Your favorite blogs on Tumblr may have been deleted over an attempt to crack down on shady porn activities.
Tumblr appears to be carrying out the purge after its iOS app was delisted from Apple's App Store last week. As of Monday, the app was still missing from the store.
Y'all please. If you have a nsfw blog on tumblr. Back up your stuff right now. My blog got deleted. All of them. — Jas (@jaspurrlock) November 19, 2018
Neither Apple nor Tumblr have officially commented on why the iOS app was pulled. But it may have something to do with child pornography. Last Friday, Tumblr's support team on Twitter mentioned deleting a blog that a user said was hosting the illegal content.
Tumblr has also become home to many "porn bots" or fake accounts that spam sexually explicit messages and links, usually to get you to visit dodgy sites. This might have prompted Apple to pull the app; the company's app store strictly forbids overtly sexual and pornographic content.
Whatever the case may be, Tumblr account holders say the social media service has been responding by purging blogs across the platform —regardless if they were legit or not. "I follow a bunch of art study and anatomy accounts on there, all of them nuked," reported one user.
An artist who publishes adult comics also said his blogs, including the "Safe for work" one, were deleted in the purge. "This is painful, 5 years of work deleted without explanation," the artist tweeted.
Without notice Tumblr canceled my account with ALL my blogs
"Gerph18up", 60k Followers nsfw
"Skarpne" 30k Followers nsfw
"Gerph" 40k Followers, but that page is SFW
This is painful, 5 years of work deleted without explanation. ?? pic.twitter.com/DUhzFRtU3D — Gerph ?? (@gerph_art) November 19, 2018
The purge has been bad enough that rival social media service Mastodon has been encouraging affected users to join its platform.
Tumblr hasn't commented on the crackdown or said if any of the affected blogs will be restored. But the accidental account closures might only be temporary. Although the platform doesn't want to host porn videos, it does allow nudity and sexually explicit material, but advises its users to mark the content as "sensitive" or "explicit."
To all my friends who've lost their blogs! — send in a report to tumblr, explain the situation! I noticed some users had managed to get their blogs back _ with a very petty apology along with it _ but for most people it's their source of income more than enjoyment. — . (@Sir_Scandalous) November 19, 2018
According to a Tumblr help center page, the social media service has been working to restore the iOS app since Friday. "Our team continues to work on the issue with the iOS app, which is our top priority at this time," the page said on Monday.