[HN Gopher] Tumblr's core product strategy
___________________________________________________________________
Tumblr's core product strategy
Author : Tomte
Score : 51 points
Date : 2023-07-10 20:28 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (staff.tumblr.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (staff.tumblr.com)
| [deleted]
| DylanDmitri wrote:
| 1) Add "calls to account creation" to un-logged in view. Annoying
| but fine. 2) Use an algorithmic feed and not a chronological one.
| Bad. 3) Clear up internal replies structure. Good. 4) Show you
| content from people you aren't following. Bad. 5) Rework push
| notifications. Depends on execution. 6) Reduce crashes. Good.
|
| I'm on tumblr mostly to keep in touch with a circle of friends
| from 10 years ago. I don't want to "grow my blog" and I don't
| want content from people I don't follow.
| darkerside wrote:
| Unfortunately, they probably don't want you either. They want
| the person who is looking to grow their blog and expand their
| followers. Not surprising that their product principles would
| reflect that.
| grishka wrote:
| That's the problem. Every single large enough commercial
| social media service devolves into this kind of thing. So
| where _are_ people who don 't want to grow their following or
| see content from people they don't know supposed to go?
|
| The fediverse would be my answer but I'm curious what others
| think.
| mawise wrote:
| Go private with something like Haven[1], or stay public but
| on a platform that explicitly avoids "viral loops" like
| Micro.blog[2]
|
| [1]: https://havenweb.org
|
| [2]: https://micro.blog
| iknowSFR wrote:
| I disagree. They are focusing on empowering creators but are
| also pointing out their weaknesses with the non-creator
| experience. Non-creators are arguably more important to the
| success of a social media brand. I think of Mixr as a great
| sample of that. They signed the 2 biggest streamers
| (creators) and it still failed because the viewers (non-
| creators) didn't follow.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's the same pressure though. They want creators to push
| out more content to wider audiences, and they want non-
| creators to consume more content. As a random non-creator,
| you either fall into their trap, or they'll try to push you
| in through all kinds of psychological trickery, both subtle
| and blunt - and if that fails, the hope is you'll select
| yourself out of the user pool. If you can't be milked for
| profit, you can at least not waste their server resources.
|
| This is the unfortunate consequence of an advertising-based
| business model. It offers you a shortcut to growth - a
| panel with a buttons labeled "More". More ads. More
| obnoxious ads. More sneaky ads. More manipulative ads. More
| people exposed, and exposed more often. There are many ways
| to grow that involve actually improving the product and
| user experience. But pressing one of the "More" buttons on
| the ad-panel is always easier, and gives you more money
| faster.
| nine_k wrote:
| > _Show you content from people you aren 't following_
|
| If it's clearly delineated, like "You may also be interested
| in...", it may be fine and actually helpful. If it's mixed into
| your regular feed, much less so.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| They already have an algorithmic feed, it's the "For You" tag.
| As long as they don't remove the non-algorithmic "Following"
| tab, I don't care how they modify the "For You" tab.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Is this the joke social network that lost 99.7% of its value?
|
| It's literally a case study of how to drive a social network into
| the ground. It was sold for 1 billion in 2013 and for 3 million
| in 2019
|
| They banned most of their artists and content creators when the
| new owners started their neo-puritan war on porn. Thousands of
| artists used it to get commissions of fan-art. They suddenly
| found their income disappear and didnt know why - they were
| getting shadow banned, often in error.
|
| In this announcement I see no indication that they've learned
| anything
|
| Once the creators leave, they are not coming back. Quality
| content is gone. The social network only lives so long as they
| can re-market someone else's work. It's a predatory business.
| photomatt wrote:
| I hope it's going to be a case study in how to turn things
| around, much like Reddit did after they were acquired by Conde
| Nast/Wired in 2006.
|
| All we can do is make the tools work really well, and then
| people can choose how they want to use them or not.
| photomatt wrote:
| The adult content guidelines have been normalized on Tumblr
| since November 2022, but if you want to know why it's not free
| for all porn anymore check out this post:
| https://www.tumblr.com/photomatt/696629352701493248/why-go-n...
| macintosh-hd wrote:
| It's very interesting how this never affected Twitter despite
| how they have existed concurrently for most of their
| histories. I wonder if maybe this argument is bullshit or
| something...
