#crab day

[junior-theabgshark]

[ohifonlyx33]

🦀🦀🦀

Reblog if you're comfortable receiving crabs on Crab Day (July 29th) so all your beloved followers know who they can comfortably crab on crab day (July 29th) without feeling nervous about crabbing someone 9n Crab Day (July 29th).

🦀🦀🦀

[greater-than-the-sword]

Crab Day!!!

Where:

Here on Tumblr!!

What:

Buy crabs!

Why:

As we now know, Tumblr is $30 million dollars in debt. Oops. Tumblr has announced some major (and unpopular) changes to the site in their attempt to get back above water. The alternative is that Tumblr ceases to exist. But maybe we can change that...

How:

There are 327 million unique tumblr visits per month, and almost 500 million active accounts. If 10 million unique users (or less, if we bought more than one) bought or gifted Crabs from the Tumblr store, we could knock out Tumblr's debt easily. Buy crabs!

When:

July 29, 2023 is Crab Day, running through August 5 (for anyone who can't log on that day) as Crab Week!

Who:

Everyone!! If you truly can't afford to participate with a $3 crab, (or other item from the shop) post crab memes!

Time for Tumblr users to rise again and surprise everyone...

[bananonbinary]

Crab Day

okay, so here's a new info post from the top.

the problem: tumblr is extremely extremely in debt. the current model is not profitable. this is why they are trying to turn the site into a shit clone of every other social media site, so they can attract new users and their money.

solution: not a ton of people can afford a long-term subscriptions like ad-free. however, many of us CAN afford $3 to inflict crabs on another unsuspecting user. (and those that can't, can still enjoy crabs everywhere)

the idea: in the grand traditions of mishapocalypses and goncharovs and tumblr users' obsession with [random inconsequential thing] Days, we create a fund drive/holiday on July 29th, dubbed Crab Day. buy your friends crabs. buy your enemies crabs. blaze posts. post memes. change ur icon. whatever. actually put your money where your mouth is and show @staff that there actually IS profit motive to listen to the current users about what we want this site to look like. (and yes, that means accessibility features too. we currently have zero leverage to demand these features. let's change that.)

i don't know if this will actually go anywhere. worst case scenario, a few of us have fun, tumblr gets a small amount of money, and nothing changes. best case though, we actually provide incentive to keep our stupid hellsite unique.

[montereybayaquarium]

🦀 Happy Crab Day, Tumblr! 🦀

may it be ✨ crabulous ✨

[haikyuupaladin]

TLDR; don’t give tumblr money until they start making visible improvements towards accessibility

I’ve seen a few posts around about something people are calling crab day where you’re supposed to gift the crab button to your mutuals to support Tumblr financially. Please don’t participate in this unless Tumblr starts making noticeable improvements towards accessibility between now and then. It’s been 5 months of me trying to get the bare minimum of accessibility for photosensitive users or even just find out who I can talk to to get anywhere, and Tumblr is refusing to make any changes.

@photomatt has doubled down on the suggestion that you should just pay for ad-free or install an ad-blocker instead of listening to any of the suggestions photosensitive users have repeatedly made. Please do not give money to Tumblr until they show a commitment to accessibility because they will continue to ignore our requests if it doesn’t impact them financially.

Some of the requests we’ve made are:

1. Allow us to disable autoplay on browser as well as the app. This is an accessibility feature, not a data-saving feature, and should be treated as such.

2. Include ads in disabling of autoplay, along with other formats that currently get around the autoplay feature. Currently even if you have autoplay disabled you can still end up with flashing lights in your face every few posts from ads.

3. Improve the reporting process for strobing ads. The quick reporting process doesn’t provide good options to ensure the person reviewing the report realizes that it’s being reported for flashing lights so you have to hope they agree it’s either malicious or offensive and don’t just brush you off as abusing the report function. The more complicated reporting process involves getting a screenshot and the link that the ad brings you to, which requires lingering on the ad, which if you’re trying to report the ad for your safety, is dangerous. You can also still get the same ad 10 times a row after reporting it until it’s been reviewed. Which again, presents a danger to users.

4. Add a community label for flashing lights. Flashing lights are commonly untagged or mistagged, even sometimes maliciously. It would be extremely helpful to the photosensitive community to be able to add a warning to a post that doesn’t have one.

I’ve talked a lot about the photosensitive community in this post because that’s what I have personal experience with and what @photomatt has explicitly come out and just said to buy ad-free about, but there are definitely other accessibility issues that need to be addressed as well (like the alt text function needing improvements to make it accessible to users who need it and don’t use screenreaders, or the fact that a lot of tumblr official stuff still doesn’t seem to use the alt text feature themselves). Please feel free to add on accessibility issues I’ve missed in the reblogs.

[civ5crab]

[staff]

Hello, crab fans. Wow, you have been having a busy time! On July 29, also known as Crabs Day, you took to TumblrMart to give the gift of crabs to your pals. And boy, did we notice—not just all the great crab memes and trending posts on the day but also the burst in sales which made up a substantial financial boost to the running costs at Tumblr. And it truly took our breath away.  

We got so excited we went back to the drawing board and designed some crab checkmarks, which we teased by dressing your regular checkmarks up as crabs on the day. On August 1, we launched a regular little crab checkmark and a rainbow crab checkmark for gifting and treating yourselves.

Here are some stats from Crabs Day:

You gifted 8k crabs that day. That’s an almost 20k% increase in crab sales.

We saw a more than 7k% increase in total Tumblrmart sales.

