a pile of words in a trenchcoat im new heresay hi to me i would like to meet you :)
297 posts
Word-heap - Mundane Sentence Collection - Tumblr Blog
The trolley service will have to wait I fear
The trolley service will have to wait I fear
The trolley service will have to wait I fear
The trolley service will have to wait I fear
finishing off the day fully lolmaxxed. really fun looking for secrets and booping friends and strangers. thank you for a well executed april fools :3 boop
Three boop badges??
YES! one is for the first boop i think, then the next is around 300, and the last is for 1kb (kiloboop)
you EVIL BOOP??? you evil boop iso? oh! Oh! Jail for @word-heap for a thousand years
I am slowly uncovering the whole of the boop conspiracy. Once I fully understand boop I will be unstoppable.
I HAVE THE BOOP SECRET
Just wanted to share that while I'm generally an optimist and I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the people who live on the moderation side of things, recent events have made me totally change my opinion on this site. One week ago I felt optimistic, I felt that this place was on a neutral / upwards trajectory, and I felt like the site was in good hands from a leadership perspective. Automattic made a lot of sense to me culturally as a custodian of tumblr, and seeing a number of staff members active on the site, participating, communicating, and engaging with users felt really really good, even with the "skeleton crew" announcement that circulated recently.
However, Matt's actions over the last week have completely turned me around. I respect the decision to see outrage over a ban as a CEO and want to investigate it and then provide some communication to your users -- while perhaps that shouldn't come directly from the CEO, I think it's a good instinct, particularly when (according to Matt's claims) the user was misrepresenting facts and causing larger moderation problems because of that misrepresentation. I would expect that public communication to be built on a backbone of facts that the company can confirm. Timelines and warnings build credibility, i.e. "the user posted mistagged adult content for the first time in November 2023 and despite receiving warnings on X, Y, and Z dates, they continued to post unlabeled adult content. Due to how rapidly these posts would spread before we could manually apply the label (as we are required to do in order to maintain compliance with iOS app store policies), we chose, as a last resort to terminate the blog." Unfortunately, that is not what Matt wrote.
Matt instead opened with a statement that there are queer people working at tumblr, which isn't particularly relevant and reads as a haphazard kind of shield a la "I have a black friend so I can't be racist!" and mentioning that they had issues with a transphobic external moderator in the past, which again, isn't terribly relevant unless you can connect that moderator to this specific user in question, and certainly doesn't boost your credibility here. If the user was banned by this external moderator (or even was negatively effected in the past by that external moderator) that would be an entirely different conversation, but that doesn't sound like it was the case. This is already a pretty terrible start -- all it does is bring up vagaries of how tumblr is "good" (which I'd like to believe is true!) but says nothing about the issue at hand and really only opens up further avenues of criticism.
He then gets to what should be the meat of the issue: the reasons for the ban. The right thing to do here would be to provide the context that the user is hiding behind because presumably, if the user is getting permanently banned off the site, they've done something relatively serious which they have neglected to mention in order to present themselves as a victim to the general public. This would be the place to share that i.e. "a member of staff had a SWAT team called on them and we could trace the origin back to this user," "this user sent a 1000+ word ask explicitly describing attacks they intended to perpetrate against X," "this user regularly posted mistagged explicit photos and did not respond to our repeated requests to use tags," or something of this nature. Keep it objective, state the specific reason for the ban (without revealing anything that would compromise the users privacy), and it should largely speak for itself. There is a balance between respecting the users privacy while also sharing your justification for the ban, but that's not a terribly hard balance to strike. Matt however did not add anything to the publicly available information and instead vaguely called out "explicit content" and "harassment" which only added to the confusion and, by not adding details or specificity, he led users to believe that there wasn't actually anything all that damning in the first place.
Which leads me to what I believe should have happened: I think after the CEOs attention was brought to this moderation issue, they absolutely should investigate and collect facts / context on the situation. It sounds to me like this was perhaps an overreaction of either a tired/inexperienced human or overzealous automation (or perhaps even a misclick on an internal tool!) It would also be perfectly appropriate to say that this was a mistake, or that it was an overreaction. Even if the blog is hard-deleted from the database and there's no way to restore it, saying "Oops! We made a mistake here! We'll be revising the processes that brought us here, and the user can have their URL back" would've been perfect.
