As the staff post about ad-free tumblr continues to get thousands of notes telling staff to fuck off in the tags, I wanna remind you that this website's days are numbered. Tumblr is still unprofitable and by some modern-day miracle none of its acquiring companies pulled the plug on this money pit. But it will happen if it continues its trajectory.

Whether you like it or not, Tumblr needs to make money off you somehow in order to stay up. It either serves ads or asks for money to use it. This has been a paradigm on the web longer than many of you have been alive. It's Tumblr's job to make money right now because it's well past its grace period of being a black hole for cash. This has actually always been Tumblr's job, since it is a corporation, but that's capitalism for ya.

If you want Tumblr to be here for free and you want to continue to use it, you do yourself a disservice by opposing any changes Tumblr makes in order to pay for its costs. When this site finally goes belly-up then you're gonna be Tumblr-less until whatever startup takes its place and the cycle repeats itself.

If you think it should just ask for donations Wikipedia-style, remember that if and when that happens, there will be users repeating the same tired bullshit about giving Tumblr any money.

just a reminder in case you missed it directly from the current CEO of Tumblr:

Y’all, “optionally pay the site to remove ads” is currently the least assholish way a site like this can pay for development and upkeep. Nobody’s becoming a billionaire running this place.

And $5/mo. is relatively cheap. Streaming services are all in the $20 ballpark and raise rates every year or two, and their rates aren’t opt-in. Even Humble Bundle wants $12/mo. for their subscription service.

wait, are they actually offering the option to pay for no ads? fucking FINALLY, if all it takes to avoid ads on the app and directly help pay for tumblr's servers is the price of a twitch sub then tell me where to sign up. god knows I use the site enough to justify it.

another reason this is good: if tumblr is able to support themself off of user subscriptions, they won’t have to cater to advertisers. that means advertisers won’t be get a say in what is and isn’t allowed on the site. that would be a very good thing. even if tumblr does still need to use advertising, if they’re able to have that money directly from users to fall back on, advertisers’ demands will have less pull.

tl;dr: if tumblr becomes primarily user-supported, users will have the ability to influence site policy, and advertisers won’t.