stochasticdifferentialequations2 - Tumblr blog

stochasticdifferentialequations2 · 4 months ago

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So, yeah, that happened.

I just got done dealing with a few years of chaos. What is unique about our globalized era is that having written that, I know that I don't even have to tell you why. Whether you were in Illinois, or Germany, or Rwanda or Tibet wouldn't matter that much. If you were human and you were living on this planet, you got to experience the chaos, too. There might have been questions about how necessary it all was, or how best to deal with it, but it was a universal human experience. Yet, we have people on the staff at Tumblr acting as if it were not, and as if there could no possible concern in our lives that would have taken priority over their corporate desire for engagement. I wrote about this, just now, on what was supposed to be something other than a microblog.

Physically speaking, I could post essays, here. Tumblr is not Twitter. The functionality is vastly greater, a fact that would have made a decisive difference, if only we (as Tumblr users) could trust the staff that is supposedly here to help us. But we can't.

I have eyes. Even if I had never read even a single comment about the recent changes on this site, I'd be able to take one look at two pointlessly vandalized blogs, and immediately know that something very wrong was going on. But, in fact, I have read the news, and seen the accounts of users who were shocked to lose years worth of writing, after their Tumblr accounts were ended without cause. Notice how I steered my way clear of the T word? I'm sure somebody has set up a filter that looks for it.

Appeals have been getting stonewalled. When I look at the same of the group hearing those appeals on Tumblr, and compare it to the name of the now scandal-ridden board that Twitter entrusted with the same job, and remember that other group enjoys the infamy it does, I find that I am not surprised to hear about the horrible ways in which my fellow users are being treated. On a hunch, I did a search and sure enough, right after Musk fired the people who had so abused their power at Twitter, the CEO of Automattic announced his intention of opening the doors for them, while expressing a hope that they would boost his company's profits tenfold.

So much to unpack, there, but the most important message is a clear one: Automattic doesn't respect its users. It does not and it will not understand that the content we put on its servers is the reason for those profits. That should be at least a little humbling for them, as thoughts go, and that, perhaps, is why they are so determined to not entertain it, that they're persist in doing that which will bring about their own bankruptcy, sooner or later. They want to believe that they're the best and brightest and most important people on Earth, so brilliant that they could never need nor even benefit from what others have lent them.

There is no reasoning with people who think like that. To those who lost years worth of writing and memories to some anonymous T & S guy's power flex, I am sincerely sorry for your loss. Please don't think that I'm victim blaming. But we all need to learn from these bad experiences, if we are not to doom ourselves to their endless repetition. The Tumblr staff is what it is, and what it is, is something that really isn't rare in San Francisco and hasn't been for a long time. We need to stop trusting Tumblr. That much, I think we can all see. But we need to stop thinking in terms of leaving the "bad" sites and finding our way to the "good" ones.

Tumblr used to be famous for being one of the good ones, and not so long ago, didn't it? This didn't keep it from turning into something evil in the relative blink of an eye. Look at the competition, and notice the way in which almost all of it is in the same area. That lack of geographical diversity, in combination with the lack of governmental regulation, is a clear sign of future trouble to come. Any site you move to, to get away from some power mad admin, could be the place that hires him, tomorrow. One can't deal with problems by walking away from them, when the people causing them can just walk after one.

Ever been to San Francisco? You can cross the place on foot at your leisure and be back well before sunset. It's that small. The people at these companies are running into each other in person. They're not strangers. Ever been to a corrupt, cliquish small town before? SF is an overgrown version of one of those. You're not going to get fairness out of its residents, or anything resembling impartiality.

All that we can do is limit the opportunities that these people have to inflict losses on us. We all need to back up out content offline, both as hard copy and in some durable format (perhaps burned to CDs), and to not invest so much time in our blogs, that we feel the need to cry when they're wiped out. The only thing that one should upload to the Internet is a sample of one's work, that much and no more.

The real world has more than a few people in it who will earn and go on living up to one's trust, so why go on bouncing from betrayal to betrayal? San Francisco was an infamous tourist trap before the Internet was invented, never really know for having trustworthy residents, so I have to wonder why any of us ever trusted the dot coms in the first place. I'm not trying to shame or mock you, if you did. How could I, when I've made that mistake, myself? But let's see our mistakes for what they were, understand them as well as we can, and move on to better things.

The arts and sciences existed long before the Internet did. We don't need the Internet to share the things we create with those who will appreciate it.

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