29 ms·

Nope. >Mr. Mullenweg said his company intends to maintain the existing policy that bans adult content. He said he has long been a Tumblr user and sees the site

by knd775 7y ago

Nope. >Mr. Mullenweg said his company intends to maintain the existing policy that bans adult content. He said he has long been a Tumblr user and sees the site as complementary to WordPress.com. “It’s just fun,” he said of Tumblr. “We’re not going to change any of that.”

xwdv 7y ago
So basically an exercise in blowing several million dollars.
- arkitaip 7y ago
  Why do you think that hosting porn for random people will make Automattic money?
  - xxpor 7y ago
    Because it drives multiples of traffic?
    - dageshi 7y ago
      Which is mostly unmonetisable by anyone other than advertising more porn. So it's not worth that much?
      - marcinzm 7y ago
        Except from what everyone is saying and the drop in traffic people are observing it drove multiples of SFW traffic. The porn kept and drove users but they also viewed plenty of SFW content as well. You can monetize the SFW side of things.
        chipotle_coyote 7y ago
        As far as I know, Tumblr has never come close to being a sustainable, profitable business; it survived on VC funding until it was bought by Yahoo.
  - ng12 7y ago
    It's certainly more likely than a site with no users.
- tptacek 7y ago
  It's funny the stuff HN fixates on. If all you read is this comment thread, you might actually believe that non-porn Tumblr really is just "an exercise in blowing several million dollars", rather than a concern for a very loud, probably rather small subset of Tumblr users (or rather: former users). What seems at least as likely as "adult content is vital to the future of Tumblr" is that adult content has much more valence in an HN discussion thread, since people have opinions about adult content and not so many opinions about the overwhelming majority of Tumblr content that isn't suppressed. So it takes on an importance on HN that it doesn't have elsewhere, simply because of the fundamental dynamics of message boards ("controversy is always important").
  - chx 7y ago
    In your opinion what value tumblr has without the adult content (and the communities around them)?
  - yeaaaaaaah 7y ago
    Well sharing adult content was the only thing I used Tumblr for so the adult content ban was why I left.
  - gnicholas 7y ago
    > a very loud, probably rather small subset of Tumblr users (or rather: former users) Well, according to this chart (which I have only cursorily vetted), it seems there are a lot of "former users": https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/af9rwu/oc_a_year_of_tumblr_activity_before_and_after_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/af9rwu/oc_... It shows that as of Jan, 2019, there were about 50% as many users as when the ban was announced. That would suggest that there are as many "former users" as there are current users. And the downward trend has probably continued in the subsequent 6 months.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      The assumption that Tumblr's loss of users is entirely or even mostly due to suppressing adult content is probably unwarranted, but I'd be interested in data either way.
dannyw 7y ago
You’re gonna waste your money, Automattic.
checktheorder 7y ago
>“It’s just fun,” he said of Tumblr. “We’re not going to change any of that.” English translation: "We are hell-bent on making sure not to steal bdsmlr's thunder and maintain tumblr's death-spiral."
- stefan_ 7y ago
  I think the English translation is just ???. That sentence is just the purest nonsense filler.
ethbro 7y ago
That choice boggles the mind. If you're worried about cross-links between non-adult and adult content tarnishing the platform, add better features for user flagging. They (before the Yahoo and Verizon cluster&#-1s) were essentially sitting on a gold mine of training data, and ongoing training data generation, for an industry-leading porn detection engine. A subscription filtering product that would be worth $$$. Throwing that away because of some overly prudish concept of brand identity is hilarious.
- chatmasta 7y ago
  I'm sure there is plenty of training data available elsewhere on the internet...
  - ethbro 7y ago
    Continually tagged by ~100M unique monthly visitors? (the rough drop in traffic, post-ban)
- mevile 7y ago
  > That choice boggles the mind. Serving ads is hard when there's porn on the site.
  - IshKebab 7y ago
    Use a different domain then?
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      This does seem like a stupid simple solution. tumblr.com can continue being SFW, and then there'd be nsfwtumblr.com (or whatever) that contains "the good stuff". Retain account name uniqueness across both domains.
      - Zanni 7y ago
        tumblx.com, surely.
CamperBob2 7y ago
So much for "a lot of autonomy," then.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pilsetnieks 7y ago
It doesn't mean it's going to be like that forever. Maybe they're just saying that for the time being until the deal goes through, and afterwards when they've actually familiar with the product and know what it takes to properly implement adult content handling for Tumblr. Automattic isn't that large of a company, and it could take some time and effort to implement proper content moderation features, assign and train people, etc. Either way, even if they leave everything as is, there is no way they are going to be worse stewards of the thing as Verizon or Yahoo were.
- alexis_fr 7y ago
  > Automattic isn’t a large company > Either way, even if they leave everything as is Which is their plan for the moment. Which worries me about the sanity of Automattic. When you’ve stopped growing long ago and you start buying ventures to keep the turnover going, you end up like this big company which was buying ventures to stay afloat. What was it again? Ah, Yahoo.
classics2 7y ago
Then it’s a corpse.
loceng 7y ago
Yup - so will die sooner than later once an adequate alternative exists. Shaming sex and sexuality via policy has no place in a reasonable, civilized, accepting - healthy society.

