3 ms·

Tumblr was one of my favorite places on the web for a time. A real anti-fbook, but then they were taken over by yahoo. It didn't change a lot at first, but the

Tumblr was one of my favorite places on the web for a time. A real anti-fbook, but then they were taken over by yahoo. It didn't change a lot at first, but the wall street ad and censor machine started to creep in and it became obvious what once was a haven for sharing things you would never do on fbook, well it got a new moderation staff and more changes. I stayed with it even after the change to hide the porn by default and such. Then one day one of my tumblrs got banned. I understood, it very much looked like many of the rampant spammer's tumblr sites, I had thought thay by using a custom modded theme and other things a tumblr employee would see it was not a cut of mill spam blog but highly custom and completely unique. I was wrong, the moderator that made the site disappear did not see it. When I emailed the next level staff asking why and suggesting that it was unique and not spam, they replied it was flagged as spam and is gone. I wrote back one time begging for access to download a copy of my tumblr, it was all original content, all the text, all the photos. They did not care to even reply. I tried to write the CEO, I reached out for an explanation on twitter even. Nothing. I know, not a customer, the product, and your rights to speech are not rights when publishing on a sharecropper lords platform, but I expected more of tumblr. I was mistaken. I later read about how some of these companies were employing a lot of people from places outside the USA and did some research on the majority of religions and morals of those areas and scratched my head wondering how the main people of tumblr could even consider such a move given the wide range of widely shared content likely being disturbing to so many in some of those places. Then I realized, it was not just about the cheap labor, it was about have an excuse for why so much was mopped up without a second thought. IT wasn't the tumblr crew doing it right - this was the plan from yahoo and the future advertiser's and wall street and all that. I'm so mad I did not backup my tumblrs when I had the chance, so mad that I gave them so much. Promoted it as a place to have fun without the stress of fbook, linked in and such. Never again. At least with other portals you know there is a chance at loss ( I routinely save my comments before submitting to any wordpress based site, assuming that akismet will likely flag my comment and make it disappear into the ether box not seen by blog admins.. and of course blog admins make them hidden as well. Can't believe I'm about to say this, but I have more faith in G plus providing customer service and fair rules than tumblr. Boy that did not taste right coming out of my virtual mouth. That's how pitiful tumblr is now, unless it goes back to being self owned / private or whatever, it is dead to me, And there is not backup for them to get of my past trust and love.

