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kay · 2 months

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If anyone wants to know why every tech company in the world right now is clamoring for AI like drowned rats scrabbling to board a ship, I decided to make a post to explain what's happening.

(Disclaimer to start: I'm a software engineer who's been employed full time since 2018. I am not a historian nor an overconfident Youtube essayist, so this post is my working knowledge of what I see around me and the logical bridges between pieces.)

Okay anyway. The explanation starts further back than what's going on now. I'm gonna start with the year 2000. The Dot Com Bubble just spectacularly burst. The model of "we get the users first, we learn how to profit off them later" went out in a no-money-having bang (remember this, it will be relevant later). A lot of money was lost. A lot of people ended up out of a job. A lot of startup companies went under. Investors left with a sour taste in their mouth and, in general, investment in the internet stayed pretty cooled for that decade. This was, in my opinion, very good for the internet as it was an era not suffocating under the grip of mega-corporation oligarchs and was, instead, filled with Club Penguin and I Can Haz Cheezburger websites.

Then around the 2010-2012 years, a few things happened. Interest rates got low, and then lower. Facebook got huge. The iPhone took off. And suddenly there was a huge new potential market of internet users and phone-havers, and the cheap money was available to start backing new tech startup companies trying to hop on this opportunity. Companies like Uber, Netflix, and Amazon either started in this time, or hit their ramp-up in these years by shifting focus to the internet and apps.

Now, every start-up tech company dreaming of being the next big thing has one thing in common: they need to start off by getting themselves massively in debt. Because before you can turn a profit you need to first spend money on employees and spend money on equipment and spend money on data centers and spend money on advertising and spend money on scale and and and

But also, everyone wants to be on the ship for The Next Big Thing that takes off to the moon.

So there is a mutual interest between new tech companies, and venture capitalists who are willing to invest $$$ into said new tech companies. Because if the venture capitalists can identify a prize pig and get in early, that money could come back to them 100-fold or 1,000-fold. In fact it hardly matters if they invest in 10 or 20 total bust projects along the way to find that unicorn.

But also, becoming profitable takes time. And that might mean being in debt for a long long time before that rocket ship takes off to make everyone onboard a gazzilionaire.

But luckily, for tech startup bros and venture capitalists, being in debt in the 2010's was cheap, and it only got cheaper between 2010 and 2020. If people could secure loans for ~3% or 4% annual interest, well then a $100,000 loan only really costs $3,000 of interest a year to keep afloat. And if inflation is higher than that or at least similar, you're still beating the system.

So from 2010 through early 2022, times were good for tech companies. Startups could take off with massive growth, showing massive potential for something, and venture capitalists would throw infinite money at them in the hopes of pegging just one winner who will take off. And supporting the struggling investments or the long-haulers remained pretty cheap to keep funding.

You hear constantly about "Such and such app has 10-bazillion users gained over the last 10 years and has never once been profitable", yet the thing keeps chugging along because the investors backing it aren't stressed about the immediate future, and are still banking on that "eventually" when it learns how to really monetize its users and turn that profit.

The pandemic in 2020 took a magnifying-glass-in-the-sun effect to this, as EVERYTHING was forcibly turned online which pumped a ton of money and workers into tech investment. Simultaneously, money got really REALLY cheap, bottoming out with historic lows for interest rates.

Then the tide changed with the massive inflation that struck late 2021. Because this all-gas no-brakes state of things was also contributing to off-the-rails inflation (along with your standard-fare greedflation and price gouging, given the extremely convenient excuses of pandemic hardships and supply chain issues). The federal reserve whipped out interest rate hikes to try to curb this huge inflation, which is like a fire extinguisher dousing and suffocating your really-cool, actively-on-fire party where everyone else is burning but you're in the pool. And then they did this more, and then more. And the financial climate followed suit. And suddenly money was not cheap anymore, and new loans became expensive, because loans that used to compound at 2% a year are now compounding at 7 or 8% which, in the language of compounding, is a HUGE difference. A $100,000 loan at a 2% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, accrues to $121,899. A $100,000 loan at an 8% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, more than doubles to $215,892.

Now it is scary and risky to throw money at "could eventually be profitable" tech companies. Now investors are watching companies burn through their current funding and, when the companies come back asking for more, investors are tightening their coin purses instead. The bill is coming due. The free money is drying up and companies are under compounding pressure to produce a profit for their waiting investors who are now done waiting.

