Tumblr .. .

[Cele]

I just heard that Tumblr is going through another 2018 style purge at the moment, again. yeesh. Woke to find a bunch of blogs just gone.

To summ it up Tumblr has started to reinforce these rules certain types of content, but its badly written and vague enough that its getting a bunch innocent blogs flagged and deleted for the most flimsly reasons.

And because there´s a bunch of bad actors there who are more than happy to abuse the report system taking advantage of this

Now in response users have decided to migrate to mastodon and other places. But yeah as officially today, tumblr is now a terrible place to post art and fiction.

Between this, imgur, and now AO3 with the whole AI thing? godamn it. Might as well just focus on making your own website.

Wait, wait, what happened? I haven't seen anything out of the ordinary on my dash

EDIT: Is this connected to the same thing that people can't have queer slurs they can reclaim in their usernames or something?

[pinkvampyr]

i "took a break" from tumblr recently, might make another blog just to lurk some but as of right now i'm so not interested. being black, nonbinary (especially my flavor of nonbinary), and a bisexual woman was just about the worst combination of things to be on there (not as bad as twitter was but still an intolerable amount) and i got a lots of just really nasty people on my case constantly. it just made me angry and upset all the time and it wasnt good for my mental health.

that and staff was just repeatedly implementing the absolute worst rules and features and them trying to monetize the hell out of tumblr "culture" made me sick. twitter was bad enough but tumblr is getting bleak with the ways theyre trying to leech people's money.

i know this is very negative but. well. thats my experience and i'm not eager to go back to it any time soon, until i get too bored i guess lol. and even then i'm going anonymous and staying in my circles.

[wygolvillage]

The monetization of Tumblr is what really pisses me off about the platform nowadays. If you try to use it without adblock there's a promoted post from their merch blog like every 5 posts on the dash. And it's always the most cringey, trying-too-hard, overly calculated corporate drivel. No, I will not buy your merch!!! AAAAAAAA

And people will defend it since they're not a profitable platform and they need to keep the lights on, but I doubt they're recouping the server costs of such a huge platform with merch sales... I feel like a donation button would be less insulting. (I also highly dislike the notion that Tumblr users "have nowhere to go if Tumblr shuts down" and how some people go around calling the platform "the last bastion of the old web"...  )

ALSO (I swear not all I do is complain about Tumblr) the site markets itself on "having no algorithms" (which they didn't used to) but they've been constantly adding stuff like For You pages, "Best Stuff First", etc... All attempts to add algorithms to the Tumblr experience.

I just don't get it.

[creaturefeature]

Wait, wait, what happened? I haven't seen anything out of the ordinary on my dash

EDIT: Is this connected to the same thing that people can't have queer slurs they can reclaim in their usernames or something?

from what i gather it was something involving rules designed to protect minors , but all its doing is like banning blogs of survivors for speaking about their own traumatic experiences, there also been reports of a certain group of people just mass reporting blogs in some sort of harassment campaign taking advantage of these flimsy rules.

And considering tumblr track record of false flags which what was the same thing that happened with 2018 purge where even sfw images were being flagged as mature yeah.

For example if you drew art of an adult character but they were somehow short, or chubby or drawn in say an anime or cutesy style they could get flagged too.

Meanwhile, bots? still around, hate speech? still around. reporting a death threat? not only will the from a blog be still still up but all you get is a nice little message that says "this user was found to not be in violation of the rules"

So artists once again and now afraid their account is gonna get false flagued too and deleted and there´s talks about another exodus, there´s been talks of moving to mastodon instances and pillowfort.

Ironically as of this writing there´s also been twitter accounts being deleted, only this time around is due to its terrible code that is false flagging accounts as inactive.

Seriously artists cannot have a break.

Also at this point I feel like tumblr cares more about appealing to advertisers than actually making the site safe or at least functional.

I think this can be compared with the strikethrough event that decimated online communities in livejornal

[shevek]

Seriously artists cannot have a break.

This is something that happens so much.. on the outside, it looks like artists are hugely independent. Everyone making a living on online platforms often seems like they have no boss to answer to. But they all have to answer to their platforms platform deletes your account, stops showing you via the algorithm, demonetizes you, shadowbans your posts etc. and then suddenly your livelihood is threatened. Not to mention when the platform is the one paying you your cut and can withhold money. I think of this when I see the occasional (rare) person bragging that they have no boss because they're an influencer, or streamer, or living off of commissions.

