#so tumblr has a new subscription service | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

inthisuproar · 1 year

Text

Was going to write this as a reply to something but realized it needed its own post.

The tl;dr is that, from the looks of it, Automattic absolutely has every intention of turning Tumblr into a marketing media platform.

I work for a marketing company. I build websites.

Specifically, I build websites on Wordpress.org, which is operated by the Wordpress Foundation.

The Wordpress Foundation is the non-profit counterpart to the for-profit company Automattic.

Automattic, as we know, is the company that currently owns Tumblr.

Now, the thing about Wordpress.org (not to be confused with Wordpress.com) is that it's very, VERY popular amongst small businesses. Not only can you build a fully-customizable website with relative ease, you can also add an online shop using another Automattic product: Woocommerce.

Not too long ago, I noticed a new feature was added to Woocommerce: A button next to each Woocommerce product which allows you to Blaze them to Tumblr right from the comfort of your dashboard:

This is what I get when I click that little "Blaze" button...

As someone who understands these tools, I understand the potential implications of these features:

The Blaze feature is basically an up-and-coming ad campaign system that's directly integrated with Woocommerce websites, which I think is the first ad marketing system of its kind. You don't have to log into a social media account to advertise your products, use a second-party integration, or even pay another service to manage your social media ads. It's all baked right into your business's website.

THIS is their planned money-maker, folks, not the rainbow checkmarks or crab armies. And the reason why Automattic would do this kind of thing is simple: Businesses are wealthier than individuals. By implementing a B2B service, Automattic can make more money off of Tumblr than user subscriptions and shoelaces will ever provide.

It's all the same song and dance. Businesses can now shove more ads into your face in a new, convenient fashion. It'll be ads that don't look like ads disguised amongst ads that do look like ads, just like it is with Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and literally every other marketing media service that calls itself a "social" media.

(Tumblr's new video feature? My guess is that it's there to prepare for video-format Blaze campaigns. Influencer-style videos are the only kind of ad format Gen-Z is receptive to, which is why you're suddenly seeing videos on every platform.)

All they really gotta do now is make Tumblr look appealing to the normies so they can draw in a userbase that isn't trying to escape the onslaught of commercialism that plagues other sites.

Tumblr is one of the last true social medias we have; a place where content is made purely for the sake of talking about it. But given the writing on the wall...I doubt it'll stay that way.

#yells

2K notes · View notes

pomodoko · 10 months

Text

@staff, because you need to know

Here’s my feedback message I sent to @support through feedback. Inspired by @getvalentined‘s post here.

“The recent post on the Staff blog about changing tumblr to an algorithmic feed features a large amount of misinformation that I feel staff needs to address, openly and honestly, with information on where this data was sourced at the very least.

Staff considers the main feed as it exists to be "outdated," to the point that you literally used that word to describe it, and the main goals expressed in this announcement is to figure out what makes "high-quality content" and serve that to users moving forward.”

THIS IS DONE COMPLETELY AGAINST THE WILL OF THE USERS. As a long term user of tumblr since 2012 and a current subscriber to your no-ads subscription service, I am highly considering ending my monetary support and send in a scathing review on the App store for how much misinformation @staff is distributing to the current userbase. Reverse-chronological dashboard is the lifeblood of users, and the MAIN FUNCTION of the dash is for users to curate their own experience and interests via following blogs they like. By pushing algorithmic content, you're taking away users' safe spaces and make it so smaller blogs will receive worse traffic than they already do, or vice versa, bigger blogs to stay in the spotlight, because that's what an algorithm is.

"Historically, we expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience." MAKE A POLL. Actually TALK to the userbase on what they want out of their feeds/dashboard. Actually, user @darkwood-sleddog has already MADE a poll about this for you, with an overwhelming 95.2% of voters OUT OF 130,205 PEOPLE voting for the dash to stay chronological, the way it's always been.

By switching to an algorithm For You feed for new users and now forcing this change on older ones, Staff is expressing that you are looking down on your userbase and assuming that we are not smart enough to curate our own experiences here on Tumblr, a MICROBLOGGING SITE. You are lying to your users with each and every new update and hiding the fact that people have been sending you feedback and complaints in droves. Tumblr's current traffic is at an all time high thanks to the fall of Twitter and Reddit, due to both websites DOING THE EXACT THING YOU'RE TRYING TO PUSH ONTO YOUR USERBASE. Twitter's forcing users to look at content they push rather than actual content the users follow, and Reddit's copying that from Twitter.

Tumblr is neither of these platforms, and Tumblr is not TikTok, either. This is the last stronghold of interactive, engaging social media/microblogging platforms that allows users to be authentic, funny, creative, and informative. You're making changes that the majority of users here do not appreciate, and I implore you to think twice.

#tumblr #support #staff #wip #feedback #tumblr feedback #signal boost #this is important #pmdk talks

266 notes · View notes

mhalachai · 6 days

Text

some of you may have seen a notice today from a tumblr-popular youtube show, saying they're putting all their content behind a subscriber paywall. This post isn't about them per say, only bouncing off what that has brought up into the following:

When is a digital subscription something i'm willing to pay for? Rubric edition

Disclaimer - my first news job was in the early aughts at a digital stock news company, so I've been keeping an eye on this subject for over 25 years.

So you want to access an entertainment or news service that has content behind a subscriber paywall. What steps should you go through, to figure out if it's something that you should pay for?

This post will go off the caveat that artists/authors/reporters (I'm not calling them content creators, that term is garbage) should be properly compensated for the works they produce, and the current business model in our late-stage capitalist society means we all have to deal with the worst possible way of engaging with art - the subscription-model paywall. It's a terrible garbage system but there we are.

Step Zero: Do you care enough about the content to consider paying for it?