You get enshittification. You get quality going down and price going up. You get "now that you're a captive audience here, we're forcing ads or we're forcing subscriptions on you." Don't get me wrong, the plan was ALWAYS to monetize the users. It's just that it's come earlier than expected, with way more feet-to-the-fire than these companies were expecting. ESPECIALLY with Wall Street as the other factor in funding (public) companies, where Wall Street exhibits roughly the same temperament as a baby screaming crying upset that it's soiled its own diaper (maybe that's too mean a comparison to babies), and now companies are being put through the wringer for anything LESS than infinite growth that Wall Street demands of them.

Internal to the tech industry, you get MASSIVE wide-spread layoffs. You get an industry that used to be easy to land multiple job offers shriveling up and leaving recent graduates in a desperately awful situation where no company is hiring and the market is flooded with laid-off workers trying to get back on their feet.

Because those coin-purse-clutching investors DO love virtue-signaling efforts from companies that say "See! We're not being frivolous with your money! We only spend on the essentials." And this is true even for MASSIVE, PROFITABLE companies, because those companies' value is based on the Rich Person Feeling Graph (their stock) rather than the literal profit money. A company making a genuine gazillion dollars a year still tears through layoffs and freezes hiring and removes the free batteries from the printer room (totally not speaking from experience, surely) because the investors LOVE when you cut costs and take away employee perks. The "beer on tap, ping pong table in the common area" era of tech is drying up. And we're still unionless.

Never mind that last part.

And then in early 2023, AI (more specifically, Chat-GPT which is OpenAI's Large Language Model creation) tears its way into the tech scene with a meteor's amount of momentum. Here's Microsoft's prize pig, which it invested heavily in and is galivanting around the pig-show with, to the desperate jealousy and rapture of every other tech company and investor wishing it had that pig. And for the first time since the interest rate hikes, investors have dollar signs in their eyes, both venture capital and Wall Street alike. They're willing to restart the hose of money (even with the new risk) because this feels big enough for them to take the risk.

Now all these companies, who were in varying stages of sweating as their bill came due, or wringing their hands as their stock prices tanked, see a single glorious gold-plated rocket up out of here, the likes of which haven't been seen since the free money days. It's their ticket to buy time, and buy investors, and say "see THIS is what will wring money forth, finally, we promise, just let us show you."

To be clear, AI is NOT profitable yet. It's a money-sink. Perhaps a money-black-hole. But everyone in the space is so wowed by it that there is a wide-spread and powerful conviction that it will become profitable and earn its keep. (Let's be real, half of that profit "potential" is the promise of automating away jobs of pesky employees who peskily cost money.) It's a tech-space industrial revolution that will automate away skilled jobs, and getting in on the ground floor is the absolute best thing you can do to get your pie slice's worth.

It's the thing that will win investors back. It's the thing that will get the investment money coming in again (or, get it second-hand if the company can be the PROVIDER of something needed for AI, which other companies with venture-back will pay handsomely for). It's the thing companies are terrified of missing out on, lest it leave them utterly irrelevant in a future where not having AI-integration is like not having a mobile phone app for your company or not having a website.

So I guess to reiterate on my earlier point:

Drowned rats. Swimming to the one ship in sight.

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kay · 2 months

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A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:

We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally.

A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:

The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.

Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.

Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr.

Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.

When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.

Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:

Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.

Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.

Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.

We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.

We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.

We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.

— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.

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kay · 8 months

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I was tagged by @michaliz to grab a receipt over at receiptify! 🎧

tagging (this is, ofc, completely optional mandatory) @jubs @veekaybee @felix @chokaylit

#on a strokes binge because i’m still bummed about missing them live #no i won't be taking any questions about song no. 2 #we don’t talk about him #tag games #spotify #receiptify

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kay · 9 months

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I̖ ̸̳ͬh̼̦̐aͬ̋́͝v̴̨͖̮ḙ̶͠ ̭̈n̩o͉̘ͫ̍ ̴̩͔̘̟͌̒̆̆ẅ̩̚͟ȉ̢ͪl̀l ̸̢̣ͭ̈́t̴͚͘o͘͡ ͇͝l̺i̶͎͓v̬͟e͓͕ͯ̏ ͕ͥ

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kay · 10 months

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Tumblr is not getting rid of the chronological Dashboard!

Folks keep sending this feedback in, I've replied to 108 in the last hour, so I figured I'd write a post. Please reblog this, thank you!

