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This doesn't surprise me at all. I run a reasonably popular non-porn, submissions-based blog and immediately after the ban was implemented, our numbers tanked.

This doesn't surprise me at all. I run a reasonably popular non-porn, submissions-based blog and immediately after the ban was implemented, our numbers tanked. Submissions dropped from 25-35 per day to around 10-20, while the number of notes (likes+reblogs+replies) per post has dropped from 600-800 to 200-400. Unfortunately, we still see about the same total number of spambots and fake blogs in our notes. So at least from my own anecdotal experience, the ban did nothing except drive away human users. A lot of our followers asked if/when we would move to another platform, but unfortunately for them (and us), Tumblr is the only major blog platform we know of which supports a curated, moderated submissions-based blog. Reddit is the closest runner-up in that it allows submissions and can be moderated, but isn't curatable for all intents and purposes. I suspect if (when) Tumblr goes under, it's going to take my blog with it, which is disappointing.

aussieguy1234 8y ago
I run a popular tech blog on Tumblr and I've noticed the same thing. Their faulty AI censor bot also flagged 20+ of my non porn tech posts as porn, including a photo of Mars. Sent them all in for manual review months ago, no response yet. Conversely I'm also still seeing some actual porn on Tumblr. Its apparently not difficult to fool the AI censor with carefully crafted images.
- alleyshack 8y ago
  I had several text posts flagged by their algorithm. I still don't know how it managed to do that.
- tzfld 8y ago
  You are not the only one: https://66.media.tumblr.com/47f87b2a4dab47d52adb9e343b57b517/tumblr_pk2pbvhjDl1rasnq9o1_r1_1280.pnj https://66.media.tumblr.com/47f87b2a4dab47d52adb9e343b57b517... Seems they unleashed a totally untrained ai.
- ihuman 8y ago
  Just add a #sfw tag to your posts. Supposedly that bypasses the scanner.
jayshua 8y ago
I find this very interesting. Could you elaborate a bit more in what features tumblr has that you require?
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  Imagine if you had a popular twitter account but you were running low on content to post. In tumblr can have other people submit content to you to post on your tumblr. You just have to approve it or reject it. They get visibility, you get a steady stream of content and your followers get a curated feed.
- alleyshack 8y ago
  The main thing Tumblr offers that I haven't seen anywhere else is curated submissions. Like the sister reply said, on Tumblr, you can allow anyone to submit posts to your blog (including anonymous users and users without Tumblr accounts). You can set restrictions, such as "only text post or photo+caption submissions", and provide tags for submitters to choose from (e.g., on my blog submitters can choose the tag for the TTRPG they're using). The key differentiator is the curation. Only those submissions which my mod team approves get posted to the blog, unlike Reddit where all submissions get posted first and then up/downvoted accordingly. I think (?) Reddit might have a way to curate, but it's not feasible at the scale of Reddit and a subreddit equivalent of the blog would quickly overwhelm the mod team and have to become uncurated. Considering the number of low-quality submissions we actively curate out, the result would be a significantly degraded experience. Which is not to say a transfer to Reddit is impossible, but it would definitely be An Effort, and one I'm not sure I'm willing to put in for what's been a fun hobby project for the last seven years. Asks are another Tumblr feature that I haven't seen in other places. An ask is a question submitted to the blog mods, which the mods can reply to either publicly or privately, and which are visually differentiated on users' dashboards. On Reddit, a question to the mods would look exactly like any other post, and the mods' answer could easily be lost in the sea of general comments on the post. There are also lesser features that Tumblr has that I've never seen on other platforms. Tagging is a big part of Tumblr culture and something I've had a lot of fun with on my blog. Reblogs and replies are very different forms of interaction than retweets/@'s. Fun coincidences like "dash did a thing" (where two unrelated posts show up together on a user's dashboard in a way that's amusing) don't appear to be a thing on other platforms for various reasons. The visual layout and formatting of Tumblr posts on the dashboard tends to be more readable than Reddit or Twitter. These are all little things, but they're little things that have built up the personality of the blog over the years. I'd rather close the blog with its personality intact than watch it slowly die as yet another subreddit plagued by low-quality posts, insufficient moderation, and sameness. (This sounds like I'm down on Reddit, which is not the case at all - I like Reddit, just not as a possible host for my blog.)
zach43 8y ago
this isn't production-ready yet, but there's a federated blogging platform being developed called "Plume" that might satisfy a few of criteria that you've listed in this thread: https://joinplu.me https://joinplu.me
- BigJono 8y ago
  Well, going by some of the false positive reports about Tumblr's NSFW filter here I'm not entirely sure we could call Tumblr "production ready" at the moment either, heh.
- m-p-3 8y ago
  Oh me like, it's works with ActivityPub!
gmays 8y ago
You can do this fairly easily on WordPress with a bit of setup (mostly picking the right plugins).

