[HN Gopher] How tumblr became popular for being obsolete
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How tumblr became popular for being obsolete
Author : ingve
Score : 113 points
Date : 2022-01-16 10:12 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| anyfactor wrote:
| I know this is a stupid thing but I firmly believe that Tumblr
| imposing content filter ruined Reddit and to some extent Twitter.
| The distraught tumblr userbase had a unifying demographic
| characteristics that wasn't on par with the culture of
| (old.)Reddit. When this group left reddit was very quick to
| embrace them and alienated a large parts of it userbase. Reddit
| created an internal clash by attempting to merge these polarizing
| groups and trying their best to be marketable at the same time.
|
| It is a very difficult to put into words but I think having a
| tribe of userbase is far better for a social media than to appeal
| to majority.
|
| I think instagram and tiktok as social media still provides a
| good experience for their longterm userbase compared to social
| media that appeals to majority like twitter, facebook and reddit.
| Terretta wrote:
| Agree there was a shift, and while it hadn't occurred to me
| before, your timing makes sense.
|
| Reddit used to be that place where you had definitely _"read
| it"_ first.
|
| Now, to your point, most subs that bubble via algo to all and
| popular are tumblogs (infinite image/meme scrollers), and posts
| come after it's already been on IG and Facebook groups.
|
| I'd chalked this up to IG influence, but Tumblr diaspora makes
| as much sense, together with your hypothesized shift to pop
| engagement over niche quality.
|
| Still works that if you dump the subs that show up in all or
| popular, you can get back to text / long-text niche interests.
| Most seem to be slowing pace of posts and discussion replies
| though, so unclear how much longer that will last.
| Traster wrote:
| Sorry, but I was on reddit atleast since 2008 and it was
| obvious even then that 80%+ of the redditors hadn't read the
| articles, the whole reason they were on reddit was to chat to
| other redditors, not to actually read the article. It's a
| different story now, where the whole conversation has turned
| meta though (people arguing obout whether people have or
| haven't read the article and what the behaviour of redditors
| says about society in general)
| bckr wrote:
| > Reddit created an internal clash by attempting to merge these
| polarizing groups
|
| Isn't segmentation of audiences built in to Reddit in the form
| of subreddits?
| libraryatnight wrote:
| That's true, but they sort of converge on pages like All and
| Popular. I'd never thought of a Tumblr exodus affecting
| reddit, but I remember the Digg exodus.
| mocheeze wrote:
| And even before the Digg exodus Reddit was rife with
| tribalism. I remember all the pro- vs. anti- Ron Paul stuff
| when he was running in the GOP primary.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| You might be sharing thirst comments about fetish porn pics.
| Or you might be discussing tips and techniques for artisanal
| home cheesemaking. Either way, it feels like Reddit.
|
| Different subreddits have different levels of quality and
| effort in the average post. But "group" != "audience". The
| culture trends on Reddit are site-wide, even if the subject
| matter of each sub varies wildly.
|
| I THINK that what parent commentor is trying to say is that
| pre-Yahoo-Tumbler, Reddit culture was predominately male
| libertarian Ron Paul fans... while post-Yahoo-Tumbler, there
| was an influx of "purple hair" female social leftists. And
| that Reddit's culture has been somewhat fractured and at war
| with itself ever since.
|
| I'm not sure that I accept this theory (I think simply has
| more to do with a continuous influx of newbies, and general
| youth culture shift over the past 15 years). But I do agree
| with the result, and the timeline happens to match up neatly.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Reddit has always been at war at itself. Subredditdrama
| didn't magically appear after the Tumblr meltdown.
|
| People talking about reddit degrading reminds me of people
| talking about when music was the best; it was great when
| you weren't quite new but weren't quite jaded about it yet.
| lozenge wrote:
| The quality on the default subreddits kept dropping so they
| tweaked the front page to bring content from smaller
| subreddits. Which then dropped in quality &etc.
| zerop wrote:
| Each Social network is kind of a tribe, that's how they are all
| different. Tumblr has successfully maintained its own tribe over
| the years. Same goes with all platforms including HN.
| MrDresden wrote:
| I've never been a big Tumblr user, having only occasionally found
| my way there through links and search results.