| photomatt wrote:
| I think Twitter's lack of safety and moderation of adult
| and illegal content is one of the next shoes to drop in the
| amazing reality show of the Twitter takeover. There is so
| much hardcore content on Twitter I have no idea how they
| get away with it. It's an area though where no service that
| accepts user-generated content is perfect, it's just how
| fast and well you respond when something goes wrong.
| dotBen wrote:
| _I see no indication that they've learned anything_
|
| To be fair, it was Yahoo that banned NSFW but Automattic are
| the current owners of the property.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I somehow can't see the Wordpress people wanting to become
| porn moguls.
|
| Though on the other hand, they're also the WooCommerce people
| - with such a name, who knows...
| photomatt wrote:
| We now have Woo.com!
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Nice! I'll await your pivot into _the business_.
| felipellrocha wrote:
| Sure, but "Tumblr is not easy to use" doesn't really instill
| confidence. Tumblr _used_ to be very easy to user. Perhaps
| one of the easiest websites out there in terms of usage.
|
| The underlying problem is actually two fold:
|
| 1. They didn't understand their own customers need (which
| was, to be frank, share porn) 2. That they quite simply lost
| momentum
|
| The first one is addressable. Just say you're going to allow
| porn again. The second one... Well, that's harder to address.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I don't think I understand who Tumblr is for anymore, or, maybe I
| just don't know who it was ever for.
|
| I'm not sure any of this is actually coherent or makes sense.
| They're all points that could be applied to any social network.
|
| Maybe Tumblr itself no longer knows who it's serving.
| [deleted]
| ravedave5 wrote:
| Seems like they have the right idea. I signed up after the first
| twitter meltdown and I had a hard time using it. I couldn't find
| good communities and when I did I didn't know how to engage.
| mathewsanders wrote:
| Tumblr is the only platform that I'm still active on- I've had an
| account since 2009-ish. It's a really fun community to be active
| with and the only one that hasn't attracted a majority of
| insufferable people.
|
| It's great to see the Richard Rumelt format of strategy with
| diagnosis/guiding principles, I'm a fan of this format but it
| also feels a bit like strategy-by-committee and just a laundry
| list of things.
|
| Reading though this I get the sense that no one at tumblr has
| great insights around the pain points of their own product. I
| think they need to take a step deeper in their diagnosis and ask
| "how did we end up with a platform that's so hard to use?"
| Otherwise they won't make progress on the actual underlying
| issues.
| 50 wrote:
| tumblr was really something in the first several years - all
| due in part to the great early hires they made. i was in my
| early-mid teens then but i rememeber my time on the platform
| (2010-2013) fondly, probably the best time i've had on the web
| robotnikman wrote:
| Wasn't there a great exodus when Tumblr was bought out and they
| banned anything with a hint of NSFW? I doubt they will be winning
| back those users again...
| zztop44 wrote:
| Different owners. As I understand it, the current owners
| (Automattic) have allowed some, but not all, nsfw content back
| on the platform
| biccboii wrote:
| This is the exact verbiage from the community guidelines:
|
| Sexually Explicit Material. Visual depictions of sexually
| explicit acts (or content with an overt focus on genitalia)
| are not allowed on Tumblr. That includes pictures, videos,
| GIFs, drawings, CGI, or anything similar. Historically
| significant art that you may find in a mainstream museum and
| which depicts sex acts--such as from India's Sunga Empire--
| are now allowed on Tumblr with proper labeling.
|
| Nudity and other kinds of adult material are generally
| welcome. We're not here to judge your art, we just ask that
| you add a Community Label to your mature content so that
| people can choose to filter it out of their Dashboard if they
| prefer.
|
| You have the option to add a community label when making a
| new post, reblogging a post, or editing an existing post.
| Depending on your content, you can label it as generally
| mature or choose a specific category such as "Sexual Themes"
| if your post contains sexually suggestive subject matter.
|
| Blogs which have a focus on mature content may not be
| eligible for certain Tumblr features, including monetization
| options. We need to consider the policies of our partners in
| the payments space, so the rules there are a bit different.
|
| For more information about this guideline, and how to appeal
| decisions about sexually explicit material, check out our
| Help Center article.
|
| https://www.tumblr.com/policy/en/community
| mathewsanders wrote:
| Policy is what is said, and that's often a huge gap between
| what actually happens.
