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Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

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Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#281

Post by jsjohnst »

ethbro wrote: post #108
zymhan wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you considered adopting a federated corporate structure that would legally firewall off a "tumblr-for-porn"? That is literally the convoluted situation photomatt was trying to avoid. I also think that the suggestion is hilariously naive. Presumably the founder/head of the company has considered a variety of incorporation structures.

> Presumably the founder/head of the company has considered a variety of incorporation structures One would think, but apparently neither Yahoo nor Verizon made any effort in that direction. To the tune of putting approx $1 billion through the corporate paper shredder. Given that track record of handling, and an ostensibly similar approach, I thought it was a valid question.

> To the tune of putting approx $1 billion through the corporate paper shredder.

Arguably, that happened June 20th, 2013, the day the Tumblr acquisition was closed.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#282

Post by ethbro »

jsjohnst wrote: post #272
Andrex wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking care of it on an ongoing basis might have been too great a burden for the (assumedly-understaffed) team, or they had too few tools to deal with it and no incentive or manpower to create new ones that worked with the existing adult content system. Simply banning adult content en masse allows them to use heuristics to identify nudtiy and genitalia in images. Previously, they would have had to make a judgment cal…

> or they had too few tools to deal with it That wasn’t the case. They had the industry standard tools (PhotoDNA + partnership with NCMEC), but I can’t say how well they were being maintained at the time of the situation with Apple.

And at the time, HN roasted Apple pretty roundly for the decision: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18494137

There was some great snark about Safari being next on the ban list.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#284

Post by Semiapies »

Theodores wrote: post #160
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).

If you were to ask people in the street about Tumblr and what it was for, I would be surprised if you had many people say 'porn!'. They might not have heard of it or they might remember it from a decade ago or they might even think it was 'flickr'. It certainly is not up there with Twitter and Facebook as a full on household name. The next 'tumblr' that comes along, i.e. when it is another thing that Automattic do, n…

It wasn't just about porn, it was about things like not remotely porn-y art, entirely SFW LGBT-related material, and even entirely random image content all getting automatically flagged as porn.

It wasn't even worth the effort of trying to get previous posts on my Tumblrs unflagged; I just stopped using the site.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#285

Post by mattwad »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #62
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.

Every time I go to visit Tumblr, it asks me to log in. If I can't lurk on a content site, I'm moving on.

Twitter's website does this to me on my phone. Half the time I decide not to read the tweet.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#286

Post by dwd »

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.

Reading between the lines... Was Facebook/Instagram also in the market for Tumbler or was it just Verison getting close to killing it off and fishing around for a last minute buyer?

Good luck with it anyway - we need more independant platforms rather than a few mono-cultures.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#287

Post by jrochkind1 »

rchaud wrote: post #189
doh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do have some big names sticking around like Taylor Swift ( https://taylorswift.tumblr.com/post/185958366550/for-years-i... ).

any reasonably large brand that can afford a social media manager will use automated tools that crossposts the exact same content to Twitter, FB, IG, and Tumblr. The original appeal of Tumblr was that it was a modern day Xanga, lots of personal, anonymous journaling, weird jokes and photos. I don't recall anybody becoming an influencer via Tumblr, probably because it didn't attract that kind of audience.

audiences that can be influenced?

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#289

Post by coldtea »

evanelias wrote: post #207
coldtea wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to be a large "percentage of total content". It just has to be the content that matters to most users...

Well, "most users" implies a majority, which is simply not the case here, full stop. Far from it, especially if you define a user as a person who has a Tumblr account and posts content on the site. If you consider a "user" to include non-monetizeable lurkers who were just there to view adult content, then saying "most users" is definitely still wrong, but perhaps slightly less so. Tumblr's peak was many years ago (20…

>Well, "most users" implies a majority, which is simply not the case here, full stop.

Well, 30% of the traffic leaving within the first couple of months of the ban, seems rather significant to me:

"The blogging platform’s traffic has dropped by 30 percent since the December ban on all adult content (...) In December, Tumblr’s global traffic clocked in at 521 million, but it dwindled to a mere 370 million in February, according to The Verge".

And moving onwards, it continues to look like a death spiral - a website that lost half or more of its users and is on a slope:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/261925/unique-visitors-t...

>I'm not going to reply to this further. I know the stats, I've seen the internal stats over many years, and this is a pointless thing to argue.

Sure, no reason to reply. I've posted the stats myself, people can draw their own conclusions...

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