|
| So I am not someone for whom this matters.
|
| However, I never did like the way it would present other Tumblr
| _feeds_ that I would click on in the page I was on in this side
| bar navigation way, rather than just navigating me there. The UI
| felt all rather convoluted to me.
|
| Anyone know why they have stuck with this pattern in particular?
| pram wrote:
| The Tumblr UI was schizo. For example clicking an image in the
| dashboard: Some images would just open in a new tab, some would
| open in a light box on the dashboard, some would take you to
| the blog post, some would take you to some weird Imgur-esque
| display page, and some would just open a completely unrelated
| link because you could set the href on them separately I
| guess??
| lordfoom wrote:
| I recently became aware that my eldest child (13 at time of
| writing) prefers Tumblr as social media because of its
| "emptiness"
| csbartus wrote:
| After 10 years I've stopped checking my Tumblr feed last year.
| It's nothing new there anymore in the graphic / web design /
| typography inspiration area. Everybody left, the algorithm is
| dumb, no more joy.
|
| However I'm grateful for Tumblr. It shaped my design career
| considerably, and give me joy every day for years in row.
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| > It's nothing new there anymore in the graphic / web design /
| typography inspiration area. Everybody left, the algorithm is
| dumb...
|
| For me, this is a feature.
| cproctor wrote:
| Where do you go now for "graphic / web design / typography"?
| nvrspyx wrote:
| Dribbble is a pretty popular one. There's also ArtStation for
| art and 3D modeling.
| csbartus wrote:
| I'm taking a pause and waiting for something new to pop up
| prionassembly wrote:
| Pinterest is a predator on the web, sucking content and walling
| itself off, but it's full of good stuff if you enjoy the arts
| (I've been "into" asemic writing for years) or graphic design.
| nyolfen wrote:
| parasite is probably a better term
| kristopolous wrote:
| If I met someone who said they work for Pinterest, the
| first thought through my mind would be "now don't be
| violent"
| snthd wrote:
| What's the closest the fediverse has to tumblr?
| Nemo_bis wrote:
| Wordpress.com (with ActivityPub)? :)
| galfarragem wrote:
| Tumblr is completely underrated.
|
| I'm using Tumblr for almost a decade and I never found any other
| place as convenient or as cheap (free and without ads) to have a
| blog. It's dead easy to start one, to post or to make a custom
| theme (if you feel like). You can even use your domain for free
| and you even have "kind of" a social network.
|
| I know that keeping a "fun" blog is not fashionable anymore but
| Tumblr is really good at it.
| noaheverett wrote:
| I too wish there were more "fun" blogs out there, however I do
| see a good amount of dev's who keep a fun/techy blog. There
| have been a handful of services over the last 2 decades that
| made it quick and easy to spin up a blog (geocities, blogger,
| medium etc) but Tumblr had the cool factor (plus the social
| network behind it) and really nailed the posting experience I
| think -- Tumblr was the best chance at a Twitter competitor
| back in the 2009'ish era IMO.
|
| My own project Glue[1] is taking a stab at this segment so I
| have vested interest in this space. Trying to marry all the
| various content types into a single UI experience has been a
| fun challenge (short text, audio, quotes, code snippets,
| blogs).
|
| [1] https://glue.im/noah
| henrikschroder wrote:
| Six years ago I was looking for a place to host a simple
| "archive" of blog posts with embedded media, and Tumblr was the
| easiest and most flexible by far, and the audience was already
| there in the form of the fandom for a couple of very specific
| TV shows.
|
| A lot of the fandom exists on Tumblr and Instagram and Twitter
| as well, but on the latter two, you can't have any permanence.
| It's all about the ever scrolling feed, and it's about getting
| on people's feeds again and again and again with new posts, new
| content all the time. And the type of content you can post
| there is extremely limited.
|
| Tumblr allows this style as well, and a lot of users engage in
| it. But it _also_ allows for being an archive, a curated
| collection of long-form posts about a subject, tagged and
| organized and easily browsable, no matter how long ago the
| posts were made.
|
| I do not regret choosing Tumblr six years ago, and people keep
| discovering my stuff, keep liking it, keep reblogging it, which
| shows it was the right show.
|
| Let's hope Verizon doesn't fuck it up.
