Technology

59157 readers

2348 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

342

Tumblr is reportedly on life support as its latest owner reassigns staff (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 year ago by Emperor@feddit.uk to c/technology@lemmy.world

57 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It's not quite the end of Tumblr, but when management is supposedly sending memos with the Lord Tennyson quote about having "loved and lost," it doesn't look like there's much of a future.

Internet statesman and Waxy.org proprietor Andy Baio posted what is "apparently an internal Automattic memo making the rounds on Tumblr" to Threads. The memo, written to employees at WordPress.com parent company Automattic, which bought Tumblr from Verizon's media arm in 2019, is titled or subtitled "You win or you learn." The posted memo states that a majority of the 139 employees working on product and marketing at Tumblr (in a team apparently named "Bumblr") will "switch to other divisions." Those working in "Happiness" (Automattic's customer support and service division) and "T&S" (trust and safety) would remain.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I almost wonder it was a guerilla marketing success story in terms of that whole debacle. Like i don't think they were hit with anything but derision and snark.

[–] davidgro@lemmy.world 40 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My guess (and I think I read other people guessing this) was that the banks were pushing them to ban porn, and by announcing it the way they did, they were able to get cancellations data proving that they would die, so if the banks wanted any money from them at all in the future they had to back off, and did.

If it was marketing, then it probably backfired enormously - OF barely had competition that I heard of before then, but certainly did immediately after the announcement.

[–] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I thought the creators all learned to code.

[–] crispy_kilt@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Why would banks care about porn? All they should care about is making money. They're literal banks afterall.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's usually the credit cards. They don't want to be associated with the porn. Their brands show on the website.

Nobody knows what bank any company uses.

[–] crispy_kilt@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

This makes sense

[–] Hitchie_Rawtin@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It seems that way to us on the face of it but the lines that've been trotted out are firstly the worry that money is coming from an illegal source whether underaged or trafficked and secondly that money laundering could be happening, OF would be/is an extremely easy way to clean dirty money.

They used to have to set up actual businesses that did actual work in case a genuine customer appeared, now they can buy feet pics and jars of farts or whatever.

[–] crispy_kilt@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hmm I don't think that's it. They can still publish bullshit content and launder money that way. Also, jars of farts aren't porn and presumably still allowed

[–] Hitchie_Rawtin@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Tough to sell any old jar of farts without somebody wanting it for some reason (like having already seen pics of your butthole and becoming a perverted fan of everything your butthole ejects).

[–] davidgro@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I agree. Supposedly it was about adult sites having higher rates of chargebacks, fraud, etc. But to me that sounds easily solvable with increased fees from the banks for that industry instead of trying to push morals.