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So if tumblr's being especially slow it's because we run all of the traffic through this one computer

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Hello very real Staff account.

I think I speak for all Tumblr users when I say that these recent updates are very good. Keep up the good work!

We're getting rid of urls next

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Q:What is crab day?

A: well, a celebration of how strangely cursed our little corner of the internet can be. It's also a community lead funding. Push. Tumblr costs money to run, if we want to keep our little corner of the internet it's weird unique self, we're going to have to foot part of the bill.

Q: when is crab day?

A: July 29th. I would have preferred a slightly longer lead time to get the word out better, But we work with what we can get and July 29th has already gotten some traction in other groups.

Q: how do I participate?

A: buy a mutual crabs, or if you're broke, crab post crab memes.

Q: why crabs?

A: because admit it. most of us would love to get or give crabs to a mutual.

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Staffcon2023 Tumblr Live

Unfortunately the @staffcon2023 Tumblr Live hosted by the CEO Matt (@photomatt) and COO Zandy (@zingring) was not recorded by staff, so I wanted to make my notes of the Live accessible to anyone unable to make it (which was most of Tumblr; there were only around 800 people watching the stream). They answered questions from the chat for an hour about Tumblr's current plans and decisions.

Tumblr’s Financial Situation

Tumblr is currently burning more money than it makes and needs to make 30 million a year to break even.

Only 25,000 users currently pay for Ad-Free Browsing.

Despite appearances, they are not experiencing significant growth. As such, they are trying to attract new users while still retaining existing users. Additionally, they will continue to try to find new ways to monetize the site without selling user data or drastically increasing the number of ads users see.

Tumblr Live

Snoozing Tumblr Live. Tumblr Live is a way that Tumblr is attempting to make money right now, so basically no, they aren’t going to let us permanently toggle Tumblr Live off. Matt jokingly(?) asked how much we would be willing to pay to permanently switch it off and the idea of including a permanent off toggle within Ad-Free Browsing was raised.

Data Collection. Tumblr intentionally collects the minimum amount of information for Tumblr Live to operate: birthdate (as you need to be above a certain age to use the service) and location (as it’s restricted to the US). Currently, all streams are ephemeral and not saved by Tumblr. Tumblr Live is not actually banned in Europe, they just haven’t expanded there yet, but they are planning on expanding outside the US. I will note that Tumblr Live uses The Meet Group’s Livebox, whose privacy policy you can access on their site (which is honestly the standard data collection: more than I would like but not egregious).

Tweaks. Tumblr Live does not have high usage, so they will continue tweaking it until it becomes popular or they decide on something else. They plan to expand Tumblr Live’s screensharing capabilities to mobile (currently you can only screenshare by setting up a virtual camera on desktop) and may work on allowing streams to be recorded in the future.

Payment. Streamers can currently get paid through Tumblr Live. Tumblr takes a small percentage cut of all payments to streamers (this is completely normal for hosting services).

Moderation

Over-Removal of Content. They acknowledged that their moderation team may make mistakes and remove content that is permitted under Tumblr guidelines. We should escalate anything that we believe to be mistakenly removed. They are working on improving their response time, but they have a backlog of materials that they are working through. In regard to removal of LGBTQ content, they claimed it shouldn’t be happening (…) and promised to check into the disproportionate flagging of trans users.

Moderation Automation. They did not answer whether moderation is still automated or if it is entirely human moderated. Considering their settlement agreement over the discrimination allegations in 2022 required them to hire someone to review their moderation algorithms for anti-LGBTQ bias, I would assume that they are still using algorithms to flag content with humans reviewing appeals.

As a note, the entirety of the Tumblr staff is only about 200 employees, so I can only imagine how small their moderation team is. For reference, Twitter’s moderation staff alone (before Musk fired everyone) was 1,500 people.

Future Plans

Emphasis on Transparency. They plan to be more transparent about their decisions and priorities in the future, similar to the post they released earlier (they also said they will be more careful about their messaging to avoid similar misunderstandings to the chronological timeline debacle). They are considering hosting another Tumblr Live in the future and will hopefully record that one for users to be able to view afterwards.

