#i also debated not using the network tags because it's like. one gif. not a set. but idk i like it i think it is niceys so. :•) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

amanda-agnes · 5 years

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Is Tumblr a blog or a social network site?

Before we dive into the debate on whether Tumblr is a blog or a social network site, it is ideal that we fully understand what each of the key terms mean.

A Blog

What’s a blog? A blog can be defined as an online diary or journal which is updated on a regular basis, written in an informal or conversational style. The content of a blog can range from texts, pictures, videos, animated GIFS or even memes. All of the posts in a blog are displayed in a reverse chronological order. With this said, upon visiting a blog, the latest post will appear first (Djuraskovic 2019).

Everybody has a story and would most probably like to share it. So with a blog which is alike that of a personal diary, it allows bloggers to express themselves and talk freely about any topic or opinion on their mind. They can opt to either share information with an exclusive group of people or the public, making it possible for them to set their blog for private or public viewing.

A Social Network Site

The next key term to look into is social network site. Again, how would we define a social network site? Facebook, Qzone, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, Youtube, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit and the list goes on and on. What do all these online platforms have in common you ask? Well, they all can be summed up as social networking sites.

With the blooming amount of users (approximately 2 billion users) using social networking sites in 2015, they are now more than sixty popular social networking sites available for the digital communities out there (Jamie 2018). Going back to the question, a social network site is an online platform that allows users to create an account, be it private or public, to interact with other users on the site. The site normally brings like-minded communities together. They are like-minded in a sense that they may share common interests, believes, principles, goals, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections.

So what is Tumblr?

youtube

Being fairly unfamiliar with Tumblr myself, this video is able to give a rough idea of what Tumblr is. It is a scrapbook where users get to post texts, photos, videos and audio clips, all of which online. Users can update their feed with what interests them and this in turn draws in others with similar interest. It also allows for sharing or reblogging from one Tumblr blog to another Tumblr blog.

So is Tumblr a blog? Yes. Tumblr is one of the most basic blogging platforms available. It is less tech-savvy and easy to use (Palandro 2016). It supports text-based posts, but most Tumblr bloggers would opt for its visual aspects, namely photos, graphics, artwork, video of even GIFS. If we were to compare Tumblr with other blogging platforms such as WordPress.org, Tumblr is more of a “mirco-blog” and has more aspects of a social networking site. It is often depicted as Twitter, but with more words (O’Gara 2014). WordPress.org blogs are one of the most popular blogging platforms out there. Reason being that it comes with better customizability and functionality. However, these abilities incur a price for both its domain name and web hosting services, not to mention all the other plug-ins. On the other hand, Tumblr is totally free and ideal for quick posting and reblogging.

Moving on, is Tumblr a social network site? Again, I would say yes, it is. It is discussed earlier that the core definition of a social network site is for interaction between its communities. I will be comparing the affordances of Tumblr with existing social networking sites, ie Facebook and Instagram. These three platforms allow users to follow people, or in Facebook we call it adding people. The action of following one another creates a social connection whereby users share content which each other, be it texts, music, images, videos, personal updates or thoughts and so forth. There is more interactivity on Facebook compared to Tumblr, however, some form of interactivity still exists within Tumblr. Facebook allows you to post not only on your own profile, but also on the accounts of others. Tumblr may not have this feature but it allows users to reblog the posts of others, and also like a person’s post. In comparison with Instagram, Tumblr and Instagram are alike whereby they support hashtags and tagging posts. This makes them easily searchable in the entire database, provided that the account is public.

With all the above said, is Tumblr a blog? Yes. Is it a networking site? Yes. This is because it fulfils aspects of a blog and a social networking site, one way or another.

References

Djuraskovic, O 2019, What is a Blog? – The Definition of Blog, Blogging, and Blogger, FirstSideGuide, viewed 29 March 2019, <https://firstsiteguide.com/what-is-blog/>

Jamie, 2018, 60+ Social Networking Sites You Need to Know About, Make a Website Hub, viewed 29 March 2019, <https://makeawebsitehub.com/social-media-sites/>

Palandro, JC 2016, Should I Use WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, or Squarespace for My Blog?, Creative Market, viewed 30 March 2019, <https://creativemarket.com/blog/should-i-use-wordpress-tumblr-blogger-or-squarespace-for-my-blog>

O’Gara, J 2014, WordPress vs. Tumblr vs. Blogger, Digital Trends, viewed 3o March 2019, <https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/wordpress-vs-tumblr-vs-blogger/>

#MDA20009 #digitalcommunities #week4 #tumblr #blog #socialnetworksite #sns

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brujebutchdraws · 6 years

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this post features talk of abuse, ableism, pathologization, ABA therapy, forced medication and dehumanization. please do skip it if this might put your mental health at risk. the r slur will be spelled as such “r.t.rd”.

spoilers for the Undertale game have to be looked out for too.

links will be in bold.

[seven images of the video game Undertale’s character Flowey, one being a gif, and the six others being the same images, but transparent and composing the gif. Flowey is on his pink-reddish computer browsing internet resources. there is a gay flag sticker on his computer’s logo. he also has various reactions, an ‘owo what’s this’ one, a surprised one, contemplative ones, a sceptical one, and an angry one, when the computer brings up the puzzle piece symbol.

upside of him is written the tag Go Red Instead. downside him is written the tag actually autistic. both are in big red letters. on his left is written “support autistic people” followed by “by learning about us ! especially if you hate us ! don’t hate stuff you don’t know, jerk !!”, then on his right by the following:

“browse tags about us”

“respect our identity regardless of how nice we are to you. disliking someone, even for good reasons, does NOT excuse ABLEISM”

“look up why ‘high/low functionning’ are bullshit, why our symbol is a horizontal 8, symbol of infinity, why autism speaks is BAD, consider joining a facebook group about autism open to allistics, or following blogs !”

“don’t use us as your personal educator or data base.”

“do your own research, google terms you don’t know, don’t ask us for easy to find definitions.”

each phrases are preceded by upside-down red-lined hearts.]

this is april month, autistic people awareness’ month, so i’m here to teach anyone who’d listen a bit about smtg from autistic people.

#(Go)ReadInstead is a movement of the autistic community against autism speaks’ “light it blue” movement. autism speaks promotes the idea that autistic people are sick, compare us to cancer patients, and “light it up blue” to “raise awareness about the Bad Autism we must seek and destroy out of our children”. it is a logic of abuse apologism and ableist conceptions of a neurodivergency that is no illness and neither lethal nor dangerous to anyone, caused by old myths and outdated fears of demons and faeries/changelins.

the character Flowey is a jerk. he is a liar, manipulative, plays with people’s lives and laughs at the player’s/Frisk’s misery in the game. he is, by all means, an antagonist, and a bully. he is also, canonically, able of doing good. of learning. trying to get better. he is not inherently mean, but was because it was easier for him. he is as such the best representation of ableist allistics i can think of in the game, and thus i illustrate my point with him.

i already made a post about good allistic allyship in general with Frisk’s. it also has links to organizations to donate to. Toriel’s informs of good allistic parenting, and Grillby’s, of good allistic friendship and romantic/sexual relationship doing.

this, is a post of ressources.

i invite you to course through my #actuallyautistic tag on my main, elitigre, for more insight on many things autistic.

my askbox on said blog is also open for you to ask some things on being autistic. do keep in mind i’d be answering on my free time, not as a job.

then, the tags i mentioned a few times up here are at your dispostion, again, and so are #autism acceptance, #asperger, #autistic rant, #autistic voice, #red instead, #boycott autism speaks, #social model of disability, #asd. there are more to look for.

a list of online resources sites you want to know about (keep in mind some of these are held by benevolent people bloggin bout autism on the side. not your personal educators) :

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network’s tumblr blog

Happyhands.toys’ tumblr blog, to learn about stimming.

Safechewablethings , tumblr blog, about stimming too.

Sounds like you have a lot to learn about autistic people but ok, a facebook group, self-explanatory.

Growing up Aspie, tumblr blog, who makes comics about their own life.

Positivelyautistic, a tumblr blog.

Neuroqueerpositivity, tumblr blog.

Autistic-Answers, tumblr blog.

Autism in women, tumblr blog.