| smcnally wrote:
| > Let's hope Verizon doesn't fuck it up.
|
| The owner is now Automattic
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/14/20804894/tumblr-
| acquisiti...
| henrikschroder wrote:
| Right, I had completely forgotten about that!
| ironmagma wrote:
| I always found it weird that people call Tumblrs blogs. A post
| on your blog there is more like a tweet; people can pile on,
| amplify it beyond what your intended audience could have
| possibly been. This can be great or disastrous. It's yet
| another social network -- hardly resembles a blog at all.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| It's a lot more like blogs than it is like twitter, but
| overall it's almost closest to MySpace. I think if you wanted
| to write long form content on a social media platform, there
| isn't really a better pick.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _A post on your blog there is more like a tweet; people can
| pile on, amplify it beyond what your intended audience could
| have possibly been._
|
| People could do that with blogs.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Could, but the platform doesn't facilitate it. A difference
| in ease is a difference in kind.
| galfarragem wrote:
| It's a blog (e.g. https://archimodels.tumblr.com). The main
| diference is that your posts appear on followers feeds also.
| echelon wrote:
| I remember Tumbler lacking actual dates and timestamps for
| the longest time. It was also sometimes difficult to know
| the provenance of the things you were reading, especially
| after nested reblogs and comment chains.
|
| These are two really odd design decisions for blogs and
| trying to read content written by experts.
| pndy wrote:
| Blog is a generic term that most people is familiar with but
| the more accurate description for both tumblr and twitter
| (hell, even mastodon) is microblog - due to small, short form
| of the posts
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Tumblr marketing is awesome:
|
| > Tumblr is so easy to use that it's hard to explain.
|
| > We made it really, really simple for people to make a blog
| and put whatever they want on it. Stories, photos, GIFs, TV
| shows, links, quips, dumb jokes, smart jokes, Spotify tracks,
| mp3s, videos, fashion, art, deep stuff. Tumblr is 541 million
| different blogs, filled with literally whatever.
| skupig wrote:
| This article misses (intentionally?) the 3rd important point that
| keeps me on there: the absence of big money. There's minimal
| advertising, no astroturfing, no sponsorships, no paid features.
| It is pretty much the last of its kind in that regard.
|
| Someone is clearly making a push to capitalize on it, and I'm not
| looking forward to adding it to the endlessly growing list of
| beautiful things that rich businessmen have destroyed.
| smoe wrote:
| Are.na, although very niche (which I think is a feature), looks
| very interesting in this regard. Financed trough paid accounts
| instead of selling user data/ads and being driven by chasing
| big investor money. It also seems to have a very open api for
| people to build things upon.
|
| https://are.na
|
| From Wikipedia:
|
| _Are.na is an online social networking community and creative
| research platform [...] Are.na was built as a successor to
| hypertext projects like Ted Nelson 's Xanadu, and as an ad-free
| alternative to social networks like Facebook, forgoing "likes,"
| "favorites," or "shares" in its design. Are.na allows users to
| compile uploaded and web-clipped "blocks" into different
| "channels," [...]_
| dylan604 wrote:
| > _forgoing "likes," "favorites," or "shares" in its design_
|
| I have a feeling that is going to alienate mass populace
| users.
| nvr219 wrote:
| Good
| Zak wrote:
| If I could make one change to Facebook, it would be to
| eliminate the share button. I wouldn't make it impossible
| for people to copy and paste links to third-party content,
| but there would be no front-and-center UI for it.
|
| The main thing I want from that sort of social media is to
| see original content from people that I know. I don't want
| to see the _best_ cat video; I want to see _my friend 's_
| cat video.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| This is a feature. Literally every other social site falls
| over itself to show meaningless metrics.
| smoe wrote:
| Which I think is great. Those features just incentivises
| people to constantly scream for attention and marketing
| agencies to try to create viral campaigns.
|
| There are already plenty products aimed at the mass
| populace, I would love to see again more communities built
| for the niches. Not just in terms of topics (subreddits et
| al), but functionality and interactions. Because honestly I
| came to the conclusion that communities only work if they
| stay relatively small and focused. I haven't used Are.na
| enough to say anything about their community specifically,
| but their approach resonates strongly with me.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| I'm drawn to the idea and the ethos, but wow that UI is hard
| to look at.
