7 ms·

Tumblr to join the Fediverse after WordPress migration completes

118 points by Fitik 2y ago

piperswe 2y ago
I'm befuddled that Automattic is still investing in adding features (e.g. federation) to Tumblr. There's just about no chance of them actually making money from it, because its users are just about the most monetization-hostile users on the Internet. It doesn't help that the CEO actively antagonized a large portion of the site not too long ago.
- drivingmenuts 2y ago
  If they're converting Tumblr to Wordpress, I bet it will get folded into their main hosting solution eventually and Tumblr will cease to exist.
  - evanelias 2y ago
    That doesn't make sense. The primary use-case (and traffic driver) for Tumblr is a social network for logged-in users, similar to Twitter but with some differences in the feature set. The public blog network is a minority of traffic. If you've never actually been a Tumblr user, you won't have an understanding of the product at all.
- tylergetsay 2y ago
  What else would they invest long term capital into? Developing PHP is the only thing that could come to mind
- rglullis 2y ago
  Their play is not to make money from Tumblr users, but to grow the total number of users connected to ActivityPub. Then they can go to BigCos and say "here it is, you can drop Twitter/Threads/Instagram/TikTok and control your social media presence directly." It's not that different from what Facebook is doing with Threads. They are not interested in making money from social media, they are just hoping they can become the main infrastructure provider.
  - riffic 2y ago
    basically bring your own domain like Google Workspace or O365. I'd love to see the Mastodon project (or any other AP implementation) adopt that managed services model.
    - bhhaskin 2y ago
      I don't believe there is anything stopping someone from starting a managed Mastodon service.
      - danielheath 2y ago
        It’s absurdly expensive to offer, because none of the major implementations support serving multiple domains in a single process, so you end up with a lot of duplication.
        rglullis 2y ago
        Takahe is the only one that is doing it, but unfortunately Andrew stopped working on it.
        riffic 2y ago
        this looks dope, I'm going to have to take a closer look now that I've heard of it. Does seem the project is in danger of being sunset unless new support comes in the way of the developer: > TLDR: I am looking for new developers and maintainers for Takahē who want to help in exchange for my mentorship, or I'll have to sunset the project. https://aeracode.org/2023/11/06/life-critical-side-projects/ https://aeracode.org/2023/11/06/life-critical-side-projects/ The repo is still being updated so it doesn't look like it's in too much danger: https://github.com/jointakahe/takahe/commits/main/ https://github.com/jointakahe/takahe/commits/main/
        rglullis 2y ago
        It seems that most of the work is going on at a fork, now: https://github.com/avaraline/incarnator https://github.com/avaraline/incarnator
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  > It doesn't help that the CEO actively antagonized a large portion of the site not too long ago. I love that this statement could apply to either Tumblr or WordPress. CEOs are such an expensive liability lately.
  - Philpax 2y ago
    It's the same CEO! Ol' Matt pissed off the Tumblr userbase and then followed it up a year later with the WordPress debacle.
    - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      Oh shit, somehow I hadn’t put that together! Ha! Well played!
- AlienRobot 2y ago
  Ironically, I found the opposite. Tumblr users will pay Tumblr to "blaze" posts of other users, sending the post to everyone on the platform. I don't think there are many platforms in which users are willing to give the platform money. If you asked me whether I'd give money to support Reddit, I'd say just let it crash and burn.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    Very few social platforms have figured out that the right way to get money is from the readers supporting the posters, not from the posters themselves. Reddit gold is a pale version of this. Neither Twitter nor Bluesky show any signs of getting it.
    - AlienRobot 2y ago
      Hard to say that isn't the "right way" when they are making money with it. If we're talking hypothetical right ways, I think what "social" media gets wrong is to envision an anarchy for its users. People are never equal in a society. A teenager isn't the same thing as an elder, nor is a doctor the same thing as a nurse. I think I've read before that anarchy doesn't work because eventually people find someone who is reliable and naturally that person becomes their authority on the subject, creating an hierarchy. Social media tries to put all users in the same bucket even when it's well-known that most users belong in the "never posts anything" bucket while very few users belong in the "power user" bucket. There are passive users and active users. While hierarchies can become ugly fast, I don't think resigning on implementing them in any form is the right answer, specially now that everyone is on the Internet.