But the way this initial post went, and the gross unprofessionalism that followed (I saw (potentially fake) screenshots circulating of Matt messaging random users, his subsequent post to twitter, the decision to continue editing the original post, and continuing to answer asks including one in which he threatened to shut down the site if the users didn't behave better) shook my faith in this site entirely. Unfortunately, as good as I felt about the direction of the site one week ago, it now feels like the foundations of those feelings have been entirely destroyed. I no longer feel that the site is in good hands, and, until I see some kind of action to address this (any kind of admission that mistakes were made here / there is a desire to avoid this happening again) I will no longer be paying for ad-free. Of course the $5 a month is a drop in the bucket to tumblr, but I simply no longer feel good supporting the people who run this place.
I'll still be here, and as usual I'd like to post more (real life as been busy as hell these last few months) -- I really want to talk about my second pass at learning stenography and my continued adventure on neocities, but I like writing long posts and long posts require me to have enough words to fill the posts. Anyways, just felt the need to get my thoughts out. I've got a post that approaches this from a different angle that I'm drafting out, about how I believe a solid approach to community management on this site could really turn things around, so hopefully I'll get that out soon B-)
But anyways, I'm not terribly happy with where things are going and I hope there's some kind of acknowledgement that this was really really terribly handled and some plan to improve things in the future. Godspeed to anyone working for tumblr right now, and that includes Matt who I'm sure isn't enjoying this mess either, even if I personally believe this is largely a mess of his own creation.
One thing I noticed talking about Linux and free software is that a lot of people seem afraid of learning things about technology. I constantly read things like "I hate windows, but switching to linux would mean learning a new OS, and you have to be some super-smart programmer-hacker to do that." Or even: "Switching to firefox would mean switching browsers and I don't know how"
And that is precisely the attitude tech companies like Microsoft and Apple try to instill in their users in order to control them. They create these simple and “friendly” user interfaces for their products, but these hide information. From their OS being pre-installed to their settings apps, they keep people from learning things about how their computer works, and letting the companies make the decisions for their users.
I think people are underestimating themselves and overestimating how hard it is to learn new things are. It is like Windows/Macos have taught them some kind of technological learned helplessness. Not knowing how computers work and being afraid to learn how is how companies like Microsoft controls you, and justifies that control.
For example, people hate the forced and automatic system updates on Windows. And Microsoft justifies it as necessary because some people don’t know that their computer needs security updates and therefore don’t update, so they have to force the updates on them. That’s definitely true, and Microsoft’s tech support people is definitely very aware of that but it is a operating system that presumes that the user is incompetent and therefore shouldn’t control their own computer. And of course Microsoft abuses that power to force privacy-invading features on their users. Windows updates are also badly designed in comparison, no Linux distro I’ve used required the update program to hijack the entire computer, preventing the user from doing other things, but Windows does.
This is the dark side of “user-friendly” design. By requiring zero knowledge and zero responsibility for the user, they also take control away from the user. User-friendly graphical user interfaces (GUI) can also hide the inner workings of a system in comparison to the command line, which enables more precise control of your computer and give you more knowledge about what it is doing.
Even GUIs are not all made equal in regards to this, as the comparison between the Windows Control panel and their newer Settings app demonstrates. As I complained about before, Windows have hidden away the powerful, but complex Control Panel in favor of the slicker-looking but simplified and less powerful Settings app for over a decade now.
Of course this is a sliding scale, and there is a sensible middle-ground between using the command line for everything and user-friendly design masking taking control away from the end user.
There are Linux distros like Linux Mint and MX Linux who have created their own GUI apps for tasks that would otherwise use the command line, without taking control away from the user. This is mainly because they are open source non-profit community-driven distros, instead of being proprietary OSes made by profit-driven megacorps.
Still, giving that control to the user presumes some knowledge and responsibility on part of the user. To return to the update example, by default both Mint and MX will search and notify you of available updates, but you will have to take the decision to download and install them. Automatic updates are available in both cases, but it’s opt-in, you have to enable that option yourself. And that approach presumes that you know that you should update your system to plug security holes, something not all people do. It gives you control because it presumes you have knowledge and can take responsibility for those decisions.
All this also applies to the underlying fact that practically all pre-built computers nowadays have an operating system pre-installed. Few people install an OS themselves nowadays, instead they use whatever came with the computer. It’s usually either Windows or MacOS for desktops/laptops, and Android/IOS for smartphones (which are also a type of computer).