aussieguy1234 8y ago

I run a popular tech blog on Tumblr and I've noticed the same thing. Their faulty AI censor bot also flagged 20+ of my non porn tech posts as porn, including a photo of Mars. Sent them all in for manual review months ago, no response yet. Conversely I'm also still seeing some actual porn on Tumblr. Its apparently not difficult to fool the AI censor with carefully crafted images.

alleyshack 8y ago
I had several text posts flagged by their algorithm. I still don't know how it managed to do that.
tzfld 8y ago
You are not the only one: https://66.media.tumblr.com/47f87b2a4dab47d52adb9e343b57b517/tumblr_pk2pbvhjDl1rasnq9o1_r1_1280.pnj https://66.media.tumblr.com/47f87b2a4dab47d52adb9e343b57b517... Seems they unleashed a totally untrained ai.
ihuman 8y ago
Just add a #sfw tag to your posts. Supposedly that bypasses the scanner.

jayshua 8y ago

I find this very interesting. Could you elaborate a bit more in what features tumblr has that you require?

albertgoeswoof 8y ago
Imagine if you had a popular twitter account but you were running low on content to post. In tumblr can have other people submit content to you to post on your tumblr. You just have to approve it or reject it. They get visibility, you get a steady stream of content and your followers get a curated feed.
alleyshack 8y ago
The main thing Tumblr offers that I haven't seen anywhere else is curated submissions. Like the sister reply said, on Tumblr, you can allow anyone to submit posts to your blog (including anonymous users and users without Tumblr accounts). You can set restrictions, such as "only text post or photo+caption submissions", and provide tags for submitters to choose from (e.g., on my blog submitters can choose the tag for the TTRPG they're using). The key differentiator is the curation. Only those submissions which my mod team approves get posted to the blog, unlike Reddit where all submissions get posted first and then up/downvoted accordingly. I think (?) Reddit might have a way to curate, but it's not feasible at the scale of Reddit and a subreddit equivalent of the blog would quickly overwhelm the mod team and have to become uncurated. Considering the number of low-quality submissions we actively curate out, the result would be a significantly degraded experience. Which is not to say a transfer to Reddit is impossible, but it would definitely be An Effort, and one I'm not sure I'm willing to put in for what's been a fun hobby project for the last seven years. Asks are another Tumblr feature that I haven't seen in other places. An ask is a question submitted to the blog mods, which the mods can reply to either publicly or privately, and which are visually differentiated on users' dashboards. On Reddit, a question to the mods would look exactly like any other post, and the mods' answer could easily be lost in the sea of general comments on the post. There are also lesser features that Tumblr has that I've never seen on other platforms. Tagging is a big part of Tumblr culture and something I've had a lot of fun with on my blog. Reblogs and replies are very different forms of interaction than retweets/@'s. Fun coincidences like "dash did a thing" (where two unrelated posts show up together on a user's dashboard in a way that's amusing) don't appear to be a thing on other platforms for various reasons. The visual layout and formatting of Tumblr posts on the dashboard tends to be more readable than Reddit or Twitter. These are all little things, but they're little things that have built up the personality of the blog over the years. I'd rather close the blog with its personality intact than watch it slowly die as yet another subreddit plagued by low-quality posts, insufficient moderation, and sameness. (This sounds like I'm down on Reddit, which is not the case at all - I like Reddit, just not as a possible host for my blog.)

zach43 8y ago

this isn't production-ready yet, but there's a federated blogging platform being developed called "Plume" that might satisfy a few of criteria that you've listed in this thread: https://joinplu.me https://joinplu.me

BigJono 8y ago
Well, going by some of the false positive reports about Tumblr's NSFW filter here I'm not entirely sure we could call Tumblr "production ready" at the moment either, heh.
m-p-3 8y ago
Oh me like, it's works with ActivityPub!

gmays 8y ago

You can do this fairly easily on WordPress with a bit of setup (mostly picking the right plugins).