All this money goes straight back into running costs—such as a month’s worth of power costs for Tumblr application servers. That’s all you! You’re doing that! You’re keeping Tumblr around with your generosity toward your friends. Crabs be thanking ye ❤

[notmusa]

it has come to my attention that today is crab day

🦀🦀🦀

[emporium]

Crab Day t-shirt • $13.00 – $15.00

“Want to show the world your dedication to the Crab Cause and prove that you’re such a good friend (because you gifted a crab to another user) and such a good tumblr user (because you supported the website!)! Express yourself with this feisty little guy on a shirt!” Connor (Tumblr user & designer of the t-shirt)

About the Shirt

Canvas 3001 Shirt

Retail fit & Unisex sizing

Side seams

Tear away label

[spaghettiisinmysoul]

Uh… Here’s some crabs 🤣

We’ve got your basic crab, a Halloween crab, and two spycrabs!!! Use at your leisure! (I might remove the text and make these guys into stickers at some point idk)

[marlynnofmany]

[strawlessandbraless]

In honor of National Crab Day, behold the Pom Pom Crab!! 🦀

The Pom Pom Crab, Lybia tessellata, is the crustacean sensation that’s sweeping the nation. It’s debated whether the anemones they hold are for defense, camouflage, or mating. But it’s clear they know how to accessorize & they know it 💅

[pocketden]

Crab day

Tumblr please I spent all day on this let me post it

[the-asexuality-blog]

Just to make my position on the subject of Crab Day clear, since word is going around that the idea came from a highly objectionable person, I’m going to quote rather than reblog @skaldish:

This I agree with. I've seen other posts go around about it, so it wasn't just that one person.

But to make it clear, I'll take the time to explain to people why participating in Crab Day (and financially supporting Tumblr in general) is important:

It's unfortunate, but in this day and age, large websites like this one can't function without an exorbitant amount of income. For other social medias, the bulk of this income comes from Business-to-Business (B2B) transactions, often in the form of selling user data.

The thing y'all need to understand is that wealth is VASTLY different in the B2B economy than it is with B2C (business-to-consumer) economy. In fact, this is a huge reason why we're in an economic crisis...because the US is a nation with two economies, and the power of the dollar is astronomically different between the two of them.

Tech's standard of wealth is based in the B2B economy. Because Tumblr is in the Tech sector, it needs to play according to Tech wealth. Unfortunately, the way you earn Tech wealth is by selling Tech-related B2B products, and for social media websites, that product is user data.

It's a competitive market that sets a new standard of rotten with every transaction. In order to acquire data that's more valuable than your competitor's data, you have to be less ethical about how you source it...and also be willing to cross moral boundaries in regards to who you sell it to.

If Tumblr finds no other way of sourcing income, they have no choice but to participate in this data market or shut down.

However, Tumblr is the home of the secret third thing. In this case, this secret third thing is to work with the community rather than exploit it.

(That's what it looks like to me, anyway. I nether trust nor doubt Tumblr's words; that's not what's winning me over. Instead, I'm curious to know where they plan to go with this, because this is unusual as far as business practices go and I think it would be cool if they're trying to set a more holistic precedent for the social media of the future. I won't be able to see that conclusion if they go bankrupt though.)

So yes, participate in Crab Day. Just because one unpleasant person also condones it doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

I've seen a couple of comments from someone around paying Tumblr for stuff that I want to address. I'm not going to mention the person who made these comments because I'm not trying to pick a fight, but I think they're worth talking about. The comments in question are: "you think user money is anything compared to advertisers" and in a pinned post they tell people to not give money to Tumblr.

The thing is, user money can definitely be something compared to advertisers. There are multiple ways that an online company (in general, not just Tumblr) can make money, but let's break them down into three categories:

A. From the users - selling merchandise, subscriptions, premium packages, asking for donations, etc.

B. From advertisers - selling views and space on the platform to companies that use it to try and sell stuff to the users

C. From data - selling information about the user base to other companies that might use it in a whole bunch of dodgy and malicious ways, or just try to find better ways to sell stuff to us

All three of these are viable ways for a company to make money, and many companies use some combination of the above. What matters is what the company sees as their PRIMARY method of making money, because that is what drives their corporate decisions.

If none of the methods are making money, the company will shut down, and I don't want Tumblr to shut down - I like this hellsite. If option B is what makes them the most money, then they will make business decisions that make the platform look better to advertisers and this is likely to drive everything in a more algorithm-centric direction and give users fewer options to curate their own experience. If option C is what makes them the most money, then they will focus on features that enable privacy invasion and data harvesting. If option A is what makes them the most money, then they have to think about how to keep the users spending that money. Now, option A doesn't always lead to good outcomes - in mobile/online games it can end up as loot box gambling add-ins and pay-to-win options, but thankfully Tumblr isn't the sort of site where loot box mechanics would make a lot of sense. Which makes it more likely they'll go the other option: delivering the features that users want to keep them coming back and paying for subscriptions. 

I would much rather Tumblr goes for option A than options B or C because it means that Tumblr is more likely to put the user base first when making decisions instead of advertisers. We just need to show them that it's a viable option.

Tumblr is trying what online games have done for years - crabs and checkmarks are the equivalent of horse armour DLCs and cosmetics. They're trying to make the business work through microtransactions. If enough people spend a small amount, it can add up to a large amount of money. The point of crab day is to send a message to Tumblr that option A is viable so that they make the choice to focus on that. If everyone goes, "No, don't spend money on Tumblr, you're nothing compared to advertisers," then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and Tumblr will have to go with options B or C if they want to keep making money.

I'm not giving Tumblr money out of naivety or because I think they're somehow deserving - I'm giving them my money because I would much rather they make money directly from me and give them an incentive to provide features I like, than by making the site worse so that they can exploit me.