exikyut 8y ago
You've probably tried these, but just in case... - Internet Archive - Googling the URL to see if anything's still in Google's cache I wonder if you'd be up to sharing what the tumblr URL was, perhaps privately.
- stevenicr 8y ago
  Thanks for the ideas there ex. not sure how to share privately, but I think the url was: sexchaterotic dot tumblr - I had three of them, one is still active, so it could be a different url. My open set of notes and emails only go back so far. Since the ban of the other one I've been too paranoid to post anything there for the fear of it being destroyed with no way to do anything about it. I did manage to export a tumblr site into a wordpress at one point, and now control whether the content stays or gets removed and have backups. Wish I could of exported that other one, it was pretty custom.
  - exikyut 8y ago
    Interesting. I tried to find the blog you mentioned, and sadly it has indeed pretty much fallen off the end of the internet. Neither the Web Archive nor Google's cache has it, sadly. But I did find proof it once existed: https://www.sexchatsexchat.com/peeps/sexystuff/tag/sexy-quote/ https://www.sexchatsexchat.com/peeps/sexystuff/tag/sexy-quot... I also found an archived registration record from 2014 for http://cn.sitexy.com/whois/sexchaterotic.com http://cn.sitexy.com/whois/sexchaterotic.com but I'm unsure if this was relevant. I've sadly seen quite a few tumblrs be destroyed, in the form of users who I suddenly realize have a "2" or "-new" after their name. The content they're posting is sufficiently interesting to their followers that they get their network back reasonably quickly (one person finds the new account, follows them, then that spreads the posts back into the rest of the network), but they lose the link between the notes/reblogs and their ID. And that's the thing. From the standpoint of "normal" social networking, having new people discover you, etc, you generally do want to keep your identity so people can track that you're you. I guess for real fringe interests (although I can't really say what you're posting is that much of a fringe interest, at the end of the day, really...), Tumblr doesn't seem the best place to go - which _is_ pretty hypocritical, I'll give it that, yeah. I can't find it now (agh) but I remember reading an interesting Yahoo report that said something to the effect of shutting down Tumblr. All I can find now about it is earnings reports, but this PDF was a bit more explicit about it than that. Tumblr will, eventually, one day be gone; and the world is going to be a very very strange place when that happens. :/ There's no point stressing out about that point now though; nobody knows how it will pan out - maybe some crazy-insane (in a very good way) bunch of people will band together to make their own new thing, or maybe everyone will converge on some existing site. I doubt _everyone_ will disperse, although that will sadly happen. IMO, any individual effort will be fruitless unless it fits in with the group dynamics that play out at the time, and I see no point in taking the chance that the frantic freakout efforts I make will hit that dynamic, so I'm just watching. This being said, I definitely classify the question of archiving as something that is a very good idea to do right now, IMO. Sadly it seems so unnecessarily nontrivial to do so; I'm not aware of any software to download tumblr accounts that isn't a completely broken half-an-hours-effort-at-4AM job. This is sadly probably why there are few/no backups of more rare accounts. :( It's possible the Web Archive might have something, but the few parts of their archives that are public are effectively impossible to search (you basically have to download GBs if not TBs of data, open it, go "nope", delete it all, and download the next set). Hm, this turned into a bit of a rambling rant. I'm really glad you were able to export the content into wordpress (was it the one I found above? lol). Is the WP installation hosted by you? That, along with picking a smaller hosting provider, and verifying ahead of time that they're fine with the content you want to post, should hopefully minimize heartache. (This is actually a general protip: go with a smaller provider who's one or two people, let them know what sorts of DMCA/takedown/angry emails they might get at your behest and how you plan to deal with them, and even crazy content (eg, obscure political views, flamewars on steroids, sex chat-related sites, etc etc) will stand a chance at staying up for a little while.) Actually that makes me think of something. The thing with hosting your own website is that, unless you operate, say, Sci-Hub, which has the kinds of enemies that can pressure domain registrars into deregistering you, you'll be fine, because, in the scenario where your hosting provider boots you (or gets yanked in the middle of the night themselves - this can sometimes happen with tiny outfits), you just switch providers, apologize for the downtime :), and move on. (Obviously you have a local site backup. Right?) DNS registration is a bit hazier thanks to reregistration bots that constantly sniff for expiring domains and snatch them. Some of the automated systems that do this will even pay $$$ to grab the domain early in the termination pipeline (expiring domains go to auction before they are fully un-registered) if they detect the site was popular. It may be worth asking around Web hosting communities for a good registrar that doesn't boot fringe interest groups (there are fewer smaller registrars, so the hosting thing I mentioned about going with a smaller outfit can't apply here). I mean to do this but haven't yet. So... an interesting ideal could be, you could register your blog with tumblr _on a custom domain_, do whatever customization you wanted, post whatever you wanted, and then, when tumblr yanks your site, a) you still have the domain, so you just pivot that over to your own hosting... b) ...which has all your content on it, either because you were posting it to both, or because you imported your continuous backup of the tumblr account :D TL;DR, tumblr isn't for "real" fringe stuff, banhammers are both silly and horrible but unavoidable, using your own hosting will zero your chances of getting disappeared.

exikyut 8y ago

You've probably tried these, but just in case... - Internet Archive - Googling the URL to see if anything's still in Google's cache I wonder if you'd be up to sharing what the tumblr URL was, perhaps privately.

