Tumblr plans to make changes to appeal to new users and improve growth. The post states that Tumblr is currently difficult for new users to use and curates content poorly. Tumblr aims to improve how users discover and sign up, encourage frequent engagement, and boost creators’ ability to attract audiences. Specific changes mentioned include updating the confusing reply and reblog system to make conversations clearer and removing duplicate reblogs. Interestingly, the post does not discuss Tumblr’s plans to integrate with the ActivityPub protocol. Tumblr has had a turbulent history but has stabilized under its current ownership, though some long-time users may not want a more optimized social feed.
There’s a soft spot in my heart for Tumblr. I hope they find their way and become a bigger player.
Who still uses tumblr 😄
More folk than you’d think! We had an influx of Reddit folk recently (wasn’t expecting them to be embraced as much as they have been, nice to see)
Never in my life I’ve been on tumblr
Tumblr’s problem, at least when I stopped using it 10 years ago, was that it was kind of an SJW hellscape. The most toxic of toxic activists made their home there, and it was a profoundly unpleasant Internet experience. They’d have to pay me to use their site again.
I think this was more of a feature of 10 years ago - that being, people meaning well and learning about political theories for the very first time, but then ignoring all nuance and using those concepts to bully each other instead of actually make the world better. Vox has an interesting article about that phenomenon as it played out in fandom circles, and if I remember right it does talk specifically about Tumblr. Huge difference between actually working toward social justice, and simply recycling justicey-sounding words into arguments and harassment campaigns. Things do seem to have leveled out a lot as people have aged and norms have shifted a bit, but I can understand someone feeling wary of the site for that reason.
https://www.vox.com/culture/23733213/fandom-purity-culture-what-is-proship-antiship-antifandom It’s in the second section, but the full article is well worth a read. Edit: some good stuff at the links, too.
By that same logic reddit was a harbor of alt-right and other shitty people but if you curated your experience with it you could mostly avoid it. Similarly so with tumblr in my experience.
That’s good to know.
Tumblr didn’t have a ton of curation tools back when I was a regular user, but Twitter did, so I ended up spending most of my time online there until October of last year. The incident where Elon Musk carried a sink to the office was all the info I needed to know Twitter was about to take a nosedive. Luckily I really enjoy the fediverse.
I really wish they’d give us an update on that ActivityPub support. It’s been so long since they’ve even mentioned it
Here’s a Masto post from an ex-employee:
Thinking about making a “I was part of the Tumblr activityPub federation project ask me how it ended” t-shirt and wear it on my PFP here.
The CEO posted this reply to Twitter, acknowledging that Meta had beaten Tumblr to the Fediverse.
Here’s a screenshot of a post suggesting it’s not a high priority.
All of us in the tumblr community are fuming, the only reason why tumblr has survived all this time is because it is different from other corp social media. If they follow through with their plan to turn tumblr into a twitter/tiktok copy, I will move completely to the fediverse equivalent (Calckey is almost perfect, if just needs to let me follow hashtags)
The main thing I was concerned about is then getting rid of the reverse chronological sorting and they’ve backtracked on that, so hopefully it won’t be completely awful. It did just seem like a weird business memo that the staff were told to put on Tumblr rather than anything user-friendly. Just sounded way too corporate.
I still haven’t figured out how to use Antennas. Other than that, Calckey has been a super great experience.
It’s really easy although the instructions start “click on the UFO”…
So:
- Click on the UFO
- Click “Manage Antennas”
- Give it a name and fill with related keywords, which can be hashtags.
- All done, you now have a custom feed with those hashtags.
It’s one of the best things about Calckey, that I’ve found so far but I am still exploring.
