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Didn't Tumblr do a whole "alienate your user base" thing like Reddit did recently? They got rid of all the racey hot content and basically made it super boring

Didn't Tumblr do a whole "alienate your user base" thing like Reddit did recently? They got rid of all the racey hot content and basically made it super boring no? This always seems like a really bad idea.

citruscomputing 3y ago
They did, but that was a while ago. Things are still pretty bad -- if your blog gets flagged for racy content, you lose the ability to have a custom avatar, for example. (Even more, and you get banned.) They've also had quite transphobic moderation policies (really strange considering their userbase!) -- normal, non-sexual photos of trans people are "nsfw" now, which'll get your account flagged or banned. They've been making the app actively worse, redesigned the website to look like twitter, and attempted to cram "Tumblr live" down everyone's throats (only having a "hide for one week" button). Generally doing things nobody asked for, nobody wants, and continuing to break existing functionality while not listening to their users. This is an own-goal.
- skupig 3y ago
  Tumblr users are rabidly against all the user-hostile stuff other large free sites do. I think they probably could have put the site behind a $1/mo paywall two years ago and people would have gone for it, if they changed nothing else. There's a general "we're fucked" atmosphere on the site because we all know they're trying to wring money out of their users and the enshittification has begun. It doesn't seem like anyone in charge understands their users.
- Alex3917 3y ago
  > normal, non-sexual photos of trans people are "nsfw" now FWIW, the algorithms that big tech companies use are often trained to recognize women’s underwear. So non-sexual photos of trans men wearing women’s underwear are often flagged, even when similar photos of women wearing boxers are not. I’m not saying it’s right, just giving the actual reason this happens. (Albeit I don’t have Tumblr-specific knowledge.)
  - citruscomputing 3y ago
    Cool. Now why does it consistently happen for images where no underwear is visible, and why doesn't it happen for cis women? Why are appeals not granted? And why didn't staff even acknowledge there's a problem?
    - Alex3917 3y ago
      No idea. I’ve never worked at any of these companies, I just learned this in an academic conference presentation on ethnographic research into OnlyFans users. OnlyFans doesn’t have its on recommendation system, so users need to find their customers on instagram, Twitter, tumblr, etc.
      - sn41 3y ago
        Hi, just to sate my own curiosity: can you please provide me a link to this presentation, if it's available online? Thanks...
        Alex3917 3y ago
        Not online, sorry!
      - travisjungroth 3y ago
        > OnlyFans doesn’t have its on recommendation system This is by far the most mind-blowing thing about OnlyFans to me. I’m a very open minded person and I would have been so sure that a site like OnlyFans would absolutely require discovery. Like, so sure that if I was making it, I wouldn’t even question including it. The fact they just offloaded this to every other site, and then took all the monetization is amazing to me. Twitter, Reddit and Instagram can barely get money from these users, but they’re super popular, and they just link to their OnlyFans on their profile. I seriously wonder what other opportunities like that are out in the wild.
        gen220 3y ago
- underwater 3y ago
  How is it an own goal? They were bleeding money, so tried to find a way to succeed through growth of users or revenue. The path where they just left everything untouched is a path to certain failure.
  - RangerScience 3y ago
    My guess would be that they wouldn’t have to be bleeding money if they weren’t aiming for growth.
sneak 3y ago
[flagged]
- n8cpdx 3y ago
  No it wasn’t. Instead of deleting the porn they could have just hid it from iOS users. Twitter, Threads, Instagram, Chrome, and countless other App Store apps are perfectly comfortable serving up racey content.
  - sneak 3y ago
    Those are too big to fail. Nobody would buy an iPhone that doesn’t have Instagram. 500px is another example of a site full of nudity that has to arbitrarily censor for iOS, all because Apple is protecting their 10x-market-rate credit card processing business (30% instead of 3%) by preventing sideloading. It’s bullshit that Apple decides for me what I am allowed to view. How convenient that it also protects their revenue stream.
    - n8cpdx 3y ago
      I think you might be forgetting that Tumblr had a completely fine status quo, including showing me very much adult content on my iPhone, until Verizon bought them. Blaming the App Store was always an excuse. Tumblr just didn’t want to put the effort in to keep CSAM off their site. https://www.pcmag.com/news/tumblr-to-ban-pornography-starting-on-dec-17 https://www.pcmag.com/news/tumblr-to-ban-pornography-startin... Some would say it is disappointing that Apple draws the line at child sexual abuse, but I guess that is a matter of opinion.
      - evanelias 3y ago
        What you've said above is completely incorrect, and as a former Tumblr employee I find it deeply offensive. Why confidently state these things when you seriously have no idea whatsoever what actually happened here? GP's statements were much closer to the situation in reality.
notatoad 3y ago
that was a long time ago, under a previous owner. Automattic has seemingly tried to be a good steward of the tumblr brand, but it seems like at this point, the only people left using tumblr are unmonetizable. the bad idea was buying tumblr. but i think automattic knew that when they bought it, and just thought it would be fun to set some money on fire for a while.
underseacables 3y ago
They did that because a lot of the people creating and posting that Content were kids…
- callalex 3y ago
  How did you quantify that?
raincole 3y ago
Reddit-fuck-up is not even remotely comparable to Tumblr-fuck-up. What Tumblr did was more like if Reddit banned edgy memes.
lmm 3y ago
> Didn't Tumblr do a whole "alienate your user base" thing like Reddit did recently? No, they did that years ago (getting on for literally 10 years ago), and that's what ultimately resulted in selling it to its current owners for like 1/1000th of what Yahoo paid for it.

