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If anyone’s going to restore Tumblr’s glory days as a haven for adult content, it’s going to be PornHub.
Verizon recently announced it’s looking to sell Tumblr, and PornHub has already expressed interest, Business Insider reported.
Corey Price, PornHub’s vice president, told Buzzfeed the company is interested in acquiring Tumblr, with plans to revoke the site’s recent adult-content ban. Introduced in December, the ban sparked controversy among users, especially those who looked to Tumblr for underrepresented content, including material aimed at members of the LGBTQ community and women.
“Tumblr was a safe haven for those who wanted to explore and express their sexuality, adult entertainment aficionados included,” Price told Buzzfeed in an email. “We’ve long been dismayed that such measures were taken to eradicate erotic communities on the platform, leaving many individuals without an asylum through which they could comfortably peruse adult content.”
News of Verizon’s plans to sell Tumblr broke earlier this week via the Wall Street Journal. Verizon acquired the free blogging platform when it bought Yahoo back in 2015. The sale comes as Verizon Media Group continues to cut costs across its properties. Earlier this year, Verizon laid off 7 percent of its workforce in cuts that affected 750 employees.
According to WSJ, it’s unlikely Verizon will be able to sell Tumblr for anywhere near the $1.1 billion Yahoo paid for it back in 2013. The platform’s popularity has faded in recent years, dropping even more significantly in the aftermath of last year’s porn ban. As of March, Tumblr had seen a 30 percent drop in traffic since the ban was enacted in December, according to The Verge.
While PornHub fancies itself Tumblr’s knight in kinky armor, some critics have cautioned against the move, citing a history of exploitation on the part of PornHub’s parent company, MindGeek.
“Given Pornhub parent company MindGeek’s record of exploitation of adult performers, that could be a disastrous proceeding for the world of kink,” argued TechCrunch. “If Pornhub and MindGeek succeed in acquiring Tumblr to strengthen their near monopoly, they could end up exploiting porn bloggers and the performers they post about too.”
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