Anyway the last point I have to make here is that even if tumblr breaks under the algorithm (almost certain if they don’t back out of using it) and/or everybody leaves… I don’t have anywhere else to go or post things
people like to joke about it being bad, but I legitimately really like Tumblr. it actually feels like a blogging platform in a world where facebook and twitter are active political weapons that manipulate us elections. i don’t feel like i’m baring myself to content i don’t want to see here, or having to engage with a popularity-focused culture. the content isn’t sorted to influence you or trick you. it’s a bunch of people being themselves on their own terms. it’s oldnet.
yes, i do use other websites, but i’m not interested in posting personal things to any of them. this was a place i had control over and i’ll stay with it until i can’t. and when that happens there’ll be nothing left.
Honestly the main thing that ticks me off about all this is @staff’s attitude. We all know this is happening because Tumblr was/is full of bots and child porn and got taken out of the app store for it.
They knew this forever and did nothing. Then their little pizza hands got slapped and suddenly innocent blogs are getting deleted left and right, and now this.
And the fanciful attitude in the announcements. That’s the worst part to me. That meek, half-hearted spin. Like they’re really accomplishing something here. Just say you fucked up and go, @staff.
With artists moving to other sites, I think one important thing to keep in mind is the difference in the intentions behind a site’s social functionality.
When people voice concerns over twitter, people suggest things like Pixiv and Newgrounds.
Sites like Twitter, Facebook, Mastodon, and tumblr are what I consider social-media focused sites. These are sites that let you share other peoples’ work as well as your own, and focus more on moments. They have photosets and primarily focus on your dashboard. It can be much harder to find content in the backlog of stuff, but you also have way more interaction with followers. They also allow non-artists to do things such as content aggregate, which if done properly (with the built in sharing functions like retweets), help artists out.
Newgrounds, Pixiv, Deviantart, Furaffinity, etc. are gallery / content-focused instead. These are sites that focus more on your presenting pieces, archiving them, and focus less on interaction and more on the content. For these sites you usually don’t have a dashboard, or it’s not a focus, you instead have a notifications page. It’s very easy to check out prior works, but that’s all you can do aside from comment or review things–your sharing options otherwise are limited. Users who do not produce content are more limited in what they can do on these sites, and mostly just curate personal favorites or write reviews.
Tumblr had a caveat with tags and archives that let you run it as a gallery as well, which was very useful, even if it was more social-focused. Overall tumblr could function more how you wanted to, and kinda got the best of both worlds, which is why it’s a shame this is all happening.
Comparing Newgrounds to Twitter is moot because Newgrounds isn’t even in the same race as Twitter.
So the question shouldn’t be “should I get a Newgrounds account now that Tumblr is dying?” Because you should probably get one anyway, even if Tumblr were fine.
Or whatever gallery platform you want regardless. Get one in addition to whatever social media platform you end up on–choose one social and one gallery focused platform. Gallery sites are not as high maintenance as social ones as they’re not as impulsive, and are much more stable places for people to find you if something happens again.
But this is also why Twitter is the popular choice–because, in reality, it doesn’t have much competition without Tumblr, since most alternatives aren’t even social-focused. (hence why I’m eager to see how Pillowfort turns out.)
From someone who’s survived MySpace, livejournal, deviantart, and fanfiction.nets’ content purges and bad policy updates, here’s some advice on how to get through tumblr’s recent bullshit:
– don’t knee jerk delete. I know it’s tempting to peace out immediately but hang on and do the other steps first. Out right ghosting and erasing everything is how fandoms die.
– archive everything on your blog you want to keep
– tell your followers how they can archive and keep your work too. A lot of fic and art were only saved from ff.net and lj because other people saved it first. If you’re cool with other people saving your work for them to personally keep, let them know this. You can absolutely discourage reposting but I really do highly recommend you allow people to personally save fic and art they like and are worried will disappear forever. Digital Dark Ages are a real thing.
– tell people where you’re jumping ship to. Give links. Keep that info up, even if you’ve left the site.
