Ernie Smith

Made a decision. Sticking to it. I will at some point archive the ShortFormBlog content. But at this point, this is a personal Tumblr. I may even, shocker of shockers, change the name. I’ll highlight things I’m working on, but I also just want a spot where I can throw random opinions into the void.

This Tumblr has 21,000 posts on it. I would much prefer to put the 21,000 posts somewhere else where they can be mothballed but keep the community I built here. (Hey @staff, any ideas?)

I plan to combine the archives of ShortFormBlog on WordPress and ShortFormBlog on Tumblr into a single site, using the static site generator Eleventy. I’ve already done a good chunk of the exporting. Between the two sites, there are 36,000 posts. We had numerous contributors over the years, with about half a dozen regulars—but even given that, I’m responsible for most of the posts. I’ll keep the Tumblr archives online so you can follow the notes if you wanna, but I’ve long wanted to merge these archives into one piece, as complicated as it sounds.

More on the Automattic mess from my pals at 404 Media:

We still do not know the answers to all of these questions, because Automattic has repeatedly ignored our detailed questions, will not get on the phone with us, and has instead chosen to frame a new opt-out feature as “protecting user choice.” We are at the point where individual Automattic employees are posting clarifications on their personal Mastodon accounts about what data is and is not included.  The truth is that Automattic has been selling access to this “firehose” of posts for years, for a variety of purposes. This includes selling access to self-hosted blogs and websites that use a popular plugin called Jetpack; Automattic edited its original “protecting user choice” statement this week to say it will exclude Jetpack from its deals with “select AI companies.” These posts have been directly available via a data partner called SocialGist, which markets its services to “social listening” companies, marketing insights firms, and, increasingly, AI companies. Tumblr has its own Firehose, and Tumblr posts are available via SocialGist as well.  Almost every platform has some sort of post “firehose,” API, or way of accessing huge amounts of user posts. Famously, Twitter and Reddit used to give these away for free. Now they do not, and charging access for these posts has become big business for those companies. This is just to say that the existence of Automattic’s firehose is not anomalous in an internet ecosystem that trades on data. But this firehose also means that the average user doesn’t and can’t know what companies are getting direct access to their posts, and what they’re being used for.

Ten years ago today, I made the internet mad by pointing out that there seemed to be a lot of commentary about Flappy Bird, often of significant depth and thinking, and often beyond what the developer of the game actually put into what he made.

Of the single-serving Tumblrs I made over the years, this was my most successful—and controversial. It went viral and drew a lot of attention—some of it quite snarky. People were upset that I pointed this basic fact out.

Since every jerk on the internet has to have an opinion about Threads, here’s mine.

I know this sounds absurd to say, but I think this video kind of shaped my worldview.