Time Wasted on the Internet

(Profile photo by Rebecca Reynolds) Welcome to my blog of the assorted craziness and comic book stuff. I also work for multiversitycomics.com, so, you know, do with that what you will.

[scoobydoomistakes]

What with Tumblr‘s years of commotion, and the very kind concerned messages...

…I feel it’s important to say don’t worry — I’m not gonna abruptly delete/abandon SDM.

The whole point of the blog is to make people smile, and if it can still do that, the show must go on.

That said, please leave your favorite other platforms you’d like to see SDM on in the comments! More on that near the end of this post.

Of course, since I was informed recently…

…twice, for some reason…

…that the blog had, apparently, been secretly flagged explicit for who knows how long…

…and seeing as things like wholesome, family-friendly cartoon gorillas…

…are constantly flagged as adult content… well, the future feels a bit sketchy. 

So, let’s talk a little about the state of Tumblr – and to (hopefully) inject some levity into this mess, let’s use the one true medium of communication…

…Scooby-Doo reaction images.

They can make anything easier to discuss. It’s been scientifically proven.

To start things off, there are 3 vital keys to running a platform well:

1. Communicating with the community

Acknowledging issues, explaining upcoming fixes, answering common questions. This shows users you care, and are listening!

2. Fixing problems as they arise

Patching bugs, stopping platform abuses, adding vital absent features. This allows both creators’ content and the community to keep improving!

3. Moving in an understood direction

Working towards improvements & goals that most users agree are logical. This gives people confidence in the future!

Having all 3 is ideal, but isn’t always possible… 

…but fortunately, nailing 2/3 covers well for the 3rd! 

For instance, if you want to move in a direction that’s unpopular, but have a history of fixing issues well, and you communicate about changes in a consistent and timely manner, users will largely understand. 

Sadly, in the almost 5 years I’ve been here…

…Tumblr has made no visible attempt at a single one of these things. 

Communication is almost nonexistent, major issues persist indefinitely, and improvements never come.

I would go in-depth into each issue that the community has reported for years, but the file size of that much text would prolly crash the internet. 

And saddest of all, when a rare change does come, it causes more problems than it solves.

See also: the history of the mobile app, and tomorrow’s new rules.

What Tumblr needed was to finally own up to the users… 

…AKA, the people who watch the ads that make Tumblr earn money… 

…that yes, there are huge issues, and communicate on what they’re doing to fix – say – abusive content and the broken safe mode filter.

Instead, they’re banning even any legitimate, positive, properly-flagged content that’s considered explicit… despite the fact that they can’t even make the existing safe mode work… and it meant giving a literal two-week notice to artists who depended on the platform for the last 11 years?

Even for 110% family-friendly blogs like SDM… 

…well, it’s concerning to know things can be deleted or banned incorrectly at any time. 

Heck, my grandma’s Santa collection was apparently very explicit…

…so for all we know, this Santa-Scooby rug could get this post flagged too.

Be careful – there’s no tool to see which of your posts are currently flagged to request reviews for them. It’s all a mystery.

As far as we know, posts may be taken down at any time, and old flagged content may be lost forever. 

If SDM gets posts flagged wrongly all the time, what blog can’t? SDM has a flawless 4,200+ post record of safe content, and even its flags aren’t automatically reviewed. And this level of broken-ness extends to every facet of the platform… and seriously, don’t get me started on the mobile app.

I’m sure there’s loads of very nice people working there, but as a company… 

…the way Tumblr operates is inexcusable.

Despite refusing to communicate, admit issues, or improve things over the last 4-5 years, Tumblr was quite adept at accusing my mother of following Russian propaganda accounts, breaking gifs randomly for about half a year, making text display on mobile never work right, breaking blog titles, swapping images between unrelated posts, and so much more.

Now, all this said… 

…we only complain so much because we care about this platform. 

We want to see Tumblr succeed, improve for everyone, and be profitable for those working there.