|
| Tumblr had a huge content moderation issue where (based on
| my personal experience) I'm guessing there are incentives
| in place around flagging explicit content. I've never
| posted or reblogged anything that would break this policy,
| but every single post I make on my main blog is
| automatically flagged as explicit/adult content (eg a photo
| of my cat) and going though a content appeal I'd say 50%
| the human-reviewed content appeal fails and my post gets
| hidden.
|
| I ended up creating a separate blog that I now post content
| to, and then reblog to my main account.
|
| It's impossible to get a hold of any support to try and
| resolve.
|
| Despite non-existent support and increasingly buggy apps,
| it's still the best online community I've found and I love
| it :)
| photomatt wrote:
| We'll try to get better about support, bugginess, and
| account switching should be a lot nicer so you can
| actually use Tumblr as different personas when you want
| to.
| [deleted]
| niam wrote:
| On the one hand, they're right that the new user experience needs
| some attention.
|
| On the other hand: they seem woefully tone deaf on how to _do_
| that attending without royally botching the things that appeal to
| Tumblr users.
|
| Good luck to them, but I'd suggest they scrap this whole plan and
| go with something drafted by a team who hasn't drank the
| engagement kool-aid.
| lbhdc wrote:
| > I'd suggest they scrap this whole plan and go with something
| drafted by a team who hasn't drank the engagement kool-aid
|
| What teams come to mind for you?
| Kye wrote:
| I had to move my blog off Tumblr shortly after moving on when I
| realized I couldn't access the archive when logged out. There's
| no way to turn this off. And as far as I can tell, there's no way
| to convince it you're logged in when viewing under a domain. I
| was logged in, but it still showed a logged out view. Something
| to do with cookies, I'm sure, but this was with default security
| settings. I'm sure I could fix it for _me_ , but I can't expect
| everyone who visits to do that.
| photomatt wrote:
| That sounds like a bug I'd like to fix, happy to communicate
| directly on it.
| scrozier wrote:
| I'm afraid this sounds really generic and a bit desperate. I
| don't see any of the guiding principles really looking at
| Tumblr's strengths.
| photomatt wrote:
| I actually agree, "easy to use" is not the right framing. The
| core stuff needs to work really well, be friction-free. New
| features don't matter if the app crashes, or if you get spam.
| It's hard to run a social network, and do it in a public and
| open source way, but we're trying both.
| chambers wrote:
| Yeah, the diagnosis is really weak. Superbly weak actually.
| "<X> is not easy to use" has zero insight and takes no stand.
| It's a flimsy, worn-out string to connect the dots; the upside
| is that any stakeholder can grasp it and no one can strangle
| you with it.
|
| Also, the pattern of "diagnosis, guiding policy, coherent
| action" is copy-pasted from the book "Good Strategy, Bad
| Strategy"[1]. I've seen this internally at companies and even
| though the article is a great read, the application leaves much
| to be desired.
|
| [1] https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-
| corporate...
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| >Tumblr's competitive advantage lies in its unique content and
| vibrant communities.
|
| Cool, I wonder if whoever is writing this understands the reason
| those communities are like that?
|
| >The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only
| show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed
| ("Following")
|
| ...And there it is.
|
| The thing that makes Tumblr unique among social media _is the
| fact that it has a non-algorithmic feed_ , and is centered on
| _people you like_ sharing posts _they enjoy_. By default, you
| never see a post unless someone you follow either authors it _or
| vouches for it_.
|
| If they try and change that, and shove an FYP-style page in front
| of the user by default, they're going to lose that distinguishing
| feature.
|
| I personally support adding some algorithmic feed in (tumblr's
| discoverability _does_ kind of suck), but a _vast majority_ of
| the active users are very opposed to even the features they 've
| added so far (like "best stuff first"). They need to be very
| careful about how they proceed here.
|
| Also:
|
| >Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we
| haven't always had a consistent and coordinated effort around
| retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.
|
| Yeah, it's almost like you drove half the creators off of your
| site with one fell swoop.
|
| >Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for
| content related to their interests, it is easily accessible
| without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in
| their journey.
|
| Coming from a website that is known for having the second-worst
| search function in social media (after reddit, which at least is
| easily parsed by google), this is almost laughable.
