Why Is Tumblr Taking the Fall for Apple?

Membership Ticker

Mother Jones’ union co-chair Patrick Caldwell connects the dots: Facebook's decision to throttle our content cost Mother Jones at least $400,000—the same amount we had to cut from our payroll this year. Please read his post, and if you can, chip in to help us finish our fall fundraising drive strong and hit our big goal by Saturday's deadline.

$350,000

We still need to raise about 400,000

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

I have now read about a dozen articles taking Tumblr to task for its decision to ban adult content. I don’t get this. Tumblr’s decision was very clearly forced on it by Apple, which removed Tumblr from the App Store until it cleaned up its act. This is the equivalent of the death penalty: Tumblr can’t survive without access to the Apple ecosystem, so they have to do what Apple tells them.

So why isn’t everyone yelling at Apple instead? They’re the ones who are responsible for this new policy. But … crickets.

POSTSCRIPT: If I were running Tumblr, I’d fork the app and create a new one just for Apple. If you want the old Tumblr, you can get it on Android or Windows or whatever. If you insist on using an iPhone, you get a bowdlerized version. Don’t like it? Complain to Tim Cook.