Your boss is a multimillion dollar company and you have no worker protection, no rights. Your platform and ability to sell can be gone one day with no legal recourse to reinstate it or be reimbursed for your loss in business and the wasted investments you made while trusting on the fact that your account and works would still be there in the future.

Hope in the future there will be less reliance on external services for these things.

[Cele]

I'd be impressed if Tumblr users managed to go to Mastodon or Pillowfort. Just the fact that after 2018, they went to Twitter is so telling. Twitter is not a good platform for fandoms at all. (Although those fine with just hanging out with their friends went to Discord.)

[creaturefeature]

Lol you´re talking to a Tumblr veteran here.  But people are more adaptable than you think, the best one can do is to teach people how to use those platforms.

I also like that there are now more fandom instances on mastodon now who are much better at giving people freedom to express their interests than twitter or maybe tumblr ever was.

When I started using it felt a bit liberating, didn't have to worry much about some post escaping containment and dealing with trolls, just a place to vibe.

Granted mastodon is still not perfect, but at this point I´ll take it over whatever the heck is going on currently.

[Cele]

Lol you´re talking to a Tumblr veteran here.  But people are more adaptable than you think, the best one can do is to teach people how to use those platforms.

I also like that there are now more fandom instances on mastodon now who are much better at giving people freedom to express their interests than twitter or maybe tumblr ever was.

When I started using it felt a bit liberating, didn't have to worry much about some post escaping containment and dealing with trolls, just a place to vibe.

Granted mastodon is still not perfect, but at this point I´ll take it over whatever the heck is going on currently.

Maybe. I have profiles on both actually (Mastodon and Pillowfort), all I know is if I go on Mastodon and search #genshinimpact, there aren't really artists sharing a lot of stuff. So I will stay on Tumblr for now.

[creaturefeature]

that´s fair,
Still, I guess i think its up to me to start posting content I enjoy seeing then , maybe this might to motivate me to start drawing or writing more.

[shevek]

How are the Tumblr users of this forum feeling about the latest news? Another wave of "Tumblr will die" news that will blow over and isn't true, or will it be for real this time?

For context, some websites are publishing news articles about internal memos at Automattic, the current owners of Tumblr that don't look good. They talk about reassigning employees elsewhere, and keeping Tumblr in a sort of maintenance mode, you could say, with a much smaller amount of employees dedicated to it and just being focused on upkeep. Apparently, the site is just not profitable and they want to focus on other, more profitable projects in their portfolio. This could impact the development of new features the users want, as well as support, and at some point may result in the death of the site. At this point, it will be hard to find another buyer for it. Tumblr is likely the hot potato no one wants to hold.

I've seen some staff members on Tumblr trying to calm the users and pretend not much is wrong. But I also understand it to be in their best interest to do so.. anything else could help facilitate a ton of people preemptively leaving the site and/or ending their payments to any of the microtransactions and subscription stuff the site has. What are your thoughts?

[tarraxahum]

As far as I can tell, they're leaving a skeleton crew to manage Tumblr, which mostly means a lack of updates (or just slowing down with them). Which, considering that like 80% of recent updates were decidedly unpopular and even widely hated (who thought that making the layout into a clone of Twitter is a good idea, mother of--), might not even be the worst thing. Teams managing support and reports seem to be Automatic-wide and never assigned specifically to Tumblr alone, so those aspects shouldn't change much.

As for the general "Gah, Tumblr is dying" thing, eh, Tumblr is dying at least once a year, and people overreact every time. That website is a cockroach and its main userbase likely won't leave until a full server shutdown. As someone who's been there for 10 years (and I don't even consider myself especially old in Tumblr years), I say I'll believe it when I see it.

[zawieja]

I wasn't a fan of the recent changes they pushed onto the website anyway. And I just find it a bit sad that anything that doesn't make enough profit is just meant to 'die' on the internet these days, especially since I personally find it to be a relict of 2010s internet era that I miss a lot. But well, as much as I enjoy tumblr, I try not to think too deeply into it. If it stays around, cool. If it doesn't, it's a bit sad but it's nothing I haven't experienced before. My art is backed up, and that's the most important part to me.

