frogmunist
Interview and transcript of a conversation with the new owner of tumblr
yeettherich
Glad they keeping the employees but
cappucino-commie
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airyairyaucontraire
That’s actually not a bad model compared with the kind of advertising they do now. It’s what LiveJournal did (for things like extra LJ icons, which were hugely popular) and what Pillowfort intends to do once their site is more functional. The trick is to set it at a level where instead of “you can hardly do anything without having to pay extra,” which puts off new users soon after trying it out and makes people who want to continue using the platform feel extorted, it’s “you can do all the basic stuff you want to do for free and there are some really neat paid add-ons, good value for money.”
It sounds as if he isn’t committed ideologically to the adult content ban but sees it as a pragmatic necessity given the two major app stores’ sex-negative policies, and given the desirability of keeping the site functions and rules consistent across app use and web use. I’m not going to get my hopes up for any improvements there, although I’m sure a web-only adult content upgrade would make bank.
I’m always frustrated by the argument that nsfw stuff should just be on sites devoted to that, like “why are you mad when you can get that elsewhere?” because it misses the whole point that we liked Tumblr being a site for everything including nsfw, within the site’s general dorky weird culture, and being able to organise and search for content using that familiar tagging system.
(That’s aside from the whole issue of driving independent and minority sex workers into more dangerous street work because they can’t use the site to earn money in conditions of their choice, and the algorithm being disproportionately prudish and censorious of queer sexuality.)
