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@lucasthegreatyt
My Other Social Media Stuff:
YouTube
Tumblr (You are here)
DeviantArt
Pixiv
Bluesky
Mastodon.social
Mastodon.art
Firefish (A.K.A. Lethal Lava Land)
Roblox (no longer active)
Steam
Newgrounds
Spore
Plants Vs. Zombies Heroes: LucasTGYT
Discord Username: LucasTheGreat
ššØš
Lets see what you think up
do you think the cherry is part of them or
(requires mods; find my list of mods here)
Til' the sun explodes!
has anyone noticed that after the porn ban of 2018 tumblr was essentially killed from the mainstream and everyone flocked to other social media sites like twitter and meta. then those sites got enshittified to where twitter became Nazi Central and meta sites had an entire meme around getting āzuccedā aka mark zuckerberg himself would ban you for saying a no-no word like fuck. and then the mainstream shifted to tiktok where infamous toddlerspeak sentences like āhe got unalived by a pew pewā were born because if you once again say a no-no word like kill or gun or any other word that isnāt corporate i mean kid friendly then the algorithm will bury your post into the ground. and somehow weāve come full circle and tumblr is now the most bearable social media site because although we canāt have female presenting nipples we can at least talk to each other like adults. has anyone noticed that at all or is it just me and the flaming skull
just another monday
so how abt that v6 design
What's Pillowfort, is it better than Tumblr?
How many details do you want, and how much time do you have?
Haha but seriously. Iāll try to break this down point by point so it is skimmable, but will still have all the details that have been relevant to me as an artist / a regular user.
Pillowfort is a post-and-reblog blogging website thatās sort of similar to Tumblr, but it is run entirely on user contributions, and actually believes in resisting enshittification. You know how Archive Of Our Own is user-funded, has no ads, has no algorithm, has no arbitrary content limits, and virtually no character limits, right? Letās talk about a website similar to that, but for images / blogging / reblogging / commenting.
For some guides about what Pillowfort is, how it works, and how to get the most out of it, I have a collection of posts over here: pillowfort.social/Ceylon-Tae/tagged/how%20to%20pillowfort
Is Pillowfort better than Tumblr? Letās talk about:
Money / ads
Censorship
Algorithms
Apps/web browsers
Bigotry
Community
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MONEY/ADS
Pillowfort is a post-and-reblog social media website that's been user-funded for years now. There are no ads, and your attention is not the product here. If you like their service, then you can decide to throw them a couple dollars, if you want. You can buy a small subscription to optional features like adding more user icon slots, the ability upload images that are larger than 2MB, and stuff like that. You are not paying for a shareholderās third yacht, you are paying to keep the lights on and the servers up. Pillowfort publishes their workload and funding level regularly.
Tumblr is a post-and-reblog social media website thatās run for-profit, yet is famously unprofitable. This is despite selling ads to put on the sidebar, sponsored features to put at the top of your feed, putting ads at regular intervals between the posts on your dashboards as you scroll, asking users to buy monthly 'premium memberships', selling custom URLs, banning adult material in the hopes of appeasing advertisers / payment processors / app stores... and now they are putting ads in between your posts on your blog pages unless you pay them a monthly ransom subscription fee. (I left deviantART over this "putting ads in with your posts on your page" business.) I hope everyone is running an adblocker on their web browser, but I know not everyone does, and I know some people are (heaven help them) using the Tumblr app. Itās a whole lot of garbage in there. Whether you give them your money directly, or whether you just see their ads, youāre paying for photomattās overinflated ego, which will never be satisfied.
Yeah I think Pillowfort is better than Tumblr when it comes to money / ads.
CENSORSHIP
Pillowfort uses payment processors that explicitly allow any legal material to be uploaded to the website, including material intended for adults only. Pillowfort requires that 18+ posts be marked as such, it does not allow users under 18 to view posts marked 18+, and it does not allow minors to be depicted sexually in any medium. Otherwise, youāre free to post as you please. Pillowfort is also not in app stores, so it is not subject to Google and Apple app store rules about explicit material. Instead, Pillowfort has a Progressive Web App for those who want a āmobile appā experience (see the section below on apps / web browsers).
