Andreas

What are the odds that the random website it gave me was my physics study guide in high school? The Hyperphysics website

I think that if a platform wants to support long-form content, it needs to make design choices around long-form. It can’t be a short-form content UX with an arbitrary limit removed so that long posts can be created, if they’re going to be displayed and interacted with in the same way as 280 character tweets.

Some design choices that made Tumblr better for long-form posts and discussion: Being able to tag a post without writing the tag inside the main post body, so posts can be categorized without messing up the content. Text formatting support. Media can be inserted into any part of the text instead of forcing them to appear at the bottom of the post. Q&A. Post archives. Custom blog theming. One account can have multiple blogs to organize content. Replies show the context of what they’re replying to when shared. Support for commenting on posts. They combined these effectively with short-form design like the centralized feed of posts and interaction buttons.

Another reason I prefer Tumblr over Twitter is because Tumblr’s format makes discussion most visible, while Twitter makes soapboxing most visible. Tumblr’s design has flaws, but it’s the best example of platform design that balances long-form, short-form and discussion in my opinion.

It supports both, which is why I like Tumblr’s format the most. You can make short status updates like Twitter or long, informative articles on the same blog and it doesn’t look out of place.

I don’t blame the community for wanting to avoid enshittification. In an ideal world, everyone should.

But that’s not what they’re doing. They’re not making any concrete protests to Tumblr’s anti-privacy and anti-user changes. They refuse to search for and create Tumblr alternatives. They only cry (on Tumblr) about how Tumblr is the only site left for them, please don’t add this feature my autism and depression can’t handle it blah blah blah. They’re actively sabotaging monetization strategies that are user-friendly. They are - as a low-tech demographic that would rather have a “free” service than a paid user-friendly one - the reason why Tumblr has to enshittify.

Used Tumblr for 11 years because Tumblr has my favorite microblogging format. No longer frequently. The user quality dropped massively after December 2018.

The term “enabling PVP” was suggested by Tumblr users because of the aggressive attitude the community would have towards sponsored posts. As you can expect, nobody wants to spend money to be harassed, and terms like this turn people off spending money on the site.

I don’t understand why Tumblr admins embrace the factors that make spending money on Tumblr bad, instead of culling the free users who attack paying users. It’s not even like the remaining Tumblr users can revolt. They’re hated by the rest of the internet, they don’t have anywhere else to go and they don’t have the tech know-how to set up their own site. Tumblr can’t expect to maintain their “unique website culture” and make money at the same time.

I used to be interested in Tumblr joining the Fediverse, as someone who strongly prefers Tumblr’s long-form microblogging to Twitter’s format. Unfortunately, Tumblr has shown itself to be just like any money-hungry corporation at a smaller scale.

Tumblr is trying to push Tiktok-style short video Tumblr Live, which is filled with trackers, and they have plans to change their UX to be more like Twitter because Twitter is more profitable. Tumblr has the advantage of having a very low percentage of technical users, who accept these changes and don’t find workarounds because they don’t know what’s going on.

With the direction Tumblr is going in, I’d defederate it if it ever starts federating. I want a Fediverse software that mirrors Tumblr’s long-form microblogging, not Tumblr itself and definitely not its horrible community.

They had a good idea for monetization which was allowing users to buy advertising space for their own posts. The more you paid, the more users would see your post. Tumblr’s own community ruined this by sending harassing comments and messages to the posts that were advertised with this feature.

Tumblr’s biggest roadblock to monetization isn’t their site structure or ideas, it’s their community.