Now all this is very convenient and user-friendly, since it means you don’t have to learn how to install your own operating system. The OEM takes care of that for you. But again, this is a convenience that takes choice away from you. If you don’t learn how to install your own OS, you are stuck with whatever that is on the computer you bought. It’s probably precisely this step that scares people away from Linux, few people have installed even Windows, and installing your own OS seems impossibly scary. But again, learning is the only way to take back control. If you learn how to install an OS off an USB stick, you now have choices in what OS to use. (Sidenote: the hard part IMO is not the actual install process, but fiddling with the BIOS so it will actually boot from the distro on the USB stick. This old comic strip illustrates this very well).
That’s how life is in general, not just computers. Having control over your life means making decisions based on your own judgment. And to make sensible, rational decisions, you have to learn things, acquire knowledge.
The only other alternative is letting others take those decisions for you. You don’t have to learn anything, but you have no control. And in the tech world, that means big corporations like Microsoft, Google and Apple will make those decisions, and they are motivated by their own profits, not your well-being.
Computers have only become more and more capable and more important in our lives, and that can enable wonderful things. But it also means more power to the tech companies, more power over our lives. And the only way to resist that is to learn about computers, to enable us to make our own decisions about how we use technology.
this is also how i got onto linux. built a computer on a shoestring budget mixed with pieces salvaged from a university e-waste bin, didn't think about the OS until the thing was built and I either had to drop $100 on windows or try out this linux thing for free. it was mint for me, a friend recommended it, but I picked it up pretty quick and I've been using linux of some kind or another ever since
ubuntu 11.04 was my first linux but i wasn't really with it at the time, yknow, i was just installing some free orange OS i found on the internet so that i wouldn't have to pay for windows; i didn't even know that ubuntu came in versions. 11.10 was the first one whose name i still remember clearly, i remember thinking it was super cool. oneiric ocelot. and even now i am still dreaming....
let’s be real the best tumblr has EVER looked was the short span of time where you could slap code into posts and we had classics like these
tumblr has never been closer to the core aesthetic and sense of humor of its userbase
neocities day 3: i am in love. i love blinkies. i love stamps. i love wacky gifs. i love cursor trails. i love mouse icons. i love music and sound effects. visiting a webpage feels like stepping into someones home. its their place that they are letting you visit and see. it just feels so wonderful.
so i slept on it. and i woke up. and i think im in love with neocities. it feels like exactly the part of the internet that ive been missing for the longest time. its so raw and its just like. people. making things. theres no posts no tagging no searching its just people making things for themselves and other people finding them. it feels so so beautiful to me.
I keep seeing people mention neocities in passing but I've never truly understood what the magic of it was. Today I decided to take the plunge and wow. it's Different. it's really cool. it feels like I've walked into a whole new internet.
I liked tumblr because of how it still feels like there's real individuality. People are out there doing their own thing, building off of each other, making their own space where they can do whatever they want. But I've always been weird about posting. It still feels very much like I'm doing something for other people to see, which is a scary thing. Respect to anyone who's willing to put themselves out there like that, I'm just not sure I'm built like that.
But neocities feels like it really is just me on my site. And I can really just make a space for myself that nobody else is forced to see. No feed no posts just a little space to myself. My quiet little corner.
I'm think going to maybe try and also blog about how that exploration is going but no promises. I think it's going to be cool :]
Tumblr Q&A
There's some press and publications like Verge asking What's going on with Tumblr. I'm going to answer questions using the "ask" feature of Tumblr here, so everyone can see the answers. You must be logged in to ask, but use the AMA button at the top of my blog or this link.
There's obviously a lot of talk about Tumblr being shut down, which does not appear to be happening, but do you think the re-organization will be enough to keep Tumblr running indefinitely? Or is this maybe the start of an eventual shut down of Tumblr?
What's super clear is our previous approach wasn't working. It didn't turn around the business to make enough money to support the investment of infrastructure and staff needed to run Tumblr, and a lot of users were unhappy with some of the changes we tried. There have been a few staff changes within the team, but basically what we're saying is starting January 1, 2024 we'll try a different structure with smaller, more focused teams working on the core parts of Tumblr that people say they want improved. We'll sunset or rollback some things we tried that didn't work.
I'm advocating for this change because I think it has a good chance at success. I don't do anything hoping to fail. There are lots of examples of products with hundreds of millions more MAUs and smaller teams than Tumblr currently has, and there are amazing examples like OpenAI and Telegram running circles around much bigger players with small teams. That's what we hope to replicate.
The good news is as well, since people leaving Tumblr aren't being laid off, they're just switching to other teams within Automattic, if something doesn't work or breaks we can always pull them back in to work on it.