The Spoon Theory written by Christine Miserandino, something to consult to understand the spoonie culture, that applies to all disabled people.

more various resources, this good list first, by Bob Wood on facebook :

why it’s cool and encouraged for you to stand up for us.

why you really got to let us define ourselves and even other autistic people should.

what kind of behaviour you really should avoid.

why autistic kids need to be left at peace.

why stimming is good.

why autism speaks is bullshit.

why functionning labels are b a d.

why trying to “cure” a child from being autistic is actually abuse.

why we sometimes talk in seemingly pretentious fashion.

why aba therapy and variations are disgusting.

why autism moms need to fucking stop.

a tidbit about “indigo child”.

why it’s important to learn about empathy and compassion and moral judgements and to not label autistic people as heartless.

why you gotta be critical about what “made-for-autistic-kids” brands you support and promote.

Thanks you for your attention- Uidelsib E.N.

companion pieces about autistic people: Papyrus, Chara, sans.

companion pieces about allistic allyship: Frisk, Toriel, Grillby.

the character Flowey, from the video game Undertale (2015), belongs to Toby Fox.

this post is not invitation for debate on the autistic spectrum being an illness, harmful, or how Actually Autism Speaks Is Good And ABA Saves Lives.

all attempts to do so will be blocked.

#GoRedInstead #redinstead #actuallyautistic #undertale #ut: flowey #tw abuse #FuckAutismSpeaks #FuckLightItBlue #fanart #digital art

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rachelgoldsmithblog · 5 years

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Is Tumblr a blog or a social network site? The Great Debate

Blog numero uno

Since the website ‘Tumblr’ burst onto the World Wide Web in 2007, it has been heavily debated whether it is a blogging or social network site due to structure of how the program is built and the features it offers.

Today I strive to answer this age-old question, by looking deeper into blogging sites and social media sites, dissecting them, investigating, understand, and sharing my findings with you, my curious readers.

A blog (shortening of “weblog”) is an online journal or informational website displaying information in the reverse chronological order, with latest posts appearing first. It is a platform where a writer or even a group of writers share their views on an individual subject. (Djuraskovic, Ogi 2018)

Tumblr is unlike any blogging platform that has ever come before it.

And without going into too much detail, here’s the entire history of blogging to get you up to speed:

1994:College undergrad Justin Hall creates links.net to be able to share his writing online

You can heck out what it looked like in 1994 here (http://links.net/vita/web/original.html)

1997:The term weblog was created, after previous online posts were called ‘online diaries or personal pages

1998:Open Diary launches. This site was the first blogging post that allowed members of the community to leave posts on each other’s blogs.

2003:Word Press & Type Pad are born. These sites saw the beginning of people trying to turn bluffing into a career.

2004-2006:In 2004 blogger Steve Garfield decided to hook his camera up to his laptop and upload short clips to his personal site. 2

After the launch of the Huffington post in 2005, bloggers began to cover news, culture and sporting events-thereby creating the title “cyber journalist”

2006:Twitter is created-offering a different term of blogging (microblogging) where it was encouraged to post small blogs. Currently users are limited to 280 characters per post (Twitter, 2018)

2007: Tumblr is created

(Blogging.com, 2017)

Tumblr is extremely diverse in the way it was constructed, as it allows users to do much more than simply post a blog to a page and let users read it. To begin to understand the idea behind Tumblr, its best to go straight to the source. Tumblr themselves explain the site by stating ‘Join millions of people in millions of communities across millions of #tags. See something you love? Reblog it to your Tumblr and start a conversation. Or just lurk, if you’re feeling shy. No big deal.’

Tumblr allows you to create and personalise your very own page, where you can share posts, images, videos, blogs and gifs. The site not only allows you to post your own original content but also share other users content as well.

What makes Tumblr special to other blogging websites is that it gives you the choice to be ‘alone’ or connect with other users. Tumblr has incorporated a large social media aspect into their site, with the ability to follow other users, repost posts, like posts, comment and direct message other users - just like you can on Social Media sites such as Facebook, Twitter & Instagram.

Fun Fact: Tumblr currently has 463.2 million blogs and 171.4 billions posts to their site (Tumblr.com, April 2019)

Ok so that’s blogging & Tumblr, but what is social media & how is it different?

In simple terms, social media is defined as ‘web-based communication tools that enable people to interact with each other by both sharing and consuming information.’ (Nations, Daniel 2019.)

The social media landscape is evolving so rapidly, with more features being introduced quicker than we can say

Most of us will be able to identify a wide range of social media platforms, especially the very popular ones such as Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter & Instagram. After all, 3.4 billion of us are actively using social media (Hootsuite, January 2019)

What else is interesting is that the average American internet user has 7.1 social media accounts (Global Web Index, 2019).

If Tumblr isn’t social media, then why is Twitter?

Twitter was introduced as a microblogging site, where time poor users could share and read posts quickly and efficiently

Users were also able to find microblogs, or ‘tweets’ on topics that interested them via hashtags. Hashtags are not only a way to find tweets, but enabled users to create communities of like-minded people or even to engage with and create online debates and enemies.

Just quickly: Microblogging is “an online broadcast medium that exists as a specific form of blogging. A microblog differs from a traditional blog in that its content is typically smaller in both actual and aggregated file size” (Wikipedia)

Twitter quickly became almost a world wide conversation between users, and because of its speed, community and structure has been labeled as a social media website.

Twitter and Tumblr have a lot of similarities in the way users can operate the site . Although it has been said over and over that it is a lot harder to create a large following on Tumblr than it is on Twitter, ultimately the same goals can be achieved on either site, whether that be a large amount of people seeing your posts, or gaining a lot of followers.

So, Is Tumblr a blog or social media site?

Generally speaking, social media sites allow users to follow other uses, view each others content, re-post and share content such as images & videos, and like/react to content. - Sounds very similar to what Tumblr does, hey?

Tumblr has incorporated aspects from nearly each and every social media platform, whilst keeping a strong hold on blogging, which leads me to believe Tumblr is a hybrid of both blogging and social media. There are sites out there just for blogging, and their are sites for just social networking, but both, thats Tumblr.

Kind regards,

Rach xx

Referencing:

‘What is Social Media’, Lifewire, 26th March 2019, Viewed April 4th 2019 https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-social-media-explaining-the-big-trend-3486616

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apocalypticxlove · 7 years

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Here’s the Baby. {Request}

Word Count: 2.1k **Rated MA for mature audiences only! NEGAN’S MOUTH!** Notes: Thank you @unchartedghoul for requesting! Writing pregnancy was new to me, so I did the best I could, I hope you enjoy! Tagging @negans-network also for anyone else that has requested a fic like this.~ Pregnant Reader x Over Protective Negan = Father Negan and bonus baby scene! No smut.

This beautiful (heartbreaking) gif doesn’t belong to me! Just the one I kept looking at to get motivation.~ *v*

“Where the fuck do you think you’re goin’?”Negan’s gruff voice questioned, the once dark den now brighter than the sun, those damn factory lights, my husband had Lucille in his hand ready to attack. Frozen, I stared at Negan in shock, he was dead asleep just seconds ago, I checked! His brows furrowed immediately once he had another look at me with the lights on. I was currently in the middle of sneaking out, my hand on the door knob, my shoes hung over my shoulder against my back, to keep quiet, right next to my packed bag. Negan blinked slowly, moving to the side to take a moment, he grasped at his jaw rubbing at his face and let out a laugh, his mind unable to wrap around what he was seeing. “Don’t even think about fuckin’ lyin’ to me, babygirl.”

I heard his words, but I didn’t want to hurt his feeling, I loved my husband, I really did but he was— a little much at times. Biting against the side of my lip, I gulped down the sudden lump in my throat, trying to find the simplest and kindest way to tell him I just needed to get away from this place. “I just need a walk.” I mumbled, looking away from his eyes for a moment before looking back.

“You’re lyin’.” Negan replied.

I gasped slightly, taken back. I always forgot just exactly how well Negan knew me, “…I—I…”

“You looked at the goddamn ground. You always look at the goddamn fuckin’ ground when you lie, (Y/N). Truth. Now.”

“I–I… .goddammit! I need a break from you!” I blurted out. Negan was always right about communication and if we were to keep this marriage sane we needed to talk and if he wanted the truth, he could fucking have it! “You are everywhere Negan, and I mean every-fucking-where! You’re hovering over me and I can’t fucking breathe! I can’t eat, I can’t go outside, I can’t even take a shit without you biting at my heels!” I groaned out, my hands moving up to grab against the side of my head in frustration, my fingers digging into my hair, gripping roughly at it. “You won’t leave me be! Ever!”

