With recent events on Tumblr, people are looking for new places to go, and my top pick is Pillowfort. Out of all the other social sites popping up in the last few years, this is the one I’m most supportive of. So let me tell you why you should join, complete with pros and cons.
Pillowfort has an explicitly Anti-AI stance.
While preventing bots from scraping user content for AI purposes is difficult and some may argue impossible, Pillowfort still does what it can to prevent it from happening.
On top of those efforts, AI content is explicitly prohibited on their site. You will not find AI “art” or “writing” there.
They will not sell your data.
From their privacy policy, Pillowfort states that “Pillowfort does not now, nor will it in the future, sell our user information to third-parties.”
They are user funded.
This means that unlike many social sites, you are NOT the product!
The benefit of this is that they do not have to bow to shareholders! Site users and their experience is the top priority.
The negative to this is that it means some users do need to donate or subscribe to Pillowfort Premium to help them reach the numbers they need to continue adding features to the site.
They aim to be financially independent so they will never have to put profit over the soul of their project.
Staff is very transparent at every step of the way.
Speaking of being user funded, they have a budget breakdown on their donations page so you know exactly where your donations are going.
They interact with users often through things like reblogging helpful posts. They also value user feedback and seem to take it very seriously.
They have a list of known bugs as well as previous bugs that have been fixed. This post also includes a list of goals for future features. So you can easily see what they’ve done and what they’re currently working on for the site.
They allow NSFW.
It really feels like Tumblr pre-2018. NSFW content is very much welcomed there, but they also have the option to toggle NSFW content off so you can avoid it completely if you want.
Tags actually work!
Unlike Tumblr’s frustrating tagging system that makes it difficult to find what you’re actually looking for, Pillowfort’s system is straightforward.
When you search a tag, the only posts that come up are ones with that tag. It’s not looking at text in the body of the post to include in the search.
Tags are easy to blacklist! Unlike Tumblr, when you don’t want to see a certain tag or content, black listing fully hides the content from you.
When you blacklist it you won’t see it at all. No more “show this post” popping up on your feed.
The community is welcoming.
The community is small, but it is friendly. People are excited to see new users join and are eager to answer questions and help out.
They often make guides for new users to answer FAQs and give helpful tips.
There’s also communities dedicated to helping people navigate the site and its culture.
Community as a whole is integral to Pillowfort. Commenting culture is very much encouraged as talking in tags isn’t useful on the site. Connecting with people in communities (similar to subreddits) is a fun part of the site and how you build connections and an active feed.
It’s “quiet” in the good way
It’s low to no drama over there. Instead of arguments and callout posts, people simply block and move on. This kind of “live and let live” attitude amongst users makes for a low stress environment.
This does mean that if you’re someone who tends to have long DNIs and participates in discourse like anti/proship arguments, you’ll likely be blocked very frequently. Do with that information what you will.
Now for some drawbacks…
Every site will have its pros and cons. Fortunately for Pillowfort, the major cons are ones that I believe will be resolved in time. It will just take more users joining and supporting the project!
It’s small.
There are over 150,000 users on the site, as opposed to tumblrs millions, and only a portion of them are active.
You’re not going to have super active tags with endless scrolling. There are some tags that may seem common on Tumblr but don’t have a single post on Pillowfort.
HOWEVER-
This means that by joining and bringing your hobbies, passions, and fandoms along with you, you’re helping to build a community from the ground up!
There is not currently an app
Emphasis on CURRENTLY. One is in the works and it’s pretty high on their priority list.
Mobile has some bugs and isn’t as smooth as desktop, but it still works! And with a little patience it’s not really a problem.
In Conclusion
It’s a small site without a ton of action right now, but community is a major focus of the site! As more active users join and begin participating in the site culture, I believe it will flourish. But for that to happen, people have to join!
If you’re someone who is willing to sacrifice the convenience that comes with popular social media sites in favor of a passionate project that values its users, then this is the place for you.
If you’d like to join, there is a waitlist, though it is very short and sometimes nearly instantaneous. But there’s also people often giving out invite codes! There’s some in the Pillowfort tag on Tumblr and I also have a couple dozen I can give out to anyone who wants one.
Overall, there’s a lot of room for growth on Pillowfort, but I for one am happy to buckle up and come along for the ride and I hope to see more of ya’ll join too,
What is this about the tumblr staff wanting to sell art data to midjourney?
An ex-colleague of mine mentioned yesterday that there may be contacts between Automattic and midjourney in that direction, but nothing is public yet and I don't have any more info. They probably won't have anything specific to share either, since they left the company weeks ago too. That being said:
I have no reason to doubt my ex-coworker word, they are a trustworthy person.
Tumblr's CEO has been absurdly enthusiastic (comically, even) about AI, and is a big fan of LLMs and 'AI' companies.
A deal with midjourney could solve tumblr financial issues (not the same company, but openAi is paying up to 5 million/year to news companies to use their content as training data... tumblr generates several orders of magnitude more content than any newspaper or any media company and it only would need a 20 to 30 million per year deal to be profitable)
So I don't have any extra info yet, but I'm keeping my ears open.
