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.
I’ve been using Tumblr since 2014ish. I dunno, man. I think it’s fine as-is. I see exactly the content that I want because I subscribed to it. If I wanna get *crazy * I can use that For You tab they added recently. I hope they seek out feedback from its current userbase before they go making any drastic changes.
If Lynda Carter can learn how to use Tumblr after leaving Twitter, other folks should be fine (no shade, she’s just older).
Welp, it’s fucked.
And I was just thinking of re-joining after my brief stint with it circa 2013
Good timing on their part; I just rejoined Tumblr in order to reconnect with some friends and this is just the push I needed to delete my account again.
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.
Discord: “The biggest problem: our current usernames can often be too complicated or obscure for people to remember and share easily.”
Tumblr: “The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use.”
Why does everyone think we are collectively too stupid to figure out how to use the internet? Like holy crap.
Yeah, I know these updates are geared toward a very specific audience, but I’m allowed to resent that, lol. Stop infantilizing users; we are not stupid.
Why does everyone think we are collectively too stupid to figure out how to use the internet? Like holy crap.
Normies are not very tech savvy and they are completely unwilling to deal with even the most minor inconveniences. Most people just want to open their mouth and have someone dump some internet in there. “Having to curate an experience” is not something many people are willing to do.
Nobody wants to say it aloud because of the legal implications, but the majority of the internet is literal underage children. Like, probably over half of Discord users are actual kids who are vulnerable to being scammed when an account dupe of their favorite YouTuber friends them.
This has the effect of making the average user quite stupid, because they’re too young for intelligence or wisdom - but as long as they sign up and promise they’re 18 (“really!”) then they can be advertised to.
Shit, my friend is 44 and got scammed by a “girl” on Instagram who convinced him to mint his art as NFTs so she could buy it. He didn’t have the necessary funds (artist, remember?), so he managed to convince our other friend, a surgeon (also 44), to “invest” for a cut of the insane gains 😶