It might not be important enough to you to want to pay for, and that's okay. On the other hand, you may want to continue watching/reading/listening, either because of the content itself or because you want to support its creation.

(I'm separating the above as they are two different reasons - personally, i'm in favour of paying an annual subscriber fee to my small local news room to keep them in producing the content because I think it's important they exist.)

Step 1: Can you literally afford it?

Everything costs more and salaries aren't rising. If the answer to the question is no, can you split the cost with someone? Is it something that can be accessed through your local library (in terms of audiobooks or magazine/newspapers)? Otherwise, moving to:

Step 2: Is the cost of the subscription in line with what you're willing to pay for the content?

I still subscribe to the newspaper i used to work for - I can read all the news and get all the quotes I'm interested in, and I know i'm supporting local news. I'm willing to pay money for that.

On the other hand, back last year when Disney Plus announced it was raising its prices, I decided that I wasn't interested in paying that amount for what I was getting, so I cancelled that one. Do I miss it? Yes, somedays. Would I go back to them if the cost went down? Honestly I don't know.

Step 3: Did the company/channel do something to lose your trust?

Sometimes, all the above have been met with the affirmative, but something about how the company is doing things sets your teeth on edge. Maybe it's how their business model is evolving, or how they treat their customers (Netflix and their password sharing crackdown was that tipping point for me - i no longer wanted to support a company that sees its customer base like that). Maybe it's how they decided to move to subscriber-only. Maybe it's their take on geopolitical or social issues. Whatever it might be, you get to make that call for you.

Summation: Don't feel pressed by FOMO to pay for something when you're not comfortable doing so.

Whatever the situation is, you get to decide where you spend your money. The corollary of that is that you may not get to see the new stuff created by companies/channels that you like, but honestly? That trade-off might be better for you in the long run (and I'm saying this with too many years of regret behind me) nothing poisons the enjoyment of art more than feeling like you were forced to pay/pay more for it than you were OK with.

The tl;dr: Take a step back and see if you're really comfortable with paying for all your electronic subscription fees for news or entertainment. Don't feel pressured into paying for something you don't really want to see, or what to support. Consider where you want your money to go.

It's hard economic times - do what you need to, and spend your money where you want to.

(And check into what your local library has on offer - they may have streaming services or digital content you weren't aware of - might be enough to tide you over for a while).

#mhalachai has opinions on the internet #seriously tho #feeling like you're being forced or tricked into paying more for something that you reasonably can #poisons the well like nothing else #this post deliberately doesn't mention off-book ways of getting content #you can all figure that one out on your own

53 notes · View notes

alliumcola · 1 year

Note

oh my god i literally adore your art its so bright and friendly like wow goals forreal

GOALS YOU SAY ??? YOU ARE JUST IN LUCK MY FRIEND !!!

famous youtuber and artist Thomas Kraken Innit is now offering his many life and art advices to donators to his new subscription service TOMBLR+ ‼️

soon you will learn just to be as TALENTED and AWESOME and HUMBLE as i am . BECOME AN ALLIUM COLA DRINKER TODAY

being the Capitalist i am , when i came to tumblr i said to myself " you know what this place needs ??? COMPETITION . " scoffs , who has even heard of tumblr+ ??? certainly not my followers , they are much too Cool for that

#win for the allium cola drinkers #cola scribbles

166 notes · View notes

sage-nebula · 16 hours

Text

Watcher Update Debrief

I am several days late on posting my full thoughts on Watcher's update regarding their streamer, because each day when I come home from work I feel too tired to do so (and I can't post while I'm at work because my work computer prohibits access to tumblr due to it being a "video streaming website" -- yes, you may laugh). Truth be told, I'm still too tired to do so, but each day that goes by this gets less and less relevant, and after posting so much about the situation over the weekend I don't want to just not post anything about the update video, because I feel I have to give some closure on this. So without further ado, here is that closure. This is going to be pretty long as well (hence not wanting to post it on my cell phone at work), so once again I'm going to put this under a cut to spare everyone's dashboards.

First, I want to address the actions they've announced they're taking regarding the backlash they've received in regards to the streamer, setting aside the actual content of the video itself. (Because there is a lot to dissect in the video itself, both in what they say and how they present what they say, and I want to give full attention to that.)

When Watcher announced the streamer last Friday, they said that they would be virtually quitting YouTube altogether. All they would post on YouTube in the future would be the premiers of each new show, while the seasons themselves would only be released on the streamer, which would require a subscription for the annual price of $60, or the monthly price of $6 (which would total $72 for the year). This of course was only factoring rates for United States residents; the prices would be higher for those internationally. It's also not getting into how the original plan was also to pull all older seasons off YouTube, as evidenced by what the company told Variety, before Ryan backtracked it in response to the initial backlash.

However, in the update, the Watcher team reveals that they are backtracking as much as they can with regards to the streamer. While they are still going to have the streamer for the prices listed, they are going to still upload new seasons of their shows to YouTube, albeit one month later than the shows premier on the streamer. For people who have already subscribed who wouldn't have had they known this was going to happen, they can ask for a refund and they will receive it. Additionally, patrons of the Watcher Patreon will now receive access to the streamer for free, and can also reach out to Watcher for a refund if they've already subscribed to the streamer.

In my opinion, this is the best case scenario. I know there are some people out there who are upset that they haven't canceled the streamer entirely, but for reasons I've spoken about in other posts / comments, I really don't think it's possible. When I wrote my initial debrief post, I thought that they had built their streamer from the ground up, because that was how they made it sound in their initial announcement video. It has since come to light that they're using Vimeo's OTT service. But here is the thing about Vimeo's OTT service: it is not free. And while there is a standard plan that allows a customer to pay $1 per subscriber, the much more likely plan that a company like Watcher is going to use is the Enterprise plan, which would require a contract.