Nobody wants something they care about to figuratively turn into a decrepit old skeleton, falling out of the fuselage of the internet.

Now, that’s an analogy you don’t get to use every day.

Buuuuuuut to be safe, since we’ve politely asked for communication and fixes for years to no avail, I feel I should ask all you smart people… 

…is there another platform you’d like to read SDM on as well? Especially one that supports its weird long-form-post nature?

With so many people leaving Tumblr, if SDM can help bring them a laugh somewhere else as well, I’d gladly look into it.

I’ve even considered what changes it would take to make SDM work in short social platforms’ posts…

…but I dunno, isn’t the in-depth silliness sort of what makes SDM fun? Having multiple images, gifs, and lines of riffing is pretty essential to the blog. 

And as flexible as YouTube video is, it’d take far more work for way less content… plus, I’ve always liked the “scroll through with friends and chat” aspect of SDM being in post-form. You can talk over it, and spend as long laughing at a derpy frame as you like.

I’m also reluctant to just host SDM as its own site – people want the convenience of all their content aggregated together into a feed. It’d have advantages for me, but makes more work for you guys to see it. 

So, have another blogging platform you love? Let me know! One way or another, it’ll all work out in the end.

Oh, and a final FYI: I’ve seen posts of 250k+ people planning to log off on the 17th for 24 hours, in order to hopefully make Tumblr notice they need to actually listen to the users for once. 

If you’re interested, feel free to investigate – I’ll be posting right after midnight today, and will be off the site for the rest of the day. 

Your pal,

–Colin 

[brutalmoose]

Made a poppy the penguin w/ friends, it was lots of fun! He may not be the most beautiful bird but as his parent I love him anyway

[aprettyfire]

they say the best burn brightest when circumstances are at their worst

[redgoldsparks]

If this is my last post ever before my blog is deleted, know that I love you all as much as Sophie loves Howl <3 

[john-boyega]

Lemme give you a tip, you wanna make some money here? Use your white voice. - Sorry To Bother You (2018) dir. Boots Riley

[libertarirynn-deactivated202006]

[petalpetal]

[vinesforall]

James: Maybe we shouldn’t get too greedy. That’s when things fall apart.

Meowth: Don’t worry that pretty blue head o’ yours, I got a plan.

James: [offscreen, lowkey annoyed] It’s lavender.

its lavender  

[rufiozuko]

this tumblr life…

I’ve been off and on in this world, more off than on, honestly. Lately, my tumblr page has just been a landing spot for my instagram posts, and it kind makes me sad. It makes me sad because this is my first real place I hung out in when I got into social media and it was a wonderful place. I got turned on to a lot of new things, my interactions with folks really affected me and changed my viewpoints on tons of things on the world and my relationship to this whole new phenomenon of what we’re calling “social media.” People I’ve never met and may never meet in physically or IRL, but who I know just as well.

I don’t exactly know why I stopped coming back as frequently, maybe I got more into other platforms, maybe we all started coming back here less… I know there were accusations and other things behind the scene, I’m not really privy to all that information, but it all does trinkle to us users and I must admit, it all feels different.

As I sit here typing this now, having a breakfast alone on the road in Seattle, it feels like I went to house I grew up in, poking around, smiling at good memories on the wall and feeling nostalgic. But just like when your walking through your old neighborhood, it feels different now, not sure if it’s better or worse… I don’t know, can ever really go back home?

[philnoise]

Visit Original Link

Clint Eastwood (The Gorillaz cover)

This, people. This is what bad ass sounds like.

[u-ok]

iS THIS EVEN REAL AM I ALIVE IM CRYING THIS IS OS GREA8T

[baqki]

WOAH

[wilwheaton]

I think I may have come across the dumbest motherfucker in the world today, and he’s a fucking United States Congressman.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Steve Milloy, climate change denier and dumbest motherfucker on the planet.