citruscomputing 3y ago

They did, but that was a while ago. Things are still pretty bad -- if your blog gets flagged for racy content, you lose the ability to have a custom avatar, for example. (Even more, and you get banned.) They've also had quite transphobic moderation policies (really strange considering their userbase!) -- normal, non-sexual photos of trans people are "nsfw" now, which'll get your account flagged or banned. They've been making the app actively worse, redesigned the website to look like twitter, and attempted to cram "Tumblr live" down everyone's throats (only having a "hide for one week" button). Generally doing things nobody asked for, nobody wants, and continuing to break existing functionality while not listening to their users. This is an own-goal.

skupig 3y ago
Tumblr users are rabidly against all the user-hostile stuff other large free sites do. I think they probably could have put the site behind a $1/mo paywall two years ago and people would have gone for it, if they changed nothing else. There's a general "we're fucked" atmosphere on the site because we all know they're trying to wring money out of their users and the enshittification has begun. It doesn't seem like anyone in charge understands their users.
Alex3917 3y ago
> normal, non-sexual photos of trans people are "nsfw" now FWIW, the algorithms that big tech companies use are often trained to recognize women’s underwear. So non-sexual photos of trans men wearing women’s underwear are often flagged, even when similar photos of women wearing boxers are not. I’m not saying it’s right, just giving the actual reason this happens. (Albeit I don’t have Tumblr-specific knowledge.)
- citruscomputing 3y ago
  Cool. Now why does it consistently happen for images where no underwear is visible, and why doesn't it happen for cis women? Why are appeals not granted? And why didn't staff even acknowledge there's a problem?
  - Alex3917 3y ago
    No idea. I’ve never worked at any of these companies, I just learned this in an academic conference presentation on ethnographic research into OnlyFans users. OnlyFans doesn’t have its on recommendation system, so users need to find their customers on instagram, Twitter, tumblr, etc.
    - sn41 3y ago
      Hi, just to sate my own curiosity: can you please provide me a link to this presentation, if it's available online? Thanks...
      - Alex3917 3y ago
        Not online, sorry!
    - travisjungroth 3y ago
      > OnlyFans doesn’t have its on recommendation system This is by far the most mind-blowing thing about OnlyFans to me. I’m a very open minded person and I would have been so sure that a site like OnlyFans would absolutely require discovery. Like, so sure that if I was making it, I wouldn’t even question including it. The fact they just offloaded this to every other site, and then took all the monetization is amazing to me. Twitter, Reddit and Instagram can barely get money from these users, but they’re super popular, and they just link to their OnlyFans on their profile. I seriously wonder what other opportunities like that are out in the wild.
      - gen220 3y ago
underwater 3y ago
How is it an own goal? They were bleeding money, so tried to find a way to succeed through growth of users or revenue. The path where they just left everything untouched is a path to certain failure.
- RangerScience 3y ago
  My guess would be that they wouldn’t have to be bleeding money if they weren’t aiming for growth.

sneak 3y ago

[flagged]

n8cpdx 3y ago
No it wasn’t. Instead of deleting the porn they could have just hid it from iOS users. Twitter, Threads, Instagram, Chrome, and countless other App Store apps are perfectly comfortable serving up racey content.
- sneak 3y ago
  Those are too big to fail. Nobody would buy an iPhone that doesn’t have Instagram. 500px is another example of a site full of nudity that has to arbitrarily censor for iOS, all because Apple is protecting their 10x-market-rate credit card processing business (30% instead of 3%) by preventing sideloading. It’s bullshit that Apple decides for me what I am allowed to view. How convenient that it also protects their revenue stream.
  - n8cpdx 3y ago
    I think you might be forgetting that Tumblr had a completely fine status quo, including showing me very much adult content on my iPhone, until Verizon bought them. Blaming the App Store was always an excuse. Tumblr just didn’t want to put the effort in to keep CSAM off their site. https://www.pcmag.com/news/tumblr-to-ban-pornography-starting-on-dec-17 https://www.pcmag.com/news/tumblr-to-ban-pornography-startin... Some would say it is disappointing that Apple draws the line at child sexual abuse, but I guess that is a matter of opinion.
    - evanelias 3y ago
      What you've said above is completely incorrect, and as a former Tumblr employee I find it deeply offensive. Why confidently state these things when you seriously have no idea whatsoever what actually happened here? GP's statements were much closer to the situation in reality.

notatoad 3y ago

that was a long time ago, under a previous owner. Automattic has seemingly tried to be a good steward of the tumblr brand, but it seems like at this point, the only people left using tumblr are unmonetizable. the bad idea was buying tumblr. but i think automattic knew that when they bought it, and just thought it would be fun to set some money on fire for a while.

underseacables 3y ago

They did that because a lot of the people creating and posting that Content were kids…

callalex 3y ago
How did you quantify that?

raincole 3y ago

Reddit-fuck-up is not even remotely comparable to Tumblr-fuck-up. What Tumblr did was more like if Reddit banned edgy memes.

lmm 3y ago

> Didn't Tumblr do a whole "alienate your user base" thing like Reddit did recently? No, they did that years ago (getting on for literally 10 years ago), and that's what ultimately resulted in selling it to its current owners for like 1/1000th of what Yahoo paid for it.