Changes in General. They are trying to make the site better and to be the most user-controllable social network out there while still making money. A big part of that is experimenting with features and changes, then looking at how users actually interact with those features and deciding how to move forward from there. Any change that they make should not be considered 100% set in stone.

Chronological Timelines. They are not removing the chronological timeline nor do they plan on ever removing it.

Reblog Chains. The condensed reblog chains are not necessarily a permanent feature. They changed it to make things more consistent across platforms, so that it functions how users would generally expect it to work.

Custom Themes and Domains. Custom themes are here to stay, allowing you to do things like autoplay music on your blog. They also may expand custom domain’s functionality, further incentivizing users to pay for their own custom domain.

Sideblogs. They intend to improve sideblogs to make them more like “first class citizens.” What that actually means, I’m not sure.

Tumblr Stories. This is currently a feature on Wordpress, so they could expand it to Tumblr as well.

Multiple Dashboards. They are interested in supporting this feature, but it would be a pretty big task to take on.

Feedback

For bugs, the best method to get them resolved is send a ticket to support.

For general feedback, you can ping Work in Progress @wip or Humans @humans. You can also ping or message Matt @photomatt or Zandy @zingring. They mentioned that messages that are very hateful will not be read.

Overall, I appreciated the Tumblr Live and the opportunity to ask them directly about specific issues. It’s not super common for these social media platforms to open themselves up to be yelled at by their userbase for an hour. I definitely don’t agree with all the decisions that Tumblr is making and remain frustrated with their moderation issues specifically, but also recognize that they are making some efforts to listen to a userbase that despises any form of change. Also to be completely honest, after witnessing the meltdown of Twitter and the debacle at Reddit, I am more willing to view these efforts in good faith than I may have otherwise. Of course, we’ll see how everything actually plays out, but I genuinely hope that Tumblr is able to improve and survive.

Also there was a tiny ball pit

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Morning ride with a view 🌁

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Meet FLIGHT..

Targeting 17 km ride this evening on this beast ….. 🚴‍♀️

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The CEO of Tumblr (same username here) is a proud Twitter blue subscriber

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Let the games begin.

Well. Well, well, well, well, well. It’s here. The day has finally come. We’ve enjoyed witnessing you set dashboards ablaze the world over with your fandom hot takes, your cats, your dragon art, your recipe polls, your incorrect quotes, your Barbie memes. (But, really, mostly your cats.)

Starting April 20, you will be able to Blaze each other's posts: You’ll be able to scroll through your dash and see a post that tickles you, and then make thousands of complete strangers see that post also. 

We made this for fun, but you remain in charge of your stuff. So here are some important details:

Blog-level settings: All blogs will be set to Blazable by default in your blog settings. We’re giving you this heads-up so you can toggle Blaze off on any blog you don’t want people to Blaze posts from (quick link for web). Remember to do so for any secondaries you might want to keep Blaze-free. 

Post-level settings: These override your blog-level Blaze settings. You can enable Blaze in the post editor—before or after posting—via the cog (web) or the meatball menu (mobile), regardless of your blog's Blaze settings. Any posts you previously disabled reblogs on will remain unsharable via Blaze. Unless, of course, you edit the post to enable Blaze.

Real humans moderate all posts being Blazed before they go out. If something’s fishy or seems like it might be harmful, it won’t go through.

When someone Blazes your post, you will receive an email, push notification, and/or activity item (depending on your settings). 

You can cancel the Blazing of your post before it happens—or extinguish a post that is already being Blazed—either by responding to the aforementioned notification, or via the “Active” tab in your Blaze interface. 

We will only accept posts that comply with our global advertising guidelines. Interested in advertising directly? Find out more here.

Here are some FAQs.

So that’s it, really. Be nice! Have fun! 

And, as always, if you want to get in touch, drop us a line on @wip or Support, and keep an eye out for more updates on @changes. 

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Michael Cera's version of Clay Pigeons is so end of the world, existentialist, summer is over vibes.

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I knew him as Solas, a thoughtful mage obsessed with dreams. But long ago, he had a different name. Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf.

Dragon Age: Dreadwolf – Who is the Dread Wolf?

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*searches for sketchpad* I must... I must do this... for @greenyvertekins ...

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Those times when Gwen really thinks back on all the bad decisions that led to this very moment.