we’ve been waiting for you

I want to go to this exact point and run around it saying “I’m in Sweden!” I’m in Finland!” “I’m in Norway!” until I get tired

They even made a circle there which tells you in which country you are

If you want to help, please donate to the housing for homeless project Hui Mahi’ai Aina

The reblog chain is one of the things that makes Tumblr unlike anywhere else. All the notes on reblogs are attributed to the original post, no matter which branch people actually liked or reblogged. We want to keep encouraging conversations, and give contributors the recognition they deserve. 

Soon, you'll be able to like, reblog, or reply to any part of a reblog chain, and that note will go to that reblog's author. Each reblog will have its own counts, instead of one aggregated number from every version of the post. And yes, you’ll be able to like multiple posts in one chain.

If a reblog doesn't add anything, the love flows up to the last person in the chain who did. Your post doesn't lose notes just because people spread it quietly.

Past notes will stay on the original post — we're only changing what happens from here on out. Retroactively re-attributing all of them would be... a lot.

As this rolls out over the next few days and you explore it, we’ll keep reading your replies and reblogs, so please keep sharing your questions, concerns, and ideas.

Your creativity has always been the heart of Tumblr, whether you’re the original poster or adding something brilliant in the reblogs, and nothing about this change is meant to limit that.

I'm the OP. I'm making this post. If you like, comment, reblog (without comment) on this post, then I'm the one who will see all those notes in my activity page.

However...

If you reblog (with comment), I will get a notification that you did that, but any likes/comments/reblogs (without comment) you get on that reblog will only be shown to you. As OP I won't see them.

If someone adds a reblog (with comment) to your reblog...as OP I won't see that. I won't see any of those notes in my activity page.

Basically, if someone with a large following makes a comment, then they will get all the notes and OP will see nothing. If OP has said something silly because they're, y'know, 21 and it happens, and then someone reblogs it onto the dash of someone with a large following who then dunks on them for fun? OP doesn't see it, doesn't get notes for it, but they're gonna get the harrassment for it in their inbox.

If I, someone with a 5 digit follower count, reblog something to correct misinformation on Ancient Egypt, then OP will never see it unless it was on the original post, but I will continue to get notes on that post even though it's not my post. If I reblog fanart, or just art in general, with a comment like 'Oh this is so lovely!' then OP will not see any of the notes from people reblogging it from me. They'll only see my reblog. So it's possible for an art post by someone else to have 200 notes for them, but 9000 for someone who reblogs it with a comment, and the OP artist will have no idea it's been seen by that many people.

It's killing blow to the community we've built here, by someone higher up who doesn't understand that being able to see all the comments and reblogs is what makes this site the place I keep coming back to.

That's what sucks.

Anyways, plan from above gets executed with "A/B" testing, sometimes. In this case I'm not sure if it was but, in my experience, even when Tumblr had more competent knowledgeable people working on it, they never did a real A/B test the way you should. They got close, but in the end things just got rolled out if they didn't disturb things "too much". They also look for signals that it's working if people post more. do they separate out "people posting about this saying this is a bad idea" vs "posts in general"? No. I was there for the "no more replies" then "replies are back!" fiasco. The justification for ditching support for a feature (any feature, not just replies) is that anything that's an extra thingamajig upon the Tumblr codebase requires you to maintain it and fix it if it breaks. Less unique features = less stuff to fix. In this case, they saw replies were barely used vs other methods of communicating, so they figured they could get rid of replies when they introduced Messaging! Because now you can just DM the person rather than leaving a reply!

obviously that backfired. Tumblr once again touched the hot stove of "small but vocal group of users use this, actually" and they had to revert it. What they did do, at least, is fix a bunch of stuff with replies before bringing them back. I can't remember off the top of my head what they fixed but it was something like making them easier to use and read.

back to "tumblr is too hard to use for new users". it is because not many people use tumblr vs other places. so its patterns are not familiar. but that's not a good enough excuse for companies that own tumblr because infinite growth is the goal. most posts = more users therefore friction between users and making new posts must be eliminated. however this conflicts with what makes tumblr unique, which is why people stick around to use it. catch 22.

The reblog chain is one of the things that makes Tumblr unlike anywhere else. All the notes on reblogs are attributed to the original post, no matter which branch people actually liked or reblogged. We want to keep encouraging conversations, and give contributors the recognition they deserve. 

Soon, you'll be able to like, reblog, or reply to any part of a reblog chain, and that note will go to that reblog's author. Each reblog will have its own counts, instead of one aggregated number from every version of the post. And yes, you’ll be able to like multiple posts in one chain.

If a reblog doesn't add anything, the love flows up to the last person in the chain who did. Your post doesn't lose notes just because people spread it quietly.

Past notes will stay on the original post — we're only changing what happens from here on out. Retroactively re-attributing all of them would be... a lot.

It will also mean that if someone has something hateful to say, it will not get back to the original author and they will not be able to respond or clarify or set the record straight. It will make it so that someone can reblog a post and turn it into a vehicle of hate against that original creator, without any recourse for that original creator. It will lead to more toxicity and ridicule and hate on the site.

It will mean that if somebody downstream reblogs a post of mine with a question about some aspect of what I said, I will not be the one answering that question because I will have no idea that it was added.

It will also mean that if someone reblogs a work of art and adds a meme of someone weeping for joy at how beautiful it is, and then that gets reblogged and liked a million times, the original creator will not get any of those notes, and the original post on their blog will still only have 20 notes even if it becomes the most popular piece of art on the entire site.

This is going to utterly obliterate any sense of community that came from engagement with a post. Every reblog that adds anything is going to become an amputation of that post, and a creator will have to actively crawl down every separate reblog chain of every post if they want to try to find out what's happening with their content.

Just FYI everyone, because of this change I will be disabling reblogs on posts where I am sharing my own thoughts and ideas. If it's just a photo set or something I will not disable them, but anything else is going to get disabled because I do not want to feel like I'm putting my work out into the wilderness and have no meaningful way of tracking what's happening to it, and have a reblog suddenly turn it into somebody else's post, and any further engagement go to them.

Because let's be realistic, no one's going to go back through a reblog chain to interact with previous iterations. All of the engagement is going to stick with the current version that is in front of someone, which is cut off and separated from the original creator. If for no other reason than that no one will understand how this new system works, and they're going to (understandably) use the site the same way they always have and expect the same results.

I can think of so many ways that this could be weaponized and used for harmful purposes, and that is the very last thing we need in a world where there is already too much hostility.

Even if things are handled in a well-meaning way by people, it would still make it difficult, if not impossible, for creators to have any ongoing involvement in what happens to their own content once it is out in the wild, and will potentially cut them completely out of the conversation.

If you are as horrified by this change as I am, please do not stay silent. Please give some strong feedback through the feedback form so that the staff can realize how hated this change is.

The reblog chain is one of the things that makes Tumblr unlike anywhere else. All the notes on reblogs are attributed to the original post, no matter which branch people actually liked or reblogged. We want to keep encouraging conversations, and give contributors the recognition they deserve. 

Soon, you'll be able to like, reblog, or reply to any part of a reblog chain, and that note will go to that reblog's author. Each reblog will have its own counts, instead of one aggregated number from every version of the post. And yes, you’ll be able to like multiple posts in one chain.

If a reblog doesn't add anything, the love flows up to the last person in the chain who did. Your post doesn't lose notes just because people spread it quietly.

Past notes will stay on the original post — we're only changing what happens from here on out. Retroactively re-attributing all of them would be... a lot.