Tumblr is most famous for two things: banning porn at the height of its popularity, and making Yahoo lose almost a billion dollars over it. Tumblrās third most infamous act is probably ābanning female-presenting nipplesā during that porn ban. Theyāve since walked that part back, allowing nonsexual nudity in theory, but definitely not in practice. If youāre trans, theyāll ban you for fully-clothed selfies. (I stopped posting my art here during a recent storm of this.) Weāll get to that, in the section on bigotry. Iād say this is the fourth thing Tumblr is most famous for. Pretty terrible. The censorship on Tumblr is arbitrary and capricious, and done at the supposed behest of payment processors, advertisers, and app stores.
Iām gonna make an extra stab at Bluesky, too. In case you thought Bluesky was going to be a bastion of adult content, free from arbitrary censorship. It is anything but. Bluesky has recently banned anything sexual that, to their mods, looks ānonconsensualā. Users asked them to please clarify that nonconsesual/revenge porn should be banned, but not consensual porn that simply plays with dubcon/noncon topics. The people in charge laughed in their faces and basically told them no, this includes dubcon/noncon kink scenes between consenting adults, drawings where the characters look less than happy, and furry/werewolf porn if the mods are having a particularly bad day (theyāll just tell you theyāre banning it for āpromoting beastialityā). The users are not happy. Patreon is even worse right now. You canāt even say āsuckingā on your 18+ Patreon, for fuckssake.
Yeah I think Pillowfort is better than both Tumblr (and Bluesky! and Patreon!) when it comes to censorship. And if you want a subscription service for 18+ content? Get a Subscribestar. I am so serious.
ALGORITHM
Pillowfort doesn't have any algorithms. Pillowfort shows you the posts that your friends posted, in the order they were posted. If you want to see posts, you go to your dashboard feed, you can look at tags, you can look at communities (more on that later), and so on. You decide what you want to see.
Tumblr has been rolling out more and more algorithm features. However, it seems like nobody is sure how they work, and artists have suffered for it at every turn. You could put a tag on your post, but it's a crapshoot if going to that tag will actually show your post. Maybe you haven't posted enough recently. Maybe you've just posted too much. Maybe the algorithm just doesn't like you. But good luck getting your posts to show up in the tags. This is IF people even still look at the tags - Tumblr doesn't link to the sitewide tag page anymore. If you want to see recent posts made with a certain tag (this used to be the fandom standard here), you have to type that into the address bar yourself. Tumblr only wants to offer you an algorithmic 'search' feature. Tumblrās search feature, famously, sucks. If you search āNarutoā, you will see posts that are tagged with things like āI Love Narutoā and āI Hate Narutoā, regardless of which tag you want to see. As if all that wasnāt enough, Tumblr will also seemingly randomly hide your posts from the dashboards of people following you, even if theyāre looking at their chronological feed where your post really should have been shown. No clue why it does this. This is if your followers are even on their āFollowingā page instead of the āFor Youā page that Tumblr will randomly assign to your dashboard instead. This is if your followers have even turned off āBest stuff firstā, a disastrous setting that decimated the visibility of artistsā new posts when it was implemented on an opt-out basis that most users werenāt even aware of. Tumblrās automated image moderator (another shitty algorithm) may also randomly decide that your photos of sand dunes are totally porn, and will hide them from everyone (unless you win an appeal, which can take hours to days). So good luck getting people to see your posts if you included a picture, or a link, or a url, or a video, or...
Yeah I think Pillowfort wins by not having any algorithm bullshit.
APPS / WEB BROWSER
Pillowfort has a Progressive Web App, instead of being available for download in app stores. Critically, since it is not in app stores, it is not subject to Apple or Google app store rules about explicit material (see above on censorship). Should you prefer an "app" experience on mobile, use Pillowfortās PWA. That said, their website experience is good on both mobile and desktop web browsers, so thatās how I always use it. You want add-ons? We got add-ons! Install Tassel and you can get those features from Xkit that you really missed, like collapsing/expanding posts, better blacklists, etc. There are a few bugs, to be fair. My least favorite is if you make a comment on one post, scroll down, and reblog a lower post, the dashboard will scroll you back up to the post you commented on. This is honestly my biggest gripe about the place, which is peanuts.
