I opened my Tumblr account somewhere back in 2011. Since then, I started this blog, reblogged, commented, wrote, tried to build a community and engaged with people. For the first couple of years, Tumblr was a joy to use. I felt truly free to express myself, within the limit of the TOS and the law of course.
May 20, 2013 alarms went off. Yahoo announced that it was to acquire Tumblr. Yahoo (I refuse to add the exclamation mark) promised not to screw it up. However, anyone who knows Yahoo knew better. Yahoo repeatedly screws up everything it touches. Remember GeoCities? Remember eGroups? Remember Bix? Yahoo took over and in short order it ruined the use of these fine institutions, especially for people who create or share adult content.
Yahoo has screwed up Tumblr. Big time.
It made adult blogs hard (and now impossible?) to find
It hid adult blogs from the Internet, making them only accessible to people logged in with a Tumblr account
It has become increasingly intolerant of adult blogs in general
It swamps users with irrelevant posts in their dashboard
It removes Tumblr blogs for no apparent reason and without explanation
It has allowed the creation of thousands of blogs only intended to spread advertising (much of it porn!)
I could give more examples but I think you get my point.
Mind you, I don’t mind hiding adult material from youngsters or to hide it behind safe search which people can turn off by choice. No one should be confronted with adult material if they don’t want to.
I’m worried that at any moment, Tumblr will decide to pull the plug on my blog. A blog that I have spent 7 years curating, caring for and used as a means of self-expression. Why? Only because it has adult content, apparently. I can not stand this sword of Damocles over my head.
Yes, I know I could create a backup account like other people do. But what’s to stop them from deleting that too?
I feel like I am coming to the end of the line with Tumblr. I feared that it would come to this in 2013 and I guess the time is approaching when running an adult blog on Tumblr just won’t be worth the effort any more.
For the adult community, Tumblr appears to be dying.
There’s several options, the way I see it:
I could go on and wait for the seemingly inevitable deletion
I could simply give up and stop blogging here
I could beat them to it and delete my account
I could move somewhere else
Right now, “somewhere else” seems like the preferable option. Yes, I would start from scratch but it would have to be somewhere where adult content is at least tolerated. I am open to suggestions as to where this “somewhere else” is found. If you have any, please share them with me!
Feel free to share this post if you share my concerns!