| smoe wrote:
| I don't like the homepage much, especially since I did
| absolutely not understand what this is supposed to be
| about.
|
| The application part itself I quite like. Some of the color
| contrasts are way to low and style over substance (my first
| impression was, that it must have been designed by a Swiss
| Architect), but what I do like a lot is, just how little
| noise there is.
| slickdork wrote:
| Homepage is definitely a mess on ultrawide/firefox.
| password1 wrote:
| But isn't Tumblr userbase mainly teens and their subcultures?
| What's the value of not having ads, sponsor and astroturfing,
| if there's not relevant or interesting community to join to
| begin with?
| wyre wrote:
| Just because a platform is not relevant or interesting to you
| or your circles doesn't mean it has no value to others. Lots
| of people got a lot of value out of using Tumblr. When
| Facebook was limited to people you know in real life, Tumblr
| allowed for anonymity and making friends with people with
| similar experiences.
| drdeca wrote:
| "All tumblr users are either too young for tumblr or too old
| for tumblr" - "tumblr teen" argumate (argumate is certainly
| not a teenager (I think he is probably like, almost 40?) but
| some news article referred to him as such at one point)
|
| I wouldn't say there's nothing interesting on tumblr.
|
| Like, there's nostalgebraist's writing on machine learning,
| Also other people posting some math content.
|
| It is a social blogging site. People write blogs there.
| wyre wrote:
| Tumblr teens are now aged around 25-35, I bet.
| hippie_queen wrote:
| Can confirm as a Tumblr teen
| beckingz wrote:
| Frank - the autoresponder gpt-3 bot is fantastic.
| digisign wrote:
| A chronological feed sounds enticing.
| egman_ekki wrote:
| There's a subscription feature that's in the works.
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/21/22684089/tumblr-post-plus...
| Tenoke wrote:
| They cite someone saying "There aren't influencers on Tumblr
| the way there are on Instagram and TikTok, and the experience
| for all users might be more pleasant as a result. " they just
| don't dig further into it.
| theklr wrote:
| Kinda is amazing outside the pr0n kerfuffle, in essence it's
| remained itself. A shame that advertising broke its popularity
| but glad to see that it's finally under ownership that isn't
| trying to put it against X.
| null_object wrote:
| I started following some Tumblr blogs just last week after a 2 or
| 3 year hiatus. I fell in love again with not having to log-in to
| see the content, or being blocked after simply scrolling through
| a few user-provided thumbnails.
|
| Articles like this make me worried some ass-hat is soon gonna
| monetize this newly quiet corner of the internet, and make it
| shit like everything else.
| sva_ wrote:
| I've recently been thinking that Twitter has absorbed much of the
| former Tumblr userbase.
| thejohnconway wrote:
| I left when the content filter removed some of my (completely
| non-pornographic) artworks. The article notes that the content
| filter is still in place, and still aggressive. I can't see using
| it as a blogging platform when such capricious content removal is
| still in place.
|
| I would go back if they announced a change in that area.
| tzfld wrote:
| That content filter once gone bad but didn't saw any wrongly
| marked post in the last few years. And I use tumblr on a daily
| basis.
| egman_ekki wrote:
| Wasn't that filter put into place (at least to some extent)
| because Apple pulled them from the Appstore?
| zimpenfish wrote:
| They were apparently already working on the adult content ban
| 6 months before CSAM caused them to get pulled from the app
| store - it just accelerated the implementation timeline.
| egman_ekki wrote:
| Thanks for the correction. I apparently wrongly assumed it
| was connected.
| null_object wrote:
| This is like HN bingo - how many posts before someone blames
| Apple for something totally unconnected.
|
| Yesterday a poster blamed them somehow for Tesla leaving a
| brake pad off a car..
| nisa wrote:
| But it's true: https://web.archive.org/web/20190105145403/h
| ttps://tumblr.ze...
| zimpenfish wrote:
| That's Tumblr pointing out that they were removed from
| the app store because of CSAM - not general adult
| content. And once they blocked that CSAM, they were back.
| nisa wrote:
| thanks for the clarification.