stevenicr 8y ago
Thanks for the ideas there ex. not sure how to share privately, but I think the url was: sexchaterotic dot tumblr - I had three of them, one is still active, so it could be a different url. My open set of notes and emails only go back so far. Since the ban of the other one I've been too paranoid to post anything there for the fear of it being destroyed with no way to do anything about it. I did manage to export a tumblr site into a wordpress at one point, and now control whether the content stays or gets removed and have backups. Wish I could of exported that other one, it was pretty custom.
- exikyut 8y ago
  Interesting. I tried to find the blog you mentioned, and sadly it has indeed pretty much fallen off the end of the internet. Neither the Web Archive nor Google's cache has it, sadly. But I did find proof it once existed: https://www.sexchatsexchat.com/peeps/sexystuff/tag/sexy-quote/ https://www.sexchatsexchat.com/peeps/sexystuff/tag/sexy-quot... I also found an archived registration record from 2014 for http://cn.sitexy.com/whois/sexchaterotic.com http://cn.sitexy.com/whois/sexchaterotic.com but I'm unsure if this was relevant. I've sadly seen quite a few tumblrs be destroyed, in the form of users who I suddenly realize have a "2" or "-new" after their name. The content they're posting is sufficiently interesting to their followers that they get their network back reasonably quickly (one person finds the new account, follows them, then that spreads the posts back into the rest of the network), but they lose the link between the notes/reblogs and their ID. And that's the thing. From the standpoint of "normal" social networking, having new people discover you, etc, you generally do want to keep your identity so people can track that you're you. I guess for real fringe interests (although I can't really say what you're posting is that much of a fringe interest, at the end of the day, really...), Tumblr doesn't seem the best place to go - which _is_ pretty hypocritical, I'll give it that, yeah. I can't find it now (agh) but I remember reading an interesting Yahoo report that said something to the effect of shutting down Tumblr. All I can find now about it is earnings reports, but this PDF was a bit more explicit about it than that. Tumblr will, eventually, one day be gone; and the world is going to be a very very strange place when that happens. :/ There's no point stressing out about that point now though; nobody knows how it will pan out - maybe some crazy-insane (in a very good way) bunch of people will band together to make their own new thing, or maybe everyone will converge on some existing site. I doubt _everyone_ will disperse, although that will sadly happen. IMO, any individual effort will be fruitless unless it fits in with the group dynamics that play out at the time, and I see no point in taking the chance that the frantic freakout efforts I make will hit that dynamic, so I'm just watching. This being said, I definitely classify the question of archiving as something that is a very good idea to do right now, IMO. Sadly it seems so unnecessarily nontrivial to do so; I'm not aware of any software to download tumblr accounts that isn't a completely broken half-an-hours-effort-at-4AM job. This is sadly probably why there are few/no backups of more rare accounts. :( It's possible the Web Archive might have something, but the few parts of their archives that are public are effectively impossible to search (you basically have to download GBs if not TBs of data, open it, go "nope", delete it all, and download the next set). Hm, this turned into a bit of a rambling rant. I'm really glad you were able to export the content into wordpress (was it the one I found above? lol). Is the WP installation hosted by you? That, along with picking a smaller hosting provider, and verifying ahead of time that they're fine with the content you want to post, should hopefully minimize heartache. (This is actually a general protip: go with a smaller provider who's one or two people, let them know what sorts of DMCA/takedown/angry emails they might get at your behest and how you plan to deal with them, and even crazy content (eg, obscure political views, flamewars on steroids, sex chat-related sites, etc etc) will stand a chance at staying up for a little while.) Actually that makes me think of something. The thing with hosting your own website is that, unless you operate, say, Sci-Hub, which has the kinds of enemies that can pressure domain registrars into deregistering you, you'll be fine, because, in the scenario where your hosting provider boots you (or gets yanked in the middle of the night themselves - this can sometimes happen with tiny outfits), you just switch providers, apologize for the downtime :), and move on. (Obviously you have a local site backup. Right?) DNS registration is a bit hazier thanks to reregistration bots that constantly sniff for expiring domains and snatch them. Some of the automated systems that do this will even pay $$$ to grab the domain early in the termination pipeline (expiring domains go to auction before they are fully un-registered) if they detect the site was popular. It may be worth asking around Web hosting communities for a good registrar that doesn't boot fringe interest groups (there are fewer smaller registrars, so the hosting thing I mentioned about going with a smaller outfit can't apply here). I mean to do this but haven't yet. So... an interesting ideal could be, you could register your blog with tumblr _on a custom domain_, do whatever customization you wanted, post whatever you wanted, and then, when tumblr yanks your site, a) you still have the domain, so you just pivot that over to your own hosting... b) ...which has all your content on it, either because you were posting it to both, or because you imported your continuous backup of the tumblr account :D TL;DR, tumblr isn't for "real" fringe stuff, banhammers are both silly and horrible but unavoidable, using your own hosting will zero your chances of getting disappeared.