“You can’t fuckin’ breathe because you have a livin’ goddamn asskickin’ child inside of you!” Negan countered, dropping Lucille and rushing over to my side with his arms wide open. I threw my arms up in defense, stopping him in his tracks. Negan paused once again registering the situation, his brows furrowed and he gripped at the bridge of his nose in utter annoyance, “I won’t leave you alone because you’re my goddamn wife, I don’t fuckin’ have to! You’re mine and so is that motherfuckin’ baby!”

I huffed out in protest to his words, no matter how true or loud they were and any other day hearing them would have made me smile but I was being trapped like a wild animal. Everywhere I went, Negan was there— and no, not all at once but the moment I started to show, his over protectiveness multiplied. I wasn’t allowed outside the rooms after eight, then it was after seven, and now, in my last trimester, I am now not allowed outside at all. I couldn’t do anything without telling him nor make a move without him suddenly on my case. Negan began to send people out to do his business, refusing to go himself, knowing all too well that if he left me alone, I could make great use of it— like now.

“You’re breakin’ my heart here, (Y/N). I’m just tryin’ to keep you and my fuckin’ child safe.” Negan stepped closer and I stepped back. I just wanted a breather, get some air that didn’t involve or include my husband, and before I knew it, I was out the door and running away from him and the den. “W–What the shit!?” I heard Negan yell from behind me before both the sounds of our naked feet hit the pavement, echoing through the Sanctuary. I cannot believe he was actually running after me, I also couldn’t believe both of us grown ass adults were really running in the middle of the night!

“Leave me alone Negan!” I managed to reply before feeling my sudden energy boost start to drain from my body. This child of ours fed off of me more than I could eat in a day, which thankfully because of my husband and my title as the first wife, I was able to eat as much as this child wanted. Turning a corner, I neared the market area where I could easily maneuver through and loose him but I needed to stop. My lungs were more useful now that the baby dropped down to my lower half not kicking them anymore but breathing was still a hard task to do. Gaining twice my average weight and the very healthy child inside of me, my body ached more and more each day because of this, it was hard to breathe or do much of anything and running just made my aching legs scream.

Negan quickly caught up to me, because the moment I stopped I couldn’t really move again, one of his hands pressing gently against my lower back the minute he was close enough, “can we just… . Pause for a second.” Negan murmured into my ear, helping me straighten my back again, the soreness causing me to wince out. My husband shook his head before staring down at me with that stupidly sexy smirk of his, “You had this planned all day, didn’t you, you little shit?”

“You know me all to we—” I began but a sudden tickling feeling down my legs and the sounds of water hitting the floor caught my attention. Both Negan and I looked down at the floor, surrounding both our feet was a large puddle, my hand quickly moved in between my thighs, “D–Did I just–?” I stuttered, lifting the hand to my face, sniffing quickly at my fingers, which thankfully wasn’t covered in urine— I know, so disgusting, but this can happen when a large baby kicks the fuck out of your bladder three to four times in one second, you piss yourself. Bam! Welcome to motherhood!

Then it hit me, “…my water broke…” I whispered, or did I? I don’t know!

“What was that?” my husband answered, more focused on getting out of the puddle.

“My fucking water broke!” I screamed, my hands pressing against my stomach. My eyes moved from my swollen belly and up to my husband who was looking at me but at the same time past me. “Hell– ahh!” all of a sudden I was lifted from the ground and pressed tightly against Negan’s chest, he had lifted me and began to run back towards the den. He had forgotten to grab his 2-way-radio to call the doctor.

It’s been five hours since my water broke and the contractions smacked me in the face, they were still lengths apart but fuck, were they getting more and more painful. I had pushed my shirt up over my belly, feeling hot with it against my skin as Negan rubbed roughly at my tensed back, I was hugging around his neck while he leaned down in front of me. I squeezed down on his shoulders as another contraction began again, my stomach muscles squeezing so tightly, it lifted up to the right. “Ohhhh…goooood… .fuuuuck!” I groaned into his neck as the pain wracked my body, causing my breath to hitch in my throat while I pushed. “You gotta’ breathe (Y/N).” Sherry cooed as she pushed my hair away from my face and brought a cool towel to my forehead, forcing a sigh from my lips. I began pushing within a few minutes of my water breaking, no matter how much everyone tried to stop me, this baby wanted out today, not giving anyone time to set up my room in the clinic.

The den was where my child would be born, my sister wives all helped the doctor prepare the room and two of Negan’s most trusted men moved the couches to leave me more space. The contraction finally stopped and I took this time to really breathe, I lifted off of my husband and slowly paced around the small room again. The baby wiggled inside of me continuously, making the skin of my stomach crawl, only stopping when a contraction forced it still. Speaking of contractions, another one forced me to hunch over and moan out, Negan immediately coming to my aid again. “Baby. Baby, you gotta’ lay down.”

“Listen to him, (Y/N).” The doctor added, “her contractions are now three minutes apart, it’s time.”

“Simon. Dwight. Thanks for helpin’, now go outside and watch the fuckin’ doors. I don’t fuckin’ care if the world is magically endin’ twice… do not let anyone. And I mean anyone inside, do you understand?”

“Understood, sir.” Both spoke in unison, shutting the door behind them as they left the room.

“Let’s leave them be,” I overheard Tanya say while the other wives nodded and quickly started to leave the room, live natural birth wasn’t for everyone and I really didn’t want an audience. I could feel my face getting hot as I pushed harder, I was focusing everything I had on pushing, forgetting I needed air almost every time I felt the need to. Negan helped settle me down flat against the floor, leaning into his upper body while the doctor moved in between my thighs, checking to see if things were progressing smoothly or not. “Just by the look of things, the child will be here any minute. Keep up the good work mama.”

I ignored the man, feeling like I might pop a blood vessel pushing so hard, “If you gotta’ move, go ahead and move babygirl. I’ll be right fuckin’ here, I won’t leave your side.” Negan reassured me, his lips pressing hard into the side of my head but I could tell he was nervous, by how hard he was breathing and how sweaty his palms were. But then I started to feel the ring of fire down below and forgot all about my husband’s existence, I needed to scream, so I did.

My eyes suddenly opened, releasing me from the deepest sleep I have ever had in my life, what time was it — what year was it? My head didn’t lift from the pillow and I debated on just going back to bed but I suddenly remembered who kept me in agonizing pain for sixteen hours. “…aa…ahh…” I winced attempting to lift from the bed but failing miserably. I wanted to sit up but the pain from the stitches in my vagina refused to let that happen, I sighed out while slumping back down on the bed, my eyes moving back up to scan the room. They quickly landed on the man huddled on the couch next to the windows, his legs comfortably resting on the couch and his back turned towards me. “Negan.”

“Mommy’s awake…” I heard him coo out, lifting slowly and carefully from the couch, when he finally turned to me, I was taken back by his wide smile and the sight of him holding our son brought tears to my eyes. “How the fuck is he so small?” my husband whispered while carefully sliding into bed, I laughed at how silly this incredibly tall, large and dangerous man attempted to keep such a tiny, tiny being safe inside of both his large arms.

“He really is tiny.” I beamed, lifting a sore arm up to gently caress the dark cowlick sticking up from his head, just like his father already.

“Great fuckin’ job babe, he’s goddamn perfect. I’m tearin’ up.” Negan gushed, gently laying our son down in between us, placing a big hand over his tiny body. He couldn’t keep his hands off of him and just seeing him this way made me fall for him all over again, the only good thing that came out of this end of the world crap was because I found Negan out there. Negan helped keep me alive and now he has given me the most precious gift, I wouldn't be attempting another escape from this haven ever again.

Slumping down to press my head into my pillow once more, I wiggled down to be face-to-face with the cutest pinkest face in the world. My eyes traced every inch of this child’s face, never wanting to miss a thing even though all he was doing was sleeping. My finger pressed gently against his little nose making him move slightly, he had Negan’s nose which made my smile wider, I had given birth to another much smaller Negan, “this world won’t stand a chance.”

“You’re goddamn fuckin’ right.”

