#tumblr dot com

[mangedog]

tumblr blackout proposal

tumblr mobile has steadily become near unusable these past few updates. not just from a user experience perspective (which is important enough in itself) but also from an accessibility perspective.

examples include the new way the image viewer works (if you can call it "working"), the tumblr live button replacing the profile button, and that newly created blogs will be forced to have their main dashboard tab be the 'for you' page.

the demands of the protest would be along the lines of:

reverse the recent image viewer update

scrap the new users 'for you' page default setting

let us turn off tumblr live indefinitely

increase efforts against spam / porn bots

make reporting abuse and hate speech as easy as reporting as reporting spam

let us go nuts show nuts again... for real this time

remove flashing ads, including not accepting blaze campaigns for posts with flashing in them

commit to improving usability and accessibility, and listening to users!

(suggestions welcome!)

to protest against these usability issues, and inspired by the recent reddit blackout, i propose a 48 hour blackout (where you don't use tumblr at all). preferably of both mobile and web (since web has problems too) but mobile is the focus here.

[edit: a 'blackout' is when you don't log in, or interact with the site at all, for [x] amount of time.]

I suggest from the 30th of June.

this marks the end of pride month (for the "queerest place on the internet") and the start of disability month (since accessibility is a massive issue here).

tumblr office is in San Francisco, USA, so the times and dates will be calculated using their time zone (PDT).

you can find out the times and dates for your timezone here.

i can't afford to blaze this post so please spread it around as much as possible! protests only work if significant numbers show up!

edit: tumblr rejected the blaze campaigns for this post because they know it would hurt them. let's make this an indefinite blackout - it's the best way to get results.

edit 2: plain text version of this post

[twobrokenwyngs]

I don’t get it, man. why. why do we have to homogenize everything. why does every product have to look and behave and feel the exact same way. why can’t tumblr maintain its individuality? why can’t it lean into the things that make it a unique and refreshing offering instead of scrambling to make it a carbon copy of twitter? sucks, man. sucks.

[getvalentined]

An open letter to @staff

I already submitted this to Support under "Feedback," but I'm sharing it here too as I don't expect it to get a response, and I feel like putting in out in public may be more effective than sending it off into the void.

The recent post on the Staff blog about changing tumblr to an algorithmic feed features a large amount of misinformation that I feel staff needs to address, openly and honestly, with information on where this data was sourced at the very least.

Claim 1: Algorithms help small creators.

This is false, as algorithms are designed to push content that gets engagement in order to get it more engagement, thereby assuring that the popular remain popular and the small remain small except in instances of extreme luck.

This can already be seen on the tumblr radar, which is a combination of staff picks (usually the same half-dozen fandoms or niche special interests like Lego photography) which already have a ton of engagement, or posts that are getting enough engagement to hit the radar organically. Tumblr has an algorithm that runs like every other socmed algorithm on the planet, and it will decimate the reach of small creators just like every other platform before it.

Claim 2: Only a small portion of users utilize the chronological feed.

You can find a poll by user @darkwood-sleddog here that at the time of writing this, sits at over 40 THOUSAND responses showing that over 96 percent of them use the chronological feed*. Claiming otherwise isn't just a misstatement, it's a lie. You are lying to your core userbase and expecting them to accept it as fact. It's not just unethical, it's insulting to people who have been supporting your platform for over a decade.

Claim 3: Tumblr is not easy to use.

This is also 100% false and you ABSOLUTELY know it. Tumblr is EXTREMELY easy to use, the issue is that the documentation, the explanations of features, and often even the stability of the service is subpar. All of this would be very easy for staff to fix, if they would invest in the creation of walkthroughs and clear explanations of how various site features work, as well as finally fixing the search function. Your inability to explain how your service works should not result in completely ignoring the needs and wants of your core long-term userbase. The fact that you're more willing to invest in the very systems that have made every other form of social media so horrifically toxic than in trying to make it easier for people to use the service AS IT WORKS NOW and fixing the parts that don't work as well speaks volumes toward what tumblr staff actually cares about.

You will not get a paycheck if your platform becomes defunct, and the thing that makes it special right now is that it is the ONLY large-scale socmed platform on THE ENTIRE INTERNET with a true chronological feed and no aggressive algorithmic content serving. The recent post from staff indicates that you are going to kill that, and are insisting that it's what we want. It is not. I'd hazard to guess that most of the dev team knows it isn't what we want, but I assume the money people don't care. The user base isn't relevant, just how much money they can bring in.

The CEO stated he wanted this to remain as sort of the last bastion of the Old Internet, and yet here we are, watching you declare you intend to burn it to the ground.

You can do so much better than this.

Response to the Update

Under the cut for readability, because everything said above still applies.

I already said this in a reblog on the post itself, but I'm adding it to this one for easy access: people read it that way because that's what you said.

Staff considers the main feed as it exists to be "outdated," to the point that you literally used that word to describe it, and the main goals expressed in this announcement is to figure out what makes "high-quality content" and serve that to users moving forward.

People read it that way because that is what you said.