Here are the details of the Enterprise plan:

The expanded bandwidth, upload hours, and 1080p HD streaming are reason enough for Watcher to go with the Enterprise plan over the Standard plan, but any company with half a brain cell would want a dedicated support team in case something happens to go wrong with the streamer at any point. The Standard plan is for individuals who want to get into hosting streaming websites for the first time; the Enterprise plan (as the name suggests) is for companies who want to do so, and Watcher is company.

You'll notice, though, that the Enterprise plan works by a monthly or yearly subscription, and that there is no flat rate available. This means that Watcher would have already negotiated a price, and likely has already paid at least some, if not all money up front (assuming they went yearly instead of monthly, and as Watcher's own plan shows, you normally get discounts for annual plans over monthly ones). What this means is that Watcher has absolutely already put money into the streamer, and that they are in a contract they likely cannot break without incurring more fees / losing money they have spent. So at least for the time being, the streamer has to exist. They can't simply walk away from it completely like some people still want them to.

So with that in mind, deciding to release the new seasons for free a month later on YouTube is the best possible outcome. They're still keeping the streamer for those who have and want to be subscribed to it. Releasing content early on a paid platform (such as, and I am just spitballing wildly here, Patreon) is a practice that many YouTubers have engaged in for a long while now. And I would guess the month delay is because they still really, really want to lure people to the streamer. Depending on how much money they put into that Vimeo OTT contract (and I really have no way of knowing how much money that was), I can understand why. Even so, it is a surprise to me that they are willing to compromise with the fans at all. I really was not expecting them to walk back any part of the decision. So this really is the best possible outcome any of us could have hoped for, in regards to specific actions regarding the decision they made before. The future of Watcher doesn't look as bleak now as it did on Friday.

With that said, let's address the content of the video itself.

Setting aside the "three ex-Buzzfeed employees on a couch" meme quality of the video (especially since the Try Guys on the couch hadn't done anything wrong themselves, whereas the Watcher guys did), here are the specific things I want to address:

1.) They centered Shane in the update video. I believe this was deliberate.

Over the weekend, huge swaths of the fandom blamed Ryan and especially Steven while exonerating Shane. At best, they just ignored Shane. At worst, they insisted that he was secretly against the idea all along and that the other two (especially Steven) had forced him into it / outvoted him. Setting aside the implicit racism in all of this (because although the fandom has had a very hard time admitting it, you don't find the men of color inherently untrustworthy / unlikable / unrelatable and the white man inherently relatable / trustworthy / likable without implicit biases, you just don't), it's unreasonable to think they didn't notice with the flood of hateful comments flooding Steven's and Ryan's socials while Shane got less heat. Not no heat, mind, but considerably less when compared with the other two.

So upon noticing that, they centered Shane -- who was still the most liked by the fandom, the one still seen as a "comrade" by a huge number of the fandom -- in the middle of the couch, to draw the eye, to play to the audience subconscious. The sight of Steven (and to a lesser extent Ryan) makes you angry? Put them to the side, put Shane in the middle. Let his white face calm you down. It absolutely sucks ass that this was needed, but again, there were both explicit racist comments and implicit racism at play all over the place this past weekend. It was disgusting, I'm sure they noticed, and they staged themselves on that couch accordingly.

(And it was staged, as well, because on the podcast they've talked about how Ryan often likes sitting in the center and Shane (and Steven) prefer sitting off to the sides. And in the first video we see this; Ryan is in the middle, with Steven and Shane are on either side of him. But in this one, it's switched. Wonder why? This is why.)

2.) They acknowledge that they messed up, and they apologize.

Now, their bad business decision is their bad business decision. If they wanted to tank their company by moving completely to a paywalled streamer that doesn't have nearly enough content to appease less than the most diehard of fans, much less appeal to potential new customers, that's on them. But in their announcement video, they were obtuse about the financial situations of many of their fans; they were patronizing, they were arrogant . . . they messed up. They messed up, and they say it plainly, and they apologize.

This is the most basic, the lowest of bars to clear. But many YouTubers fail to clear it. It's refreshing to see that they haven't. Personally, I have respect for people who can own their mistakes, apologize, and then resolve to do better in the future. We are all human; we are all going to fuck up at some time or another. The important thing is to acknowledge when we do, apologize for it, and then try not to do it again in the future. The fact that these three acknowledged that they fucked up, apologized for it, and then outlined the actions they're taking to fix the wrong actions they took above are all good things in my eyes.

(On that note, I also appreciate that they specifically address what hurtful things they said, and explain why those things are hurtful. They acknowledge that they blew off all the fans that couldn't afford the streamer, as well as the fans who have supported them via merch sales, Patreon subscriptions, live shows, et cetera for all these years. They acknowledge the comment about "a price anyone and everyone can afford" was insensitive and wrong. Anyone can say "I'm sorry" and have it be meaningless if they don't know why they should be sorry. The Watcher team clearly did listen to the feedback and understands what they did wrong. I appreciate that.)

3.) The one thing in the video I did not appreciate and that I think was a misstep was the part where Ryan tried to once again explain why they thought the streamer was a good idea.

We heard them explain in the announcement video that they need money from the streamer, and that they have a hard time reconciling their content with ads. The problem they face is this: if the audience didn't buy that then, they are not going to buy that now when they've had an entire weekend to be upset. And not only have they had an entire weekend to be upset, but we've also had at least one YouTuber who owns a company that connects YouTubers to advertisers lay out exactly how much money Watcher should be making from their channel and how friendly their channel is to advertisers, so the claims make even less sense now than they did before. Attempting to insist that, "we really do need the streamer money though" is doing little to convince those of us who didn't already believe that. You can say, "we would lose the company if we didn't do it" until you're blue in the face, but you really are wasting that breath.