| permo-w wrote:
| have you tried searching on Threads?
| mmanfrin wrote:
| Honestly, as much as this argument has been beaten to death, they
| just need to allow explicit NSFW content. This is Twitter's edge
| right now, and Reddit maybe. Let people post freely, and they'll
| return.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| Twitter and Reddit for some reason get a pass from Apple's App
| Store Guidelines on this. It seems unlikely any other app will
| be able to have as explicit NSFW content as those two.
| paulcole wrote:
| Where does the money come from? I'm assuming it's more
| difficult to find ads to run on NSFW content and/or there's
| some other reason why monetizing NSFW content is challenging
| for businesses like Reddit, Tumblr, etc.
| rincebrain wrote:
| I believe the specific problem they've claimed before is
| they'll be banned from the Apple App Store if they do that.
| mmanfrin wrote:
| Twitter and Reddit both still exist on the app store.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Having seen this from the inside, well known platforms
| get more forgiving treatment from app reviewers even if
| policies are nominally the same for all apps. If Tumblr
| launches a new or heavily redesigned app _and_ they have
| adult content, the review process may block it even if
| Reddit 's app has similarly graphic content.
| [deleted]
| photomatt wrote:
| Good news! Since November 2022 we rolled back a lot of the
| restrictions Verizon had put in place, to now allow for
| artistic representations of the human form and many things
| people would consider NSFW:
|
| https://www.tumblr.com/staff/699744158019190784/this-is-not-...
| evanelias wrote:
| Tumblr's original hockey-stick exponential growth was in
| 2010-2012, and their traffic peaked in late 2012 - early 2013,
| quite a few years before the NSFW ban. Even if they won back
| 100% of the users that exited from the NSFW ban, it would still
| be less than one-third their peak traffic size.
|
| For a little while, Tumblr was a mainstream social network.
| This was at a time when Twitter didn't even have built-in photo
| functionality yet, and both Instagram and Pinterest were still
| tiny / widely unknown.
|
| Those mainstream users probably aren't coming back. Say what
| you will about having a ton of "normies" and brands on your
| platform, but it's not clear if a social network can be
| profitable (and therefore sustainable) these days without them.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Say what you will about having a ton of "normies" and
| brands on your platform, but it's not clear if a social
| network can be profitable (and therefore sustainable) these
| days without them._
|
| Not in the current market environment, no. But it's not
| "normies" that are the problem - it's the "free service, make
| money on ads" business model that's the root of the issue. It
| will, by its very nature, always lead to the so-called
| "enshittification". And, it's also near-impossible to compete
| with at scale. So paid social networks just can't work,
| because a "free with ads" service will trivially outcompete
| it before it starts to visibly rot.
|
| I say current market environment, because there's always that
| slight hope that some sort of regulatory intervention will
| kill the "free with ads" model, or at least severely restrict
| it to level the playing field.
| rafark wrote:
| Considering it's now owned by WordPress it's very unlikely.
| Matt mullenweg seems to be very prude (not that it's a good or
| bad thing, it's just a personality I guess).
|
| They could capitalize on all the weirdness and discontent from
| twitter and reddit like zuckerberg is doing.
| colinplamondon wrote:
| Allowing porn monetizes and aids a probabilistic percentage
| of revenge porn, child porn, deepfake porn, and human
| trafficking.
|
| Even if a waiver is signed, there's significant duress in
| many cases. There's a lot of pain and evil enabled by
| allowing porn to spread on an algorithmic newsfeed.
| jackblemming wrote:
| And people can beat people with baseball bats instead of
| playing baseball. Unless you have quantifiable numbers, no
| real discussion can be had. In the absence of numbers, I'm
| for allowing the purchase of baseball bats.
| BudaDude wrote:
| From the perspective of advertisers, this analogy is not
| applicable. It is important to emphasize that I agree
| with the notion that tumblr should also have NSFW
| content. However, advertisers exhibit extreme sensitivity
| towards their brand being associated with anything even
| remotely detrimental, and they are inclined to swiftly
| disassociate themselves without hesitation.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| They made a big mistake by removing porn.
| rpgbr wrote:
| I hope they improve the platform. Tumblr is such a nice place
| with a cool atmosphere, but I hardly can justify using it
| (working in a tech news outlet) when there are so many rival
| platforms with way more people to talk to.
