I ran a quick experiment just now, and I'm going to attempt to demonstrate the impact of this update on a relatively small scale in the hopes that it makes the update easier to understand.
Basic findings:
The OP still gets notifications about reblogs in a chain
Tags count as additions (maybe)
Reblog graphs will give an accurate reblog count
Full report below the cut
Background: Last night, I made a web weave on one of my fandom sideblogs, and this morning I noticed that the note count on the post didn't match the amount of activity notifications I was getting. I assumed it was a tumblr glitch until I saw the post about the new update. Then I started doing some digging.
These are the notes on my original post. 11 reblogs, 75 likes, for a total of 86 notes.
These are some of the activity notifications I've gotten on the same post. This already shows more than 11 reblogs (It shows 13, to be exact).
This reblogs graph shows 37 reblogs! So where's the discrepancy coming from? I know for a fact nobody added to my post in the traditional manner, the most someone added to my post was tags.
Looks like a good amount of reblogs came from this guy. So, for the sake of demonstration, I'm going to run my experiment a second time. Apologies to everyone who has to see the same post reblogged to this blog again. Its for science.
Something that should be noted here is that this is the same reblog I ran my experiment from the first time, and while it did show at the time,
it doesn't anymore. And I'm not sure where that like came from. But we're going to have to ignore that for now. Sorry for the bad scientific practice.
This lovely reblog had tags added to it!
Does this make the person who reblogged my original post a "contributor," who tumblr wants to "give the recognition they deserve"? Or when I reblog from them, will the new note count towards my original post?
I've reblogged, from the reblog, to my main. This is immediately reflected in the notes of the reblog:
And it shows up in my activity feed:
Does it count on my original post? Well I tried to reload the page and:
So that's not a good sign. Please hold.
Well that's a lie. Tumblr really doesn't want me to run this experiment huh.
Yeah that sounds about right. We'll be back later. Current time: 12:42pm.
1:10pm update: we are back! Lets check on my original post:
The like count has increased again, but the reblog count at the bottom of the post has not. The reblog count in the graph, however, has. So we now know that even tags count as contributions to a post that separate out notes. To double-check this conclusion, lets find a reblog with no tags attached.
Here's one! Now if I reblog from this post, with no tags, it should count towards the original post.
Oddly enough, it didn't. And now the same web weave is on my blog three times. Sorry squad.
I am hopeful that this is a bit of a glitch. I'll give tumblr the benefit of the doubt for a little bit. Let's focus on the fact that tags are being counted as contributions.
Wait. That reblog number should be 13, I've reblogged from this specific reblog twice. So why isn't it? Where are these reblogs going?
Current hypothesis: Tags are enough to qualify someone as a contributor, but not enough to impact reblog count for said contributor. Instead, the reblogs simply disappear. Nobody gets credit for them.
Major impacts/Why does this matter?
Disappearing reblogs. Instead of "contributors getting recognition they deserve," which is tumblr's stated goal of this update, nobody gets recognition. Reblogs aren't counted accurately outside of the reblog graph.
Inaccurate note counts. Hey remember that "posts that have 10k to me" thing? Yeah, that is no longer. Note counts are no longer a marker of anything, they are losing any meaning. As we've seen here, even tags can impact how notes are counted.
The impact of tags specifically is really important. Tags are sorting mechanisms, commentary, a place for conversation. If someone reblogs something they like and wants to find it later, they may tag it with #favs. And now this sorting system meant to be of use in their blog is impacting the data on the original post.
As much as we like to say that numbers don't matter, especially here, we have to remember that they still have some impact on how people look at the success of their posts. The inaccuracies we're already seeing in note counts will have impacts on individuals as well as impacts on data in the site as a whole.