More importantly, though . . . an apology is not the time for justifications. This video was meant to apologize for your wrongs to your community and announce the actions you are taking moving forward to right those wrongs. Which, to be fair, is what Watcher did. What the video was not for was to say, "But we were right to introduce the streamer because . . ." No one in your audience wants to hear that. Even if it made financial sense (which it did not), this is not the time or place for that, especially when what you are saying now is what you already said in the announcement video. It feels defensive at best. It's simply not the best move. It's not the time or place.

Which is not to say that nothing else should have been addressed here beyond an apology. Had they read a chunk of the fandom the riot act for the racism and other out of pocket comments (e.g. apparently people were posting on Ryan's wedding photos on IG that Mari would leave him when she realized how selfish and greedy he was), I would have supported them in that. Alas, twas not to be.

All in all, my final judgment on the whole situation is this: the response video is the best possible outcome any fans could have hoped for. I will remain subscribed to their YouTube channel, because I am an adult with a full time job and a life and so I don't mind watching the videos a month later if it means watching them for free. I accept the apology that the Watcher team has given, and I appreciate the fact that they got someone with actual public relations experience to assist them in writing and presentation (because they very clearly have a PR person assisting them now -- that was not a Watcher original production).

But just because I accept the apology doesn't mean that I have forgotten, or will forget, what has transpired. I have known for awhile now that Watcher Entertainment is not the tiny underdog they pretend to be. After all, they got DISNEY to sponsor them for an episode of Ghost Files. (The Haunted Mansion episode, to be specific.) When you have Mickelous Fucking Mouse himself opening his checkbook to cut you some cheddar for advertising, you have hit the big time. You can no longer claim to be a small, pitiable underdog at that point. Previously, I was happy for them that they were hitting the big time. I remember messaging a good friend of mine so excited that they were getting paid by The Mouse. After this debacle, though? Seeing them pretend to be starving to death while still getting cut checks by huge corporations for ad revenue? That sweet taste has turned rather bitter, especially when their merch -- multiple items of which I have purchased -- is so overpriced as well. (I paid over $80 for that Mystery Files jacket. It's just a regular denim jacket with the logos stenciled on . . . I was glad to support them and to have a jacket featured on the show, but now . . . smh.)

All of this is to say: I will still watch their shows for free on YouTube. I'll listen to their podcast when I need background noise. But I'll never again buy a piece of merch. And I'll regard them as I do the owners of any other company: businessmen who are, at the end of the day, there to make money. They are company owners, they are actors, and they are nothing more than that. And that's fine. They don't have to be.

That's where I stand, anyway. Everyone else is free to reach their own conclusions on the matter.

#don't bother trying to argue that ''people weren't racist''#or ''it was ok to be vile to Steven bc [reasons ppl dug up to justify their racism]'' or i'll just block you tho #watcher #watcher entertainment #shane madej #steven lim #ryan bergara

25 notes · View notes

invisiblefoxfire · 10 months

Text

Listen up, fellow queers and token straights, we're not gonna whine about the lack of new media during the strike and we're not gonna waiver in our support of the strikers.

In the meantime, we are going to recommend to each other more already-existing media than any of us could ever watch given several lifetimes to do it in.

I'll go first. Here are just a few of the creators I care about and want you to support.

FREE TO WATCH:

Filmjoy: This YouTube channel (Movies with Mikey, Deep Dive, etc.) makes incredibly well-produced video essays on film and occasionally TV and games. The channel's focus is on positivity and finding things to love about everything. And YouTube doesn't promote that sort of thing anymore, so the channel's creators (one of whom has multiple sclerosis) are running out of money and close to losing their house. Binge these genuinely incredible video essays with adblock turned off or, better yet, sign up to their Patreon and binge them with adblock on. Seriously, I love this channel so much, and if they don't get a boost in income soon, they're going to have to stop making videos. And I want more videos. Seriously, even watch the videos about things you haven't seen. They've persuaded me to watch loads of stuff I never would have watched otherwise and they're very good about not spoiling things (and giving spoiler warnings when needed).

AyeForScotland on Twitch: This is Tumblr's very own very handsome pro-Scottish-independence @ayeforscotland who has an incredible accent and plays loads of interesting games. He's going for Partner on Twitch now, which he has already earned but been denied due to an absurd technicality regarding whether viewers being linked to the channel directly from Tumblr integration. Go follow him now if he's not live, and when he goes live, go to Twitch and manually click on his name to watch the stream, since that's apparently the best way to get him the boost he needs. He sometimes has @thebibliosphere on as a guest (DOUBLE SCOTTISH ACCENTS HELL YES) and you can watch archives of many of his streams on his YouTube Channel.

Africa Everyday: This YouTube channel is run by Babatunde, a Nigerian man who shares his life and culture, makes cooking videos, and generally is a pleasure to watch and listen to. Seriously he's one of the kindest human beings I've ever spoken with. The money he earns from the channel goes towards helping his family and his community.

CHEAP AND WORTH PAYING FOR:

Dropout.tv: You simply will not find better comedy entertainment for the money. A monthly or yearly subscription is just a few dollars a month and gives you access to countless hours of top-quality entertainment from a company that started their own streaming service rather than cater to YouTube's algorithm. This is the place that started as College Humor, but if you haven't seen them in a while, you really need to check it back out. They're incredibly inclusive in their casting and theming and the production values are insane. I recommend starting with Game Changer, a show which has made me laugh so hard I choked and almost threw up. They also have Dimension 20 (or D20), the highest-quality DnD series out there, with custom-made sets and minis, usually with a focus on sheer comedy rather than drama (most of the cast members are comedy writers or comedians) - but it WILL and I mean WILL make you cry now and then. The currently in-progress season of D20 is called Dungeons and Drag Queens and the players are four literal actual fucking drag queens including Bob the Drag Queen and friends? You need to be watching this. If you have any doubts about whether Dropout is worth it or don't have any money, you can watch many full episodes for free on the CollegeHumor YouTube channel, although they have to censor the swears on there.

