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Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

wsj.com

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Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#211

Post by coldtea »

mbreese wrote: post #206
coldtea wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That boggles the mind as well. The purpose of an ad is to be seen. Whether it's seen next to porn should be irrelevant. I guess, because prudery.

A great deal of advertising revolves around "brand awareness". You may not be selling a particular product to the consumer, but keeping your brand in the mind of the consumer. Understandably so, not all advertisers want their brand associated with adult content. Where an ad is seen can be just as (if not more) important to the advertiser as the ad itself. So, if your site serves up adult content -- you can guarantee…

>A great deal of advertising revolves around "brand awareness". You may not be selling a particular product to the consumer, but keeping your brand in the mind of the consumer. Understandably so, not all advertisers want their brand associated with adult content.

If all brands allowed their ads to appear next to adult content, then it wouldn't be any special association for any particular brand, just another outlet.

So I guess it has more to do with the historical prudery of some countries, when an ad appearing next to adult content would trigger angry letters to the editor, editorials, and so on from "concerned citizens".

That said, advertisers didn't seem to have much issue advertising all kinds of stuff on Playboy back in the day, or FHM and the like today...

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#212

Post by nopriorarrests »

coldtea wrote: post #195
mevile wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That boggles the mind as well. The purpose of an ad is to be seen. Whether it's seen next to porn should be irrelevant. I guess, because prudery.

>Whether it's seen next to porn should be irrelevant.

It does not work that way. If some average person sees some brand advertised on WSJ and FT, and another competing brand on PornHub he will attach more 'premium' value to a first brand, and will pay more for owning product from this brand. It's only normal and a part of human nature.

People enjoy content from PornHub, but they want to be associated with something advertised on WSJ/FT/NYT/etc. People want to signal status, not just own a good stuff.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#213

Post by djsumdog »

ethbro wrote: post #55
knd775 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

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…

Well remember what actually happened. Apple removed their app! That's a bigger problem in general (I think at some point, legislators will need to force Apple to allow 3rd party installs without jailbreaking a phone).

Tumblr had issues with jailbait and childporn. Even with a lot of moderation and policing, it was difficult to keep under control. As an interesting consequence, people who use scripts to rip entire blogs, may have underage selfies and other pics they're not even aware of. It's a strict liability crime in the US, so even having huge Tumblr dumps can be risky!

There were a lot of factors involved in the censorship, and it makes me thing the future of the open web needs to be more federated/distributed. Sites like Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook need to lose relevance.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#215

Post by aussieguy1234 »

It's looks like Tumblrs strict new moderation policies aren't going to be reversed.

I've long been a Tumblr user and because of these policies I created Libr to replace Tumblr https://app.librapp.com

The front end progressive web app is open source https://github.com/cipher-code/libr

It'll be interesting to see if Tumblrs code gets open sourced. I used to run the biggest WordPress deployment in the world outside of WordPress.com and worked with a few Automattic devs in the process.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#216

Post by geargrinder »

ethbro wrote: post #55
knd775 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

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…

#Epstein is trending and you have to ask why a company might be wary of advertising on a site with unmoderated adult content?

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#217

Post by notyourday »

photomatt wrote: post #63
zuuow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your plan to wind down Tumblr?

We are planning to do the opposite: excited to invest into the platform. The web needs open and independent publishing and social media more than ever.

I guess my rather naive question is "if the platform is to accept only the same kind of safe content then what is its USP compared to Facebook/Instagram/Reddit/etc?"

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#218

Post by gbear605 »

djsumdog wrote: post #213
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…

Well remember what actually happened. Apple removed their app! That's a bigger problem in general (I think at some point, legislators will need to force Apple to allow 3rd party installs without jailbreaking a phone). Tumblr had issues with jailbait and childporn. Even with a lot of moderation and policing, it was difficult to keep under control. As an interesting consequence, people who use scripts to rip entire blo…

Apple specifically removed it for child porn, and once Tumblr took care of that (before removing adult content in general), Apple added them back to the store.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#219

Post by thiagomgd »

taurath wrote: post #44
ravenstine wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was really really huge for the LGBTQ community. There has been no replacement.

As far as I know, a lot of LGBTQ migrated to Mastodon

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#220

Post by Kye »

basch wrote: post #107
nugget wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, the Yahoo acquisition held a lot of potential for Verizon. In reality, Verizon operationally mismanaged many parts of the business and destroyed most of the value. Tumblr is one visible example of that. It's unfortunate but not uncommon. Once the deal closes, internal politics rather than common sense and innovation rules and a small handful of bad leaders or a small set of perverse incentives can sink the…

Yahoo still has some strong brand recognition in some sectors, and COULD make a massive comeback if Verizon made the right moves. Yahoo Finance, Yahoo News, Yahoo Fantasy, Yahoo Email/Messenger. Verizon should release a WhatsApp, FBMessenger, iMessage competitor and let you pick if you want it to be Verizon, Yahoo, or AIM themed. Nostalgia is all the rage. Being able to use AIM (like facebook chat at the bottom of a…

I hope they sell Yahoo Answers to the McElroy brothers. They're the only people who know what to do with it.
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