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Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

wsj.com

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Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#271

Post by mises »

gbear605 wrote: post #218
djsumdog wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing is, a naked 17-year-old and a naked 18-year-old look fairly similar. One is a felony; one is not. It would be evry difficult to distinguish between them. Apple probably wanted to head off the outrage which some person would drum up, and passed to tumbler. Tumbler figured it was easier to classify all inappropriate content, as there's no real way to classify something so fuzzy with the requisite accuracy.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#272

Post by jsjohnst »

Andrex wrote: post #241
gbear605 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#273

Post by Anon1096 »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #146
stcredzero wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've got porn on a domain, it doesn't matter if you show ads on porn or not, it doesn't matter if you require age verification, nothing you do will likely matter. What if there was a way to "ban" something by changing it's domain? What if there were two web apps with a linked backend? Let's say: tumblargh.com tumblarghR.com When something is "banned" from tumblargh.com, it remains on tumblarghR.com, which is oth…

isn't this what 4chan did with 4channel.org?

4chan split into two sites because PayPal stopped working on the main domain, but similar idea.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#274

Post by ImprovedSilence »

umeshunni wrote: post #229
basch wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No one outside the US has heard of Verizon and most of the products (whatsapp, messenger) you named have the majority of their users outside the US. Most internet users today have also not heard of or have any nostalgia for Yahoo Messenger or AIM.

AIM nostalgia checking in!

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#276

Post by gibrown »

justinator wrote: post #239
photomatt wrote: post #11

I'm super excited to have the Tumblr team and product join the Automattic family. We've been evolving Automattic to be more of a Berkshire Hathaway-inspired model and businesses with a lot of autonomy, and this continues that trend. I was very impressed with the engagement and activity Tumblr has continued to have, and I hope that with this new ownership and investment the product will blossom.

Sounds cool! Are you hiring?!

Always! https://automattic.com/work-with-us/

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#277

Post by mikeschinkel »

evanelias wrote: post #267
mikeschinkel wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious about your just curious; what is the architecture of the current Tumblr back end? This appears to be 6 years old. Is it still relevant? http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/2/13/tumblr-architectur...

Ehhh parts of that article were never accurate, especially the stuff about having an hbase-powered dashboard feed. Primarily the product backend is monolithic PHP (custom framework) + services in various languages + sharded MySQL + Memcached + Gearman. Lots of other technologies in use though too, but I'll defer to current employees if they want to answer.

Cool, thanks for the answer.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#278

Post by ethbro »

k_sze wrote: post #242
coldtea wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

> 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... I guess it’s because Playboy and FHM are somehow considered tasteful and for connoisseurs?

I suppose that was Hugh Hefner's brilliance. That if Playboy was seen as "tasteful porn", then advertising space instantly became more valuable.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#279

Post by ethbro »

Simon_says wrote: post #222
ethbro wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With very few exceptions, I'm in favor of the internet having more of anything that anyone is trying to make it have less of.

Ads? Spam?

Sure. Caveat Utilitor.

I'd rather have an internet full of dark and danger than a safe theme park moderated by corporate entities and governments.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#280

Post by jsjohnst »

evanelias wrote: post #267
mikeschinkel wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious about your just curious; what is the architecture of the current Tumblr back end? This appears to be 6 years old. Is it still relevant? http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/2/13/tumblr-architectur...

Ehhh parts of that article were never accurate, especially the stuff about having an hbase-powered dashboard feed. Primarily the product backend is monolithic PHP (custom framework) + services in various languages + sharded MySQL + Memcached + Gearman. Lots of other technologies in use though too, but I'll defer to current employees if they want to answer.

You’re being generous. Most of that article was a pipe dream that never came to fruition.
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