Nebula: Remember Lindsay Ellis? She left YouTube because of [too many reasons to list] but it turns out she's still active, she's just on Nebula now. Nebula is the co-op of streaming sites. Users sign up for a low monthly fee and the income is distributed among the creators, weighted according to how many views they get. The videos are uncensored and ad-free and contain lots of stuff that later needs to be edited out of YouTube videos to avoid copyright strikes. They've got FilmJoy on there (remember them from the start of this list?), Philosophy Tube (@theabigailthorn), Jacob Geller, Extra Credits, and loads and loads of other stuff on all different sorts of topics. Many of these channels also have YouTube channels that contain most of their content if you can't afford a Nebula subscription, but Nebula supports them more and gives them more creative freedom.

I'm gonna stop here for now but I'll add more in reblogs as the strike continues.

I hereby invite all of you to ruin my notifications until the strike is over. Reblog this, add your recommendations (especially ones that most people might not know about), and pass it on. There will not be a single complaint about lack of things to watch while the strike is ongoing.

(Why yes I am looking for more things to watch too. I've already seen all of the above. Bring it on.)

(And if you have a few dollars to spare, support the strikers directly at the Entertainment Community Fund.)

#wga strike #wga strike 2023 #stand with the wga #do the write thing #sag aftra strike

120 notes · View notes

queen-mabs-revenge · 1 year

Text

Anyway just sent a support ticket to staff about the new lightbox. Feel free to crib some/all of it if you want to send your own

Hi there,

First of all, I do want to say that there have been some amazing updates to this site of late -- polls stands out as something that has absolutely enhanced the Tumblr experience, and they've been implemented in a really thoughtful and clear way. These have made me happy to be a paying ad-free user.

However, I have to give feedback about the new lightbox feature that has been rolled out on mobile. I find it so hostile to the user experience that I've actually deleted the mobile app and am now accessing tumblr through my mobile browser.

When I click on an image, it's with the intention of removing all other distracting app features so I can focus on the image. With the new feature, the permanent post detail overlay covers part of the image/video and creates a cluttered and distracting experience. Also, if the image is of text, the text overlay makes it impossible to read the text in the image.

Also, I often click on an image with the intention to zoom in to either read small text or look at image details. The new lightbox feature destroys the capability to do either of those things without going through the circuitous process of clicking 'more' and then accessing the post through the person's blog rather than the dash. This makes the experience of viewing images actively difficult and circuitous instead of easy as it was with the previous lightbox experience. It deeply reduces accessibility.

Clicking on a video used to bring the video into focused view with sound automatically unmuted and gave the ability to scroll through the video by pulling left or right and pause with a tap. The new lightbox forces mute when opening a video, and the inability to easily track back and forth means that one is unable to rewind to hear the missed sound. Also, the ability to scrub back and forth through a video is essential for people who need more time to process sound and language. Again, the new lightbox removes accessibility.

With the new lightbox feature, the standard motion of flicking up to exit an image/video has been hijacked to introduce algorithmically-served content. The reason I am here on tumblr is because I can very carefully curate the content that I see. I choose not to use any other social media site because I find unavoidable algorithmically-served content hostile to the experience I would like to have online. I have chosen to pay for Tumblr services because I so strongly support the idea of a social media site where algorithmically-served content is not pushed onto you as a user. Not only has this lightbox feature removed a standard one-handed motion now requiring two-handed browsing, but it's actively antithetical to why I chose to financially support this site.

All of this added to the fact that on mobile images are still being served tiny and not being scaled up to full-width as they were previously, and the alt text indicator is still so dark and in a position where it's likely to cover text, means that the lightbox view is more important than ever. I was unhappy with the small images and obscuring alt text tag, but was able to push past that with the old lightbox view. Now the mobile app is unusable to me, hence deleting it.

If this is something that remains permanent, I can't see going back to using the mobile app and subsequently would drop my ad-free subscription.

I really hope that you consider going back to the previous iteration of the lightbox - it was simple, intuitive, accessible and didn't push algorithmically-chosen content. That's what people come to Tumblr for.

Thanks for your time and all the work you do,

queen-mabs-revenge

#tumblr mobile #tumblr tv #tumblr app #sorry for not shutting up about this but this is def the change that has broken me

128 notes · View notes

cyle · 9 months

Note

I'm curious and I've gotta ask: do you know anything about the old MMORPG "Star Wars Galaxies"?

tl;dr it turned into a cautionary tale about chasing new users at the expense of alienating existing users, and among MMO gamers over a certain age, it's infamous

however, it's the exception, not the rule: the majority of the MMO market's history seems to show that a game and/or service -can- survive major changes, -if- those changes are gradual and continual, mixed with changes desired by the existing userbase, and not fully committing the product to a niche already filled by another company's product

that said, Tumblr doesn't have a lot of time to be gradual with its efforts to adapt, considering Automattic has already been nursing it at a loss since 2019...

but on the bright side, the current chaos among social media platforms offers some opportunities and wiggle room that never really opened up in the constantly overcrowded MMO market. like, some Tumblr users seem to think imitating Twitter in any way is a bad business plan, and they cite the fact Twitter is failing. but Twitter isn't failing because of its sidebar design, it's failing because of Elon Musk. imitating certain aspects of it is just free real estate at this point

funny you should mention SWG, i know it quite intimately. the official SWG forum was the first message board i ever joined, and i was highly active in that community for many years. up until very recently, i was still hosting a message board that was started as an SWG fan board. the people i know from that are some of the people i've known longest through the internet, and in my life actually, so it's close to my heart.

