Basically when Tumblr got bought, they progressively became more aggressive in their attempt to make it more profitable. At first, they changed their UI to something so shitty that the site was practically unusable without an external extension, and slowly but surely, they began to aggressively add more invasive advertising. It was like a war; the ads would become more invasive, and users would actively figure out the ways to block it. In this time, it was also almost as if moderation just ceased on the site as they focused their entire time on advertising and making a profit of some kind. Then as things kind of settled and users begrudgingly downloaded xkit, the porn bots started to show up. It was slow at first but progressively it just got worse and worse and worse. As this occurred, moderation on the site was so bad that the iOS app store began blocking the app temporarily due to site failing to take action against child exploitation material. The porn bot accounts hit critical mass, and immediately after they did the site banned adult content to try and get things reinstated on the app store. It was, but users jumped ship en-masse and the site has never fully recovered and likely never will. The entire site dropped in value and has stayed that way too. The final straw for so many people wasn’t even the adult content removal was more so the fact they’d rather ban adult content entirely than actually improve their poor moderation.
If reddit ends up banning NSFW content or restricting it somewhat, then I honestly feel like it will be more evidence that for-profit social media platforms are just simply not sustainable long term especially with twitter doing its thing right now as well and Meta just generally becoming a real life supervillain ran company. If things go the same vein as tumblr for reddit, then there will be more drama a lot sooner than people realize and the migration towards lemmy and other platforms is just inevitable. When the mass exodus of tumblr users occurred, the site was so broken it was practically unusable.
There’s some instances that exist for it, but they aren’t that big. Yet.
The reason why a few instances are shying away from it though is because it is kinda hard to properly moderate adult content consistently. It requires a lot of time to make sure you stay within the scope of the law otherwise it opens up legal liabilities.
I wonder if, despite their public failure, the owners of these platforms somehow manage to make a good profit behind the scenes. If not, I am curious about why history would repeat itself in this way.
I was not around Tumblr… But that does sound eerie. What happened?
Basically when Tumblr got bought, they progressively became more aggressive in their attempt to make it more profitable. At first, they changed their UI to something so shitty that the site was practically unusable without an external extension, and slowly but surely, they began to aggressively add more invasive advertising. It was like a war; the ads would become more invasive, and users would actively figure out the ways to block it. In this time, it was also almost as if moderation just ceased on the site as they focused their entire time on advertising and making a profit of some kind. Then as things kind of settled and users begrudgingly downloaded xkit, the porn bots started to show up. It was slow at first but progressively it just got worse and worse and worse. As this occurred, moderation on the site was so bad that the iOS app store began blocking the app temporarily due to site failing to take action against child exploitation material. The porn bot accounts hit critical mass, and immediately after they did the site banned adult content to try and get things reinstated on the app store. It was, but users jumped ship en-masse and the site has never fully recovered and likely never will. The entire site dropped in value and has stayed that way too. The final straw for so many people wasn’t even the adult content removal was more so the fact they’d rather ban adult content entirely than actually improve their poor moderation.
If reddit ends up banning NSFW content or restricting it somewhat, then I honestly feel like it will be more evidence that for-profit social media platforms are just simply not sustainable long term especially with twitter doing its thing right now as well and Meta just generally becoming a real life supervillain ran company. If things go the same vein as tumblr for reddit, then there will be more drama a lot sooner than people realize and the migration towards lemmy and other platforms is just inevitable. When the mass exodus of tumblr users occurred, the site was so broken it was practically unusable.
LEMMY NEEDS PORN!!!
Jk, sort of.
There’s some instances that exist for it, but they aren’t that big. Yet. The reason why a few instances are shying away from it though is because it is kinda hard to properly moderate adult content consistently. It requires a lot of time to make sure you stay within the scope of the law otherwise it opens up legal liabilities.
Thank you for providing me such a nice summary!
I wonder if, despite their public failure, the owners of these platforms somehow manage to make a good profit behind the scenes. If not, I am curious about why history would repeat itself in this way.