An ex-colleague of mine mentioned yesterday that there may be contacts between Automattic and midjourney in that direction, but nothing is public yet and I don't have any more info. They probably won't have anything specific to share either, since they left the company weeks ago too. That being said:

I have no reason to doubt my ex-coworker word, they are a trustworthy person.

Tumblr's CEO has been absurdly enthusiastic (comically, even) about AI, and is a big fan of LLMs and 'AI' companies.

A deal with midjourney could solve tumblr financial issues (not the same company, but openAi is paying up to 5 million/year to news companies to use their content as training data... tumblr generates several orders of magnitude more content than any newspaper or any media company and it only would need a 20 to 30 million per year deal to be profitable)

Nightshade your photo posts now.

Even if you don’t post your own art anymore, go back to your old stuff and watermark it.

Do it ASAP, before the deal goes through and the scraping begins.

This will not only protect your art, but has the opportunity to fuck over this deal on a pretty large scale. The more of these posts that are glazed or poisoned, the less valuable this deal becomes for tumblr and midjourney.

The extra funny thing is that I got the tattoo mid-semester BECAUSE conservatives flipped their shit about me making a TikTok saying “be gay, do crime” after mentioning that I am a law professor.

Well. This time I had to give up immediately because I got like ten followers down the list and was having immense trouble figuring out who’s a bot and who’s real. Never ever used to see this but like 5/10 of the first few followers I checked on had just totally empty blogs. It wasn’t until I’d already blocked 2 - assuming bots bc empty blogs - that I thought to check if they had any likes. And bam! There it was. All of their user activity.

We have people on this website now who have never reblogged a single post.

Y'all, I’m sure you’re sick of seeing “you have to reblog thing” but you literally have to reblog things. That is how this website works. You understand that, right? How do you think the post you hit “like” on got in front of you? It wasn’t because you liked enough things and Tumblrs algorithm figured out what you like enough to hand it to you. It’s because you followed someone, a human person, who reblogged that post. And it came from another person who also reblogged it.

You are killing this website by refusing to interact with it in the way that makes it better than the other websites you ran from to come here.

This is not Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok. Liking is nothing more than a bookmark. You look like a bot and will be blocked.

Make a post introducing yourself. You don’t need to add all the details!!! Here’s an example that’s safe and doesn’t reveal too much:

“Hello! I’m [insert whatever name, even just your username] and I’m [age; can just say you’re a minor or over 18, you don’t need to be specific]. I was on [social media site] and thought tumblr was like those. So here’s my introduction to prove I’m a person and not a bot. My hobbies are [insert whatever] and a few random facts: [insert anything but keep it short, maybe mention you have pets and/or love puns]. I was advised to stay anonymous because that’s how tumblr works. I’ll do a better job of reblogging now that I understand how this site work.”

Reblogging a bunch of things from someone else’s blog is AWESOME. Add commentary in the tags. Keep in mind the first five tags are what the search engine here tracks, so use those for your bookmarkers. If you wanna find the posts again, tag what’s relevant, and then add commentary, a story, a keyboard smash, whatever. If it’s artwork (real stuff, not AI generated), include your opinion on the work. Keyboard smashing qualifies as “I have no words for how much I love this thing.”

Definitely reblog art from the original artist OR art posts that credit the artist. If you’re not sure of the OP is the artist, check their blog. Art includes crafts and writing!!!!!!! This is how we get our work seen. No one sees your likes unless you have them available on your blog and people go searching. It’s rare that anyone does, so just reblog the post.

Reblog, do not repost. These are not the same thing. Reposting is rude and is considered theft, especially if it includes any kind of art.

Do not spam tags. What is tag spamming? It’s when you add tags not relevant to the post. This fucks with searches. Yesterday, a new follower had posts of random tropical architecture tagged as lgbtq, interview with a vampire, ace, anime, and other things entirely not relevant. When I searched for quilts, anime GIFs and more architecture showed up. Those fuck with searches!!! YOU WILL BE REPORTED. We do not tolerate spam here. At all.

DO NOT CENSOR YOUR TAGS!!!! There’s a tag blocking system in place, and censoring fucks with it. Use your words. This isn’t tiktok. Use words. Something like su!c!d3 will not be on the block list, and that tag is very triggering for a lot of people. Use the entire fucking word. Also, block things you don’t want to see. If you don’t like what someone posts, keep on scrolling or unfollow them if you are a follower. You can ask that they tag their stuff, but if they choose not to, that leaves you with the option of unfollowing, blocking, or moving on. I’ve unfollowed friends because they don’t tag stuff that triggers my seizures. For my own safety, I unfollowed.

Again, liking helps no one. It makes you look like a bot. A blank blog makes you look like a bot. We block bots here. Zero tolerance for them. Make yourself look like a person.

Also, if someone comes into your inbox and asks you for donations, report and block them. What they’re telling you is a scam. This is very common here. There’s on that’s been going around for years, with new scam accounts, and it’s always a fucking cat. THERE IS NO CAT!!! They set up a GoFundMe packed with lies in order to take your money. They will likely have a new blog set up here that’s a day old, filled with reblogs, and most of those reblogs will be the scam post. Report and block.