Tumblr Gets the Last Laugh | Hacker News Reader

Tumblr Gets the Last Laugh

theatlantic.com

45 pointsbookofjoe57 comments

> Today, Tumblr has a reputation as a refuge from the louder and busier social-media landscape, and those who still spend time there—or who returned to the site, as many did at the start of the pandemic—love it for being somewhat creepy and overlooked. If Musk ruins Twitter, maybe it too could have a second life as something most people are always forgetting about—in a good way.

Tumblr is not a place to go to as a refuge, they went on a massive banning spree of 'adult content' [1], which appears to have killed off loads of other content. It appears they were capitulating to their advertisers/sponsors. They recently confirmed they are not changing their stance either [2]. Tumblr is arguably way more likely to censor you than Twitter (especially now as Twitter likely doesn't even have a censorship team anymore).

[1] https://www.eff.org/tossedout/tumblr-ban-adult-content

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/27/tumblr-bring-back-porn-nsf...

Actually, that's not true, yes when they initally launched community labels they didn't actually change the rules, but they changed the rules pretty shortly after (https://staff.tumblr.com/post/699744158019190784/this-is-not...)

Yep, the only thing you can’t post on Tumblr is outright porn all that’s because of CC companies, advertisers, and Apple.

> Tumblr is arguably way more likely to censor you than Twitter

Not posting porn is hilariously easy.

Okay, they got me. The Important Blue Internet Checkmarks made me chuckle. There's been so much inkled spilled over Twitter's profile icon in the past few weeks, it's just silly.

I’ve started to think Elon is being “chaotic good” here by showing people what’s wrong with these silos and also making a fool out of the world for thinking these sites are so important.

Twitter never should have been any more important than Tumblr. The idea of that dumb site being central to world politics is the problem.

I don’t see how it’s any different than a smoke-filled back room, or the local grange where people meet together and try to convince one another of what’s important. The scale is substantially different, but just because it’s a different mode of communication doesn’t mean it’s less meaningful.

I’ve been thinking something along these lines as well. For years, whenever a conservative was banned from twitter, everyone would smugly say “it’s just a private company bro, why do you care so much?” And they were right in a way - it is just a private company and people shouldn’t care so much. The problem with that logic was that seemingly every politician used twitter extensively and a lot of public discourse happened there, which makes political bias an issue. But now that a conservative owns the private company, it’s the end of the world.

My point is not to argue about political factions. My point is that twitter should not matter. If opening up verification to everyone willing to pay was indeed a 4d chess move, well done.

I feel like the thing that ends up being missed here is that conservatives aren’t being banned because they’re conservative. If that was the goal and you support the private company argument the banhammer would have a much much bigger blast radius. Like good lord Ben Sharpie is still on Twitter.

What you have is a bunch of high profile internet edgelords with persecution fetishes and who’s internet clout is dependent on whipping people into a frenzy and so bait bans by posting barely veiled hate speech as “comedy” and then milk that by whinging for months. And it happens to conservatives because of the weird internet culture that took hold and has its origins in 4chan where saying absolutely vile shit for the lulz are the kind smugly superior takes that get views. Liberals have their own smugly superior takes but it’s “haha I’m smart, you’re stupid, obvious racist is obvious.”

There is a whole sea of conservatives who aren’t falling into this shit to get themselves into the news cycle. Sorry bud, no matter how many Youtube videos you make trying to say it’s one big grand conspiracy against you, you weren’t banned because you’re a conservative — you were banned you in particular are a hateful asshole.

Honestly, article is paywalled for me, but on Tumblr generally... a warning for parents... Tumblr is almost single-handedly responsible for my eldest teen 'discovering' at a pretty early age all sorts of self-destructive self-harm behaviours and venturing into some very very dark content holes. Tumblr is where it started, anyways. Pinterest has recent equal blame. Both are a minefield of essentially unmoderated suicide, eating disorder, cutting/self-harm, etc content. Lots and lots of it.

Trying to moderate this stuff yourself as a parent is a never-ending battle. Between devices at school and through friends, etc. there's no stopping access. And before you get judgy on me -- an 11-year old or 12-year old in general lacks emotional maturity and context to contextualize and understand this kind of content, so just "talking to them about it" is no panacea.