“And you have got to start watching your mouth around the baby.”

dem tags for any negan related fics by me: @ali-pennell @negansxlucille @buckybarnesisalittleshit @sub-miss-me @britbrat7502 @wadeyourebarelyalive @nattiedaunicorn

dem tags for people who liked father negan fic idea: @itssimplybri @haley-the-human @riverdalerandomness @littlestpotato @avecxplaisir @kellyn1604 @incorectly @alextherotten @littlefearsdoodles @ohmyneganimagination-twd

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nickyschneiderus · 5 years

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Mastodon is crumbling—and many blame its creator

It’s 9am on a Tuesday, early morning by cybre.space’s standards. Few have logged on to the microblogging social network, and it shows: A follower feed filled with more than 31 users updates at a snail’s pace. It’s much slower than one would expect on Twitter. But then again, cybre.space isn’t Twitter. It runs off a decentralized social media software called Mastodon, and is part of a much larger network of Mastodon communities.

Over on Twitter, users post jokes about President Donald Trump, this time of a fast food feast he prepared for the Clemson Tigers football team amid the ongoing government shutdown. But the words “Trump” and “shutdown” only appear once each on cybre.space’s “local timeline,” which shows posts on the site and any other connected “instances,” or Mastodon communities. It’s even more barren on this reporter’s home timeline: No one is talking about hamberders.

Posting works differently on cybre.space than Twitter. It’s much more like living in a queer house, one that prefers to talk about political theory over current events. Some users chat about democratic socialism and queer identity, while others talk about games, music, fandom, or their difficulties navigating trans healthcare. One user posts a message that reads “re: hrt” with a few lines about their hormone replacement regimen hidden underneath, accessible only via the “show more” content warning (CW) button next to it. Another boosts a post praising Tallahassee by the Mountain Goats, calling it a “visceral experience.”

Cybre.space has just over 2,000 users. Over on Mastodon’s flagship community, Mastodon.social, there are over 300,000 users. But despite the larger userbase, discussions are even less political. On the community’s local timeline, one user troubleshoots installing a Linux distribution. Another shares a news story about a man who tried to turn his home into a restaurant. A third links to an article about Gearbox Software’s Randy Pitchford. Here, Trump is not the sun; tech, gaming, and the occasional NSFW post largely prevail. It’s as if the outside world doesn’t exist.

Mastodon

Visiting Mastodon feels like strolling through the first “apolitical” social network. There’s no urgency to talk about the Trump administration’s policies or break down ongoing political events—but while that may seem like a pleasant reprieve, it’s actually an indication that all is not well on Mastodon.

Mastodon has long been hailed as a friendly and inclusive safe haven, one by and for people who want the far-right out of social media. But instead of losing the far-right, the platform has lost all politics entirely. That’s a problem for its queer userbase, who cannot be apolitical by nature. Being queer isn’t a hobby; it’s a political identity. And so while Mastodon seems fine on the surface, there is a much larger schism at play across the social media project regarding who should run it: its community, or its creator.

The creator

It’s impossible to understand Mastodon without considering its architect and understanding its structure. Eugen “Gargron” Rochko, a 25-year-old German programmer of Russian and Jewish heritage, began working on Mastodon while studying computer science at the German public university Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jenahad (or “University of Jena” in English). Rochko had experience with decentralized social networks as a teenager, and by 2010 he had already decided Twitter’s corporate-driven structure just wasn’t the proper way to handle online messaging. But it wasn’t until early 2016 that he decided to sit down and look at GNU social, a decentralized social network software and precursor of sorts to Mastodon.

Originally, Rochko considered making an app for GNU social, but he ultimately decided to start from scratch and create a custom implementation of GNU social’s protocol. This became Mastodon.

Simply put, Mastodon is a microblogging software where users can communicate with one another through character-limited messages, called “toots.” The project, which released to the public in October 2016, supports embeds for images, GIFs, and videos, and there’s even a “boost” system similar to Twitter’s retweets. But Mastodon’s biggest feature by far is its “fediverse.” Instead of throwing every account into a gigantic melting pot on one main website, Mastodon users can splinter off into dozens upon dozens of miniature Mastodon instances, which are servers governed by their own rules and with their own communities. These create one large federation, and while each of these instances—like Cybre.space—runs off of Mastodon’s software, they simultaneously exist separately from one another and as part of a larger whole. Instance users can interact with one another or blacklist other instances.

Mastodon is a free and open-source software that functions entirely on community contributions via GitHub. Over Discord, Rochko described Mastodon’s development flow: Features, changes, or fixes are submitted as pull requests on GitHub. A contributor codes the feature for Mastodon within the pull request. The pull request must pass through tests for review. But even if a pull request passes those tests, “only the owner of the project can decide” whether a pull request is merged, as Rochko puts it—although he has given that ability to “three or four more people than me” for redundancy’s sake (“in case I get hit by a bus,” as he says).

Since graduating in 2016, Rochko has given Mastodon his full attention. Today, he works on Mastodon full-time with support from over 900 patrons on Patreon (at the moment, he receives over $4,400 per month in total, or over $50,000 per year). But he’s far from the only person making Mastodon a reality, and many of its users take umbrage both with what features Rochko implements and how he credits the project’s contributors.

Mastodon’s former project manager, Maloki, founded a separative community that criticizes Rochko’s “Benevolent Dictator For Life” (BDFL) model for negatively impacting “already vulnerable and marginalized people.” Many queer critics feel Rochko implements features into Mastodon that make it easier for users to discover—and by extension, harass—people of color, queer posters, women, trans folks, and other marginalized groups.

The community

Decentralized social networking isn’t a new idea, nor is the “fediverse” as a concept. But the Mastodon project quickly became popular with queer and left-wing users after Trump’s election in November 2016. Most of Mastodon’s early users shared a common background: Some were furries, others worked in tech, some even developed video games. Many identified as queer and trans. As one Mastodon user said on Nov. 23, 2016: “Holy shit everyone Mastodon is basically gay furry-adjacent Twitter without risk of racist eggs, get here immediately and help us en-culture.”

After Trump’s election, Rochko paraded Mastodon as a Nazi-free alternative to Twitter, pointing out that Mastodon.social, which is personally administered by Rochko, bans Nazis. To this day, Mastodon is the progressive Twitter alternative, one repeatedly praised everywhere from Motherboard to Wired.

But Mastodon’s politics are more complicated than merely banning Nazis. White, queer, middle-class tech workers migrating to Mastodon treated it as an escape from the outside world. CWs effectively hid politics from plain sight, and to this day, the occasional Trump conversation is concealed and tagged under the warning “uspol.” This turned Mastodon into an apolitical space, one where users debate queer theory but try to keep the outside world’s happenings out.

Mastodon’s apolitical approach reflected larger problems at play on the platform. One early Mastodon adopter named “voz” left the platform in February 2017 after feeling increased alienation from Mastodon’s predominantly white userbase. Voz, who is a brown queer trans woman, considered Mastodon “a very white space” that gradually mirrored real-life versions of gentrification: White users made the service “more and more hostile to the Black and Brown users” that were among Mastodon’s initial adopters.

Mastodon

“Whiteness insists on hiding itself, and a veneer of respectability given by ‘banning (overt) Nazis’ is really just a kind of fig leaf for the more mundane white supremacy at work there,” voz said via Keybase.

part of why Im not as active on Mastodon anymore even tho I think its a more ethical funding model is cuz its full of fragile white gentle porcelain dolls earning $150k/year in tech calling me ableist for making them uncomfortable by talking about politics under a content warning

— Shel (@DataPup_) December 14, 2018

Some people of color blamed Rochko, arguing he doesn’t properly moderate Mastodon.social to protect people of color from abuse. Others came to believe Mastodon’s hyperfixation on avoiding politics fundamentally hurt users of color, eventually driving them away.

“What sort of culture thinks talking about politics needs to be behind a content warning? Is me talking about the intersections of my life and society in need of a CW because it’s political? What the hell?” writer and performer Creatrix Tiara asked in April 2017.

The process and the politics

Mastodon’s community and its development cannot be separated from one another: Whoever controls development also steers how its users interact with one another. For example, more privacy and anti-harassment features mean better protection for marginalized users. But these requests don’t always align with Rochko’s vision for Mastodon.