And I just got confirmation from a second ex-colleague that a deal with midjourney has been brewing since months ago. Not any extra details, just that's a real thing.
Shit, I don't see any way for this to happen that doesn't make it an apocalyptic event the size of the porn ban. Fuck.
Shit. This may be pure chance and coincidence, and it's not he is in a position to be able to talk about anything, but seeing prominent staff members announcing they are moving their original photography out of tumblr just two weeks ago seems a pretty significant cue of shit to be about to hit the fan.
I’m sorry friends, but “just google it” is no longer viable advice. What are we even telling people to do anymore, go try to google useful info and the first three pages are just ads for products that might be the exact opposite of what the person is trying to find but The Algorithm thinks the words are related enough? And if it’s not ads it’s just sponsored websites filled with listicles, just pages and pages of “TOP FIFTEEN [thing you googled] IMAGINED AS DISNEY PRINCESSES” like… what are we even doing anymore, google? I can no longer use you as shorthand for people doing real and actual helpful research on their own.
– https://searchmysite.net/
Search engine for the indie web, personal websites, digital gardens. You can also find them in websites like Neocities, Indieweb, Blogarama, and write.as. There is also a big list of personal websites.
– https://search.marginalia.nu/
Search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and promotes websites that aren’t usually at the top of the list.
– https://www.worldcat.org/
Search engine for items in libraries (books, but also maps, articles, sound recordings, theses, etc.)
– https://scholar.google.com/
Search engine for scientific papers, reviews, etc. It’s still google, but a lot better than the normal search engine counterpart.
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines
A list of search engines sorted by subject, area, and more. If you’re searching on a specific area, it might be worth checking if there is one focused on that area.
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_databases_and_search_engines
A list of academic databases and search engines.
– https://tineye.com/
Reverse image search alternative to Google’s.
Also, P.S.: Please stop using Google, and start using more privacy focused search engines, like DuckDuckGo or SearchX (opensource; personally haven’t used it yet, but it looks promising for privacy-focused users)
Is tumblr like having blurred images for someone else as well??. Since yesterday images have been rather burred/not loading, both my stuff as well other people’s posts??.
Is tumblr like starting dying now?
hey, have you heard that pillowfort has ✨ drafts ✨ now? (as in, the ability to save your posts as drafts.) they're still working on the queue feature, but drafts are a big step forward!
in case you missed it so far, pillowfort is like a cross between tumblr and dreamwidth/livejournal, with a simplified dashboard reminiscent of old school tumblr and some classic livejournal features such as communities, threaded comments, and the ability to make individual posts followers-only or mutuals-only.
what are communities? basically, central hubs for posts about any subject you want that, unlike hashtags, can be moderated. they may have rules, such as "[subject matter] must be tagged" for example. you can post directly to a community or reblog existing posts to it!
since the site is currently experiencing some financial trouble, i thought i'd help out by spreading the word once again.
why you should give pillowfort a chance:
no ads
no venture capitalist funding
no spying on the users
completely free to use except for optional premium features
nsfw is allowed except for sexual depictions of minors. if you're unsure what exactly that means, their tos may help
communities and the privacy controls mentioned above are excellent features
great community, low drama compared to other websites (so far)
the site's features themselves encourage genuine connection and good-faith conversation over endless "discourse"
every blog can automatically be filtered by original posts only or reblogs only
reasons not to join:
if you enjoy algorithmic social media. there is no algorithm at all
if you want to post or look at machine-generated art. they're still finalising the wording and personally i hope some exception will be made for models trained on ethically sourced images, but basically an anti-AI rule is in the works
if you cannot live without reblog additions (reblogging with comment). all discussions on a pillowfort post take place in the comments section, and only your own followers see your tags. this has its pros and cons for sure! a similar feature to scratch that itch may be implemented in the future, but it will never be exactly like on tumblr.
if you need everything to be an app. the website works fine in a mobile browser and a progressive web app will hopefully be released soon (basically it's like an app in your browser and on mobile these can be added to the homescreen like real apps i think? they have push notifications!), but there's not going to be a native app available through official app stores due to the restrictions of those stores.
other factors to consider:
yes, the userbase is still small. depending on your interests, activity may be very slow. but we can change that! and on the plus side, reblogging your post to a community is a good way to easily get more eyes on it; way more effective than simply adding tags imo
the site culture is a bit different than on tumblr. many people read everything that's been posted since the last time they were online and don't follow more users/communities than they can keep up with. it's still somewhat lacking in shitposts and heavy on "essays" but don't be afraid to post whatever 😅
there are no blog themes like we have them on tumblr as yet, but you can customise your blog's colours and use html/insert links and images in your blog description
likes literally do nothing except to let OP know you enjoyed their post. you can't look at a list of all your likes. beware!
the staff is small and development is slow. some highly anticipated planned features other than the aforementioned queue include:
- multi-account management
- dashboard filters/reading lists
- post bookmarking (since likes don't work that way)
but we don't know how soon any of those will be implemented.
