This bit, within the linked story, seems relevant:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18104366/tumblr-ios-app-...
Tumblr has never made money, as far as I know, and Yahoo's new corporate parent Oath seems to be a lot less mellow about that sort of thing. I suspect this is a necessary step before they open the advertising floodgates and see if they can get Tumblr to start paying for itself. Losing a massive amount of their userbase is an acceptable outcome as long as there's still enough users there for more advertising to turn a a profit.