– go through who you follow and find out where else you can follow them. Save their work if they’ll allow it. It’s tedious as hell but if you want to keep up with people on here clicking on their page to check in is the best way to do it.
– support places like ao3. This is exactly why ao3 asks for donations a few times a year. They are a 100% anti-purging, judgement free, ad free non profit run by an elected board and protected by lawyers. Places like ao3 literally save fandom so please continue to support them and other similar archives. This is exactly why ao3 is so important.
i was looking at old photos and i wanted to show you how our story went, a little
bronwyn and i met at age 12 but i dont have any photos from then, really, but this is from grade 9 science class when we were being goofs and i was 13
this is from our first ever sleepover, we couldn’t stop laughing and we were sleeping on a mattress on the floor and we went to boston pizza and got plastic rings that we both still have (bronwyn kept hers on a necklace after that)
i went to bronwyn’s cottage for the first time in the summer after grade 9
we had our first kiss in grade 10 when i was 14 and were in a weird kind of dating limbo period
then i moved to the states and turned 15 and told bronwyn i was in love with her and we visited every chance we could and she sent me flowers and packages
then i went to junior prom with her and bronwyn cut her hair
then we had the most beautiful summer where i spent 5 weeks at her cottage and i cut my hair
then i went back to miami for 12th grade and turned 16 and bronwyn was 17 and we went to senior prom together
then i moved back to canada for university when i was turning 17 and we finally lived in the same place again and we loved each other so much and got breakfast together every day
then after a beautiful summer we started living together when i was 18 and bronwyn was 19 and we went to bahrain together and bronwyn dyed her hair brown and now i get to see her every morning and every night and we adventure in our city and have a coffee shop and love each other more than i could have thought. there were periods of scary intense darkness but we love each other so much and i’ve never been happier. i’ve known bronwyn since i was 12 and now i’m almost 19 and i love her more and more.
i’m never on here anymore, but i wanted to share that almost a month ago bronwyn and i got engaged!! under a beautiful tree on a perfect day and for the rest of my life i get to pursue her and care for her and make her laugh. i’ve said this so many times but now more than ever: if this is all i get, it’s so much more than i could have hoped for.
I doubt this blog will be affected. Do I support it? No. The only good thing about this is that 99% of all the bots will be gone. The new guidelines mainly target porn. Smut, art of people kissing in bed etc is still allowed the way I interpret the guidelines, as long as you don’t draw dicks? Anyway, blogs are automatically deleted and SFW content gets flagged as sensitive by an algorithm? I think Tumblr is one of the first websites getting to experience what is yet to come: Article 13. All content aggregating websites will get this problem sooner or later.
Only .1% of Tumblr’s porn is original content. All the rest is reuploaded by bots. 22.5% is a lot. But it’s very likely that a lot of that activity comes from bots. There are porn posts out there with 43k notes, all reblogs. What are the odds? (Flickr’s ratio seems a bit more realistic)
Anyway, it’s 3am, don’t really know where I am going with this so…
Tumblr wants to take away all adult content on the platform, abandoning a large majority of it’s userbase which uses the site for this exact matter. Please sign the above petition if you would like to keep tumblr the way it is. They need to be shown that they will lose a HUGE amount of their traffic if they’re too carry this through.
This should everyone’s right to choose, not a decision automatically made for them. Just thinking about how much of fandom will be affected by this makes me so angry!
No, you dumb fucks this website is goddamn 13 and up and we’ve been BEGGING staff to get rid of all the fucking child porn and bestiality and porn bots and normal porn and now you idiots are trying to stop them from doing that?? I see the problem with art being taken off Tumblr, and hopefully, that will be fixed, but there’s a million more platforms that can be put on. This is a website/app for CHILDREN.
It’s not.. for children though… I’m all for getting rid of that shit, but when it gets to the point where it’s taking things that aren’t those it’s a problem. This. This is a problem, they aren’t doing this right. It isn’t fair to the people getting deleted because staff decides they cant find a better way
Anxiety-prone-human 