Tumblr

Yeah VPNs can get you automatically flagged as a spambot on Tumblr.

Edited by Florien on Sep 10th 2023 at 1:53:21 AM

Considering how many bots they had for a while there, I can understand the policy.

Tumblr still has quite a lot of bots though... it does seem to have calmed down a bit, but I still get obvious spambot followers quite frequently.

I know many sites are not doing enough to stamp out bots. Captchas usually work to weed out bots (and when it doesn't, it's because the bots find a way to export the captcha to a human). Put in a weekly captcha, and you'd have a website cleaned of bots in a couple months.

But most sites don't actually want to get rid of the bots, because they make money for advertising. Most advertising is just bots selling to other bots. It's only when it becomes a problem for users (like it did on Tumblr) that anyone complains and they do anything about it.

I'm going to stop there before I go on a rant.

This is factually incorrect, by the way, the arms race has got to the point the historic captchas (the ones that you'd enter the text or click the pictures) are solvable by bots, but not solvable by many humans. (especially to screen-reader users.) So there are accessibility concerns also. More modern captchas which don't rely on testing users directly are harder to circumvent, but that doesn't matter, because you can just throw a thousand bots at it and one will get through, and each server can send out thousands of bots per hour.

The vast majority of bots don't get through Captcha. The ones you do see are nothing compared to how many attempt to register. So it's less that "they don't actually care about fixing the problem" and more "they have fixed the problem, this is really the best that can be done."

Not everything that's bad on a website is an elaborate plot on the part of a website, sometimes it's just "turns out computer security is actually one of the most difficult problems there is."

Excuse me, I am clearly in a "fuck the system" mood, you're obviously only supposed to provide information that agrees with me.

But seriously, thanks for the updated info. I still feel like this is a solvable problem, even if it needs legislative help. Ignoring the difficult of passing technology laws, would it be at all feasible to fine the botmakers? As you said, they're working through the power of scale; ding someone a penny for every bot they send out, and this whole thing would dry up pretty quick. The question is, can they follow even a fraction of the bots back to where they came from?

So someone posted on Tumblr about how the way new accounts are opened on Tumblr means that a lot of accounts people assume are bots and block recently since they have nothing on them yet are likely new accounts.

You literally CANNOT modify your tumblr until you follow 4-5 people.

So if they don’t have a porn lady icon, then it’s not a bot.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Sep 28th 2023 at 10:04:47 AM

I got followed by a recent confusing account who I was able to tell was a real person because, even though they had the default icon and no profile, they had a visible list of liked posts that were fandom-specific to signal that they're not a bot.

Heh,I don't even have my likes as public

Why would Tumblr make that requirement? I don't quite blame them for failing to anticipate this specific outcome, I'm just struggling for any benefit it could have at all.

who can possibly know the workings of tumblr

tumblr is a madman driven by whim

It's ostensibly to get users engaged right away by making sure they're following some people and tags. I had to do it when I signed up and assumed that was what everyone had to do. I didn't find out until later that that's not how things work.

Pretty much all the default everything people who followed me turned out to not be bots later, I never blocked them.

The thing is, apparently this isn't even consistent. Some new users don't get told to do this, and so there's all kinds of confusion going on about it.

What about the “follow to see more?” ones? Or is that what it says if the blog is empty?

I’ll keep that in mind, though. Good to know.

Edited by SapphireBlue on Sep 30th 2023 at 4:30:25 AM

Tumblr is making it so you're no longer able to use custom domains not purchased through them :/

Necrobump!

So I heard that the CEO of Tumblr had a meltdown and a bunch of users are moving to the Fediverse, like what happened with Twitter at the end of 2022. Is that true?

So as far as I can tell...

- Trans woman gets a post of hers detailing her transition timeline flagged and deleted

- She jokingly threatens the Tumblr CEO over it

- Tumblr CEO loses his goddamn mind, deletes her blog and doxxes/sics the fbi on her

- Everyone who supports her is similarly threatened

That's a yikes moment.

Apparently he’s also been using his position to slowly push out any and all Queer employees as well.

Is this a new CEO? Why are they doing it?

Nope he’s the one they’ve had for several years, and he’s been behind some of Tumblrs worst ideas in the past few years.

x5 That sounds illegal.

I just have to wonder if people like him are thriving on or straight-up enjoying being as hateful, petty and despicable as possible. Because, you know, not being a complete garbage human shouldn't be so fucking hard.

Or, you know, at least being a smidgeon pragmatic if you absolutely have to be an asshole.

Edited by MagmaTeaMerry on Feb 20th 2024 at 8:30:18 PM

The worse part is learning this just as the amended KOSA bill(which is just reworded but nothing changed) is once again trying to go through and how this will censor Tumblr even more than the CEO is already shown to be doing.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Feb 21st 2024 at 1:05:41 AM

keep in mind a few other things-

tumblr has already had to settle a discrimination lawsuit a few years ago for disproportionately targeting trans women with bans

in the years since absolutely nothing has changed and trans women have still been targeted for NSFW bans even over completely innocuous SFW posts (much like the inciting incident, which was literally just two headshots of a trans woman from pre-transition to being in transition)

the CEO admitted that he hired an external moderating company that was run by TERFs and outright admitted that trans women were being specifically targeted (not to mention the company doing some really illegal stuff by selling moderating powers, likely to TERFs).

and then, well, the incident occurred and the cartoonishly unrealistic "threat" was made and everyone is up in arms.

Tumblr will likely be censored by the new KOSA bill, which hasn’t changed at all just been reworded, GOP Marsha Blackburn and Democrat Blumenthal are the co sponsors of the bill and has gotten 60 Other Co Sponsors in the Senate to support the bill and this is the last week to stop it from passing.

Marsha Blackburn has even stated this is a weapon against the “Trans agenda” and naturally plenty of Democrats have chosen to support it as well with the Republicans.

Here’s a link to the electronic frontier foundation talking about it and how this will affect websites like Tumblr;

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/02/dont-fall-latest-changes-dangerous-kids-online-safety-act

This will also be used to affect…other real life events since they can censor information that is pro/anti-conflicts they don’t like. Indeed the wording is meant to make it as roundabout as possible but ensure they can do this. This video about KOSA includes the clip where Marsha admits this will target LGBT+ works online:

Edit: The clip starts around 3:30 in the vid.

This will make the censoring going on even worse than the way tumblrs already handled trans women as is.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Feb 21st 2024 at 3:28:33 AM