| jchw wrote:
| > Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app
| launch.
|
| This one is a tricky one. I understand the intent, but I think
| platforms need to shy away from trying to optimize this in
| particular.
|
| One reason is you can't define "high-quality content". Thinking
| in terms of Tumblr's userbase, there are users who have _very_
| specific things they want to see, and if you try to focus on some
| measure of "quality" (how? engagement? bad idea!) you may just
| frustrate and alienate them by making it hard to do this
| curation. That means it's important to make sure you DON'T force
| an algorithmic feed, even if you're not doing the Threads thing
| and making it basically a giant sponsored post section in the
| timeline.
|
| Another reason is that's not what people actually like about the
| internet. The internet is fun because it's a mixed bag: you get a
| lot of everything. Seeing only the best things every day is neat,
| but after a while you just get numb to it. What you want is
| something enticing and interesting. A good example here is
| YouTube in say, 2008 or so. That was _crazy_. There was not much
| of an "algorithm" to speak of: your homepage was just surfacing
| your followers and their interactions with others. This made a
| natural social graph of content for you to explore, and you could
| find stuff that people you like thought was interesting. The
| experience of crawling through this web of content is enticing in
| a difficult to explain way, but it would certainly be made worse
| if you just select stuff that an ML algorithm thinks I would
| like. Case-in-point, YouTube's recommendations for me are
| horrible, because it more often than not finds superficially
| relevant content that doesn't actually scratch the same itch as
| the stuff I _do_ like.
|
| Worse, I think over time having systems like this cause lots of
| feedback loops. People discover ways to game the algorithm and
| suddenly everybody is playing the game. Content that is de-
| prioritized by the algorithm becomes less visible, and makes
| discoverability of things that people would like to see much
| harder.
|
| I suspect most people who sign up for Tumblr have a specific
| entrypoint: another person or account that they came there for.
| The focus on discoverability should, in my opinion, focus on
| moving outward from there rather than trying to push a bunch of
| viral content on the user in hopes that it will appeal to them.
| Same goes for a lot of other social networks that do literally
| the same thing.
|
| It will help your metrics in the short term, but you may very
| well bleed even more dedicated users. Metrics can obscure a lot
| of important things...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I wonder if anyone has tried to experiment in getting
| recommendations right as a terminal goal. Not as a way to push
| what they want, control the experience, or funnel the sheep to
| slaughter. Just a honest-to-$deity, non-commercial, "hold my
| beer and watch this" attempt at putting some algorithms in
| front of content library (perhaps _someone else 's_ content
| library), and giving enough knobs to the users to let each one
| tune their own feed. Guide the machine.
|
| Of course, any such attempt will stay somewhat obscure - it
| can't get popular, because in the wider world of users being
| seen as cattle, the system will get immediately gained and/or
| bought out and/or sued - but it could work as a proof of
| concept. Perhaps lead to a bunch of scientific papers, a
| Wikipedia page, an interesting anecdote - but also a capability
| demonstrator for a better future. So where is it? I'd expect at
| least the torrent crowd would have something like it by now.
| But then maybe it exists, and I'm just not privy to it.
|
| Anyway, with all the research that's been going on ever since
| Netflix award, and maybe earlier, with all the systems in use,
| some of which probably not initially designed to be malicious -
| it feels to me that it should be possible, and the missing
| ingredient is treating end-user as a partner, not an idiot.
| karpour wrote:
| Regarding YouTube, I'm very split. I wish the platform would
| give control to the users. There is a lot of stuff I want to
| see, like.. I subscribe to people because I want to see their
| things, show their videos on my front page.
|
| On the other hand, the algorithm, for all its flaws, has
| introduced my to a whole world of music I would have never
| found otherwise. Though then I watch one video about the
| Ukraine conflict and YouTube suddenly thinks that's all I ever
| want to watch. Luckily a friend told me about the incognito
| switch, so now whenever I watch a video I don't want to
| influence the algorithm, I use that. Not ideal, but better than
| nothing.
|
| On a social media site, on the other hand, I don't want an
| algorithm deciding what I see. I follow my friends, I don't
| follow celebrities. Just show me what I want.