Mastodon’s development process is pretty standard in the free open-source software community, but Mastodon isn’t a standard open-source project, and its queer users have long fought with Rochko over how credit is given out for features. Hoodie Aida Krisstina, who uses fae/faer pronouns, helped push for Mastodon’s content warning system in November 2016 by opening an issue on GitHub after the feature was “born from the community consciousness,” as fae said.

In a Dreamwidth post from July, fae sharply criticized Rochko, arguing queer users initially “begged” him for feature changes to support the community that ultimately turned Mastodon into what it is today.

“Evidently sometimes what [Rochko] does is take the pull request, close it, use that code as a starting point, then later commit it himself,” Krisstina said in an email. “This, tied with how [Rochko] credits others (read: he doesn’t, except for GitHub commit history), means that there is very little evidence, and virtually no recognition for the folx that actually made a feature happen. It’s not unrealistic to state that without the pull request, and without my GitHub issue, there would never have been content warnings.”

Rochko admits that contributors weren’t originally acknowledged in release notes. However, he argues there are an enormous number of feature requests and bug reports, and that he is “a little more ambivalent” toward crediting users for making feature requests, as GitHub automatically records their requests, and “they’re asking somebody else to put in the work and everybody’s got ideas.”

Granted, Rochko thinks it would be “fair” to credit users who come up with a thorough design as part of a feature request, although he claims he hasn’t “seen any feature requests that actually designed a system.”

“Pull requests take higher precedence because people actually put in the work to contribute,” Rochko said. “Also translators, I would say, are a step below that, as translators who submit translations for various languages. So they put in the work of actually writing code and submitting it and I agree that those people should be credited.”

Queer users seem to view the issue differently.

Shel Raphen served as a developer for Mastodon from January to spring 2017 and worked as a “de facto” volunteer coordinator, project manager, and community manager for Mastodon during its boom in April 2017 (or “Eternal April,” as Raphen calls it). Raphen, who uses ze/hir and they/them pronouns, first joined Mastodon in the “November wave” that hit the project after the U.S. 2016 presidential election, one month after Mastodon was officially announced. They became interested in Mastodon thanks to the decentralized fediverse’s potential to protect marginalized users.

“When everyone joined there wasn’t per-post privacy or CWs or anything that people associate with Mastodon today,” Raphen said over Twitter DM. “The new wave of queer users came up with, designed, pushed for, and implemented those features.”

Because Mastodon relies on the BDFL system, ongoing conflict with Rochko can quickly become messy. In one case, Raphen said that they designed a welcome modal in April 2017 that Rochko “hated” and harshly criticized, calling it “stupid.” Raphen confronted Rochko over the modal, telling him that he has to “thank people and appreciate their work” on the project.

After Rochko introduced his own alternate welcome modal, Raphen claims community pressure led Rochko to add Raphen’s design—without crediting Raphen in the project’s release notes.

“I went in and edited the release notes myself and added myself, since I had that privilege, and Eugen got pissed and removed all my privileges and basically booted me from the project,” Raphen said.

When asked to comment on the incident, Rochko stressed that he should ultimately have the right to edit and tweak the onboarding modal as need be.

“I wanted to change some stuff around and they were very upset when I just touched anything and that’s not how it should work,” Rochko said. “If I have some feedback about how this onboarding modal should work, I should be able to change it without causing a drama.”

Raphen’s treatment was a breaking point for Mastodon’s queer community, and its users began openly criticizing Rochko’s control over Mastodon. Two weeks later, Mastodon user and GitHub contributor Allie Hart wrote a post-mortem called “Mourning Mastodon” and a follow-up post, “Mourning What Now?!?!”—both of which Raphen considers “Important Historic Documents” for Mastodon’s history.

In “Mourning Mastodon,” Hart argues its initial leftist, furry, queer, and disabled base was the “most vocal and most frequent of Mastodon’s unpaid contributors,” designing Mastodon’s features from November 2016 to April 2017. After Graham Linehan and Dan Harmon temporarily moved to Mastodon.social and an April 2017 Motherboard story sparked media attention in the project, a new base arrived at the site, one that gave the project’s queer community less leverage in demanding changes from Rochko, Hart argues.

“The recent influx of users to the platform has brought with it new contributors and an expanded revenue stream that has rendered the original nearly obsolete,” Hart wrote in April 2017. “Queer users could leave en masse without harming the project’s survivability, which means that the reciprocity of their relationship has been terminated—queer users still depend on the project, but the project no longer depends on its queer users.”

Granted, Mastodon’s queer community isn’t perfect, and some of the same criticisms leveled against the Mastodon project could be made against the white queer community found on the service from the very beginning. For instance, Hart claims Mastodon’s white queer community would simultaneously demand a bigger voice in development while driving queer people of color off the site. The gentrifiers were now being gentrified, so to speak.

Warring philosophies

While speaking with the Daily Dot, Rochko called Mastodon “the child of my imagination,” arguing he “created it the way that I wanted to do it” and that he “did things the way I wanted them to work.” For the record, he doesn’t consider BDFL a harsh description of the Mastodon project, but rather a programming term to describe its governance. He also believes it’s more efficient than rule by committee.

“When you separate the decision making between different people that can come and go, you sort of have a tragedy of the commons where nobody is fully responsible for it and people have disagreements over all sorts of things, and you add the bureaucracy of [a] voting system, etc,” he explained. “Often times you’ll get requests from the community that are directly mutually exclusive to each other, and you have to make a choice, like, which direction will you go or how do you make a compromise.”

Rochko describes Mastodon’s users as separated between two “camps”: those who prefer discoverability, and those who discourage it. It’s more accurate to say Mastodon is increasingly forced to choose between its marginalized, queer userbase and white, well-off, and male tech workers who support Rochko’s BDFL vision.

Mastodon

Raphen believes Mastodon is “getting better, slowly” thanks in part to new queer users challenging its “fragile” privileged queer users. But even then, the platform’s remaining queer community has grown increasingly upset with Rochko’s leadership. After Rochko unexpectedly introduced “trends” tracking for words, phrases, and hashtags in summer 2018, marginalized users who feared harassment from the feature criticized its unexpected implementation. Rochko replied with a toot, arguing he “built Mastodon the way I wanted” and that those who disliked the project should not “give me shit about your failed expectations.”

“There’s the door, there’s the code, there’s the alternatives,” he tooted on June 2.

The future

A June essay from Mastodon user Cassian, titled “I left Mastodon yesterday,” argues Mastodon’s problems start with Rochko’s approach to development. Cassian claims users are rarely acknowledged for their contributions unless they are programmers, and Rochko controls the original instance and gets to decide which features make it into the Mastodon project.

Combine this with Rochko’s perspective as a white male programmer, and his decisions will constantly come from a privileged point-of-view that clashes with Mastodon’s marginalized userbase.

“Like it or not, he is in charge of the main branch of a huge community project and he promises various advantages over Twitter to attract members,” Cassian writes. “The users of his software have needs that he refuses to address but he wants to remain the sole decision-maker and have complete control. He has a right to do that, but it is unhealthy for the project overall.”

Again, Rochko thinks Mastodon users are split between two sides: those who believe the project should help users find one another, and those who prefer to stay hidden from others. But Mastodon’s internal community conflicts can better be described through a queer lens—that is, between privileged users and marginalized ones, and their diametrically opposed philosophies for what Mastodon should be.

“He’s a programmer. Not a leader,” Raphen said. “He’s an amazingly talented programmer. But that’s not enough to lead the project. He takes all the credit for making Mastodon what it is when it was extremely a group effort, not just the programming (the only labor he sees as legit).”

Raphen and Rochko’s beliefs are at Mastodon’s core, and yet they are fundamentally in conflict with each other. One wants a community-driven government system to protect vulnerable users. The other believes only a BDFL can efficiently maintain Mastodon and promote its decentralized, open-source fediverse structure. Both are hopeful for Mastodon’s future, and yet, they represent diverging paths that Mastodon can take.

Meanwhile, Mastodon’s users can’t even agree on how Mastodon should function, let alone whom it should serve. Figuring out an answer will decide Mastodon’s future—and whether its marginalized userbase has a place to call home.

from Ricky Schneiderus Curation https://www.dailydot.com/debug/mastodon-fediverse-eugen-rochko/

#Ricky Schneiderus Curation

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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Tumblr announced Monday that it would be banning many categories of adult content across its platform, including “photos, videos, or GIFs” displaying explicit material, as well as “illustrations that [depict] sex acts.”

