Micro blogging app fights to remain on Apple's iOS store by adopting 17+ age restriction

Tumblr to avoid porn label by adding iOS age rating

Tumblr continues to fight the porn label that has befallen the photo app after Apple removed it from the iTunes store in reponse to the controversey surrounding its explicit content.

In response to its removal from the App store, the firm has implemented a 17+ age restriction to its iOS app, which both new users and existing users updating to the app’s latest version will have to adhere to.

"You must be at least 17 years old to download this app," Tumblr writes in its description of the app in the iTunes App Store, because it contains "Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity."

Whilst the latest update to the app does include a number of minor bug fixes and corrections, the predominant addition is the new age restriction.

The controversy follows the introduction of Twitter’s Vine app last week, which allowed users to create and share six-second clips of their choosing.

However, the app rapidly filled with inappropriate content, including nudity and explicit clips, whilst a number of the most popular searches on the service included #porn and #sex, which subsequently led to Apple halting its promotion of the app.

It’s no secret that explicit content has long plagued the blogging site; with its founder David Karp confessing to tech site CNET last year that two to four per cent of Tumblr’s total traffic is porn-related.

Given the recent controversy, one would assume that number has risen considerably throughout the past year, enough to warrant the addition of age-restrictions and removals from app stores entirely.

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