Tumblrās app is a joke, especially among its users. Most of the reason I stopped using Tumblr's app completely was due to its completely outrageous flashing/autoplay/loud/adult-themed dashboard ads, which are especially outrageous considering its ban on most adult materials. Then thereās the way Tumblrās mobile app would randomly scroll you to the top of your endless-scroll dashboard if you turned off your phone screen, or looked at another app. The UI sucked. And the thousand other shitty changes they made along the way. People on here brag about how long itās been since they updated their Tumblr app because the new changes suck so much. By comparison, Tumblr on mobile web browsers + adblock was almost tolerable. Except recently, doing things with a post (like seeing a different reblog of it) will scroll you back to the top of your dashboard page ON MOBILE WEB BROWSERS TOO.
Yeah I think Pillowfortās mobile experience is better than Tumblrās.
BIGOTRY
As far as I know, the people who run and moderate Pillowfort know when the shut the fuck up. As far as I know, there hasnāt been any unfair moderation that would discourage LGBTQ+ users, furries, kinksters, etc from posting TOS-abiding content on the website.
Tumblrās CEO Matt Mullenweg aka. photomatt is literally incapable of shutting the fuck up, and will pursue trans users to other fucking websites to harass them if they said they didnāt like how he was running his website. Tumblr was sued for discriminating against LGBTQ+ users, they opted to settle, the terms of that settlement included āstop your moderators from being so fucking transphobicā and they did not listen at all. It bans trans women for posting fully clothed selfies. It bans people for talking about transgender topics. Youāre not allowed to tell terfs to shut the fuck up. I canāt even list all the shit they ban you for, all the trans users theyāve banned, all the critics theyāve banned, for absolutely no fucking reason. Go read my tag for this.
Bluesky, as we already discussed, recently changed their TOS. Another one of the changes in there was to explicitly allow malicious users to stay on the website, regardless of whether they orchestrate harassment campaigns agaisnt bsky users, as long as they do it off the website. I explain that here. Bluesky also recently had a bunch of feds and White House shitheads join ahead of the October No Kings protests. Theyāre the most-blocked users on the website, but evading a block on Bluesky is laughably easy ā you just have to log out, and you can see all a userās posts again. Bluesky offers no options for users to make a post private, or even logged-in-users-only. Fucking shitshow.
COMMUNITY
If you know how ArchiveOfOurOwn works, you will have an idea of how Pillowfort works. Pillowfort wants you join this community! Like really! Join communities! Follow people! Look in the tags! Make shitposts and reblog them to the shitposting community! Make comments on posts! Talk to people! The comment sections on Pillowfort posts are fully nested, so they are organized and easy to follow. I find this to be less stifling than Tumblr or Bsky comment limits, and less intimidating and rapid-fire than Discord. This is how I grew up talking to people online, and this is how I prefer to talk to people online. You have an extensive amount of control over your Pillowfort posts, where they are visible, who can view them, who can reblog them, and who can comment on them. You can post things directly to a community, for example, if you don't want that post on your blog. You can make your own community for whatever you want, including "making a sideblog for just one topic" (I have done this lol). People are also discouraged from being rude in the comments, where your wiseass comments are not visible to anyone who didnāt intentionally open the comments section looking for a discussion, and being a little shit to people will simply get you blocked. Pillowfort doesnāt want you posting AI-generated slop. Pillowfort doesnāt want harassment mobs or callout posts. The one thing Pillowfort SHOULD have that it DOESNāT have right now is a huge userbase, and I literally cannot fathom why not - it wins in every other category. I can understand why we didnāt go back to Dreamwidth, because Dreamwidth didnāt have image hosting. Pillowfort HAS image hosting, which used to be a big deal 15 years ago but is standard for social media now. I want more people to join Pillowfort. With Bluesky and Tumblr both shitting the bed repeatedly, more people are joining. I want more people to join Pillowfort!!! If you want an active dashboard, go follow people and follow communities. Post stuff. Reblog stuff.
