tumblr userbase is going to become unconscionably insufferable in response to this taste of power I suspect. don't let it go to your heads.
Lots of talk about "bullying wins" and little talk about power and the flow of capital, which is what matters to the corporate bigheads who approve these things. imo a few things were at play here to make them rescind this.
- It was buggy. Tags not showing up for an OP past even an empty reblog did not appear to be intended (or at least, it was not mentioned in the announcement), and is a MAJOR problem. Specifically, it undoes the major update from around 5 years ago which was heavily praised by the userbase (one of few tumblr updates to actually be widely well recieved) which allowed a poster to see tags in their activity feed. If this was the only problem, they could have launched a bug fix. Same goes for not being able to turn off reblogs.
- Userbase unity? Well, maybe. Specifically - the userbase had a swift, harsh, and overbearing response to this update. Most of the complaints were the same: this will exacerbate harassment, this will disrupt the flow of communication, this will make it impossible for someone to maintain their posts. Big names in the tumblr ecosystem came down hard, fast, and with significant concern: if this stays in place, I will have to leave - this place will not do what I need it to do. Much of the userbase said the same, sharing alternate blog hosting sites and doing the thing we always do when this ship looks like sinking. Additionally, their replies and feedback forms were obviously being flooded. This put real pressure on their workers in the office, which puts financial pressure on the company. I think the most disrupting tactic though, was going offsite. I checked out their instagram and twitter comments; they were flooded. This is something we Don't Usually Do when we're just whining about the newest change. Usually we stay here to complain but we make do with the change. This, I think, is the thing that signified people weren't just whining but were actually for real pissed. And then of course...
- Five hours before the roll-back announcement, an article drops. That kind of bad press is the nail in the coffin for a dying company like tumblr. I imagine several concerned meetings somewhere in those five hours.
What do we learn? The answer is not "bullying works" and "swearing at customer service reps is fun". The answer is to remember that online, we are both the product and the thing that creates the value (similar to but obviously distinct from the actual workers of a corporation; if we vanished overnight they'd have nothing). Brush up on your collective bargaining & try to understand why this happened in this way. And don't try to replicate this for every random update that comes next by endlessly harassing them. Take stock of the little power you have and work out where to put it to use. This is still just tumblr.



