- AndrewDucker 2y ago
  Paying Tumblr user here - I'm delighted to give them money to not have adverts!
- evanelias 2y ago
  > I'm befuddled that Automattic is still investing in adding features (e.g. federation) to Tumblr. The article is saying the opposite though: they are not adding federation directly to Tumblr's own codebase. Instead, federation will come about from some planned future migration of Tumblr onto WordPress.com infrastructure, which already has that feature.
TiredOfLife 2y ago
Can we expect another round of silly blocklists from the fediverse?
- guywithahat 2y ago
  That would be the logical expectation. Fediverse maintainers can be worse than Reddit mods in how aggressively they ban users and instances
- cogman10 2y ago
  I'd assume not. Tumblr isn't anywhere near as big a player in the social media arena as Meta is.
- kmeisthax 2y ago
  It depends on the server operator. Threads was preemptively shitlisted just for thinking of connecting to Fediverse, because a lot of instance admins are ActivityPub or Mastodon maximalists[0] and believed that everyone would just flock over to Threads immediately. Then it was shitlisted again because Mark Zuckerberg started zucking on Trump, and decided to take their already threadbare moderation team and tie their hands further. This is a more practical concern as most Fedi admins do not have the time or ability to deal with one mega-instance that happens to be both indispensable and willing to flood everyone with garbage. I could see Tumblr getting shitlisted purely on the grounds of "fuck Matt Mullenweg", because Fedi admins are also hilariously petty[1]. But in practice, "just link Tumblr up to Fedi" is going to be just as much of a problem as "just link Threads up to Fedi". There's an underlying tension between the Fediverse's technical underpinnings - ActivityPub - and the community of Fediverse servers that use it. The technology wants to be widely adopted, but the community wants to be small enough to avoid harassment and attacks[2], and these are in conflict. The Fediverse's structure is already a lot more centralized than anyone would like to admit, and scaling the network makes this problem worse. [0] As opposed to general enthusiasm for federated communications technologies. See also the pushback Cory Doctorow got for backing Free our Feeds, a plan to make good on BlueSky's currently vacuous federation promises. [1] This is why I self-host Mastodon even though it's a total pain in the ass. [2] Like that one time a bunch of Japanese skiddies decided to spam literally every server from whatever accounts they could register
xnx 2y ago
If Matt wasn't so fixated on WPEngine, he could actually do something important and radical by pushing Tumblr as a true user-controlled (i.e. each user has their own TLD) alternative to Twitter, BlueSky, Instagram, Threads, etc.
- rglullis 2y ago
  (Pure) ActivityPub would be the wrong basis for this. Its federated model is not meant to give control to the end user. SOLID or ActivityPods, on the other hand...
  - VectorLock 2y ago
    >Its federated model is not meant to give control to the end user. Can you elaborate on this? I would think giving control to the end user is exactly what a federated model would do.
    - rjbwork 2y ago
      It gives control to the node operator. You join a node on the basis that you like the operator and trust them to federate responsibly. The end user is along for the ride with the node operator.
      - kalleboo 2y ago
        That's not how it works in the case of WordPress though, in this case it's not posting to some account on someone else's instance, each blog is it's own ActivityPub instance (as they just add support for the ActivityPub endpoints to the existing hosting)
    - echelon 2y ago
      Mastodon suffers from the same problem Reddit does. Moderators have too much power. A truly P2P system where the end user has 100% control over what is blocked, and furthermore where they can't be shut out in the cold by capricious mods, would be the ideal social media vehicle.
spondylosaurus 2y ago
"After migration completes," but they haven't even started it yet. Kinda skeptical that it's gonna happen at all.
42772827 2y ago
After the migration can we have dicks on Tumblr again
- Mistletoe 2y ago
  Matt's already on there.
- seanhunter 2y ago
  For people who don’t know the backstory, back in the wild west days of the internet, Tumblr’s official content policy (and I’m not making this up) was “Go nuts! Show nuts. Whatever.” When they changed it a lot of folks were unhappy https://www.tumblr.com/photomatt/696629352701493248/why-go-nuts-show-nuts-doesnt-work-in-2022 https://www.tumblr.com/photomatt/696629352701493248/why-go-n...
cratermoon 2y ago
"running Tumblr’s back end on WordPress would allow for greater efficiencies, while not changing the interface and experience that Tumblr’s user base has grown to love" That's a lot to assert without elaboration.