Tumblr has communities that, as far as I know, no one uses. Tumblr doesnāt want you looking in a tag. Tumblr wants you to look at shitty algorithmic searches (and ads). Tumblr doesnāt even want you seeing the posts that your friends posted in the order they posted them. They automatically opted you into things like āsee best stuff firstā, or will randomly open a āFor Youā page instead of your āFollowingā page on your dashboard. Tumblrās userbase isnāt what it used to be, but thereās still a lot of posts and your posts WILL still get buried by the algorithm. Tumblrās reading comprehension level is famously piss-poor. But hey, at least we can keep circulating the same shitposts back from when we used to be free.
If you want an endless dashboard that rapidly refreshes with more new posts than you could ever hope to see, Pillowfort doesnāt have that yet (unless you REALLY decide to follow a LOT of people and communities ā which you can do, if you want). Pillowfort has a community of people who actually talk to each other. Itās where I post my art and hobbies these days. Instead of getting 5 likes on Tumblr, I get 5 likes and some comments on Pillowfort, and thatās if I forget to reblog it to a community on the topic. Itās up to you. But I really recommend you give Pillowfort an honest try and actually talk to people there.
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In summary
If you know how to use ArchiveOfOurOwn, Pillowfort is sort of like that, but for blogging. Thereās no ads and thereās no algorithm. Itās user-funded. You are supposed to go find things that you enjoy. People to follow. Communities to join. There's way more than I mentioned here, and this is already really fucking long. Pillowfort is what you make of it, and you can make it really nice.
Iām not going to tell you that you should abandon Tumblr completely and only use Pillowfort for the rest of your life. First of all, Iām not your parents. Secondly, trying to quit a habit (ex. a social media) cold-turkey can be a dicey plan in general. Youāve got to decide whatās important to YOU, and what makes YOU feel happy and safe in your free time. Obviously I havenāt completely abandoned tumblr ā I still scroll it at work ā but Iāve stopped posting my art here, Iāve stopped spending my free time here, and Iāve certainly never given tumblr my money. And honestly, even just scrolling tumblr at work, knowing that tumblr is going to show ads to people scrolling my blogās dedicated page is kind of rotting me from the inside. This in addition to the way I feel rotten from remembering the censorship, the shitty algorithm, the shitty mods and their shitty transphobia, and all the other things Iāve mentioned here or didnāt have the time or space to mention here. It feels bad, man. Youāve gotta be able to back away from things that suck. Iām not good at that but Iām trying to get better at it. When I go home and I want to fart around online, I go to Pillowfort. I journal on Pillowfort. I post my art to Pillowfort. If you like Tumblr and you like AO3, think you should try it, too. Follow people and communities, make posts, reblog those posts to communities, and talk to people.
Hereās a multi-use invite link. I'll try to add more in the comments as time goes on. If you donāt want to use an invite link, the queue to register is maybe an hour or so long. Come dive into a website thatās not actively trying to be shitty-for-profit.
pillowfort.social/users/sign_up?invite=VNztIsS_agdozhsJ6CrC9Q
Hey, do you hate the idea of this new update because it encourages the idea of bullying and can also people to hijack your posts and steal away all of the notes you wouldāve gotten (even though it was YOUR post)
Well, I want you to go this website and select āfeedbackā and tell them that you donāt want this update
Tumblr is a place to express yourself, discover yourself, and bond over the stuff you love. It's where your interests connect you with your
If you want an idea of what to write, hereās what wrote
āThe idea of separating reblogs from the original post is a horrible idea for multiple reasons
If someone reblogs my post, they can very easily hijack my post and steal away all of the notes I could have earned from that post. If I were to make some artwork, I would never know it made about 7,000 notes, because most of those notes are because another person who reblogged my post. Itās highly discouraging and would make a lot of us not want to anymore. Notes should go to the original users and not to the person who hijacked their post and got more notes because they had more followers
It also allows bullying and harassment to be a lot more easy, because the original users getting bullied doesnāt know where the harassment is coming from, because they donāt see the reblogs, they do get the harassment their inbox though. So, this update would cause more issues than before and would allow harassment to be easier.
Reverse this decision, itās a awful idea and nobody likes itā
You donāt have to have an exact version of this post, you can use it as a basis for your own, your choice, but I do want you to send your feedback!
Force them to pull back from this update as soon as possible.