Rest assured, [tumblr] is not getting rid of the chronological feed of blogs you follow. For details, please see this update from Staff over a week ago.

We also mentioned this on Changes the day after. Please do follow @changes, it only posts twice a week and is the best way to stay informed. (BTW, a lot of you are blocking Changes, WTF is up with that?) As for algorithms, we actually have several already in use, and those are the ones we're working to improve. You can see them under the For You tab, and turn them on or off for your Dashboard via the "Include posts liked by the blogs you follow," "Best stuff first," and "Based on your likes" toggles in your Dashboard settings. With those three toggled off, which will always be an option, your Dashboard feed will be solely posts from the blogs you follow sorted chronologically from newest to oldest. If you have any other feedback, please use the Feedback category in the support form. Submitting feedback there is like a firehose directly to our developers and designers. (Please of course be mindful of signal to noise. I know a firehose is tempting to abuse, but the more nonconstructive feedback we get, the harder it is to see the constructive feedback.)

And, of course, please stop sending concerns about removing the chronological feed. We are not removing the chronological feed of blogs you follow, we never will, and we never planned to.

Thanks!

#tumblr #psa

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kay · 10 months

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Tumblr Search Improvements?

What are the biggest things that we are missing or broken in Tumblr search? Feel free to share your pain points or ideas on how to make Tumblr search the best.

#tumblr search #user feedback #👀

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kay · 10 months

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This is what (almost) all of the Tumblr @staff team looks like in a room. 192 people here at the meetup! In my introduction I ended up doing an impromptu presentation on typography and how that brought me to open source. I originally learned about this stuff through our Automattic colleague @apartness, in this article on A List Apart The Trouble With EM ’n EN (and Other Shady Characters).

#staffcon2023 #tumblr

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kay · 10 months

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we are not removing the chronological feed

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kay · 10 months

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huh, this staff post is pretty much copy-pasted from our internal comms. good to see the transparency.

of course, peoples' gut reactions are coming from a place of ignorance...

"don't implement an algorithm" "the chronological feed is the only reason i'm here"

girl, tumblr has had an algorithm for years now! it's called "Best Stuff First" and you can turn it off in your dashboard settings. but it's not on by default out of malice, or stupidity... it's on by default because it works.

i don't really get it either, personally i hate when any feed or inbox is sorted any way other than purely chronologically. and i can't stand interruptions like recommendations or ads. but my curated experience only works because i put the effort into maintaining it, and most people... don't want to do that.

at no point does that post state that people curating their dashboards is a problem. at no point have i seen any plans, not even any suggestions, to ever drop the chronological dashboard or to stop supporting the curation experience that tumblr offers today.

the stated problem is that a good tumblr experience currently relies on user curation. for every person that "gets it" and winds up like, let's be honest, you or me, someone who's been here for years, there's a hundred other people who didn't get it and decided that twitter is less confusing.

#tumblr #signal boost

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kay · 10 months

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well this is cursed

#staffcon2023 #an extra hour in the ballpit pls? 🥺

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kay · 10 months

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Tumblr you have the opportunity to be the funniest bitch on the planet rn and set a reward for looking at more than 600 posts in a day

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kay · 10 months

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despite staff's recent changes, we're... winning??????

#i love this :)#prev tags>>#so the great porn crackdown was our version of a skate blade to the thigh?#slow and steady and waiting for everyone else to fuck up

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kay · 11 months

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Tumblr is weird because sometimes you go to a mutual's page and like/reblog half their content like you just broke in their house and imediately ate a little piece of all their food, tried out some of their clothes, sat on their sofa, and then just left.

And sometimes the mutual notices and does the same to your house.

And that's encouraged here. I love it.

#reddit migration #the way it should be

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kay · 11 months

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going from the reddit star wars fandom to the tumblr star wars fandom is giving me insane whiplash. the upside is that people aren’t bitching about every single imperfect detail in the entire franchise, but the downside is that i’ve seen more fanart of obi wan and commander cody tenderly knowing each other than i have ever wanted to in my life in the last three hours and it has probably fundamentally altered the way i interact with the entire franchise

#welcome :)#reddit migration

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kay · 11 months

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#poll

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kay · 11 months

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what's your favourite colour of the sky?

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kay · 1 year

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he thinks he's being so smooth with his little face on my leg. i SEE you, villain

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