The Verge
Tumblr will let you ditch its terrible ads for $4.99 a month
Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Tumblr announced today that users can opt out of ads (on the desktop and in its mobile apps) by paying $4.99 per month or purchasing a year of ad-free browsing at a discount for $39.99.
Image: Tumblr
That means long-time posters can go back to the way things were before Yahoo bought Tumblr in 2013 for $1.1 billion, before Tumblr banned porn and lost a massive chunk of its audience, and before Verizon sold Tumblr to WordPress owner Automattic Inc. for a tiny fraction of its original price.
Founder David Karp was opposed to allowing advertising, and once the company bent on that principle, it’s been plagued by tacky, cheap-looking advertisements that seemed to flood the feed and often make little to no sense. But now,...