| Izkata wrote:
| > I wish the platform would give control to the users. There
| is a lot of stuff I want to see, like.. I subscribe to people
| because I want to see their things, show their videos on my
| front page.
|
| Okay it's not the front page, but this view does exist. On
| the left sidebar, click "Subscriptions" to go to a
| chronological view of only videos uploaded by who you're
| subscribed to: https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _On the other hand, the algorithm, for all its flaws, has
| introduced my to a whole world of music I would have never
| found otherwise._
|
| I feel there's a dead-obvious solution to this: _split the
| difference_. Give users granular control over parameters of
| the recommendation algorithm, and then use that to populate
| _half_ of the feed. The other half, do what is done today.
| Maybe even make the user-controlled half of the feed a
| _negative_ input into the platform-controlled recommender.
| And sure, even mix in all the commercial prioritization into
| that second half.
|
| This way, each user gets to enjoy _both_ precise control and
| serendipitous discoveries; they get to suffer both stewing in
| their own filter bubble and getting exposed to random shit
| content - but no more than 50% of each. A good balance could
| be achieved.
|
| It would definitely be better than what we have today, where,
| unless you're working hard to carefully tune your experience,
| getting drowned in random shit content mixed with advertising
| is the _good_ outcome - the bad outcome is ending up stuck in
| a filter bubble made of... shit content reinforcing your
| particular inclinations (and still mixed with advertising). I
| feel it would even be better for platforms, too.
| CodeSgt wrote:
| While _generally_ I think that your approach is the best
| approach to discovery, I think it is prone to privacy
| complaints. I've certainly looked at... things... on social
| media that I wouldn't want close friends or family to get
| recommended to them, even worse if they know they got
| recommended it because of me. Not everything everyone interacts
| with on a social media platform is meant to be shared with
| everyone else.
| jchw wrote:
| I think _that_ problem is relatively solvable though: giving
| people privacy controls and making operations that are public
| explicit is easy enough. Like, if you are commenting publicly
| on something, I think it 's fair game to default to showing
| that to people who follow you. OTOH, it doesn't have to be
| forced to work that way. Heck, Twitter probably did this
| right a long time ago: if your post started with an @ it
| would not show up in other people's TLs, making direct
| replies not show up to your followers; but if you add a dot
| at the beginning, they would. Now obviously that's
| unnecessarily arcane, but at least to me the concept of being
| able to control that would be a good start. Combine that with
| a good system of identity where users can change their
| publicly displayed identity and work under multiple aliases
| fluidly and this should make it possible for people to manage
| things decently. It's odd how Twitter actually was kind of
| close to this at a point; it has fluid identities, they added
| the ability to switch between up to five accounts, etc.
|
| Then they screwed up by surfacing likes and never adding an
| option to make them private. Very dumb.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Tumblr 2.0
|
| Now, more than ever (Twitter/Reddit), is the perfect time to re-
| launch Tumblr.
| permo-w wrote:
| perhaps we are at an inflection point
|
| reddit is at war with its users, twitter is being scuttled in
| live view, Threads is a newborn baby. chaos?
| weare138 wrote:
| _The default position should always be that the user does not
| know how to navigate the application._
|
| I really wish tech companies would stop designing apps for this
| mythical moron user who's apparently seeing a software
| application for the first time ever. Everyone knows how to use
| these apps. Think about it, kids can figure it out.
|
| Modern UIs have become so oversimplified that they're counter-
| intuitive to average users and useless to power users. When you
| try too hard to make an app for everyone you just end up with an
| app the doesn't work for anyone.
| szundi wrote:
| This
| maxbond wrote:
| I call this "usability nihilism," as an allusion to therapeutic
| nihilism - the idea, not that the user shouldn't be made to
| think unnecessarily, but that in fact they are not capable of
| it. That the user cannot be empowered or trusted to learn by
| experiment. In short, that usability is impossible.
| bentt wrote:
| I had to double check that the date on the post wasn't 10 years
| ago.
| chrisallick wrote:
| I call bs on this strategy being consumer centric. They couldn't
| monetize "enough." They're saying they had a product problem, but
| not for their users. Tumblr was lovely, just didn't have the
| gross design patterns that drive the level/type of usage that
| advertisers want. Reddit has the same issue and you see them
| prying the product out of the hands of their users. Lol, also yes
| to that comment, let the NSFW fly free.
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