[sizvideos]

This campaign defies censorship in social media to raise awareness for early detection of breast cancer

[iamanemotionaltimebomb]

this is actually super fucking smartass of them

[snake-lady]

Reblogging as this is so important everyone! My mum had breast cancer and that shit is not nice so please check yourself ladies and gents! 💕💕💕

[edwordsmyth]

The “Yellow Vests” Show How Much the Ground Moves Under Our Feet

If one feature of any truly revolutionary moment is the complete failure of conventional categories to describe what's happening around us, then that's a pretty good sign we're living in revolutionary times. #France #YellowVests #“yellowvest”movement

David Graeber on Gilets Jaunes: “Let me begin by offering two suggestions as to the source of some of the confusion: 1. in a financialised economy, only those closest to the means of money-creation (essentially, investors and the professional-managerial classes) are in a position to employ the language of universalism. As a result, any political claims based in particular needs and interests, tend to be treated as a manifestation of identity politics, and in the case of the social base of the GJ, therefore, cannot be imagined as anything but proto-fascist. 2. since 2011, there has been a worldwide transformation of common sense assumptions about what participating in a mass democratic movement should mean—at least among those most likely to do so. Older “vertical” or vanguardist models of organization have rapidly given way to an ethos of horizontality, one where (democratic, egalitarian) practice and ideology are ultimately two aspects of the same thing. Inability to understand this gives the false impression movements like GJ are anti-ideological, even nihilistic.”

[kenyatta]

To understand the appeal of the movement—that is, of the sudden emergence and wildfire spread of real democratic, even insurrectionary politics—I think there are two largely unnoticed factors to be taken into consideration.

The first is that financialized capitalism involves a new alignment of class forces, above all ranging the techno-managerials (more and more them employed in pure make-work “bullshit jobs,” as part of the neoliberal redistribution system) against a working class that is now better seen as the “caring classes”—as those who nurture, tend, maintain, sustain, more than old-fashioned “producers.” One paradoxical effect of digitization is that while it has made industrial production infinitely more efficient, it has rendered health, education, and other caring sector work less so, this combined with diversion of resources to the administrative classes under neoliberalism (and attendant cuts to the welfare state) has meant that, practically everywhere, it has been teachers, nurses, nursing-home workers, paramedics, and other members of the caring classes that have been at the forefront of labor militancy. Clashes between ambulance workers and police in Paris last week might be taken as a vivid symbol of the new array of forces. Again, public discourse has not caught up with the new realities, but over time, we will start having to ask ourselves entirely new questions: not what forms of work can be automated, for instance, but which we would actually want to be, and which we would not; how long we are willing to maintain a system where the more one’s work immediately helps or benefits other human beings, the less you are likely to be paid for it.

Second, the events of 2011, starting with the Arab Spring and passing through the Squares movements to Occupy, appear to have marked a fundamental break in political common sense. One way you know that a moment of global revolution has indeed taken place is that ideas considered madness a very short time before have suddenly become the ground assumptions of political life. The leaderless, horizontal, directly democratic structure of Occupy, for instance, was almost universally caricatured as idiotic, starry-eyed and impractical, and as soon as the movement was suppressed, pronounced the reason for its “failure.” Certainly it seemed exotic, drawing heavily not only on the anarchist tradition, but on radical feminism, and even, certain forms of indigenous spirituality. But it has now become clear that it has become the default mode for democratic organizing everywhere, from Bosnia to Chile to Hong Kong to Kurdistan. If a mass democratic movement does emerge, this is the form it can now be expected to take. In France, Nuit Debout might have been the first to embrace such horizontalist politics on a mass scale, but the fact that a movement originally of rural and small-town workers and the self-employed has spontaneously adopted a variation on this model shows just how much we are dealing with a new common sense about the very nature of democracy.

