5 ms·

The moment it is split into the "safe" and "unsafe" it becomes immediately obvious that "unsafe" loses gobs of money while "safe" makes a tiny bit of money, whi

The moment it is split into the "safe" and "unsafe" it becomes immediately obvious that "unsafe" loses gobs of money while "safe" makes a tiny bit of money, which is exactly why the non-safe content gets purged ( in case of Tumblr, badly -- there's still lots of porn on it ).

huffmsa 8y ago
But purging the content meant 30% of their users left literally overnight. Those users probably consume some safe content.
- notyourday 8y ago
  It is numbers: if the cost of servicing those users in a non-safe content is X, they are worth it only if the revenue received from them in a non-safe content Y is either ~X or > X. Unprofitable eyeballs leaving decreases the losses, making a business more valuable.
  - ryan_j_naughton 8y ago
    Not if there is an ecosystem effect, and you need those people to ensure that all the safe content has enough producers, consumers, commenters, etc to make it a living, community and ecosystem.
    - notyourday 8y ago
      Those effects did not work for Tumblr. Tumblr always lost money. That's exactly how it ended up in this situation.
- RenRav 8y ago
  What's interesting is that the content doesn't seem purged. All the accounts with porn just have their blogs hidden, but like 90% of the images and such are still hosted and can be directly accessed. Someone could easily reverse this and slap on monetization features, because even today there doesn't seem to be any decent tumblr replacement, not reddit, not twitter. That seems unlikely to happen though.
  - notyourday 8y ago
    That gets us back to Tumblr being a money losing enterprise. The question is what is a working strategy to monetize a massive user content driven platform where advertisers view on that content is somewhere between the gigantic landfill on fire and a nuclear waste.
    - RenRav 8y ago
      Seems Pornhub is one solution after all, it sure solves the advertising problem... they just put up their own advertisements. > https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/05/pornhub-wants-to-buy-tumblr-and-restore-site-to-former-porn-filled-glory/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/05/pornh...
  - danaris 8y ago
    As I understand it (as a light Tumblr user, in areas adjacent to but almost entirely outside of the NSFW sections), a significant number of the porn blogs have, in fact, been deleted, as well as a significant number of blogs or posts on blogs that were flagged as porn by their egregiously terrible porn-finding algorithm, but were in fact nothing of the kind. However, the porn spambots still keep popping up periodically, and there are still loads of Nazi/alt-right blogs that Tumblr doesn't seem to have any intention of doing anything about.
  - Izkata 8y ago
    That is in fact exactly what happened. The implementation was rushed and/or inept to the point it's near-impossible for me to believe this was something they were already working on: * Tumblrs that weren't marked adult got marked as such by their new algorithm. This included the text-only official announcement post itself. * The actual block was done by turning on safe mode for all users, and removing the toggle from the settings page. For a short time, some people were supposedly able to turn in back off by adding that setting back to the POST manually. * The setting doesn't affect your dashboard, so you can still see new posts by those you follow, even though there's no way to browse to their page directly.
terryschiavo22 8y ago
4chan doesn't exist to make a profit though. It only needs to get enough money to keep the lights on.
- notyourday 8y ago
  Which makes it not a business and not valueable unless someone wants to fund it.

huffmsa 8y ago

But purging the content meant 30% of their users left literally overnight. Those users probably consume some safe content.

notyourday 8y ago
It is numbers: if the cost of servicing those users in a non-safe content is X, they are worth it only if the revenue received from them in a non-safe content Y is either ~X or > X. Unprofitable eyeballs leaving decreases the losses, making a business more valuable.
- ryan_j_naughton 8y ago
  Not if there is an ecosystem effect, and you need those people to ensure that all the safe content has enough producers, consumers, commenters, etc to make it a living, community and ecosystem.
  - notyourday 8y ago
    Those effects did not work for Tumblr. Tumblr always lost money. That's exactly how it ended up in this situation.
RenRav 8y ago
What's interesting is that the content doesn't seem purged. All the accounts with porn just have their blogs hidden, but like 90% of the images and such are still hosted and can be directly accessed. Someone could easily reverse this and slap on monetization features, because even today there doesn't seem to be any decent tumblr replacement, not reddit, not twitter. That seems unlikely to happen though.
- notyourday 8y ago
  That gets us back to Tumblr being a money losing enterprise. The question is what is a working strategy to monetize a massive user content driven platform where advertisers view on that content is somewhere between the gigantic landfill on fire and a nuclear waste.
  - RenRav 8y ago
    Seems Pornhub is one solution after all, it sure solves the advertising problem... they just put up their own advertisements. > https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/05/pornhub-wants-to-buy-tumblr-and-restore-site-to-former-porn-filled-glory/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/05/pornh...
- danaris 8y ago
  As I understand it (as a light Tumblr user, in areas adjacent to but almost entirely outside of the NSFW sections), a significant number of the porn blogs have, in fact, been deleted, as well as a significant number of blogs or posts on blogs that were flagged as porn by their egregiously terrible porn-finding algorithm, but were in fact nothing of the kind. However, the porn spambots still keep popping up periodically, and there are still loads of Nazi/alt-right blogs that Tumblr doesn't seem to have any intention of doing anything about.
- Izkata 8y ago
  That is in fact exactly what happened. The implementation was rushed and/or inept to the point it's near-impossible for me to believe this was something they were already working on: * Tumblrs that weren't marked adult got marked as such by their new algorithm. This included the text-only official announcement post itself. * The actual block was done by turning on safe mode for all users, and removing the toggle from the settings page. For a short time, some people were supposedly able to turn in back off by adding that setting back to the POST manually. * The setting doesn't affect your dashboard, so you can still see new posts by those you follow, even though there's no way to browse to their page directly.

terryschiavo22 8y ago

4chan doesn't exist to make a profit though. It only needs to get enough money to keep the lights on.

notyourday 8y ago
Which makes it not a business and not valueable unless someone wants to fund it.