apricops:

apricops:

It’s quite likely no coincidence that that most ‘mismanaged’ and least profitable social media site is also the one that turned out to be most amenable to the formation of actual communities

To clarify, Tumblr is indeed horribly mismanaged, but notably, it’s mismanaged both in ways that harm us (e.g. doing little about pornbots, nazis, etc.) and ways that have greatly benefited us – not asking for real names, hiding our follower counts, a chronologically-sorted dashboard, etc. are big draws, but in the eyes of other social media monarchs, they look like unforgivable mistakes. If I don’t have to give my real name, that’s that much less information to sell to advertisers. If posts are listed chronologically, Tumblr can’t shove the posts of ‘influencers’ in front of me willy-nilly. Tumblr was a ‘success’ because it was too poorly managed to sufficiently atomize us, and so we actually had conversations and communities instead of being the best products for advertisers.