#like the WORST thing staff has done is introduce a bunch of inconveniences for us

[tribow]

I don't get the discourse around supporting Tumblr.

Like if you give money to Tumblr you are supporting all of their bad decisions!!!

Okay, but then how do they keep the site alive? Ads? How many people are clicking on ads here? Tumblr hasn't been scraping every tiny piece of data they can get to sell it like Facebook does either. Should they start doing that? Or should they sell more ad space even though they're already known to be a site that isn't all the great for advertisers.

This is the only two routes I can think of for attempting to stay sustainable without the use of getting money directly from their users.

Someone's gotta pay to maintain this site and also pay all employees working to do so. This isn't a one man job you need a whole team for this. Tumblr costs quite a bit to maintain.

Is it wrong to pay for an online service you frequently use? I mean, let's imagine every Tumblr user magically unite to protest against all the changes to Tumblr they disagree with by making sure Tumblr gets no financial support. What would happen? Who is paying Tumblr's staff to listen to the demands of its community? Does anyone know how long that could take? Would that really save the site or would that send it straight to its doom?

To change topic a bit. Is financially supporting a company indicative of you agreeing with what they are doing? Is it not entirely possoble to critique a company in spite of your support? There's still things like review bombing and disrupting customer service. Besides, without being a paying customer you wouldn't have much of anything to threaten Tumblr with. If majority of the userbased was supporting with money it would be very scary for Tumblr if a ton of people really pulled out.

I....

I don't know it just seems to me that people want to protest to Tumblr staff by just....doing nothing and continueing to use Tumblr. What does that do??? Do YOU want to become the product??? Tumblr could axe Tumblr Live right now all of those people complaining wouldn't give Tumblr a dime for it. These devs are fairly communicative. They have several blogs dedicated to development, there's devs with their own blogs who respond to the community and even post surveys for suggestions to other staff, they did a Q&A in Tumblr Live (annoyingly), and have been fairly transparent in clearly communicating their plans while keeping it very open to criticism.

I can't really say that about many other companies. Tumblr staff gives its users SO MANY avenues to communicate. It's almost too open. The staff can get harassed very easily (I'm sure some do). Are the people complaining about this site not using these avenues to get staff's attention? I don't see how not giving them money will get their attention. If anything it would make them more desparate to get money from us through other means than something as inoffensive as merch.

This is a website that you are using. Is it wrong to compensate those maintaining/providing this service as you use it? If it is wrong, then what are the alternatives? Am I just stupid am I missing something?