to unpack your thoughts here though, i think SWG is an interesting case study that actually supports our strategy, but really it doesn't quite fit because it's fundamentally a different model. MMOs are primarily subscription based (they were when SWG was out) or now freemium, and tumblr and most social media is funded by advertising. the underlying monetization mechanics are totally different, leading to totally different priorities.

if people on the internet were willing to pay to fully fund a social media network, either through a freemium model or a subscription, removing itself from VC funding and advertising, then the comparison between MMOs and social media platforms would make a little more sense. then it'd be much more easy for us, inside of tumblr, to prioritize existing paid customers, when those customers are a significant (or the primary) revenue stream. that would be pretty amazing!!!

and from my perspective, the "current chaos among social media platforms" is much smaller than it seems. i think the media just enjoys writing about this stuff, and overblowing it, and platforms like meta and tiktok are doing silly things mostly to grab that free attention. while certainly more people than ever are willing to try out other platforms, the raw numbers of how they retain / "stick" when they do make that move seem to be abysmal so far.

if anything, right now on the internet, the stage is perfectly set for something radically new to come along and completely blow away the incumbents, including meta and tiktok. i think web3 has already failed (thankfully), and AI is a tool (not a platform), and VR is too expensive and inaccessible, so something else is gonna pop up and become big. it's been a long while since a truly amazingly innovative product came along to shake the foundations of the internet. we're overdue.

33 notes · View notes

not-poignant · 2 months

Note

Hi there! I absolutely love your works and, having followed you for a while now, I also really admire you as a person and an author in general. Every update on AO3 and Tumblr is always such a delight. I'm sorry if this ask is coming out of the blue or if it's something you've been asked before, but how did you take the plunge from writing predominantly fanfic to posting original fiction in serial form and also self-publishing novels? I'm currently in the process of drafting two original works after writing/posting fanfic regularly for years, and I'm just lost as to how to set everything up. I have a general idea (post chapter-by-chapter on AO3 and offer early access and some exclusive content on patreon or some other subscription service), but it all feels so daunting right now. Any bit of info or advice on how you got started would be immensely appreciated <3

Hi anon,

Tbh, I went from writing fanfic to original fiction because I had original characters in my fanfiction and readers asked me about them.

I had no kind of...dreams of being an original author in this way, I was published via other pathways already, and fanfiction was really an escape for me, a chance to break with all the conventions of standard writing and just do what I wanted.

But I needed a broader cast than what the movie gave me re: my first fanfics, and I added my own OCs, and left them in the background as much as possible, but even back while writing that fanfic, even the OCs were getting fanart. Sometimes readers would send me anons about them, or ask me more details about them.

Finally, I decided to write some hatesex between them, just something to kind of...idk get it out of my system? Answer what the readers were looking for?

The flow through therefore felt natural. Game Theory flows very naturally on from From the Darkness We Rise & Into Shadows We Fall. And from there, moving into other original works has been easy, in part, because I've often being doing alternate universes from a core of original characters.

If I want to introduce new original characters, I introduce them in stories where pre-existing original characters have already been established.

I didn't even start writing original works with a view to making money off that. In fact I thought it was a very foolish thing to do. A lot of people on AO3 don't want to read original works on AO3 and refuse to do it or only do it if it's PWP / pornography.

I started my Patreon account because readers asked me to. I got asks from very very generous people who wanted to know my Paypal, or asked if I'd start a Ko-Fi, and finally a few people just asked if I'd start a Patreon. I said I didn't think it was a good idea, and they said it was up to them if they wanted to pay me or not, but I should at least consider giving them the choice.

From there, I found it all very overwhelming. I made lots of mistakes. I had to go on hiatus for a year because I promised too much and couldn't deliver on many of those rewards. And for many years I only offered one early access chapter per week for one story, and my main stories were never early access (and still aren't, Underline the Black goes up for everyone at the same time - and while that may change in the future, it's definitely unconventional).

I've always been transparent with my readers that with very few exceptions, if they just wait, they eventually get everything for free. But if they want to support this kind of writing and/or enjoy it, and can comfortably afford to send some dollars my way, they can ensure that I can keep writing this way.

I have for a long time offered no exclusive content at all, I believe that can do well, but it's not my preferred way of doing things.

This career has been incredibly reader driven, anon. I would not personally attempt it cold, without a really fantastic readerbase who encouraged me every step of the way in the first place, because I am a cautious, insecure writer who doesn't like to take risks. So I can't give you advice on how to build this career without the support of the readers there in the first place, and I believe the only reason why I had their support was, in part, because of the actual strength of the writing itself. Which isn't to say it's the best, it's not, it's what I needed at the time and it's what a few other people needed, and that's basically how this works.

If you turn up with the writing, and the audience comes, and they want the story, you have the career.

In terms of practical advice - you can introduce original characters in fanfiction, just be aware that readers tend to be hostile by default if they pull any significant 'screen time' away from the fandom characters (and readers are extremely savvy to authors trying to build a financial business through AO3)

It IS daunting, but the good news is you can do a soft launch. You can open a Patreon or Ream account tomorrow and tell no one. You can mess with your graphics and your tier rewards to your heart's content when you don't have any subscribers. Build a buffer of early access/chapters, and make sure you don't overpromise on anything. Whatever you think you can realistically deliver to readers, cut it in half, because the stress of chapter update deadlines every month can really add up and it's a very different landscape to novel releases.

You can take your time, you can build interest slowly.

Remember you can never ever mention any kind of site where you're getting paid inadvertently, sneakily, or directly on AO3. You can't mention Ream, you can't mention Patreon, you can't mention Ko-Fi, you can't go 'learn more about my writing here' and link to those places. You can't mention buy links. You can only mention sites like Tumblr, Linktree, Twitter etc. Places where the point of sale isn't happening. Not doing so risks AO3's Not For Profit status and risks your entire account, and it's not worth it.

