On that Tumblr subscription service thing

[soc_puppet]

So Tumblr's offering a new subscription service, where you can pay them a few bucks a month and they won't show you ads. I think this is a good move for them! It has plenty of potential, and it's a lot better than Posts+; the tip jar option they floated a little while ago wasn't too bad either, aside from the whole "all or nothing" bit, where you couldn't turn it off for posts that would get you dinged for intellectual property theft.

That said, I'm rather torn about whether I'll be subscribing myself. I do spend a lot of time on Tumblr, but that's mostly because the people whose content I want to follow are mostly on Tumblr rather than my preferred platform. I understand the value of being able to share images, sound, and video with a wide audience, I just don't know if I personally like the methods of content aggregation.

In short, I... don't know if I would mind if Tumblr went down. I'd be a little upset if it happened, say, tomorrow, without me having a way to back up the stuff I've added since the porn ban, and I'd feel bad for the people who really love it there, and I'd feel extra bad for anyone who'd have to scramble to find new ways of making money or any friends they've made there, but I ultimately prefer Dreamwidth. I don't know if I want Tumblr to stick around enough to pay a minimum of $40 USD per year for the privilege.

Methinks I've got some weighing of priorities to do.

Comments

[type_wild]

I never thought about it before, but I've honestly just been using tumblr as the placeholder until Fandom's Next Home comes along... except now it's been a decade and here I am, huh. Recent upheavals reanimated the debate about whether tumblr is the Web 2.0 anarcho-underdog or just the roach of social media, but honestly... I just don't care. I've no sentimentalism towards the platform either way, and it's not very good at doing what I'm primarily in fandom for.

But this feels like a time to backup my meatier meta from over there anyway.

[mistressofmuses]

I feel pretty similarly.

There's a lot of stuff I wouldn't see at all if it weren't for tumblr - certain people, as well as the certain "genre" of tumblr memes and informational posts and things that I do genuinely enjoy. It's also my only real connection to some kind of... adjacent fandoms, where I don't actively seek out content, but I am happy when pretty fanart and interesting meta and links to fic come across my dash. I would miss that.

Buuuut... honestly, it wouldn't emotionally destroy me if tumblr did go down.

I am a fan of this as a style of monetization, and I wish there weren't quite so many knee-jerk negative responses to it. Opt-in is great! I like that better than selling more data! It's better than fucking post+!

But I'm also not jumping on the option to buy. I might, at some point, but I'm not sure.

[bluedreaming]

I access Tumblr almost exclusively via rss to email or direct links people share, but I’m also always a proponent of no ads (I’d always rather pay for something: I guess the whole “if you don’t pay for a product, you are the product” really stuck), so I went for it.

(Twitter! Give me no ads!)

While I wouldn’t personally be affected by its loss, the loss of all the meta and fanworks and other works and people using the images as image hosting elsewhere—it would be significant.