The controversial change will take effect on December 17; existing posts flagged by Tumblr’s censors as violating the new policy will be automatically set to private, meaning that no one will be able to see them other than the blog’s creator.

Debate is raging about what Tumblr’s userbase will even look like at that point, given how much of the community involves erotica and the use of explicit imagery. Discussion of the ban consumed social media throughout Monday evening, and Tumblr users responded with a mixture of outrage, worry, and hilarious memes.

On the one hand, it’s easy to see why Tumblr, now in its 11th year as a social media platform known for “reblogs” and image-heavy content, made this move: it seems very likely that its hand was probably forced by Apple. In November, Apple banned Tumblr’s official app from the IOS store because of reported child pornography on the platform. This led to a sitewide crackdown on pornography that left many users complaining that their NSFW blogs had been unfairly purged in the sweep.

Yet despite last month’s initial purge, the app has still not been restored to the IOS store, in what seems to be a clear ‘fix this or else’ ultimatum from Apple that has almost certainly prompted the current crisis. As Motherboard wrote on Monday in its breakdown of the Tumblr situation, “Apple has repeatedly leveraged its unprecedented power over millions of smartphones to sanitize the apps that are available on iPhones.”

In an email response, a Tumblr spokesperson directed Vox back to the staff announcement, including the staff’s acknowledgment that “filtering this type of content versus say, a political protest with nudity or the statue of David, is not simple at scale. We’re relying on automated tools to identify adult content and humans to help train and keep our systems in check. We know there will be mistakes, but we’ve done our best to create and enforce a policy that acknowledges the breadth of expression we see in the community.”

But on the other hand, many users are outraged over what they see as an attempt to disrupt the entire culture of Tumblr and its community, where erotica and NSFW artwork and storytelling have thrived and flourished — and where marginalized communities who have built safe spaces may now be newly vulnerable.

“According to marginalized and vulnerable people, this change in policy will directly hurt them,” wrote geek icon and power user Wil Wheaton, in a reblog of an inappropriately flagged post which featured nothing more offensive than shirtless men kissing. “And that’s indefensible.”

What’s at issue is not only the question of whether Tumblr can survive its own purge — it’s the question of who Tumblr’s core users are, and what will motivate them to continue building their communities on a platform that seems to be devaluing them and their vital contributions to building Tumblr culture.

Though Tumblr was born alongside most other modern social networks, it’s long been associated with a certain countercultural deviance. Founder David Karp launched it in 2007 when he was just 20, and his much-vaunted hoodie-wearing ethos helped give the site a permanently youthful attitude — even an air of “millennial narcissism.”

Tumblr’s younger, digital-savvy denizens made Tumblr into a center of internet culture, churning out memes and cultivating subcultures from fandoms to study bloggers to digital art collectives. But despite all this, the site has long been plagued by an unfairly dismissive cultural reputation that reduces the entire vibrant platform to a vast repository of porn, and not much else.

The association of Tumblr with porn is part of a longstanding media narrative that has perpetually dismissed the site and its userbase for its relative youth, its progressive politics, its fandom leanings, and its predominantly queer and feminist userbase.

“Every time I make the mistake of opening Tumblr at work I end up seeing a stray boob,” Akila Hughes joked in Splinter News.

This reputation further reduces the community that gave us “Tumblr activism” — the disruptive but progressive political force that grew into a loud generation of real-world activists — down to that of a bunch of women who are only there for porn.

And even the porn itself gets mischaracterized. The fact is that the erotic and NSFW imagery on Tumblr includes everything from fanart to sex education, and is a vibrant and much-valued part of the community. And while data analysts have uncovered that, yes, there is a lot of porn on Tumblr, it’s coming from only a tiny fraction — about a tenth of one percent — of the site’s creators.

And the producers of this pornography are not active members of the Tumblr community. Most of the producers of pornography on Tumblr are pornbots, automated accounts set up to specifically generate NSFW content, much of it designed to lure users to third-party paid content sites.

Still, because pornbots don’t always stay in their lane, it’s easy for users reading random “normal” tags to be exposed to them. The site has tried multiple times to deal with porn in its midst. Users have even tried to help, organizing spontaneous organic pornbot-banning campaigns. But the site’s efforts haven’t been enough to keep it from running into trouble with third parties — most notably, Apple, which, in its ban of anything “overtly sexual,” is not attuned to the blurry lines between porn, erotica, and other types of racy content.

Tumblr has long sagged under the weight of doubt regarding its longterm sustainability. The site plateaued its growth in 2016 at just 23 million users, less than half that of Twitter at the time and a third that of Instagram, which has since ballooned exponentially.

Since the exit last year of its longtime chief David Karp, and the sale of the site to Verizon, rumblings that Tumblr is finally finished have abounded. Meanwhile, Tumblr users have been increasingly at odds with Tumblr’s corporate side, as the business tries to balance potential money-making opportunities with its unruly yet thriving corner of internet culture. Unfortunately, the short-term solution seems to be a pivot away from that grassroots culture towards more rigidly controlled content — which opens the door to a whole new set of problems.

One of the biggest questions on the minds of Tumblr users is whether Tumblr can effectively carry out this policy without nuking everything in its path. The consensus so far, based on both past experience with Tumblr as well as other algorithmic censorship attempts, as well as the abundant reports of posts that are already being inappropriately flagged under the new change: not a chance.

Welp, my Tumblr blog is marked NSFW, bc I curse like a sailor and occasionally I reblog fanart, fine art, and protest art that contains nudity. (Yes, including FEMALE-PRESENTING NIPPLES.) So I guess my Tumblr blog will be on the chopping block too.

So where we goin’ next, y’all?

— N. K. Jemisin (@nkjemisin) December 3, 2018

It’s important to note that Tumblr is attempting to explicitly draw a dividing line between its users’ creative content and the more hardcore stuff. Tumblr’s new policy defines “adult content” as “primarily includ[ing] photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts.” That doesn’t necessarily include many types of erotica, which may be sexual and evocative without explicitly depicting sex. And Tumblr is only banning “photos, videos, or GIFs,” not text-based erotica or artwork — except when that artwork portrays sexual acts.

The platform is also trying to differentiate between explicit porn and non-sexual nudity — a tricky bit of semantics that led the site to go with language banning “female-presenting nipples” while protecting “exposed female-presenting nipples in connection with breastfeeding,” among other things. The new policy also specifies that nudity for the purposes of sexual education and other contexts is okay. That should be comforting to the thriving community around sex work on Tumblr, as well as to those who are concerned about its increasingly important role as a de facto sex education site for millions of its users.

But all of these attempts to separate the wheat from the porny chaff raise the question of whether Tumblr will be able to accurately police along these dividing lines without committing overreach and becoming censorship-happy, thus silencing many vital blogs and users.

In the wake of the passage of FOSTA, the anti-sex trafficking bill that has raised internet-wide concerns about censorship, many Tumblr users have spoken out about their anxiety that Tumblr will become a platform of broad and ill-defined censorship which will silence some of the most important parts of Tumblr. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time; in 2013, Tumblr attempted to ban NSFW tags and wound up censoring queer content before backtracking.

And how does anyone, let alone Tumblr’s automatic censors, draw the line between illustrations that depict sex acts and illustrations that simply “feature” nudity?

These questions have alarmed many Tumblr users. Many fanartists and original artists create explicit art alongside non-explicit art as a matter of course; some, like the well-known artist Siij, whose NSFW blog was banned in the November purge, have already been targets of Tumblr censors.

In addition, some users have reported that entire tags are currently being scrubbed of content and hidden from Tumblr’s search; for example, searching for the NSFW tag no longer generates any content. And users who’ve already started receiving emails about their flagged content under the new policy are reporting that their content is being flagged incorrectly.

One Twitter thread compiling reports of incorrectly flagged Tumblr posts collected everything from benign art and fanart to cave photos, safe-for-work vintage photos of black women, and even a reblog of Tumblr’s own announcement:

On a superficial level, this is all hilarious — and, to many of us, hilariously familiar. (More on that in a moment.) But on a deeper level, the giant outcry over this decision reflects a larger anxiety from users — a fear that Tumblr is cracking down, not just on porn, but on the very essence of Tumblr culture: unruly, unsanctioned, and in many ways, united by the very spirit of deviance that Tumblr is trying to kill.