So as much as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook piss me off, there is at least an attempt there to manage content on their platforms. A few wrong-clicks on Tumblr can take your 12-year-old to some really bad places. At least Tumblr has a 17+ rating on iTunes store (though there's nothing stopping them from accessing via web); Pinterest is rated 12+.

https://archive.ph/ml9tY

works for me

Ironically, the entire article could've been a tweet:

> Although, to keep things in perspective, Tumblr is still much, much smaller than Twitter.

Imagine thinking Tumblr is still relevant, especially when Gas (not to mention TikTok) is absolutely crushing it with teens. Totally disconnected from reality.

Tumblr is still relevant with niche corners of the internet, even if you're unaware. TikTok is for passing the time, Tumblr is for posting, and Discord is where everything gets reshared. Cool cool

> Tumblr is still relevant with niche corners of the internet, even if you're unaware.

Just like Digg and MySpace, I'm sure.

They still release new music on vinyl. Sometimes people stick to the medium they're comfortable with.

Second Life

Ooh. I hadn't heard of Gas -- which means there's a chance that the kidz are still using it. In general by the time I've heard of it, it's over.

Given a cursory look, it doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would have broad or lasting appeal. But it doesn't need to appeal to me. Arguably, it's better if I don't understand it.

Twitter isn't dead so I feel this title doesn't make sense. Twitter is more than the engineers that built it.

I bought two important blue checkmarks on Tumblr the minute I saw it.

Funny, well executed, shut up and take my money! It's the least I can do to support a site I'm actually using daily and getting enormous amounts of enjoyment from.

The press and the rest of the chattering industry is so full of shit that it's amazing they can taste anything.

Today doesn't matter. Tomorrow is what matters. If you read the press Apple would be in bankruptcy, Intel would be unstoppable, and Nokia would rule the mobile world.

It's fun to read, but really, the chattering classes are full of myopic insta-pundits who can be safely ignored.

I find that a lot of what I read coming out of modern journalism is indistinguishable from what one would expect a GPT-3 language model only trained on, say, the top 50 editorial news sites would produce. As opposed to an actual human performing deep research on a subject and distilling key points into a coherent precis, sans opinion.

Online ads killed the budget for the newsroom, and the type of content you’re describing has always been the most expensive to produce.

Does "the chattering class" include you as well?

I assume by 'the chattering class', they meant people who are paid to churn out articles like this. We're complainer class, the ones who complain about them in the comments :)

Genuine question/request: how do you stay informed about the world? I agree with you but I still want to know what’s going on and I find it very difficult.

Not OP but I use podcasts, books and following intelligent people (not from the media) on twitter.

Also genuine question, why do you need to be informed about the world?

Sometimes it directly affects you. You benefit from being informed about stuff occurring near you, in your country, likely about the largest trade partners of your country. Possibly you're not very interested in what happens in Botswana or Peru, and Western media cover these places scarcely. But maybe news about China are important for you in most of the world, or news about Russia are important for you if you're in Europe and depend on Russian gas, and generally don't like warfare near you. Etc.

It affecting me doesn't mean I need to know why. If a serious earthquake happens it also affects me a lot and there's no way to get news about it in advance. The only reason you feel like you have to follow the news is because you can, but at the cost of what?

I have several examples of major world events I didn't know about for many weeks or months until it came up in conversation and I've never felt it affected me in a negative way, meanwhile I get time for long walks with my dog.

Earthquakes are one of the few disasters that strike with absolutely no warning.

And that's why I used that example. The others you can kinda predict from following news. If I used another example the argument would make no sense.

For a recentish example, my family had a decent amount of toilet paper stocked up before panic buying due to covid led to it running out. I would have had to pay a significant premium for TP if I hadn't stayed informed.

Most "news" is actually just low-quality analysis of things that don't matter to you very much.

The only news/analysis I recommend is https://geopoliticalfutures.com/

Diffusion. If something is important enough, I will hear about it from people in real life, such as natural disasters, the weather, important global events, and so on. Rarely do I ever look at or read the news directly, it's simply a waste of time.

I try my best to NOT stay informed. Like a sibling mentioned: stuff that's big enough tends to creep through one way or another.

I am however on top on rather arcane topics that I am very interested in. Twitter curation works wonders for that.

