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#since half the user base are entitled assholes who think they shouldn’t pay for less than perfection
britcision · 9 months
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I’m pretty sure the people bitching about not giving money to tumblr are the same ones who complain when AO3 or wikipedia ask for donations, so I’m just gonna clarify something
Running a website is not free
Even if they made no changes and did only maintenance, they still need to pay for server costs, expert programmers for when something goes wrong, storage (although frankly storage is cheap as chips these days which is nice)
They need to keep up with the capabilities of new tech like improvements to web browsers, never mind their own apps keeping pace with old and new tech developments
Backwards compatibility (being able to run the updated app on old tech) is a massive problem for apps on a regular basis, because there are people out here using an iPod and refusing to update software
There’s a reason every few years apps like Animal Crossing will issue an update that breaks backwards compatibility and you can only play if your phone is running more recent software
This shit costs money even before you look into the costs of human moderation, which I’m not exactly convinced is a big part of their current budget but fucking should be if we want an actual fix for their issues with unscreened ads and reporting bigots
Ignoring that it’s apparently illegal for companies not to actively chase profits, running Tumblr is expensive
And advertisers know we fucking hate them here
They’re still running ads, which we know because they’re all over the damn place, but half the ads are for Tumblr and its store
Other ad companies know we are not a good market, so they’re not willing to put the money in
Tumblr runs at a $30 million deficit, every year, because hosting a site is expensive
They are trying to take money making ideas from other social medias because they’re not a charity; they need to make enough money to keep the site going
If you want tumblr to keep existing, never mind fixing its many issues that require human people to be paid to do jobs like moderation, they will need money
Crabs cost $3
One crab day a year can fix the deficit and hammer home for Tumblr that:
A) we do want to be here and want the site to keep going
And B) they do not need to do the normal social media money making strategies we all hate
They need a way to make money if you want the hellsite to exist, because we live in a capitalist hellscape and cannot all be AO3
If they think they can make enough to keep running without pulling all the tricks we hate, they have no reason to pull said tricks
But they need money
And a way to make money
And if we can show them we can do that, there is a significantly higher chance they will listen to us, the user base they need money from, than if we don’t
Tumblr isn’t perfect, or anywhere close. They need someone to actually screen the paid ads they put through, they need to take the transphobia, antisemitism, and bigotry seriously
These Are Jobs That Will Cost Money
People Need To Be Fucking Paid For Their Work
Tumblr Is Not Run By Volunteers For Free And Nor Should It Be
Paying People Is Good Actually
So if you wanna get all high and mighty over $3/year, by all means, go spend that hard earned cash elsewhere
Good luck finding a perfect and morally pure business to give it to though
Being a whiny negative asshole isn’t more appealing just because you’ve put yourself on a moral soapbox, it just means the asshole is a little higher up
For all the whining about “all the new updates are terrible this site is unusable”…. It’s one fuck of a lot more usable than it was in 2017, 2018, 2020
And yeah, it’s going back down and most of the newer ones have been fucking annoying and I would also like them to stop
But it got up somehow and that means it could do that again
Hope is more fun than edgy nihilism
August 1st is a good and exciting day to summon a crab army
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