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Tumblr – Heads-up for AT&T customers

tumblr.zendesk.com

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Re: Tumblr – Heads-up for AT&T customers

#3

Post by adambatkin »

Is this designed to be a test of (lack of) net neutrality or something?

Verizon now owns Tumblr. AT&T e-mail addresses will suddenly be blacklisted from logging in to Tumblr.

Maybe I am reading too much in to this?

Edit According to TechCrunch (https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/25/take-the-oath/) it's all cool. Except that the explanation still makes no sense. It sounds like what they are saying is that (for example) an att.net e-mail address won't be a Yahoo account anymore, which I assume means that Yahoo won't be hosting their e-mail or something like that. But why wouldn't those addresses become the "username" on Yahoo logins, in the same way that any e-mail address can sign up as a Google account, even though the e-mail itself is hosted elsewhere (i.e. my "username" for Google could be a non-Google-hosted e-mail address, but my e-mail itself has nothing to do with Google - i.e. it's not a GMail account).

Re: Tumblr – Heads-up for AT&T customers

#4

Post by ben1040 »

adambatkin wrote: post #3

Is this designed to be a test of (lack of) net neutrality or something? Verizon now owns Tumblr. AT&T e-mail addresses will suddenly be blacklisted from logging in to Tumblr. Maybe I am reading too much in to this? Edit According to TechCrunch ( https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/25/take-the-oath/ ) it's all cool. Except that the explanation still makes no sense. It sounds like what they are saying is that (for example)…

This isn't a net neutrality thing, it's the breaking of a relationship that AT&T and Yahoo has had for 15 years. AT&T email addresses were once Yahoo accounts. Now they're not.

SBC, prior to acquiring BellSouth and AT&T, originally contracted with Yahoo to run email/web portal service for their customers.

The SBC/ATT email addresses were essentially premium Yahoo accounts but with SBC's domain, and had access to all of Yahoo's products. At least at one point, SBC/ATT customers got free Flickr Pro as part of this.

AT&T evidently has left email the same (for now) but they've set up their own web portal. People have been informed that the former Yahoo-enabled accounts will no longer be usable for Yahoo properties.

https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r31478297-Legacy-swbell-use...

edit, after your edit: since it seems like Yahoo is still handling the email side (for the time being) I imagine their system just treats these email addresses as neutered Yahoo accounts, so they'd be unusable on Yahoo-owned services that expect a Yahoo account.

Re: Tumblr – Heads-up for AT&T customers

#9

Post by jakelazaroff »

adambatkin wrote: post #3

Is this designed to be a test of (lack of) net neutrality or something? Verizon now owns Tumblr. AT&T e-mail addresses will suddenly be blacklisted from logging in to Tumblr. Maybe I am reading too much in to this? Edit According to TechCrunch ( https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/25/take-the-oath/ ) it's all cool. Except that the explanation still makes no sense. It sounds like what they are saying is that (for example)…

This is not a net neutrality issue but walled garden/integration one. Net neutrality is concerned with ISPs discriminating between services at the packet level, while this is a limitation imposed by a service itself (albeit one owned by an ISP). There's nothing preventing AT&T customers from accessing Yahoo! or Tumblr other than possibly using another email address.
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