there is a user-developed browser extension (well, a userscript) called tassel available that adds additional features much like tumblr's beloved xkit :)
✨ okay, so how do i sign up? ✨
if you're interested but confused by the sign-up process or still under the impression that you need to pay to sign up (false), i'll put some clarifications and invite codes under the read more below. plus a note on donating, premium features, the paypal issue etc.
in a nutshell:
it's free
signing up without an invite code is possible, but you may have to wait a short while - supposedly less than an hour atm. just submit your email to the waitlist
if you don't feel like waiting, you can either use an invite code from an existing user or pay $5 to sign up instantly
every user gets plenty of invite codes and we're all willing to hand them out at the drop of a hat. they're really not hard to come by
some invites to get you started (just click the link):
i'll try to periodically check if any have been used and cross those out.
...paypal issue?
ok so paypal doesn't like working with sites that allow nsfw. as a result, you need a credit card in order to donate to pillowfort, buy one of those insta-registration keys, or subscribe to premium features*. i personally happen to have a credit card and would be willing to help out anyone who trusts me enough to send the money to me via paypal, but i realise chances are only my friends will do this.
some users are currently organising various activities for the purpose of letting people who only have paypal contribute to the site's survival. it's not super relevant for new users and won't get you access to premium features, but i thought i'd mention it anyway in case someone loves the concept of the site so much they want to support it immediately. a fundraising community has been created to collect posts of that nature!
*premium features are strictly limited to two categories of things:
fun little extras that no one truly needs
higher image upload limits, because obviously big images take up bandwidth and are therefore a reason for increased costs
you will never need to pay for vital accessibility features or anything of the sort. :)
I use mainly pillowfort for my posting in recent few years. Even though it’s a small team behind it, and it’s still wip feels, I prefer it over here.
Things I personally like with pillowfort:
-Actual privacy control over your own posts, (and yes you can edit this later on too).
-Being able to customize your fort/blog with bg color and such.
-Nsfw art is allow, and there is a nsfw filter.
-Is rather good lgbt wise, and personally never seen any hate speech, big drama or harassment in there.
-They don’t sell your data and such.
-Able to make and join community of whatever interests.
-Is more closer to older internet vibes, no algorithms, less stressful, less outrage, no constant bots pestering you. Just feel more chill like this.
Things I think should be improved in there:
-Better funding solution, so they can still stay afloat (they do want to plan to add paid post promotion thing eventually, as well gift subscriptions option).
-Searching, search could be even better.
-Any way to bookmark posts (bookmark is on their list of things they want to add though).
-I sometime would like having option to toggle to a grid version at times, specially when searching, but I don’t think that is anywhere near the point will happen.
He will not be too late for spring, everything was ready and prepared, the only things missing were the first warm light rays from the sun, you are able to smell it, the fresh air, today is the day where it starts, gardening season ...
I think this is my most complex digital artwork so far, painting feathers and flowers took some time there but I think I was still faster with this than with the last piece I made from this series. The hat there was made using a Blender model that I also modelled by myself and painted over. The gardener is a Burrowing Owl of course. I need to make more of these to finally have 12 to turn them into a calendar.
Okay tumblr, first you changed your design to be more crammed feel (spesically searches feel like a can of sardines). And now you are throwing clowns covering intop of other things like a popup as if it’s april 1st joke.
Like please tumblr, I’m tired, I still having to report scam bots regularly, and your attention is put toward bullshit like this?.
I just made a new sideblog and found out this setting (found under "Edit Appearance") is disabled by default.
Edit: Tumblr settings are unpredictable and devious. This may not be disabled by default for you. People have also said that their themes have been removed. Please look to the notes if experiencing complications.
This means that ALL new blogs will NOT have a [username].tumblr.com page. Not only that, but they will not have any themes besides the mobile-default.
As someone who really likes custom themes and Tumblr still having a fully customizable profile page, please turn this on!
You can make a website for your tumblr blog that is entirely your own!
Finding posts on your URL.tumblr.com page is much easier due to the ability to use your Archive and url.tumblr.com/tagged/[tag] pages!
Visiting your mutual's tumblr pages will become much more fun if they do the same! I used to always associate blogs with the themes they had, but that's sadly not possible anymore :(
If Tumblr themes die out, it will truly be an end of an era for the internet, and the future will hold only mobile-orientated, endless-scroll design devoid of personality.
Even if you don't like themes, this is a move that almost destroys Tumblr's origin as a blogging website and showcases the takeover of social-media-sameness.
Having your own URL and custom theme is fun! Try it today!!!
Edit: I focused on promoting custom themes but I do encourage people to simply turn on this setting for the URL. You can pick a free tumblr theme or even leave on the tumblr mobile-orientated default!
Also sorry I didn't think of this until now, but there are versions of this post in the reblogs without the colored text, with extra information, with how to find this setting, and troubleshooting why it might not be working!
dailybridgerton
ellievsbear
theartofmadeline
pixelskylines
kianamaiart
