So I do have some thoughts on the Tumblr purge.
What everybody’s going through now? Many of us have gone through before.
The loss of weeks, months, years of time and investment in building our
friend circles, our communities, our audiences, our content. A lot of
that we can never fully get back.
We know that pain. In some ways, having been through it before makes it easier. In others, the commitment and investment were real and they are a real loss.
I’ve said several times that I’m liking what I see of Pillowfort. This is true. But I have caveats. And they descend from what’s happening to Tumblr, and what happened to Livejournal back in the day, and MySpace before that.
The thing is, while I do believe Pillowfort’s team have the best of intentions in mind…so did the guys who developed Livejournal. That original team? They were great. But they were a private company. Just like Tumblr. And eventually–also like Tumblr–when they’d moved on in life or whatever, they did what most people in that situation would do: they sold it.
These platforms aren’t OURS. They aren’t owned or controlled by us, the users. When they’re private companies or private individuals, those people can ultimately do whatever they like, to OUR content. And even if they’re good people, their needs and inclinations will change with time. When I tell people I like Pillowfort…well, I do. But I can’t guarantee its code base will be ready to handle a mass fandom exodus. And I can’t guarantee that even if it is, in 5-10 years you won’t find yourself right back here. In fact, history suggests you probably will.
The LJ Strikethrough was the last time this happened. At that time, Dreamwidth and AO3–both built with the same principles of user privacy, user control of their content, and freedom of expression–were just coming online. But at that time, the majority of exiting users chose Tumblr. And here we are.
Now Pillowfort is an option. It’s designed to fund itself via user-generated revenue–purchasing premium features, etc. so that the users are also its customers. Dreamwidth is still an option, using the same model and still operating under the same principles it was founded on, still willing to grow and change based on feedback from the users it was created for. Mastodon is out there too now, a Twitter ‘clone’ that also gives the user ownership of their own platform.
It’s also true you don’t have to choose only one. In my case, I’m hedging my bets. I’ve been active on Twitter for a little while now. I’ve had a Dreamwidth since my late LJ days, and I set up a Pillowfort a couple months back because I wanted to see what I thought so I could give people my genuine opinion. And I’ll be on all those for a while yet.
So I’m saying, just…be thoughtful. Investigate. Don’t just leap for the option that looks shiniest on the surface, or most familiar. Most especially, don’t just go for what seems familiar. Look at the ways you’ve been dissatisfied with your experience, or your community’s experience, and consider how the different options might address those problems better. And remember that your experience online–your time, your creations, your communities–represent things of real value, and they deserve a choice that will respect and protect them.
And I guess I’m also saying…if you don’t see anything you like, consider building it yourself. You don’t need to be a coder in order to have a vision, or to organize people, or to put out a call.
from Tumblr https://ift.tt/2QcN3WE