118 points by Fitik 2y ago

I'm befuddled that Automattic is still investing in adding features (e.g. federation) to Tumblr. There's just about no chance of them actually making money from it, because its users are just about the most monetization-hostile users on the Internet. It doesn't help that the CEO actively antagonized a large portion of the site not too long ago.

drivingmenuts 2y ago
If they're converting Tumblr to Wordpress, I bet it will get folded into their main hosting solution eventually and Tumblr will cease to exist.
- evanelias 2y ago
  That doesn't make sense. The primary use-case (and traffic driver) for Tumblr is a social network for logged-in users, similar to Twitter but with some differences in the feature set. The public blog network is a minority of traffic. If you've never actually been a Tumblr user, you won't have an understanding of the product at all.
tylergetsay 2y ago
What else would they invest long term capital into? Developing PHP is the only thing that could come to mind
rglullis 2y ago
Their play is not to make money from Tumblr users, but to grow the total number of users connected to ActivityPub. Then they can go to BigCos and say "here it is, you can drop Twitter/Threads/Instagram/TikTok and control your social media presence directly." It's not that different from what Facebook is doing with Threads. They are not interested in making money from social media, they are just hoping they can become the main infrastructure provider.
- riffic 2y ago
  basically bring your own domain like Google Workspace or O365. I'd love to see the Mastodon project (or any other AP implementation) adopt that managed services model.
  - bhhaskin 2y ago
    I don't believe there is anything stopping someone from starting a managed Mastodon service.
    - danielheath 2y ago
      It’s absurdly expensive to offer, because none of the major implementations support serving multiple domains in a single process, so you end up with a lot of duplication.
      - rglullis 2y ago
        Takahe is the only one that is doing it, but unfortunately Andrew stopped working on it.
        riffic 2y ago
        this looks dope, I'm going to have to take a closer look now that I've heard of it. Does seem the project is in danger of being sunset unless new support comes in the way of the developer: > TLDR: I am looking for new developers and maintainers for Takahē who want to help in exchange for my mentorship, or I'll have to sunset the project. https://aeracode.org/2023/11/06/life-critical-side-projects/ https://aeracode.org/2023/11/06/life-critical-side-projects/ The repo is still being updated so it doesn't look like it's in too much danger: https://github.com/jointakahe/takahe/commits/main/ https://github.com/jointakahe/takahe/commits/main/
        rglullis 2y ago
        It seems that most of the work is going on at a fork, now: https://github.com/avaraline/incarnator https://github.com/avaraline/incarnator
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> It doesn't help that the CEO actively antagonized a large portion of the site not too long ago. I love that this statement could apply to either Tumblr or WordPress. CEOs are such an expensive liability lately.
- Philpax 2y ago
  It's the same CEO! Ol' Matt pissed off the Tumblr userbase and then followed it up a year later with the WordPress debacle.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    Oh shit, somehow I hadn’t put that together! Ha! Well played!
AlienRobot 2y ago
Ironically, I found the opposite. Tumblr users will pay Tumblr to "blaze" posts of other users, sending the post to everyone on the platform. I don't think there are many platforms in which users are willing to give the platform money. If you asked me whether I'd give money to support Reddit, I'd say just let it crash and burn.
- pjc50 2y ago
  Very few social platforms have figured out that the right way to get money is from the readers supporting the posters, not from the posters themselves. Reddit gold is a pale version of this. Neither Twitter nor Bluesky show any signs of getting it.
  - AlienRobot 2y ago
    Hard to say that isn't the "right way" when they are making money with it. If we're talking hypothetical right ways, I think what "social" media gets wrong is to envision an anarchy for its users. People are never equal in a society. A teenager isn't the same thing as an elder, nor is a doctor the same thing as a nurse. I think I've read before that anarchy doesn't work because eventually people find someone who is reliable and naturally that person becomes their authority on the subject, creating an hierarchy. Social media tries to put all users in the same bucket even when it's well-known that most users belong in the "never posts anything" bucket while very few users belong in the "power user" bucket. There are passive users and active users. While hierarchies can become ugly fast, I don't think resigning on implementing them in any form is the right answer, specially now that everyone is on the Internet.
AndrewDucker 2y ago
Paying Tumblr user here - I'm delighted to give them money to not have adverts!
evanelias 2y ago
> I'm befuddled that Automattic is still investing in adding features (e.g. federation) to Tumblr. The article is saying the opposite though: they are not adding federation directly to Tumblr's own codebase. Instead, federation will come about from some planned future migration of Tumblr onto WordPress.com infrastructure, which already has that feature.

