instagram got hit with this, too (and pretty badly, might i add).
last i was on there, i had to dig around to find any art and convince the algorithm of it and i still struggled with finding it.
imo, that’s a big glaring sign that capitalism is anti-art and anti-human (ai being used to “streamline” one’s business to sell you something for an exorbitant amount of money, though businesses that incorporate ai ironically hemorrhage money: it’s still there bc it’s like, in vogue and junk).
and imo, for that alone, we should stop using this site. we should stop using meta sites, too (for that, and their data centers have been caught polluting potable water in georgia and releasing “cleaned” reused potable water into the ecosystem in wyoming at too high of temperatures, making it prime real estate for this nasty GI parasite that’s been going around).
but tumblr is a big corporation that doesn’t care about us — and also, imo, we didn’t “bully” them into changing that march 16 update back, because i don’t know if anyone remembers the text post update some time ago, but they sprung that on us and people were mildly salty about it and they rolled it back for a time. some time after that, they made it optional before they forced it on us permanently.
tumblr has a track record of listening to complaints and then finding ways to surreptitiously bring the updates back in the hopes you won’t notice because they see their userbase as nothing more than dopamine-soaked lemmings who are willing to keep interacting with each other, oblivious to the fact tumblr is a corporation that cares more about money than anything. so, they take advantage of the userbase to try and keep them from leaving and the userbase falls for it literally every time (see: the stupid “snek” game thing for april fools day following the march 16 update, how wildly popular that turned out to be; or the “boop” bullshit thing back in 2024 which came after the introduction of tumblr live and tumblr mart).
another thing that tells me that tumblr is getting increasingly pro-ai? the “music of tumblr” thing. seriously, go see for yourself and tell me some of those “artists” aren’t ai, especially when i think about how sudden that feels. i’m old enough to remember the “tumblrcore” music on here (lana, tame impala, warpaint, arguably the arctic monkeys even though they got their start with myspace, i think bring me the horizon was a part of that bunch, too, same with asking alexandria, pierce the veil, of monsters and men) but that all felt completely organic, though. i’ve never heard of anyone on this “music on tumblr” section, and i’m not just saying that because i’m basically a grandma at this point in internet time. look how sudden that’s come about, kind of how like the ai “artists” on spotify and other places have manifested: they started releasing music some time in the last year and in droves.
edit: apparently there are a great number of artists whom i have not only heard of but am a fan of (iggy pop, 21 pilots). that still doesn’t take away the fact that the whole thing feels sprung upon us in one fell swoop.
amandla
pixelskylines
tangentwithtanner
kianamaiart
izzy806
snowghoul
origamiaround
germansingergirl
andulkaphoto
