Why I’m Logging Off on December 17th and Why You Should, Too
Let me begin by saying: I am not the boss of you. You have your own agency and every right to completely ignore everything I’m about to say. I do wish, however, that you at least give it a moment or two of your time before you say “No.”
I’ve seen a lot of posts about how everyone’s freaking out because Tumblr is “dying” and how all of the old, grizzled blogs are staring at the whole situation with a jaded sense of apathy.
I’m with them in the sense that I also don’t think Tumblr will die because of the changes to their policy come December 17th. My reasons can be boiled down to these:
Tumblr is owned by a multi-billion dollar company.
People will keep using Tumblr.
Let’s start with #1. Tumblr is owned by Yahoo (which is owned by Verizon), which is worth billions of dollars (in fact, it bought Tumblr for roughly $1.1 billion and seems to be having trouble making that money back). It’s not run out of someone’s basement (no matter what the state of the mobile app’s coding would have you believe). They can take a hit if the income from the site dips for a while. It also means that, like most million and billion dollar companies, all they care about is making a profit. It’s the reason why they started the blanket ban on adult content to begin with: They got taken off the Apple Store so no one on iOS could download the mobile app.
Which brings us to #2. People will keep using this hellsite, in spite of these changes. Tumblr makes money mainly from sponsored ads. You’ve assuredly seen them at some point; posts that are nearly identical in format to normal posts, but with ads for everything from political figures, to Snickers, to Amazon, and to seemingly every mobile game ever created. This means, as long as you’re looking at Tumblr- if you use the app, have it downloaded, or open in a browser- you’re giving them money, indirectly though it might be. The apathy and mentality of “it’s just another fuckup. I’m not going anywhere” is essentially telling the company, “Yes, the way you handled this is fine. I’ll continue to give you my business.” You can make all the angry posts about it in the world, but, if the way they handled the porn bot and child pornography issues are anything to go by, doing that doesn’t change their behavior in any effective manner.
To this day, I still get followed by porn bots. At least four since the announcement, to be exact (and those are just the ones I’ve noticed). If I’m being honest, I had no idea that child pornography was so rampant on this site until I started digging into posts on here and reddit that talked about the policy changes (hint: it’s disgusting and, like most things, was handled poorly or essentially not at all by the staff). Posts that aren’t inappropriate are being flagged by the staff’s ineffective, buggy code/filter. That doesn’t even begin to cover the way they discriminated against “female-presenting nipples” (FREE THE NIPPLE).
There are a lot of users out there whose reasons for staying or not caring about the policy changes are something along the lines of: “It doesn’t affect me. I don’t post explicit images, so I don’t care. Sucks for those blogs, though. I’ll make a post about it.”
Yeah, well... that’s kind of shitty. That’s the same kind of reasoning that allows for abuses of human rights all over the world. Don’t get me wrong, this issue is nothing compared to what some people around the world face... but your reasons are still shitty. There are plenty of legitimate artists and bloggers out there- people who have been on this site for years- who won’t be able to post on here anymore, and whose posts will be (for all intents and purposes) purged from the site. The worst part? With Tumblr staff’s track record, this won’t even solve the problems of porn bots and child pornography.
Now, let me be clear: I want staff to get rid of porn bots and child pornography. To have them on this site for as long as they’ve been here is appalling.
But the way they’re going about this won’t solve the problem, and the only way to get Tumblr and Yahoo/Verizon to listen is to speak the one language they understand and care about: Money. Dolla Dolla Bill Y’all. Greenbacks. Cash. Moola. Dough. Capital.
Because of the way Tumblr works, this means... that’s right.
I’m not saying you have to log off forever, but, at the very least, you should log off for a day. A full 24 hours.
The last two years have taught me a lesson in constantly reaching new lows in my level of trust in figures of power. Because of this, I know (despite the staff’s continued efforts to murder it) Tumblr won’t die.
But maybe- just maybe- it should.
Information about an organized Log Off Protest #logoff2018
Information about the Tumblr policy changes
