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Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

wsj.com

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Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#91

Post by eridius »

jedberg wrote: post #18
JBReefer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that majority opinion in America? I only see opposition to free speech in niche communities.

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…

Reddit is the poster child for why unfettered free speech is a huge problem for online communities.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#92

Post by basch »

bkberry352 wrote: post #49
afturner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This paints a pretty clear picture: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=tumblr&geo=US

Does it? This seems to indicate that the site has been declining since 2013 and that the policy was more of a "final straw" type factor

or it stopped growing through google discovery, but its core base had it bookmarked, visited it through autocomplete, or used the app. google search results going down doesnt necessarily mean active users went down.

App store bans and country bans should be better indicators.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#93

Post by georgestephanis »

delhanty wrote: post #67

Apologies HN, off-topic. Matt, while you're here can you comment on John O'Nolan's tweet [0] from July accusing Automattic of anti-competitive behavior w.r.t. Ghost [1]? >Can never decide if I’m flattered or horrified that a $1.1billion, 1,000 person company w/ a 83% share of CMS market seriously employs a full-time team dedicated to attacking a 12 person bootstrapped non-profit org with an open source product [0] ht…

John is a pompous jerk who likes to misinterpret half-truths, scream persecution, and then block people when called out rather than admit fault. And if ever called on it he silently deletes his tweets instead of acknowledging his actions or faults.

source: he blocked me years ago for precisely this. also, coincidentally, when he was screaming persecution once prior.

https://twitter.com/JohnONolan/status/605728714840797184 https://twitter.com/daljo628/status/606057031288647680 https://twitter.com/jcasabona/status/605946936659558402

Further examples of another tweet thread of his that he silently deleted after getting called out:

https://twitter.com/helenhousandi/status/286930024232267777 https://twitter.com/helenhousandi/status/286929096846499840 https://twitter.com/helenhousandi/status/286862020412858369

In short, pretty much anything that comes out of John's mouth is trolling, and should be given about as much credence.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#94

Post by ceejayoz »

delhanty wrote: post #67

Apologies HN, off-topic. Matt, while you're here can you comment on John O'Nolan's tweet [0] from July accusing Automattic of anti-competitive behavior w.r.t. Ghost [1]? >Can never decide if I’m flattered or horrified that a $1.1billion, 1,000 person company w/ a 83% share of CMS market seriously employs a full-time team dedicated to attacking a 12 person bootstrapped non-profit org with an open source product [0] ht…

How is that anti-competitive behavior?

That looks like a textbook definition of competitive behavior.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#95

Post by kd5bjo »

shadowmore wrote: post #17
JBReefer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that majority opinion in America? I only see opposition to free speech in niche communities.

The majority of consumers, yes. Not majority of companies. Whether tech giants or smaller businesses, they all do advertisers' bidding, and the advertisers themselves have the insipid idea in their heads that having their ads show up alongside non-PC content is going to somehow associate their brand with that exact content, as if it's an endorsement.

More than that, even if there are tools available for the advertisers to only target specific content they don’t want to be associated with a website that provides content they don’t like. IIRC, this was one of the reasons why Twitch was spun out of Justin.tv— advertisers liked the gaming content but not what was in the other categories.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#96

Post by mffnbs »

jedberg wrote: post #18
JBReefer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that majority opinion in America? I only see opposition to free speech in niche communities.

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.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#97

Post by delhanty »

ceejayoz wrote: post #94
delhanty wrote: post #67

Apologies HN, off-topic. Matt, while you're here can you comment on John O'Nolan's tweet [0] from July accusing Automattic of anti-competitive behavior w.r.t. Ghost [1]? >Can never decide if I’m flattered or horrified that a $1.1billion, 1,000 person company w/ a 83% share of CMS market seriously employs a full-time team dedicated to attacking a 12 person bootstrapped non-profit org with an open source product [0] ht…

How is that anti-competitive behavior? That looks like a textbook definition of competitive behavior.

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

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#98

Post by chx »

tptacek wrote: post #86
xwdv wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically an exercise in blowing several million dollars.

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…

In your opinion what value tumblr has without the adult content (and the communities around them)?

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#99

Post by mcintyre1994 »

Gpetrium wrote: post #88

It is worth noting that Tumblr was an indirect acquisition by Verizon when they bought Yahoo in 2017. It seems to have had stable unique views up until Aug-Sep 18 [1]. At some point it suffered from country-wide bans in places such as Indonesia. The country bans coupled with a ban from the iOS App store [2] caused direct downward pressure on viwership. This has led to a rapid drop in viewership in the months after [3…

Also important context on that viewership, they banned adult content in December ‘18 - which presumably explains the acceleration in drop since then.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#100

Post by carbocation »

Gpetrium wrote: post #88

It is worth noting that Tumblr was an indirect acquisition by Verizon when they bought Yahoo in 2017. It seems to have had stable unique views up until Aug-Sep 18 [1]. At some point it suffered from country-wide bans in places such as Indonesia. The country bans coupled with a ban from the iOS App store [2] caused direct downward pressure on viwership. This has led to a rapid drop in viewership in the months after [3…

Their adult content ban in December 2018 probably also accelerated that decline: https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18266013/tumblr-porn-ban-...
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