“The reality is that for a lot of the LGTBQ+ community, particularly younger members still discovering themselves and members in extremely homophobic environments where most media sites were banned (but Tumblr wasn’t even considered important enough to be), this was a bastion of information and self-expression,” wrote one Tumblr user in a widely reblogged post. “For a lot of artists too, this was a great place to come and post NSFW work and get traction that became Patreon pages that became honest jobs.”

What’s frequently lost in the reductive equating of Tumblr with porn is that, as on LiveJournal before it, much of the platform’s erotica is community oriented — and essential to the vibrancy of that community.

For instance, entire fanart traditions have sprung up around cheeky erotic illustrations and the frequently NSFW artists who produce them. Tumblr also birthed the phenomenon of popular fandom blogs featuring porn stars who look like various fictional characters, peddling erotic content specifically through the lens of shipping. Modern-day Tumblr artists have entirely revived the long-dormant tradition of professional-quality fanzines, many featuring subversive queer content and explicit content.

Then there are the many, many queer and genderqueer and marginalized users who found in Tumblr a positive, identity-affirming community space that simply doesn’t exist on most other social media platforms. As Tumblr users grappled with the news, many spoke out about the degree to which the banning of explicit content could impact untold numbers of individuals who lack the ability to safely explore their identities and their sexualities, on other websites or in real life.

“This is a mistake,” wrote Tumblr user caitercates in a widely-distributed response to the Tumblr staff post. “You say you’re all about “sex positivity” while banning all adult content of any kind? … You are actively deleting a majority of your account base. … your solution is to bleach your site until it’s unrecognizable.”

Not to mention the countless artists and writers who are about to lose their viewer/readership. I understand erotica will still be allowed – but what about the relationships that are fostered between artists and writers? There are so many of us who make fanart of our favorite fics, and a lot of the time that involves smut. This ISN’T A PROBLEM. This is creativity at work, and sex positivity, like you claim to support.

Change this.

EDIT your site. Make positive changes that we as the community have asked for – don’t blanket-ban the content that, tbh, most of us are here for at least in part.

It’s extremely significant that Tumblr users are fighting for Tumblr to walk back this change, because Tumblr has traditionally had a primarily harmonious relationship to its userbase, despite its users increasing distrust of its motives and interests. With the exception of Reddit, which is mainly community-run, Tumblr has given its users more freedom than any other platform in shaping and making the site into what it is.

This is partly due to the fact that Tumblr was never intended to be a grassroots haven for the misfits of the rest of the internet. But that characteristic is part of what has made Tumblr uniquely quirky and offbeat among social media spaces — and it may be the trait that saves it.

There’s a legitimate argument to be made — and one that I, as a longtime Tumblr user, would admittedly like to be true — that people who think banning porn on Tumblr will kill Tumblr really don’t know that much about Tumblr’s core users. Despite the mainstream media narrative, Tumblr has never, ever, been about porn.

Tumblr was built around community, around fandom, around viral absurdist meme blogs and street fashion bloggers. What other social media platform annually sends amateur bloggers to Fashion Week? It was grown from arty hipster landscape photos whose wistful aesthetics were deposited straight onto the collected works of the Chainsmokers. Tumblr has given us feminist art galleries and digital art collectives pushing online art movements like vaporwave, seapunk, and glitch art while showing off, bar none, the best GIF artistry on the planet.

Tumblr’s deliberately hyperbolic language fueled everything from “all the feels” to the rise of One Direction. It’s been called the progenitor of Neo-Dadaism, the wellspring of a vast amount of absurdist millennial humor that’s pushed out of its niche Tumblr basement to hit the mainstream corridors of the internet. Mic shamelessly built its brand by exploiting Tumblr’s politics while Buzzfeed shamelessly built its brand by piggy-backing off Tumblr’s content. It’s the place where angry feminist clapbacks and “your fave is problematic” exist alongside hungover owls and “Mmm Whatcha Say?” — that is, it’s as marvelous, and marvelously frustrating, and deeply surprising, as the internet itself.

It’s tempting to argue that while core Tumblr users will grumble about the site-wide crackdown on porn, they’ll recognize that while they can get the porn from other sites, it will be impossible to replace everything else that makes Tumblr what it is.

That said, the very quirky nonconformity of Tumblr’s users may, in fact, push them to leave. Some users see the site’s push to ban adult content as echoing the downward spiral of LiveJournal, the once-popular early blogging platform which was highly admired for its open-source ethos, its laidback moderation style, and its positive sense of community.

In an infamous pair of 2007 incidents that became known as “Strikethrough” and “Boldthrough,” LiveJournal famously destroyed the trust of its userbase overnight when its own attempt to ban certain types of explicit content resulted in a ban on fanart and other innocent and creative types of content.

The relationship between the site and a userbase that had, until then, been ride-or-die, never fully recovered. In the wake of LiveJournal’s steady overtaking by Russia, many of those users migrated to Tumblr, where they joined the much-larger stream of millennial and Gen Y and Z users who have relied on the site’s user-friendliness and openness to many types of erotica as they built their communities.

A side effect of the ban involved a renewed appreciation for the Archive of Our Own, (AO3), a nonprofit, censorship-free website run by fans which is explicitly set up to archive fanworks in the event of major content crackdowns like this one. Among the other more serious responses to the ban has been a litany of fandom history and advice posts being shared for the benefit of younger Tumblr users and others for whom the overnight implosion of their digital home was a new experience. Especially prominent have been recommendations for alternative sites to Tumblr.

Many users, desperate to recapture the deep sense of community that once existed on LiveJournal, have been advocating for a retreat to a new social platform called Pillowfort, a site which very overtly attempts to combine the best characteristics of LiveJournal and Tumblr with a more laidback old-school approach to fandom and content moderation. That platform, which is currently in beta, is currently down for planned security upgrades. On its Tumblr in response to the news about the Tumblr ban, Pillowfort stated that it plans to “allow NSFW content with very few restrictions.”

Still others looked to Dreamwidth, a blogging platform built on LiveJournal’s open-source code that was originally built in 2008 in response to LiveJournal’s demise. Its owners, too, were ready to welcome the Tumblr diaspora with open arms, just as it welcomed the LJ diaspora a decade ago. Other sites like MeWe also responded to the news by welcoming potential Tumblr refugees.

For many Tumblr users and onlookers, however, the simplest solution seems to be a return to the spirit that built Tumblr culture: when all else fails, make memes.

It was inevitable, for example, that there’d be at least one reference to DashCon, the notorious 2014 Tumblr fan convention that turned into a viral disaster, typified by this famous forlorn image of the “DashCon ball pit:”

At the top of the list of agenda items was the phrase “female presenting nipples,” which received the lion’s share of hilarity from Tumblr users.

free the female presenting nipples. robbieross/Tumblr

Of course, all of this won’t really help answer the larger question of what’s next for Tumblr. But ironically, in response to the news, Tumblr’s userbase has reminded us all exactly what a valuable and irreplaceable role Tumblr has played in the evolution of modern internet culture.

All of the wry humor, the trenchant memes, the progressive social commentary mixed with genuine care for Tumblr’s marginalized communities that Tumblr users have deployed in response to the adult content ban — all of that is a unique combination that’s grown out of Tumblr culture. When it’s gone, there’s no guarantee it will return on another website in the same form. And it definitely won’t be accompanied by the same fabulous GIFs and fanart.

Still, there’s no guarantee that Tumblr’s profit-driven side will prioritize keeping that culture sustainable, even if it does somehow manage to ban adult content and retain its core membership. If that’s the case, then it’s a loss not just for Tumblr users, but for the entire internet. Like Vine before it, another irreplaceable cornerstone of our online world that should have been better appreciated all along, Tumblr might be fated to be loved best only after it’s gone.

