I wrote an incredibly long post on Dreamwidth about the Tumblr purges and what happens next! Here’s the first bit, which I’m quoting here as a little bit of a fannish history lesson for all you young’uns, probably it’ll get deleted, thanks Tumblr:
First: let me start off by saying that it is very probable that Tumblr will back out of this particular bad idea. They often do. The pattern of fannish archival catastrophes at the hand of corporations almost always has five stages: 1) a sale, or rumored sale, of the platform; 2) falling or nonexistent profits; 3) pressure from (pick at least one) governments, morality warriors, and/or advertisers/other corporate interests; 4) the actual fannish archival catastrophe, caused by a change in the TOS or in the enforcement of the TOS, which itself frequently comes in multiple stages; and 5) a second sale of the platform.
Strikethrough, for example, wasn’t a single terrible idea executed badly, it was at least two terrible ideas executed badly: first Strikethrough, which happened in May 2007; and then, following masses of outrage (particularly outrage from fans), some limited concessions from LJ management; followed by a second round of permanent suspensions conducted a little bit differently, a.k.a. Boldthrough, in August 2007. These tend to get lumped together in fannish memory, but I want people to remember that they were not a single event.
And those two events, themselves, are also not the whole story: Strikethrough itself followed on well over a year of rumors that LJ was changing its TOS/enforcement of its TOS, ever since LJ had been sold to SixApart in 2005, who were trying to monetize the site. Likewise, alongside those rumors, LJ’s adult content—which, unlike Tumblr, may actually have been predominately fannish, because I don’t think actual porn producers used LJ anywhere near as heavily as they use Tumblr—had been under continual attack from Christian pressure groups because it hosted material that they claimed was “harming children” [I can’t find a source on this, but I remember it very clearly—if anyone has a source, lmk in comments and I’ll link], what with all the fannish erotica with clear disclaimers on it that it was intended for adult audiences, frequently (as with pornish_pixies) posted in locked communities. There was, simultaneously, a lot of pressure being put on LiveJournal by the Russian government, because another group that heavily used LJ at the time was Russian political protestors. On top of that, there was a lot of rumor about LJ/SixApart’s advertisers getting antsy about blogs containing adult content [I can’t find a source on this either—if anyone has a source, lmk in comments and I’ll link].
So, in short, here is what happened to LJ: 1) LJ was sold to SixApart; 2) SixApart tried to monetize it; 3) SixApart got pressure from a) the Russian government, b) the Christian anti-porn police, and c) advertisers to bring its “adult content problem” under control; 4) LJ deleted a whole bunch of blogs, backed up and said “mea culpa”, and then… deleted a whole bunch of blogs; and 5) SixApart sold LJ to the Russians.
Following this pattern, here is what I suspect is going to happen to Tumblr: 1) Tumblr was sold to Yahoo (now owned by Verizon); 2) Yahoo/Verizon tried to monetize it; 3) Yahoo/Verizon got pressure from a) various governments, including Indonesia and China, b) the anti-porn/anti-sex-work/anti-shipping moral purity police, and c) the Apple Store to bring its “adult content problem” under control; 4) starting earlier this year, Tumblr deleted a whole bunch of blogs, backed up and said “mea culpa”, and then… changed its TOS and started deleting content [← we’re here right now]; and 5) Verizon will sell Tumblr to ? ? ?
It’s possible that we’ll have another couple rounds in Step 4. It’s not like 2 rounds in Step 4 is magic, or something; my point is just: Tumblr has already backed down once. You see where that gets us (fucking nowhere, that’s where). That said? The death throes are going to take a while. I was still reluctantly cross-posting to LJ in 2015; as late as 2013, LJ was still a lot of fans’ primary home. Six full years after Strikethrough!! Six! Full! Years! After they started deleting our shit, and banning our friends!!! And in that six years, all that happened was LJ’s TOS got continually and aggressively more restrictive, while the Russians were banging up all the political dissenters whose content they’d purchased into jail.
My point, here, is just that we have been here before. Exactly here. We have done this before, exactly this. Tumblr may take a while to bleed out, and they may try to triage it, but the writing is, in fact, on the wall: Tumblr will throw us off whatever cliffs they need to to try and eke out a profit for the morons in Verizon’s boardroom; and in the end, our data’s going to get deleted, or it’s going to get sold, because that is just how these things go.
So we need to figure out where we go next.
Please read/reblog/reply—I really do want people to weigh in! I’m not promising to keep tracking this on Tumblr (come to DW, the water’s fine), but I do want to hear what people have to say.
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