Pornhub is looking to buy Tumblr

Pornhub is interested in buying up Tumblr – and restoring its NSFW content – on news that owners are selling the blogging platform.

Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Verizon Communications is looking to sell Tumblr to stabilize business. Verizon Communications owns several media platforms, including Yahoo!, HuffPost, and TechCrunch. After it failed to meet revenue targets, it appears Tumblr is getting flogged off by Verizon.

And there is at least one potential buyer. According to Buzzfeed, Pornhub is ‘extremely interested’ in acquiring Tumblr. Pornhub vice president Corey Price said in an email to Buzzfeed that the porn-streaming giant is keen to buy the platform. Price expressed that restoring the app’s NSFW edge would be a priority if the acquisition does happen.

“Tumblr was a safe haven for those who wanted to explore and express their sexuality, adult entertainment aficionados included,” Price told BuzzFeed News. “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. There are obvious synergies between the two brands and value Pornhub could derive from Tumblr. We’re extremely interested in acquiring the platform and are very much looking forward to one day restoring it to its former glory with NSFW content.”

The acquisition comes in the wake of controversy. Tumblr, typically known for fandoms and memes, found itself in rocky controversy last year. In 2018, child porn slipped through the site’s scanners, which led to Apple removing the app from its app store, and then the site’s service overhaul.

Then later in the year, Tumblr announced that it would ban pornography, enforcing the ban in December. Some pockets of their userbase did not take the news well, and there was a general abandonment of the app, causing a fall in its traffic.

Jokes about Pornhub and Tumblr have made rounds on social media since the porn ban. Moreover, it seems Pornhub were planting the seeds even back then. They tweeted in December that they welcome any and all Tumblr users with ‘open arms.’

Tumblrs:

Pornhub welcomes you with open arms. Join our amazing community of millions

Curators: Customize your personal feed, create playlists, generate gifs and more

Creators: Upload videos, photos, gifs & share text posts to a massive audience. Earn revenue on your content.

— Pornhub ARIA (@Pornhub) December 4, 2018

On the issue of how the ban affected LGBT artistes, Sienna, a queer artiste who once reveled in Tumblr’s NSFW art community reportedly spoke to GSN about migrating to Twitter after the porn ban was instituted.

“The NSFW community on Twitter is great but it’s not the best platform to share artwork (with all the image dimensions and quality restrictions),” she said. “I was pretty bummed when it happened but it didn’t hurt me as much as some others, as I didn’t have a large following there. But I know some people were hit really hard as they used Tumblr exclusively and their livelihood was threatened by the ban.”

Sienna also expressed the ‘paranoia’ that creators feel on large platforms, such as Twitter, as a ban for explicit content can come at any moment.

“But if Pornhub acquired Tumblr, that would give us back that feeling of safety, I think,” she said.