[history-and-stuff-and-things]

[queen-esu]

[cygulls-deactivated20200408]

Oddity Woods - Page 291

Archive | Read from Beginning

The problem child

[teathattast]

[raesputin]

[beckyhop]

I’m not a fan of Evangelion, but I am looking forward to a new generation of anime fans screaming “WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST WATCH” at the ending like I did about 8 or 9 years ago.

[beckyhop]

Oh shit, I just realized this also means I can introduce a whole new generation to this clip afterwards:

[brucesterling]

Oath of Doom

https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/04/why-oath-keeps-tumblring/

TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. This is a rough draft of something new – provide your feedback directly to the author (Danny at [email protected]) if you like or hate something here.

My three word Oath? I’m with stupid

It goes without saying that this piece about my employer is my work alone, doesn’t reflect management’s views, and is done under the auspices of TechCrunch’s independent editorial voice. No usage of internal information is assumed or implied.

This is a piece about TechCrunch’s parent company, formerly known as “Oath:” (okay just Oath, but who am I to flout a mandatory colon?) and now ReBranded™ as Verizon Media Group / Oath (See what they did there? They literally slashed Oath. Poetic).

Oath is essentially the creature of Frankenstein, a corporate alchemy experiment to fuse the properties of the companies formerly known as AOL and Yahoo into the larger behemoth known as Verizon. You can feel the terrible synergy emanating from the multiple firewalls it takes to get to our corporate resources.

Oath has a problem:* it needs to grow for Wall Street to be happy and for Verizon not to neuter it, but it has an incredible penchant for making product decisions that turn users off. Oath’s year over year revenues last quarter were down 6.9%, driven by extreme competition from digital ad leaders Google and Facebook.

The solution apparently? Give away page views. If that logic makes sense, well then, maybe you should fill out a job application.

The kerfuffle is over Tumblr, which is among Oath’s most important brands, in that people actually know what it is and kind of still like it. Tumblr, which Yahoo notably acquired under Marissa Mayer back in 2013, has been something of a product orphan — one of the few true software platforms left in a world filled with editorial content like TechCrunch and HuffPost (Oath sold off Flickr earlier this year to SmugMug — which also seems to be going through its own boneheaded product decision phase).

All was well and good — well, at least quiet — in the Tumblr world until Apple pulled the plug on Tumblr’s app in the App Store a few weeks ago over claims of child porn. Now let’s be absolutely clear: child porn is abhorrent, and filtering it out of online photo sharing sites is a prime directive (and legally mandated).

But Oath has decided to do something equally obnoxious: it intends to ban anything that might be considered “adult content” starting December 17th, just in time for the holidays when purity around family gatherings is key.

In Tumblr’s policy, “Adult content primarily includes photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts.” You’ll notice the written legerdemain — “primarily” doesn’t exclude the wider world of adult-oriented content that almost invariably is going to be subsumed under this policy.

Obviously, adults (and presumably teens as well) are pissed. As users are starting to see what photos are getting flagged (hint: not the ones with porn in them), that’s only making them more angry.

Oath is attempting to compress the content moderation engineering and testing of Facebook down to a span of a few weeks. And Facebook hasn’t even figured this one out yet, which is why people are still being murdered across the world from viral messages and memes it hosts that incite ethnic hatred and genocide.

I get the pressure from Apple. I get the safety of saying “just ban all the images” à la Renaissance pope. I get the business decision of trying to maintain Tumblr’s clean image. These points are all reasonable, but they all are just useless without Tumblr’s core and long-time users.

What flummoxes me from a product perspective is that it’s not as if banning all adult content is the singular solution to the problem. There is an entire spectrum of product, policy, legal, and product cultural ingredients that could be drawn upon. There could be more age verification, better separation of “safe for children” and “meant for adults content,” and more focus on messaging to users that moderation was meant to help the product and focus audiences rather than to puritanically filter.

Or you can just kill the photos, the somehow still loyal core user base, a safe space for expression via nudity and sexuality and, well, traffic along with it. And then you look at -6.9% growth and think: huh, I wonder if there is a connection….