For me it's essentially being my own journalist. I cringe writing that, as 'being my own journalist' is basically what every extreme-wing lunatic says in just about every conspiracy group. But of course I like to think I'm different.

That means that whenever I want to form an opinion on something I try to seek out information to construct my own arguments, based on premises, based on facts, to eventually get to conclusions.

That limits the range of topics I can draw reasonable conclusions on given I have limited time. The result is that on most topics I don't actually hold any firm stances because I simply don't know, despite knowing quite a few facts about said topics. And I'm okay with that, I'd rather be not sure than to be wrong, and outside of some political or health or work decisions I have to make every now and then, it's not really necessary to have to draw a correct conclusion all the time.

For example I really don't need to predict with a great degree of certainty whether Tumblr or Twitter is going to succeed or not over the next 12 months, and for what reasons. It's interesting to follow the facts, but concluding a trajectory from that is not necessary.

And I find that 'the news' is still pretty good at reporting facts. Not so great at drawing conclusions from them, always. But just getting facts is fine for me on a whole range of topics. Then I pick the few topics that I want to really draw conclusions on, and research it myself. (which usually involves seeking out prior research by others btw, in a non-news setting, often academic).

Right. And the chattering classes spend such a disproportionate amount of time on Twitter (like some of the journo and other intellection/writerly types spend all day on it) that the things they tend to say and think about it are typically very much exaggerative and divorced from reality.

TIL there’s a Twitter alternative called tumblr, which has been around since 2007

You just learned about Tumblr today? Curious which generation/age group are you? Tumblr was pretty big among millennials but then sort of died after Yahoo acquisition

Then Tumblr mandated that porn be removed which killed it even more. It's now bought and controlled by Automattic which makes WordPress.

I think this was it more than anything else. It wasn't even just a mandate or just porn, they ran some sort of "is this image mostly skin color?" check against posted images and automatically locked down accounts with matches. Got a huge number of false positives and didn't even notify the owners.

I think they were one of the ones to adopt the "female presenting nipple" language as well. I would like to know which lawyer originally came up with that language because I've seen it in many places at this point.

Probably from the users. Tumblr was the origin point of a lot of the now-common "woke language".

I doubt that; the users widely mocked the phrase at the time.

Yes, well, I’ve been around way before the series of tubes were a thing

Oh man, you missed some history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZgxeX2dCnQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvjwXhCNZcU

Hmm. I always assumed Tumblr was more alternative to Instagram or Pinterest, I. E. Image-oriented (as opposed to "series of tiny messages you can't figure out start, end, or order thereof" that is twitter to me :)

It seems the Media are now touting new platforms that they believe they can control. Thats how they made twitter famous in the first place

I wonder if they have asked Matt about his free speech views

100%.

I too remember the meteoric and completely organic growth of Twitter where overnight every major media platform from TV to Newspapers fell in love with Twitter and pushed it like it hard. Totally organic growth.

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Any HNer who says Tumblr is dead should not be listened to.

I've been using Tumblr for years to follow along various fandoms. It lends itself well to both short- and long-form content.

Most recently, I've been following My Chemical Romance's reunion tour. Tumblr has been a better source than anywhere else on the Internet for pictures and videos of each new show (they have different costumes and setlists every show. Sometimes even playing deep cuts/B-sides for the first time in decades) + along the way you'll get a never ending supply of historical posts (old pictures, scans of magazines, text posts about the band). And then there's fanart and jokes and analyses (which, as always, is opinions so hit or miss). I'm a pretty new fan, and it's been nice seamlessly get myself "in the know" thanks to Tumblr users.

Interestingly, Twitter is Tumblr's main competitor in this niche of Internet society. Twitter tends to be where more fan/pro photos end up. But only Tumblr has the deeper content I crave as a fan of a rock band.

Back to my original point, if you haven't used Tumblr to dive deep into something you love with Internet strangers, then your opinion of it really doesn't matter. I highly doubt the site is going anywhere too. The company has seemed to embrace its strengths with a good if dorky sense of self awareness.

Agreed. Tumblr is Niche Capital.

https://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/

The article is dated yesterday, but last week Musk cancelled the $8 blue check feature.

No, the rollout is just “paused” until late November. Musk did realize how poorly thought-out it was and might cancel it entirely.

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