“NSFW” is a common Internet term for “Not Safe For Work.” This marks the content that will get you fired – from porn and nudity to drugs, violence, and the seedy underworld.

Oh wait – now these pages will no longer appear in external, internal, or even Google searches?! How, then, do you get to them organically?

This is the core issue for “Adult” users – the community has been effectively stunted. With new membership almost impossible to produce, they are left only to attempt to grow members through sharing direct links. By not even allowing for a filtered search, Yahoo! is making a clear statement and backtracking from its earlier policy – NSFW is not welcome.

While it is quite true that many would lose their jobs by visiting certain sites and content, few crack down as aggressively as this when solving the problem. Even sites know for their backyard adult content have easy, novel means of solving this issue that do not require ostracizing the users. Reddit flags adult posts with a clear “NSFW” warning, while 4chan pops up a warning when entering an unregulated board.

The Terms of Service and Community Guidelines are, not surprisingly, silent on this change. Tumblr never updated them after the Yahoo! acquisition, leaving consideration for NSFW content to the community alone.