(at the same time, I agree that tumblr feels a bit like a cockroach that just doesn't want to die, so it's hard to imagine it just disappearing)

[shevek]

ts main userbase likely won't leave until a full server shutdown

True, at least for the hardcore users, I imagine.

And I just find it a bit sad that anything that doesn't make enough profit is just meant to 'die' on the internet these days, especially since I personally find it to be a relict of 2010s internet era that I miss a lot.

Yeah, I also wish things did not have to be profitable to survive.

Your post also made me think more closely about what Tumblr means to me and others, as well as how much is left of the site, in regards to being a 2010 relic.

It's intense how much time has passed. Likely, a ton of people you used to engage with on the site are not on there anymore (or not active anymore). Blogs you used to see daily on your dash are dormant. Popular funnypeople of the site are now adults with jobs (see meladoodle). Aside from growing out of it or worse things, the ban on specific content drove people away, too. More and more people also become tired of social media and delete most or all of it. The interface of the site has changed a lot since then, features added and removed. The tone evolved - the many memes about a better culture on the site are really noticeable. A % of users sure is still there from the 2010s, but they aren't the same people anymore, too.
If you think about it, a site can exist since a specific date and be super old, but its users always come and go, and the discussions and culture are influenced by who stays and who leaves, and by outside events too.

Makes me wonder what parts of the original site are even left. Maybe it evolved so much that there is nothing there from 2010 aside from the post format.

[zawieja]

Your post also made me think more closely about what Tumblr means to me and others, as well as how much is left of the site, in regards to being a 2010 relic.

It's intense how much time has passed. Likely, a ton of people you used to engage with on the site are not on there anymore (or not active anymore). Blogs you used to see daily on your dash are dormant. Popular funnypeople of the site are now adults with jobs (see meladoodle). Aside from growing out of it or worse things, the ban on specific content drove people away, too. More and more people also become tired of social media and delete most or all of it. The interface of the site has changed a lot since then, features added and removed. The tone evolved - the many memes about a better culture on the site are really noticeable. A % of users sure is still there from the 2010s, but they aren't the same people anymore, too.
If you think about it, a site can exist since a specific date and be super old, but its users always come and go, and the discussions and culture are influenced by who stays and who leaves, and by outside events too.

Makes me wonder what parts of the original site are even left. Maybe it evolved so much that there is nothing there from 2010 aside from the post format.

I agree partially with what you are saying, but as a counterpart - the tumblr pages are still customizable, for one! You can edit your theme's HTML and all that. You can still use gifs easily, which I value a lot (when I make gif animations, I can usually only post them in weird video formats on the other websites which annoys me). And 90% of the dashboard is still not influenced by algorithms and is chronological. No need for text limit or video reels... I can see a lot of "old" stuff in there.

Personally I've seen a lot of people leave, but a lot of new younger people join as well. It seems pretty well-balanced, but this might depend a lot on the specific fandoms though.

But yes, a lot of the attachment to the website might be just nostalgia speaking I suppose, since it's simply just... Not as bad as some other social media can be. At least for me 

[tarraxahum]

Likely, a ton of people you used to engage with on the site are not on there anymore (or not active anymore).

Funny you should mention it (I'm not disagreeing with you btw, a lot has changed, as it goes with generations I suppose), just recently I was nostalgic about a fandom I used to be in whole 10 years ago, and when I went to its tag I ran into the same artist that I used to know back then, still active and drawing the same characters occasionally! And I'm pretty sure I know at least couple more users like that, who are basically eternal in my Tumblr experience.

Those are sand particles in a whole beach of other users who left and new users who came, of course, but that's what I mainly mean when talking about the userbase who won't leave until lights are out. Some of us are stuck on there, it seems (not that I'm complaining).

the tumblr pages are still customizable, for one!

And I still customize mine even though most people don't open full desktop versions anymore. (For shame, really, but that's what mobile convenience does I guess).

EDIT: Oh, also: the lack of the algorithm (there's the For You page but it's not exactly driven by popularity or engagement, I legit get fanarts there with like 4 notes sometimes, as it should be) still makes people frequently interact with your older content instead of drowning whatever didn't lift off immediately like Twitter does. Actual working tag system and timeline order of posts makes it so much easier to exist in a fandom than what most other social medias currently have. People actually SAW my stuff even when I didn't have active followers on a new side-blog yet!