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Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

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Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#121

Post by delhanty »

ceejayoz wrote: post #106
delhanty wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not advocating either way - just curious to hear Matt's take on it.

I'd imagine it'll be something along the lines of "of course we market to potential customers".

Hmm, it's implied at least later in the Twitter thread that it's predatory pricing. John's friend Pieter Level's quotes [0] Wikipedia [1] as follows:

>"Under Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, pricing below cost is prohibited where the seller has a dominant market position and the pricing will have an anti-competitive effect.[22][23]"

[0] https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1146446632017203200

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing#European_Uni...

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#122

Post by SkyBelow »

mffnbs wrote: post #96
jedberg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most sites start that way. That was our policy on reddit too. If it was legal it was allowed. But you can see where that leads -- as you get bigger you attract a crowd that may be legal, but not one you want to support. The best analogy is that I support your right to spew your hate speech if you want, but I'm not going to open my house and let you do it in my living room. Most sites eventually decide that they don't…

Steve's take on Reddit these days almost seems like he's doubling down on the whole "free speech" thing for better or for worse. I personally left the site after eleven years. Steve actually permanently banned me after I had pointed out a few instances where racism was not only allowed to live, but seemingly encouraged.

I can think of at least one subreddit that often hits the top of r/all that will limit posts only to people who have sent a picture of their forearm to the mod to verify their race. Somehow that is allowed. Literally submitting a picture of your skin for the color to be judged. headdesk

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#123

Post by anarchy8 »

ravenstine wrote: post #25
skilled wrote: post #4

Surprised by this news. Tumblr has lost a ton of momentum since its policy change, and the site itself doesn't have a very strong "brand" audience attached to it. Fun fact: I can't recall the last time I either opened a Tumblr link or saw one in the wild. But maybe that's just me.

Their brand wasn't particularly strong in the first place. Correct me if I'm wrong, but for years it was widely known as a home to porn and people blogging about genders. I never knew anyone personally who hosted anything on Tumblr. Maybe it could be turned around, but it's pretty old-school at this point and seems hardly better to me than MySpace.

And what's wrong with porn and blogging about genders?

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#124

Post by IshKebab »

mevile wrote: post #120
ethbro wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That choice boggles the mind. If you're worried about cross-links between non-adult and adult content tarnishing the platform, add better features for user flagging. They (before the Yahoo and Verizon cluster&#-1s) were essentially sitting on a gold mine of training data, and ongoing training data generation, for an industry-leading porn detection engine. A subscription filtering product that would be worth $$$. Thro…

> That choice boggles the mind. Serving ads is hard when there's porn on the site.

Use a different domain then?

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#126

Post by tptacek »

gnicholas wrote: post #111
tptacek wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny the stuff HN fixates on. If all you read is this comment thread, you might actually believe that non-porn Tumblr really is just "an exercise in blowing several million dollars", rather than a concern for a very loud, probably rather small subset of Tumblr users (or rather: former users). What seems at least as likely as "adult content is vital to the future of Tumblr" is that adult content has much more va…

> a very loud, probably rather small subset of Tumblr users (or rather: former users) Well, according to this chart (which I have only cursorily vetted), it seems there are a lot of "former users": https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/af9rwu/oc_... It shows that as of Jan, 2019, there were about 50% as many users as when the ban was announced. That would suggest that there are as many "former users" as t…

The assumption that Tumblr's loss of users is entirely or even mostly due to suppressing adult content is probably unwarranted, but I'd be interested in data either way.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#127

Post by classics2 »

knd775 wrote: post #24
romwell wrote: post #20

So, the real question is: are the censorship policies going to be reversed? To be specific, is adult content going to be kosher on Tumblr again? Because if not, I'd have very little faith in the platform (and I do have an account there).

Nope. >Mr. Mullenweg said his company intends to maintain the existing policy that bans adult content. He said he has long been a Tumblr user and sees the site as complementary to WordPress.com. “It’s just fun,” he said of Tumblr. “We’re not going to change any of that.”

Then it’s a corpse.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#128

Post by marvin »

mffnbs wrote: post #96
jedberg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most sites start that way. That was our policy on reddit too. If it was legal it was allowed. But you can see where that leads -- as you get bigger you attract a crowd that may be legal, but not one you want to support. The best analogy is that I support your right to spew your hate speech if you want, but I'm not going to open my house and let you do it in my living room. Most sites eventually decide that they don't…

Steve's take on Reddit these days almost seems like he's doubling down on the whole "free speech" thing for better or for worse. I personally left the site after eleven years. Steve actually permanently banned me after I had pointed out a few instances where racism was not only allowed to live, but seemingly encouraged.

Permabanned by an admin and founder after 11 years as a user? That's actually quite impressive, unless you did something obviously outrageous.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#129

Post by blobster »

mevile wrote: post #120
ethbro wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That choice boggles the mind. If you're worried about cross-links between non-adult and adult content tarnishing the platform, add better features for user flagging. They (before the Yahoo and Verizon cluster&#-1s) were essentially sitting on a gold mine of training data, and ongoing training data generation, for an industry-leading porn detection engine. A subscription filtering product that would be worth $$$. Thro…

> That choice boggles the mind. Serving ads is hard when there's porn on the site.

How about Imgur? And Reddit?

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#130

Post by hi5eyes »

romwell wrote: post #20

So, the real question is: are the censorship policies going to be reversed? To be specific, is adult content going to be kosher on Tumblr again? Because if not, I'd have very little faith in the platform (and I do have an account there).

tumblr blogs began moving their audience to instagram and twitter years ago

instagram and tiktok are where kids are building their brands now

the nsfw sphere is on twitter/reddit

tumblr is/has been dead for years

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