I did an interview with Subscriptions for Authors where I actually talk about many of these things so you can watch (or listen to) the podcast here if you're inclined! It also talks about the importance of community-building, gratitude to the readers, and generosity.

I am here because my readers wanted me to be. So I'm very concerned with making sure I can give them the best writing possible within my abilities. This makes me not very suited to offering 'how to start in this career' advice because it was a happy accident. It's hard to teach something I have never done your way myself, anon, because I worry I'd give bad advice. My writing had people turning up, but I'm not sure anything else I did, added much! I think responding to Tumblr asks and replying to every comment helped too! But...I don't know for sure.

But this career path does make me pretty well suited to offering 'how to keep this going' advice, because I've been doing this for ten years. <3333

#asks and answers #pia on writing #pia on subscription #pia on fandom #i don't know how i got this lucky #but i do know that i stay lucky because i work hard on the writing #so the writing is where it's at #i've been thinking a lot lately on drafting some kind of course on #how to write hooky serials #but if you're writing novels/books that won't be very suitable to you!#i'm not writing serials to turn them into novels #i'm just writing straight up serials that are very messy and difficult to turn into novels lol #idk i do all of this ass backwards #and recently just pulled out of giving a speech on my success as a disabled author #because i actually feel like i'm not good at what i'm doing in a way that is tangibly useful to others #if nothing else anon #make sure you join the Subscription for Authors Facebook #and watch some of the podcasts on YouTube #Christopher Hopper's keynote speech is particularly good

12 notes · View notes

inkweaver22-blr · 5 months

Text

I got a survey from Tumblr in my email today.

Hmmmm.... This could potentially be useful in helping users shape the si-

Nevermind. -_-

What kind of questions are these???? The wording here is terrible.

I have never personally reached the post limit ever so I'm not interested.

Why are these being locked behind a Premium feature???

Now this is some bullshit! Labs has always been open to everyone so they can try new and experimental features to provide feedback! Locking it behind a paywall is going to limit your testing pool!

*unimpressed stare in uBlock Origin*

Looks like someone enjoys Blue Sky. But seriously, this would be an incredible feature, if it wasn't going to be locked behind a premium subscription.

Oh boy! One free Blaze per month?! What a deal! /heavy sarcasm

Again, useful, if it wasn't going to be pay-walled.

What the fuck??? Since when was there a like limit??? They better fucking not be implementing just to try and get people to fall for this shit.

Wow! I get a free Blaze of one my own posts as well! That means two free Blazes in a month! /unlimited sarcasm

What even are some of these features? it's like they're taking ideas from every other social platform. The custom feeds from Blue Sky. The communities from Twitter. This from Discord. Like, yeah they're cool ideas, but not cool enough to pay for.

This sounds super bad for people with ADHD. Not to mention impossible on mobile.

Yeah no.

What a load of bullshit. If you get this survey there's some answers you can type up so please let them no you do NOT want a Premium service.

#Tumblr #tumblr.com #Tumblr Premium

11 notes · View notes

titles-for-tangents · 2 years

Text

I’m seeing plenty of excellent posts on tumblr addressing how infuriating the Warner Brothers Discover merger is, but my dashboard’s circle of influences has yet to produce for me a more comprehensive sequence of events or list of shows being taken down, so IMMA START

According to Polygon, here is a complete list of the nearly 40 shows HBO Max has taken down:

12 Dates of Christmas

About Last Night

Aquaman: King of Atlantis

Close Enough

Detention Adventure

Dodo

Ellen’s Next Great Designer

Elliott From Earth

Esme & Roy

The Fungies!

Generation Hustle

Generation

Infinity Train

Little Ellen

Mao Mao, Heroes of Pure Heart

Messy Goes to Okido

Mia’s Magic Playground

Mighty Magiswords

My Dinner with Herve

My Mom, Your Dad

Odo

OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes

The Ollie & Moon Show

Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

Ravi Patel’s Pursuit of Happiness

Select Sesame Street specials

Make It Big, Make It Small

Squish

Summer Camp Island

The Not-Too-Late Show With Elmo

The Runaway Bunny (special)

Theodosia

Tig n’ Seek

Uncle Grandpa

Victor and Valentino

Yabba Dabba Dinosaurs

HBO Max has also removed about 200 episodes of Sesame Street; I am presuming those certain specials mentioned up above are included. A certain Batgirl movie that would’ve brought back Michael Keaton also got canned.

This is all because Warner Brothers Discovery wants to merge HBO Max and Discovery+ into a single streaming service in order to compete with the likes of Disney and Netflix. Over the course of the next ten+ years they hope to have a base of about 130 million subscribers. It’s also worth noting that, according to The Washington Post, “Warner Bros. Discovery was formed in April, when AT&T’s WarnerMedia unit and Discovery completed their merger, and started with some $55 billion in debt.”

I had yet to see any tumblr posts talking about what Warner Brothers Discovery really plans to do with these programs, and frustratingly it’s unclear at this time how many, if any, of them will make it onto the new streaming platform. (And to be fair, from what I’ve perceived this whole hot mess has been happening on such a rapid timescale it’s been hard to pivot before the rug gets ripped out from underneath us again.) Warner Brothers Discovery through HBO Max would’ve had to keep paying residuals to the creators of these shows, so locking the shows in financial limbo looks a hell of a lot like a massive tax write-off. They’re cutting their losses as much as they can now in order to compete as an even bigger monopoly, but their best bet to pay off their $55 million debt is really to include all the shows onto the platform and let the debt and residuals pay for themselves via the subscription service. And even then, let’s be clear, Sesame Street should be free.

This, I imagine too, is a developing story and we’re bound to hear about some more fuckery in the near future.