TiredOfLife 2y ago

Can we expect another round of silly blocklists from the fediverse?

guywithahat 2y ago
That would be the logical expectation. Fediverse maintainers can be worse than Reddit mods in how aggressively they ban users and instances
cogman10 2y ago
I'd assume not. Tumblr isn't anywhere near as big a player in the social media arena as Meta is.
kmeisthax 2y ago
It depends on the server operator. Threads was preemptively shitlisted just for thinking of connecting to Fediverse, because a lot of instance admins are ActivityPub or Mastodon maximalists[0] and believed that everyone would just flock over to Threads immediately. Then it was shitlisted again because Mark Zuckerberg started zucking on Trump, and decided to take their already threadbare moderation team and tie their hands further. This is a more practical concern as most Fedi admins do not have the time or ability to deal with one mega-instance that happens to be both indispensable and willing to flood everyone with garbage. I could see Tumblr getting shitlisted purely on the grounds of "fuck Matt Mullenweg", because Fedi admins are also hilariously petty[1]. But in practice, "just link Tumblr up to Fedi" is going to be just as much of a problem as "just link Threads up to Fedi". There's an underlying tension between the Fediverse's technical underpinnings - ActivityPub - and the community of Fediverse servers that use it. The technology wants to be widely adopted, but the community wants to be small enough to avoid harassment and attacks[2], and these are in conflict. The Fediverse's structure is already a lot more centralized than anyone would like to admit, and scaling the network makes this problem worse. [0] As opposed to general enthusiasm for federated communications technologies. See also the pushback Cory Doctorow got for backing Free our Feeds, a plan to make good on BlueSky's currently vacuous federation promises. [1] This is why I self-host Mastodon even though it's a total pain in the ass. [2] Like that one time a bunch of Japanese skiddies decided to spam literally every server from whatever accounts they could register

xnx 2y ago

If Matt wasn't so fixated on WPEngine, he could actually do something important and radical by pushing Tumblr as a true user-controlled (i.e. each user has their own TLD) alternative to Twitter, BlueSky, Instagram, Threads, etc.

rglullis 2y ago
(Pure) ActivityPub would be the wrong basis for this. Its federated model is not meant to give control to the end user. SOLID or ActivityPods, on the other hand...
- VectorLock 2y ago
  >Its federated model is not meant to give control to the end user. Can you elaborate on this? I would think giving control to the end user is exactly what a federated model would do.
  - rjbwork 2y ago
    It gives control to the node operator. You join a node on the basis that you like the operator and trust them to federate responsibly. The end user is along for the ride with the node operator.
    - kalleboo 2y ago
      That's not how it works in the case of WordPress though, in this case it's not posting to some account on someone else's instance, each blog is it's own ActivityPub instance (as they just add support for the ActivityPub endpoints to the existing hosting)
  - echelon 2y ago
    Mastodon suffers from the same problem Reddit does. Moderators have too much power. A truly P2P system where the end user has 100% control over what is blocked, and furthermore where they can't be shut out in the cold by capricious mods, would be the ideal social media vehicle.

spondylosaurus 2y ago

"After migration completes," but they haven't even started it yet. Kinda skeptical that it's gonna happen at all.

42772827 2y ago

After the migration can we have dicks on Tumblr again

Mistletoe 2y ago
Matt's already on there.
seanhunter 2y ago
For people who don’t know the backstory, back in the wild west days of the internet, Tumblr’s official content policy (and I’m not making this up) was “Go nuts! Show nuts. Whatever.” When they changed it a lot of folks were unhappy https://www.tumblr.com/photomatt/696629352701493248/why-go-nuts-show-nuts-doesnt-work-in-2022 https://www.tumblr.com/photomatt/696629352701493248/why-go-n...

cratermoon 2y ago

"running Tumblr’s back end on WordPress would allow for greater efficiencies, while not changing the interface and experience that Tumblr’s user base has grown to love" That's a lot to assert without elaboration.