users were consuming explicit content (though only 1 percent was producing it). Thatβs 2.2m people per day clicking on adult content!)
Tumblr currently has 10 million daily users, the former engineer says, and Verizon expressed a hope last summer that this number would βat leastβ double by the middle of 2019. (βI donβt remember the exact timeline β¦ mostly because it was so ridiculous no one really paid too much attention to it.β) This is why the engineer quit, or as they put it, βjumped ship.β
The former employee also noted that Tumblrβs engineering team has been shrinking, with senior staff leaving for other jobs without hearing counteroffers from Verizon. Odd, because Tumblr would probably have an easier time growing if there were more investment in basic problems that a robust engineering team could address: The search feature is notoriously terrible, and the limited discovery features on the platform are virtually useless. Tumblr has struggled with porn bots and bad ads for years, but its tools for rooting them out are also widely considered to be far below the industry standard.
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/4/18126112/tumblr-porn-ban-verizon-ad-goals-sex-work-fandom
