Another Tumblr update; another erosion of functionality

I’m a bit bemused by the uproar that results from each Tumblr update. Because here’s the thing. Yahoo bought the established service Tumblr not because it wanted to run a blogging service but to buy an already-established user base. 

And now it is using this user base to carry out its basic business function: selling eyes for advertising. It doesn’t matter in the slightest how users feel about changes to the interface because we’re not their business target; we’re the product. We’re what they’re selling. And each of these interface changes are designed to further advertisers’ use of this product, us, by making it more ad-dense and less customizable to avoid the ads. 

So far, we’ve managed to talk around Tumblr. But the clock is ticking. That’s going to erode. And at every update I ask the same question: where are we going take our fandom and its conversations when Tumblr finally becomes unusable? It’ll be a death of a thousand cuts, but we’ll still be dead at the end. 

In my naivety I’m still dreaming of the independent, user-run ao3 version of tumblr. :/

It’s so sad but I guess it’s inevitable. LJ made enough user-unfriendly changes to drive me to tumblr; where will tumblr drive me?