Is Tumblr approaching death ?

I once had a great tumblr, with over 5k followers, I posted my original content. It was a labor of love for me and a place where I felt freedom.

Kanthala Raghu

I once had a great tumblr, with over 5k followers, I posted my original content. It was a labor of love for me and a place where I felt freedom. I got downright depressed when I had to shut it down. I naively used tumblr to host my professional portfolio. Everyone snickered at me when I gave them the link. I now know why.

I will be honest, Tumblr was where I discovered porn in 2018. There's still some porn on tumblr, but nothing like as much, and lots of it is just the same pics and gifs just doing the rounds.

"CEO Matt Mullenweg at the time called Tumblr "one of the Web's most iconic brands," and said he intended to maintain the adult content ban"

The current owner of the site is a huge Elon fanboy, he constantly screws up the site with weird additons like Tumblr Live and awful UI changes that destroy performance. 

Apple threatens to boot Tumblr App from Appstore

Apple booted Tumblr off of the iOS App Store because people found CSAM on Tumblr. I forget if it was material that the then-current staff of Tumblr was lax in removing, or if it was material that had been found just then in a dark corner just then and there and reported up the chain to Apple by some person or group, but the result was Tumblr got booted off the App Store. The staff could have worked their asses off to promise to remove CSAM while keeping adult content on the site. Tumblr chose the nuclear option, to wipe out all NSFW material, and that cost them everything.

Tumblr bought by Automattic

Automatic tried extremely hard to monetize Tumblr while keeping it close to what it originally was. They added all kinds of features like being able to “blaze” posts to satirical checkmarks next to your name to a merch store where you could buy novelties like Tumblr shoelaces from that ancient meme.

Additionally, they did explain why the porn never came back. According to them, it was an issue with credit card companies being unwilling to work with porn-filled sites. Apparently, the options were to be an ad-infested pornscape or to keep porn banned while seeking alternative monetization.

They get kudos for trying and it’s a shame it wasn’t enough. Social media platforms are so difficult to generate profit from in a way that makes sense but they were given a broken product and expected to make it shine. Even taking the porn ban away (which coupled with legislation couldn’t have been overcome), the previous owners had no idea what they had and no idea how to make it work the way it should have.

Tumblr has been my favorite social media to use by far, even beating out reddit. There is just a different kind of community you cultivate on there with the reblog-system and mutual follower interactions, that you can't get anywhere else on the internet these days.

If it's truly in it's end days I would lose contact with so many online friends whom I've come to genuinely cherish.
Labels: #Technology

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Kanthala Raghu

Kanthala Raghu