Original Source -> Why Tumblr’s adult content ban is about so much more than porn

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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donnafmae · 6 years

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How to Drive Traffic to Your Website with Instagram

We already know that social media is a powerful marketing tool. Even if Google has said that social media is not a ranking factor (this is debatable—it very well might be), we’ve seen the importance of using social media to engage a community, build a brand’s voice, and promote content. However, once you build an audience on your social channels, how do you get their eyes from your beautifully curated feed to converting on your site? I’m going to focus on how you can drive organic traffic and conversions through Instagram (IG). The popular social network is not only a visually pleasing platform full of scenic drone shots, fashion bloggers, and doggie influencers, IG is also a platform that can be used to sell products. Instagram boasts the highest engagement rate of popular social networks and is second behind Facebook in number of monthly active users. And the app’s popularity keeps on growing: as of June 2018, IG has 1 billion monthly active users and announced a new long-form video app, IGTV.

I’m going to share five tips for driving traffic from your IG to your website organically (without paid ads).

1. Include a link in your bio

Every IG account only has one spot on their profile for a clickable link—that is, the “link in bio.” Use a shortened URL to keep this space clean and uncluttered. There should always be a link present in your bio—either to your homepage, shop, a promotional landing page, or wherever you’re hoping to drive traffic. Encourage users to visit this link by referring to your link in bio in the captions of your photos. “Link in bio” is the only location for hyperlinks that every account on IG is able to use. Business accounts with 10K or more followers have more hyperlinking opportunities that we’ll get into later.

Case Study: Bite Beauty, Urban Outfitters, and Into the Gloss

Many B2C brands, like Bite Beauty, will set the link in their bio to a shoppable feed of products featured on their account. Urban Outfitters links to a page on their website where they repost other accounts’ IG photos that feature their products (this encourages user-generated content, or UGC). Into the Gloss (ITG) follows a common approach, which is to use your link in bio to promote a new piece of content or product. ITG’s link goes to a new article on their blog about sunscreen, and they included a CTA on their most recent photo, encouraging their audience to click on their link in bio.

2. Creatively engage your audience to “swipe up” on Instagram Stories

My favorite Instagram feature is Stories because the feature provides even more opportunities for creativity. Instagram first launched Stories in August 2016, and as of November 2017, Stories has over 300M daily active users—meaning over 300 million people watch Stories every day, that’s more than Snapchat’s 187M daily active users. Stories is a relatively new feature, and for many brands, it is an untapped platform for creating and sharing content in a unique way.

Stories have a number of compelling features, including GIFs, location tags, stickers, boomerangs, and filters. Arguably the best feature of Stories is the ability for users to “swipe up” on a Story post. Business accounts with at least 10K followers have the option to add a link in their story. If your brand’s IG isn’t yet set up as a business account, get on it: business accounts have access to analytics data and special features. Users can access this link by swiping up on a Story post. Other than “link in bio,” adding a link to an IG story is the only other way to directly link to your website from IG.

Brands can use stories to creatively entertain and influence their audience. Stories should be fun, informative, and engaging—they should make users want to keep tapping through. They also shouldn’t overtly try to sell, even when including a link to a product or content piece. Stories disappear within 24 hours, but with the highlights feature, you can save your best Stories to your profile to continuously drive traffic to the links in your Stories.

Some ideas for creatively engaging your audience on stories include:

Take your audience behind the scenes–let them see the personality of your office

Provide demonstrations of products (and give sneak previews of new releases)

Promote giveaways, and partner with influencers to “take over your IG story” for the day

Add polls, post boomerang videos, use fun GIFs and stickers—make use of the growing list of stories features

Case Study: Glossier

It’s no secret that Glossier, a skincare/makeup startup founded by Emily Weiss, is crushing the social media game. Glossier gained a cult following largely through the use of social media and word of mouth. Glossier’s social media strategy focuses on building a community and gaining their audience’s trust. Glossier engage their audience in stories through:

Behind the scenes: Glossier posts videos around the office where they ask employees questions or show off earlier iterations of a just-released product.

Product demonstrations: Glossier posts videos of both makeup artists and their employees using their products, showing viewers how to create a look.

Engaging their audience: Glossier encourages UGC by asking their followers what they’re looking for in new products, to review recent releases, and to tag them in photos. Glossier will repost follower’s content to their Stories.

3. Take advantage of the Shopping feature

In 2017, Instagram began rolling out a shoppable feed to business accounts with over 10K followers. This feature allows brands to link to their products directly from their IG photos, making it easy for users to purchase products directly from the app. Previously, the only way brands could link to products was through a single link in their bio. When a user taps on a photo with products tagged, they see annotations of each item’s name, price, and a link to the product page on the brand’s website. The user can also click on a “shop” button, visible on the top of a brand’s profile, to view a feed of all photos with products tagged. Commerce is going to continue to grow on Instagram, as they just announced they’re rolling out shoppable stories.

Case Study: Madewell

Almost every photo on Madewell’s grid is shoppable (as indicated by the white shopping bag icon in the upper right hand corner of a photo). Even though Madewell’s posts link to products, their photos are not overtly selling a product, but rather present a pleasing visual experience. Madewell’s feed feels cohesive, displays a lifestyle their followers want to mimic, and their witty captions are relatable (i.e. “show ‘em who’s embossed” on their photo of sandals) while informing the brand’s identity.

4. Use analytics to understand your demographic and when to post

Instagram Insights provides business accounts with key metrics to help inform their posting strategy, including:

Account Activity:

Impressions (total number of times all of your posts have been seen)

Reach (unique accounts that have seen any of your posts)

Link clicks (number of clicks to your link in bio)

Profile visits (number of times your profile was viewed)

Content Insights—for posts and stories:

Profile visits (number of times your profile was visited from a post)

Follows (number of accounts that started following you)

Reach (number of unique accounts that have seen your post)

Impressions (total number of times your post was seen, and where they were seen from—homepage, hashtags, etc.)

Stories:

Taps forward

Taps backward

Completion rate (number of people who watched all the way through)

Exits (number of people leaving your story)

Replies

Analyzing Instagram data can help you understand your audience and inform your social media strategy—when is the best time to post? When are your users most engaged? What kind of content is performing best? For example, if your videos have a wider reach, that could be a good indication that you should invest more time in creating and posting videos. Use your analytics to your advantage by posting when your users are the most active. Post 10 minutes before your audience’s peak activity time—that way, when users login, your content is waiting for them.

If you don’t have a business account yet and therefore don’t have access to analytics, studies show it is generally best to post between 8-9am and at 5pm (these times align with typical commuting hours). However, it’s best to experiment with posting at different times to determine when YOUR audience is the most active.

Instagram insights on a post:

I’m going to use my dog Millie’s Instagram account (isn’t she cute?) to show how Instagram Insights works. Millie has a business account, and I can see under the “activity” tab her account’s reach and impressions. From the “content” tab, I can see an overview of her recent feed posts and story posts, and when I click into a feed or story post I can see more data specific to that post.

5. Collaborate—Partner with other brands, influencers, and your audience

Collaborate with other brands, influencers, and your audience to increase traffic to your IG account and engagement (comments and likes) on your posts.

Partner with other brands - Work with other brands to do a giveaway. Ask your followers to like and comment on the post to enter. Have other participating brands tag you in their post and ask their followers to also follow your account to enter.

Sponsor an influencer - Chances are an influencer has a larger and more-engaged audience than your brand. Send them free products or sponsor a post on their feed to drive their followers to your IG. Make sure they tag your IG account and link to your website on their Story. I like to use BuzzSumo to find influencers.

Encourage your audience to comment/like - Encourage your audience to interact with your content by responding to and liking their comments, writing captions that ask them questions, and reposting their photos on your Stories. If you repost their content, make sure to tag their account to give them credit.

The more your followers interact with your content, the more likely Instagram will serve your photos to the top of their feed. When Instagram sees likes and comments on your post, they’ll also see it as more valuable content and will be more likely to display your post on the explore page.

Case Study: Away

Away created their own hashtag (#travelaway) to encourage UGC. They’ll repost (and tag) their followers’ photos of their luggage that feature the hashtag #travelaway or that tag Away’s IG account. (If you search #travelaway on IG right there, there are over 29,000 posts). PLUS they’ll collaborate with IG influencers. (Just about every travel blogger/vlogger has one of these suitcases now and posts about them.)

Final Thoughts & Discussion

Are you ready to step up your Instagram game and start driving conversions? Instagram CAN be an effective tool for selling products and driving organic traffic to your website when used strategically. Consider doing a social media content audit to develop your content strategy and identify what your competitors are doing well.

What other tips do you have for driving traffic to your website from social channels?