| kyledrake wrote:
| But that's kind of the problem here. Apple removed an
| entire platform for what I'm assuming was a few CP
| reports, and Tumblr reacted by adding an extremely
| aggressive "adult content" filter that wiped out a ton of
| legal content, and triggered a mass exodus from their
| platform, so they wouldn't get their app permanently
| removed from the app store and have their business
| completely destroyed.
|
| This really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone but CP
| happens from time to time on all large platforms, you get
| reports and you remove it, it's just a fact of life if
| you do a lot of third party content hosting. Tumblr
| doesn't have the means to pre-screen all of the content
| on their network, so they chose to eliminate all
| potentially problematic content before it gets published
| using an aggressive ML porn detector (probably Yahoo's
| open_nsfw), rather than face Apple's wrath on it. Again,
| for what was probably a few specific reports on a few
| tumblr accounts Apple was threatening to (and temporarily
| did) remove an entire platform from the store that
| billions of users require to install it.
|
| This is absolutely a consequence of their monopolistic
| and arbitrary control of their store and their policies
| that leave no room for error in content moderation. Apple
| is absolutely altering the nature of the web when they do
| things like this, and deciding through fear what kind of
| content is going to be allowed by scaring platforms into
| adopting a lower floor of controllable risk.
|
| Whether you agree that Apple's infamously closed off
| bureaucracy should be the content mods or not for any
| platform that requires use of a phone camera, criticizing
| them about it is absolutely within the bounds of valid
| discussion here because they absolutely played a key,
| major role in a change that wiped out an enormous
| percentage of Tumblr's users, the vast majority of whom
| were not violating any laws.
|
| Now I should mention they certainly have the legal right
| to do so, just as Twitter had the same legal right to ban
| a Twitter account for a ToS violation, but this feels a
| lot more concerning to me. It would be like if Apple was
| telling Twitter to dump an account for _their_ ToS
| violation or they would remove Twitter from their app
| store.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Tumblr reacted by adding an extremely aggressive "adult
| content" filter
|
| Which they were already preparing. It wasn't a reaction
| to the app store removal - they had been planning it for
| months and this just prompted a quicker activation.
|
| > so they wouldn't get their app permanently removed from
| the app store
|
| No. They were going to do this regardless of the app
| store snafu. You can't blame Apple for _this_ move on
| Tumblr 's part (but you could possibly blame Apple for
| perhaps overreacting to "a few reports" although I don't
| think we've ever got the full story of what went actually
| on...)
| pram wrote:
| Tumblr was already making people mark their blog NSFW and
| started filtering posts and tags long before the App
| Store thing. They had been "belling the cat" in
| preparation for an eventual ban.
| Macha wrote:
| How much effort is it to scan for porn/have reviewers
| informed all porn is banned?
|
| Vs.
|
| How effort is it to allow porn but have some algorithm or
| reviewers determine what is porn but is allowed vs what
| is CSAM? Obviously images of abuse of a 10 year old are
| clear, but much more content than that is disallowed, yet
| you're going to get a lot of shit for taking down self-
| taken images of that young looking 20 year old when your
| policy allows porn, and if you overcorrect the other
| direction you'll get even more shit for not taking down
| images of that older looking 16 year old.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Who are they supposed to blame, Tesla?
| sva_ wrote:
| I feel like the real HN bingo is Apple fanboys coming out
| of nowhere to defend Apple about some arbitrary thing.
|
| Well, perhaps they're mutually dependent.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Just a few days ago it became clear that a large number of
| tags were shadowbanned only on Apple devices.
| thejohnconway wrote:
| I don't remember the sequence of events very well, but my
| memory is that the real slide started when it was acquired by
| Verizon. Whatever the exact reasons were, it was still a
| series of bad decisions, because it led from Tumblr being
| huge to being practically irrelevant.
| Macha wrote:
| Yahoo were perfectly capable of neglecting Tumblr or
| spending more time asking "What can Tumblr do for Yahoo?"
| prior to Verizon's oversight also. You can see acquisitions
| like Flickr or del.icio.us which shared Tumblr's fate, just
| earlier.
| megapoliss wrote:
| You are right - platform with censorship doesn't make any
| sense. They should provide flexible filters instead, so you
| won't get content that you don't want.
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