#//TUMBLR’S ALGORITHM RUNS ON REBLOGS LIKING POSTS DOESN’T CIRCULATE THEM

[starredragon-modding]

Goodbye night fury o7

[fuzzarchive]

Thinking about where I plan to go once Tumblr finally dies. I’ve pretty much already accepted that Tumblr is gonna die, I knew that the rate at which people were buying blaze, checkmarks, crabs, ad-free browsing, etc. was not enough to cover Tumblr’s operating costs and I knew the amount of people purchasing those features was not going to rapidly increase anytime soon.

One thing I know for sure is that I am DEFINITELY not going back to Twitter, it was a cesspool even before Elon Musk bought it. TikTok is off the table for me as well, naturally. Instagram is a platform where you can only post things and reply to other people’s posts, it doesn’t have any option for you to share posts onto your account for the people who follow you like with reblogging or retweeting as far as I’m aware, and I would prefer to use a platform that circulates content in that way rather than relying entirely on an algorithm. Basically none of the other “big platforms” are a very good option for me.

The two places I think I’ll use are Pillowfort and the fediverse (well, the fediverse isn’t really a place, but rather a collection of places).

Pillowfort was created to be a clone of Tumblr, except it is non-profit and runs entirely on donations (it also allows you to post nsfw content, if that appeals to you). It used to be in closed beta and you had to pay $5 in order to sign up, but now it is in open beta and it has a wait list that allows you to sign up for free. It has the main perks that Tumblr has, such as tags that are separate from the body of the post and no character limit, but there are a few features that Tumblr has that Pillowfort still lacks, such as asks and being able to queue posts and being able to run multiple blogs. I already have an account on Pillowfort, I just haven’t been using it much since, well, I haven’t been able to find any of my friends or mutuals on there. If we’re mutuals and you have a Pillowfort account or are planning to create one, please let me know so I can follow you!

As for the fediverse, there’s a variety of different fediverse software out there that is used to mimic other popular platforms. For example, PeerTube is a YouTube-like, PixelFed is an Instagram-like, Funkwhale is a SoundCloud-like, and Mastodon and Misskey are both Twitter-likes. I can’t seem to find any fediverse software that’s really comparable to Tumblr, though. Maybe there will be a demand for one once Tumblr is finally on its deathbed and somebody will make one then. I really hope a Tumblr-like complete with asks and the ability to queue posts and such gets made eventually, federated Tumblr instances sounds awesome. Right now I’m currently on a Calckey instance called stop.voring.me, though I have considered running my own private instance for just me and my irl friends if they are up for it. If you’re confused as to what the fediverse is, how federation works or what the appeal of it is, here’s a video that I think explains it quite nicely. Also, if we’re mutuals and you’re anywhere on the fediverse where your instance is able to federate with the one I’m on, let me know so I can follow you!!

I didn’t make this post to announce that I’m leaving Tumblr or anything, it’s still the place where I spend most of my time online and I’m going to be here until its last day of operation. I just made this post because I’ve been thinking about how hard it will be for me to adapt once Tumblr is gone and to sort of make a plan for it, and to encourage other people to start making plans as well and start thinking about how they’re gonna stay in contact with their mutuals once Tumblr is gone.

I don’t use Pillowfort or the fediverse a whole lot right now, but that’s because right now everyone is still on Tumblr. I can’t get my friends and mutuals to follow me to these other places right now, and the likely reason for that is because they’re not gonna be able to get their friends and mutuals to follow them there for the same reason. I suspect that will change very quickly once the plug on this website is finally pulled, and on those sites it will become a lot easier for me to find people as people flock to those sites. I’m still going to miss Tumblr though, and I want to find as many of the people that I commonly interact with on Tumblr as I possibly can on these other sites so that I can still preserve the online space that I’ve spent all this time curating for myself at least somewhat.

[casual-eumetazoa]

I saw in one of your tags you were asking about people not reblogging things. I do reblog stuff a lot of the time but the main reasons I might like and not reblog a piece of art are: It's good but there's something about the content I don't like — e.g. it's sad, it's a ship I don't really like, or there's something minor about it that I personally find unsettling or uncomfortable for a relatively ridiculous reason — or if I see quite a bit of content from this particular fandom but it's not one of my main fandoms and I only reblog the occasional thing relating to it. It's wanting to say "good job!" but also I don't want it saved on my blog. I can't guarantee whether other people's reasons are the same.

thank you for sharing your perspective!

i can tell for myself that when i like and don’t reblog something it’s usually for one of three reasons:

1) it is a random meme or joke or text post or whatever, not related to any fandoms i am in and not in line with the stuff i post on the blog, so i like it to look at it later. sometimes i end up reblogging that stuff, and tagging it with “random”, especially if i don’t have a lot to post otherwise that day

2) it is some sort of resource i want to look at later, or a post i want to send to a friend without reblogging it. again, when it comes to resources, sometimes i end up reblogging it anyway with the “save” tag

3) by far the most common - i am scrolling on mobile and i like something with the intention to reblog it later. the reason is that on mobile it is hard to reblog and there is always some sort of fucking bug, like when reblogging something takes you to the top of your dash. much easier to reblog on desktop, especially because it is much easier to tag there. i try to regularly go through my likes and reblog that stuff, especially art, fanfic, and edits/gifs, but sometimes i go too long without doing it and the likes get over-crowded and i forget something

so if i ever like some of your original stuff, like art / fanfic / etc and not reblog it, most likely reason is that my likes got overwhelming and executive functioning of my brain gave up so i did not get to it. sorry.

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i have also seen people give reasons for not reblogging which are more complicated, like being afraid that the content will get them angry anons, or that it will be triggering for followers, or being very cautious of what they reblog from people they don’t know in fear that they will be giving attention to people with horrible bigoted views (e.g. the crypto-TERFs). this i understand and honestly don’t know what individual users could do to fix, and i have no faith in tumblr staff doing anything about harassment of users or the cryptic behaviours of bigots

what i think is a big contributor that people can do something about is passive consumption of content. like, i know we are all drowning in a sea of posts, and liking something is easier than having a curated blog with a tagging system, but also, thing is, without sharing, content doesn’t circulate. a like is a nice gesture, sure, but it doesn’t spread the content, it buries the content. the best it can do is move you up the tag page, but who even goes into tags anymore? 

it is very hard for an individual to fight against the algorithms or get over the dopamine crash of having highly stimulating content being blasted into our faces by every platform, but every little step you take helps to keep this website alive and motivate content creators to put their stuff out there

i think one way we could combat this is making a bookmarks blog. literally just creating a side-blog that you use exclusively for reblogging things. it can have no tag system, no theme, no particular curated category. you can disable anon messages or disable asks altogether. and you use it just how you would use the like button, just to reblog everything you saw and liked

you’d think no one would follow a blog like that but the thing is, back when i just joined tumblr, most people who reblogged my original content and made it circulate were bookmark blogs. they usually weren’t called that explicitly but that’s what they were - just people reblogging everything they liked, never or almost never making their own posts, and many did not have any tagging system. it was just chaos on their blog, they would reblog everything and anything they wanted. and it made the content circulate and get orders of magnitude more exposure

so basically i vote for bringing back bookmark blogs and being okay with just running a disorganized mess of a blog, 

like a storage of everything that crossed your dash and made you smile or sparked your interest in any way. it is as low effort as possible while still being a massive help to content creators. obviously you don’t have to do anything, but if you want tumblr to stay alive and for more content to be posted here, that is the lowest effort solution i can think of