*The final results of the poll, after 24 hours:

136,635 votes breaks down thusly:

An algorithm based feed where I get "the best of tumblr." @ 1.3% (roughly 1,776 votes)

Chronological feed that only features blogs I follow. @ 95.2% (roughly 130,077 votes)

This doesn't affect me personally. @ 3.5% (roughly 4,782 votes)

[defilerwyrm]

And I boop at him

And he boops at me

And I boop at him

And he boops at me

[princessnijireiki]

what happened w the staff wrt “scortched earth”

ok so staff has a new page @/humans where they've got a post up listing several of the current moderators for the site, some of whom linked their own tumblr blogs. user @partyjockers made an original post like "so the new staff lineup explains why mods aren't blocking actual terfs huh" & then reblogged their own post with screenshots for evidence, one of the @/humans intro post, and one of the blog of one of those mods, "jas," @/jezzuminah. all publicly visible posts.

jas is a diehard hp fan, but people paid close attention to her artwork (her art tag is linked in a pinned post at the top of her blog). she's done a lot of dramione fanart, a lot of attack on titan fanart, and ship fanart of aged up preschoolers from spy x family. of note, she also put in her header, "opinions are my own," which is typical for ppl maintaining private social media accts linked to their real professional lives, as a way to ask for or demand a free pass to be inflammatory in some way w/o facing prof'nl. repercussions.

most of the commentary I saw at that point on @partyjockers's post was like, "lol that figures," bc it's not like any of that is especially shocking to see on tumblr; it's dime a dozen in fandom circles, but funny to confirm that "yeah the employees #on here are like that too, ugh, smh. 🙄"

within ONE DAY, staff had no only entirely shut down & seemingly permabanned @partyjockers, AND copyright striked the original screenshots so they get blanked out to error pictures if you try to repost them, they also did something they've never done before + which past staff have indicated was not doable within the tumblr framework: they scrubbed every trace of the post from the site. original post, gone. THOUSANDS of reblogs, all gone. even notifications from people interacting with reblogs of the post, wiped from the activity page. like beyond twitter, where if you delete a tweet, you can still see people's responses from THEIR pages, and you can still see QRTs even if you can't see what's been retweeted... every interaction w that post was gone. @partyjockers, gone. jas just toggled off the "view top posts" feature, locked her twitter & instagram, and deleted one piece of dramione fanart that people began reblogging after that overkill response.

and NOW the scrutiny is higher than ever before, because it's all fun & games and "my opinions are my own" until one person hurts your feelings (at WORK) by pointing & saying, "harry potter fan!" ...and, vitally, they also proved @partyjockers right. they've always been able to erase the entire footprint of violent fascists, people spreading explicit hate speech, literal nazis, revenge porn distributors, doxxers, bigots who run active harassment campaigns (incl some terfs!), ppl who share EXPLICIT csa materials, gore, etc.— even pages like @communismkills just got shadowbanned, and that was after a LONG TIME being a leaking sphincter on this site.

and tumblr staff have thus far ONLY ever unleashed this big gun ONCE in the whole history of the site, to my knowledge, as a tool to take down a page that wasn't even, like, a "whistleblower" for anything that serious, but who JUST SAID, "y'all don't ban terfs (true!) & y'all hire harry potter fans (also true!)," which apparently this new staff took sooooo personally & seriously & disparagingly (lol) that they nuked a random person's page from orbit over the "insult."

and we're currently on day 2, so I'm sure more will eventually unfold, but yeah, this scorched earth tactic is genuinely batshit hostility out of nowhere, over not even mild criticism but just a literal factual observation.

[pennywise-fucker]

People out here mad that people wanna fuck Cooper "The Ghoul" Howard as if that's the weirdest thing someone on this site could want to fuck 🤨

[crisisdotorg]

Remember Goncharov? Tumblr's iconic fake movie? Okay so now Tiktok has one called Zepotha.

[glorbs-dominion]

Banana Split without Ice Cream

This meme interestingly enough made it's way into our "Funny Awards" chat!

Many thanks to @thisisurheichouspeaking for what became a loved meme in @glorbs-dominion and whoever took this image that made it's way to our server!

[pikaman-fan]

[queerism1969]

[ghostofbriggiesmalls]

Oh cool, on mobile I can’t see anything I write in a post. Cool! Who knows if there are typos! It’s a fun Litt game.

Tumblr dot com app sure is a …app?

@staffs-secret-blog I’m disappointed you didn’t announce this fun new feature

[getvalentined]

So tumblr has started putting this little banner at the top of posts from new accounts, and honestly I kinda dig it. I've seen a lot of people get absolutely eviscerated for doing something that was perfectly normal on their previous platform but a huge faux pas here, and I think this little banner will go a long way to mitigating that.

Editing to add: DO NOT BE SHITTY TO PEOPLE WITH THIS BANNER I SWEAR TO GOD IF THEY'RE TRYING TO BE NICE YOU BE NICE BACK OR SO HELP ME

[tocertaindeathwego]

i just think it would be funny to watch someone try to explain this to a republican senator

[timeflow]

could just be me, but it feels like the way that the staff account clarified that the dashboard wasn't going back after making it sound like it was was done intentionally so that we would feel less bad about the other features in the post that actively clash with what people currently want. yes yes it's all well and good that the chronological dashboard isn't going anywhere, but what about the part about sending emails when push notifications are turned off? or the part about potentially removing duplicate reblogs from your dashboard? (actually, depending on implementation, the entire section about reblogs/replies sounds concerning to me.) the way that everyone immediately decided everything was fine feels almost like a planned thing to distract us from the rest of the post is what I'm saying

[dumbbitchawards]

What the fuck is going on

[defilerwyrm]

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