Thinking of joining the Tumblr exodus?
If you’re looking for reasons to leave, I’d like to add these ten to your thinking.
You might not be personally interested in NSFW content in your fandom - but on December 17th Tumblr’s algorithm is going to take down a lot of SFW content in error. Many of those creators have moved on and aren’t around to requests that their posts be re-assessed. Older fandoms are about to lose a huge amount of material.
Do you want to stay on a website using slash-and-burn tactics against long-established user communities? Tumblr believe they can tell most of their userbase they aren’t welcome here, then expect a family-friendly utopia to rise from the ashes. They’re going to get a nasty shock.
The site is about to hemorrhage active users. You might not post NSFW content, you might not like NSFW content - but many of your followers do. They’ll follow where it goes.
There are clear signs that Tumblr has incredibly hazy standards of what will constitute adult content. You only need to read their big announcement to know this. (’Female representing nipples’? Nudity in art is fine, but not in fan art?)
You can bet your bottom dollar that no matter how ‘adult content’ will be judged, those standards will be applied far more harshly to LGBT content. Romantic kisses happen between heterosexual pairings; gay pairings commit sex acts.
And even if the loss of adult and LGBT content is fine by you, that’s load-bearing content. Without all that monthly activity, Tumblr is going to see a shocking fall in its traffic. How long before Verizon decide it’s not worth keeping Tumblr operational at all?
If you want to spend your time and effort in building a fandom, it makes more sense to direct it into helping establish a new community with long term prospects. Why waste your time trying to keep a dying giant alive?
Learning a new site might seem like an annoyance, but so are the bugs which have plagued Tumblr for months. Those glitches are going to get worse as the site collapses.
Nazis are still perfectly welcome here. When all the fandom blogs are gone, blogs spouting hate speech are going to be much more obvious. Tumblr was known as a haven for adult content; it’s about to become known as a haven for racist content.
If Tumblr bans adult content and then collapses shortly afterwards from a mass exodus of users, other social media sites will think twice before doing this in future.
TLDR: as Tumblr experiences a nose-dive in activity, other sites will see a sudden blooming - and you can be a part of that. You can contribute to something good and growing. Some of those communities, especially in smaller fandoms, could really use your help in laying down solid foundations.
They’ll appreciate your support far more than Verizon ever will.