Also, if you want in depth version that goes over this update in more detail, go here, they explain this update, perfectly
Tumblr is a place to express yourself, discover yourself, and bond over the stuff you love. It's where your interests connect you with your
Also also, send your feedback to the replies and reblogs of this one as well as a bonus, just so they can really see your opinion of this
š¬ 16033Ā Ā š 57999Ā Ā ā¤ļø 34409Ā Ā·Ā Itās very clear that you all have strong feelings about Tumblr and about this change. We hear you. The passion
We see you @staff @changes
Change it
if this repeal demand doesn't work TODAY we're organizing a boycott tomorrow.
-Bring back reblogs. Reinstate them to how they operated last week.
-Stop platforming AI chatbots, especially since most of the ones here aim at children playing pretend with their OCs
-Trans people are not mature content.
Those are the three big demands. not just from today but the last two, admittedly tiny, log-off events.
HERES THE EASIEST WAY TO DO THIS:
Step 1) tell people what this post says. There's a button to do that for you. It's kindof the subject of this post.
Step 2) Go to the tumblr feedback page and submit that this reblog-breaking-update must be rolled back. YOU WILL BE MET WITH A BIG WALL OF WARNING TEXT, so scroll ALL THE WAY DOWN and hit "submit anyways"
Step 3) Make a post tagging @staff @changes @tumblr about the issues this has caused. Most people will advise you to speak professionally. IIIIve been tagging them on everything related to the issues.
Step 4) Use the stuff in this image:
Step 5) If 3/17/26 starts and this crap is still here, log off. I've seen many people saying we should at least aim through April 1st.
WE DO NOT COME BACK UNTIL DEMANDS ARE MET. Frankly, these demands are easy, assuming the backend of this site wasn't fully gutted to -again, intentionally break the website. The AI and Mature Posts stuff is related because ALLLLL of this is happening due to censorship and the push for AI surveillance. Wherever in the world you're reading this from, eventually you'll be calling your representatives to tell them "hey, do NOT demand my government ID just for access to my apps or phone or computer or websites"
but at least- AT THE VERY LEAST- this reblog shit has to be fixed. This WILL increase harassment on this website, and Twitter private replies were the case study.
Notice how there's multiple steps here that aren't just "log off." You may not be able to do every step (logging off shouldn't be a problem tho. it's one button) and that is FINE. That does NOT make this useless. Tumblr is not as big as Youtube or Spotify, but even THOSE boycotts have made strides. THIS IS VERY DOABLE.
Thanks
Oh wow I hate this. So I tested it a little on a side blog and this is what it does
Then, if you go to the notes on the original post, it only shows the reblog from "two"
So the OP doesn't get to see how much engagement their post has unless people like/reblog from the original post. If someone adds any sort of comment, it splits them up like this. Artists, writers, crafters will see less engagement, nobody will know how far the reach of their post is or if someone says something nice about it. If you want OP to know, you'd have to make a conscious effort to reblog from the first post listed in the chain.
Not only is this going to be bad for general community things, but this could easily promote harassment. You won't see anything but the initial reblog from you if someone makes an addition, so there could be whole conversations that go completely missed.
Thanks, tumblr. Very cool š
EDIT: Also, the posts aren't even properly displaying the notes YOUR SPECIFIC VERSION of the post is getting, which this post has shown me.
This is what I see looking at my post at this moment:
But if I go to the reblogs tab of my activity page, we can see
There's a few more than 20 reblogs.
@staff as a Tumblr user for the last 12+ years, the idea of reblogs turning to "Twitter/Bluesky-like" chains is repulsive beyond comprehension. Tumblr is a blogging website. What makes Tumblr unique is the reblog system, where users can reblog a post to their blog and others can do the same.
What's NOT unique is hiding reblogs behind separate "chains." That just makes navigating this site even worse. Not only that, but it kills engagement.
Listen to the users of this website and DO NOT consider implementing this update @staff
whats your thoughts on the latest tumblr update
we need to s***t and k**l m**t m*******g. truly more and more unusable website
I found a lovely snail at work who was dried out so I let him have a shower and he seemed to enjoy it!! ššæ
birthday cake for my sister + bulborb cake pops