by knd775 7y ago

xwdv 7y ago

So basically an exercise in blowing several million dollars.

arkitaip 7y ago
Why do you think that hosting porn for random people will make Automattic money?
- xxpor 7y ago
  Because it drives multiples of traffic?
  - dageshi 7y ago
    Which is mostly unmonetisable by anyone other than advertising more porn. So it's not worth that much?
    - marcinzm 7y ago
      Except from what everyone is saying and the drop in traffic people are observing it drove multiples of SFW traffic. The porn kept and drove users but they also viewed plenty of SFW content as well. You can monetize the SFW side of things.
      - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
        As far as I know, Tumblr has never come close to being a sustainable, profitable business; it survived on VC funding until it was bought by Yahoo.
- ng12 7y ago
  It's certainly more likely than a site with no users.
tptacek 7y ago
It's funny the stuff HN fixates on. If all you read is this comment thread, you might actually believe that non-porn Tumblr really is just "an exercise in blowing several million dollars", rather than a concern for a very loud, probably rather small subset of Tumblr users (or rather: former users). What seems at least as likely as "adult content is vital to the future of Tumblr" is that adult content has much more valence in an HN discussion thread, since people have opinions about adult content and not so many opinions about the overwhelming majority of Tumblr content that isn't suppressed. So it takes on an importance on HN that it doesn't have elsewhere, simply because of the fundamental dynamics of message boards ("controversy is always important").
- chx 7y ago
  In your opinion what value tumblr has without the adult content (and the communities around them)?
- yeaaaaaaah 7y ago
  Well sharing adult content was the only thing I used Tumblr for so the adult content ban was why I left.
- gnicholas 7y ago
  > a very loud, probably rather small subset of Tumblr users (or rather: former users) Well, according to this chart (which I have only cursorily vetted), it seems there are a lot of "former users": https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/af9rwu/oc_a_year_of_tumblr_activity_before_and_after_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/af9rwu/oc_... It shows that as of Jan, 2019, there were about 50% as many users as when the ban was announced. That would suggest that there are as many "former users" as there are current users. And the downward trend has probably continued in the subsequent 6 months.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    The assumption that Tumblr's loss of users is entirely or even mostly due to suppressing adult content is probably unwarranted, but I'd be interested in data either way.

dannyw 7y ago

You’re gonna waste your money, Automattic.

checktheorder 7y ago

>“It’s just fun,” he said of Tumblr. “We’re not going to change any of that.” English translation: "We are hell-bent on making sure not to steal bdsmlr's thunder and maintain tumblr's death-spiral."

stefan_ 7y ago
I think the English translation is just ???. That sentence is just the purest nonsense filler.

ethbro 7y ago

That choice boggles the mind. If you're worried about cross-links between non-adult and adult content tarnishing the platform, add better features for user flagging. They (before the Yahoo and Verizon cluster&#-1s) were essentially sitting on a gold mine of training data, and ongoing training data generation, for an industry-leading porn detection engine. A subscription filtering product that would be worth $$$. Throwing that away because of some overly prudish concept of brand identity is hilarious.

chatmasta 7y ago
I'm sure there is plenty of training data available elsewhere on the internet...
- ethbro 7y ago
  Continually tagged by ~100M unique monthly visitors? (the rough drop in traffic, post-ban)
mevile 7y ago
> That choice boggles the mind. Serving ads is hard when there's porn on the site.
- IshKebab 7y ago
  Use a different domain then?
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    This does seem like a stupid simple solution. tumblr.com can continue being SFW, and then there'd be nsfwtumblr.com (or whatever) that contains "the good stuff". Retain account name uniqueness across both domains.
    - Zanni 7y ago
      tumblx.com, surely.

CamperBob2 7y ago

So much for "a lot of autonomy," then.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

pilsetnieks 7y ago

It doesn't mean it's going to be like that forever. Maybe they're just saying that for the time being until the deal goes through, and afterwards when they've actually familiar with the product and know what it takes to properly implement adult content handling for Tumblr. Automattic isn't that large of a company, and it could take some time and effort to implement proper content moderation features, assign and train people, etc. Either way, even if they leave everything as is, there is no way they are going to be worse stewards of the thing as Verizon or Yahoo were.

alexis_fr 7y ago
> Automattic isn’t a large company > Either way, even if they leave everything as is Which is their plan for the moment. Which worries me about the sanity of Automattic. When you’ve stopped growing long ago and you start buying ventures to keep the turnover going, you end up like this big company which was buying ventures to stay afloat. What was it again? Ah, Yahoo.

classics2 7y ago

Then it’s a corpse.

loceng 7y ago

Yup - so will die sooner than later once an adequate alternative exists. Shaming sex and sexuality via policy has no place in a reasonable, civilized, accepting - healthy society.