#this is not to restate the obvious #I saw a lot of grade A discussions but little journalism you know?#speaking of preserving history #hbo max #cartoon network #warner bros merger #current events #cartoons #polygon #the washington post #this wasn’t even on my apple news feed; I had to hunt for it #thankfully not for long but still

143 notes · View notes

hiccupmistress · 10 months

Text

So earlier today, everyone on twitter got all confused because everything was showing a “rate limit exceeded” error message with no further clarification whatsoever. Then, some hours later, Mister dumb-dumb claims its “totally deliberate u guys” to “address extreme levels of data scraping”, and limiting people to seeing 600 posts per day. That might sound like a lot, but the way Twitter loads its feed, that basically means you get about 30 seconds of usage.

So basically, Mister dumb-dumb spent an unearthly amount of money to buy one of the biggest, most relied-upon social networks in the world, fired all the people who actually worked there, changed the verification badges so instead of confirming celeb accounts are legit, they instead mean “my cult is paying me $8″, claimed an adjective is a slur and is now massively restricting people using the service.

He does claim this is “temporary”, but given this idiot’s track record, he probably doesn’t know how to fix it. Especially since he laid off most of the actual software engineers.

Twitter has, for years, been a primary platform for both communities as well as keeping up on news. If people can barely see any tweets per day, that all goes right out the window.

Twitter got so big largely because it was convenient to get those things on one feed. Netflix got big when it started because it was convenient to have everything in one place, it reduced the amount of piracy that was going on for film/TV because it was easier and more convenient than the old torrenting services of the day. Now, every last studio wants to cash in with its own streaming service, and people are going back to piracy because its more convenient that having 500 different monthly subscriptions. This is the social media version of that. Mister dumb-dumb took one of the most convenient social media platforms and utterly mangled it, so user retention is understandably going through the floor.

Anyway, that means a lot of the communities I’ve been a part of are splitting all over the place to countless third party platforms. I’m not 100% sure yet, but I might be making more of an effort to get used to Tumblr. I’ve never quite felt confident posting here, but its currently the best alternative; Reddit is also going down the toilet with their API changes, Facebook is more built for people you know IRL rather than fandom communities (I never particularly liked the groups systems there), Discord is utterly alien to me and I simply cannot learn how to make the most of it and stuff like Mastodon or random-twitter-knockoff-that-my-mutuals-aren’t-bothering-to-tell-me-what-it-is are too niche and a bit weird.

So yeah, this feed might become more active with videogame screenshots, Star Trek episode thoughts and opinions, neurodivergent ramblings and whatever else, idk.

EDIT: News article with a bit more detail if you want

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-66077195

#twitter ded #mister dumb-dumb broke twitter for good #social media's gone all weird #i just want my online community spaces #i need somewhere to talk about my hyperfixations #trust your software engineers #i'm still not entirely sure how to use tumblr

19 notes · View notes

dinoburger · 6 days

Text

to try to put an earlier thought about fan work and commodity in a less frenetic, more cohesive way, it's one of those things that thrives from being divorced from context that also makes it fraught as a way of feeding back into media consumption

it's easy for us to see on one hand, there are artists who are independently creating work, where monetary gain is minimal and means maybe this week it's a bit easier to pay rent.

On the other you have "buy a Disney plus subscription and watch this show the 'correct' way so they can keep making more content!" and it's a celebrity cast with a zionist director or something. Also Disney. Also the corporate subscription system.

Good job, you've helped set the pieces for the diabolical Rue Goldberg machine of capitalism and encouraged others to do the same.

Most things are more blurry. This platform, for instance, is less than ideal in countless ways and at worst, morally bankrupt, but it's still a resource that can be taken advantage of to the ends of spreading word about other resources, or helping drum up awareness - if nobody knows what's going on, they're going to listen to what's being told to them. We know which voices are the loudest.

Paying attention to which accounts have checkmarks, though, it's not as if we aren't complicit in some ways. When we use this site and it encourages others to do the same, we're paying indirectly.

There's always going to be more decision making than electing to shrug and say "no ethical consumption under capitalism" - that absence of a decision to decide where to draw the line is a kind of crime of omission. This "I just wanna draw my silly guys from my funny shows tee hee ^^".

I make and weigh up my decision to use this site every day that I do. I still think, ultimately, it is more optimal than a subscription service, it's... reasonably... user friendly (although, that gets less and less true by the day) and it's fairly accessible. I like that fan communities are a free, open space for people to chat and hang out.

I might change that decision tomorrow. I think it would be a shame, considering how long I've been around, but I don't need to fortify my identity as a "tumblr user".

That should extend to fan work. I don't guarantee you my patronage. If TF2 became a subscription service, I might rescind. I already feel very on-the-fence about supporting Valve - while it was a pioneer company, it's still encompassed by the vast and profitable Steam, which is corporate in its makings and as such, dubious. I wouldn't really encourage anyone to give them money, but I can't stop it either.

The other thing about this kind of disconnect is how most people online treat you as only the sum of your parts. The entity that is you is comprised of commodities they enjoy. Most people who find your work will do it through the frame of whatever they were already looking for, people who don't necessarily have any ideas about these conscious decisions we make.

I do know of artists deliberately making themselves harder to find because of this. Either disappearing any trace of the person behind the work, or obscuring the work to begin with. To a degree, it kind of undermines the joy of open accessibility that made these sites appealing, but I also understand why.

The sad part of closing yourself off from a community is that it can make it harder for smaller artists who just want to get by, doing what they do, to be seen at all. It's harder to reap the benefits of using this platform, with a lot of the same risks anyway.

I think everyone, to some degree, has an obligation to encourage conscious decisions like this, and show awareness of the strings attached to whatever their new shiny thing is. You're never really going to get there by trying to purge everything or double down about why you're allowed to stop caring.

6 notes · View notes