Tumblr Advisor Board
I think it could be cool to put together a board of the top Tumblristas in the world, that could see previews of what's coming up and advise on strategic direction. Who should be on it?
I am going to get this out of my system upfront so that I can explain everything that's wrong with this idea in a clearheaded way: This is a bad idea, it feels incredibly gross, and it reinforces my impression that you do not understand this website at all. It is indescribably frustrating and infuriating. It makes me want to vomit, and that's even before I get to "Tumblrista".
Now then.
A key takeaway from the massive amount of almost universally negative feedback to the reblog change should have been: Tumblr users do not, as a rule, care about clout. We do not want quantified "credit" for how good our addition to a post is, and we don't want influencers who are anointed as more important than everyone else because they are popular. That's not what we do here; it's never been what we do here. If we wanted that, we could get it from ANY other social media. The fact that we're here instead makes it pretty clear that clout is not important to us, and in fact is actively repulsive to us. Anointing particular Tumblr users as "top Tumblristas" and putting them on an "advisory board" that gets special access to new features and the opportunity to give feedback on them would constitute the exact type of hierarchy we despise.
Furthermore: When a corporate entity proposes an "advisory board of power users", what they're actually doing is trying to pre-empt wider user pushback against executive decisions, by creating the illusion of user buy-in while using social pressure to enforce decisions that have already been made. The actual reasoning behind selecting "top" users is because they are popular, which suggests they have influence over other users. The idea is, rather than convincing the community as a whole, you convince a smaller subset of influential people, and then they convince everyone else. Again, this depends on a kind of hierarchy and clout-based "influencer" system that we don't have and don't want.
As for the "top users" board themselves: By choosing someone and telling them "you're a Top User and you get to be on the special committee and have special privileges," you are giving them something (supposedly) desirable: social status, (the appearance of) influence and power, etc. And you can take it away. That means now you have power over them. If they don't want to lose their special status, they will avoid displeasing you. Which means they are less likely to give you significant pushback, and they are more willing to pressure others to go along with what you want to do. That makes them incredibly useful to corporate, but completely undermines their supposed role as a voice for the community. We see this already with influencers on every other platform, who become de facto spokespeople for corporations and brands and stop meaningfully criticizing them out of fear of losing the access that is critical to their status.
I'm not saying all this because I think it's news to the CEO of a tech company. I think you know all of that perfectly well already. I'm saying it because I think you assume we don't know it, and because some people might not. But I have played this game before and I know how it goes. It never benefits the community. It is always a way to control the community.
You do not need an advisory board to get feedback about site changes. The community is demonstrably perfectly able and willing to speak for themselves individually. If you really want to know what everyone thinks, you have to ask everyone, not a handpicked group of influencers who are under pressure to play along.
and this is exactly why they're trying to do it. clout can be sold. once you have a list of popular users then you can go to an advertiser and say these are the people you need to get talking about your product.
it's also why they wanted to change reblogs. because a post with 10 millions note by a dead blog from 10 years ago isn't attractive to advertisers. but let's say you want to push the narrative that climate change is a hoax then it's helpful to see that this specific tumblr user's reblogs drives engagement and they are a good target to spread your oil company propaganda.
and everybody knows this because it happens all the time. this will attract the worst people as it does on every other social media site. the clout chasers who will say or do anything to get engagement because it is monetarily beneficial to get clicks. and before long it won't be possible to opt out of being marketed to and propagandized because they'll make changes like every other social media to either push 'similar posts' by algorithm or deprioritise chronological ordering of posts or limiting the amount of people you can block.
they failed to find the influencers with the reblog change (and believe me there are people on here with huge audiences that can be marketed to advertisers) so now they're trying to get the grifters to self identify. and it's working based on the notes because people are shamelessly putting themselves forward or nominating their parasocial fave to be chief sellout.
tumblr's best feature for users and most hated defect by its makers is the fact that tons of notes on a post usually means that 10 thousand users are separately talking to one or two mutuals in the tags about something and not that one person is speaking and 10 thousand are being lectured like on the video sites.
in some ways it's actually more social here in that people generally know the 4 or 5 mutuals they regularly interact with. but they don't want you to be social, you're supposed to be mindless sheep that hang on the words of the chosen charlatans who tell you what to think and what to buy like every other 'social' media website.
they 100% know what we want and don't need any special advisors but what we want is not what they want to sell so they'll never listen
Tumblr currently falls out of range of the required age verification laws (they need to be making a certain amount of money in order to be mandated to comply). Getting more popular people on here would increase their worth and then they'd HAVE to require ID. I wouldn't be surprised if the corpo world sees Tumblr as a threat to whatever unified internet they're making. It still has a decent amount of people on it but it's flying under the radar "and that's not fair".