average conversation on tumblr.edu

This is a genuine conspiracy theory and I'm very sad about it because when I first heard it I thought it was funny and charming and harmless. And then I looked into it and you'll never guess who its believers think is to blame

I originally put this as the tags but then wanted to see where it lead so I looked it up and this is all I can really get? https://www.iflscience.com/flatearthers-have-a-wild-theory-about-trees--52772

Real and implied birds.

i am begging you all to stop treating this site like instagram if you dont want it to be content free by next year

actually i'm reblogging this again with commentary, fuck it.

There's people in the notes talking about "not basing your worth off numbers", and like. that isn't what this post is about. It's not a threat, either, it's a comment on how this site works, at a mechanical level.

Likes are worthless. Let me say that again.

Likes. Are. Worthless.

They don't do anything. They're a bookmark. They were never part of how tumblr works - in the early days we didn't even have a like button, and the site still more or less acts as though we don't. They're personal bookmarks and the only people who "get" anything from them are you (you bookmark the post) and the OP (maybe a very slight serotonin boost), but they don't keep the post in circulation, they don't keep it alive.

Without reblogs, a post will be dead in the water within an hour. No matter how good it is, no matter how many hours of painstaking love and attention its creator put into it, it will be dead within an hour and never seen again. It gets pushed down the dashboard and nobody aside from the followers who were online when it was posted will see it. And there's a huge difference in engagement on posts that get even one lucky reblog from someone with wider reach - that one reblog shows your post to five, ten, fifteen other people, and if one of those people also reblogs it, and so on and so forth, that's how posts stay alive and in circulation. It's like a contagion, but we're sharing creativity instead of disease.

And that matters. That "lifespan" of the post matters, artists and writers give up on this site and go to sites where posts have longer lifespans because it sucks to spend hours of your life, maybe even days, to get two notes and some fucking pocket lint for your efforts. We create for ourselves, but we share because we want people to see it, because that engagement offers positive feedback and encouragement to continue. But more than that, if every post (whether art, fic, gifset, whatever) is dying within an hour or a day of being posted, that means it's not making it onto your dashboard. And if it's not on your dashboard, you won't see it. This kills the site, after a while. You stop seeing the posts, because nobody is putting them on your dashboard, because this site doesn't have an algorithm like twitter and insta's and it shouldn't, it's the last bastion of chronological timelines.

Forgive my giant fucking rant I am so tired right now and full of the plague but like stop acting like artists and writers are just being whiny little babies, or "threatening" to withhold our fucking work (you're not entitled to it! it's ours! if we get nothing out of sharing it we're well within our rights to keep it private!) when we say this site will dry up without reblogs. We're just stating facts.

also I’ve seen some people in the tags say ‘oh there have always been more likes on posts’ no there haven’t ???? 

these are posts from 2013, look at the ratio

not to sound like a nursing home resident but back then people know that the point of this site was to reblog things and share them, not to bury them away among your other 23k liked posts

I WILL POST BITCH!!!!

We fucking lost it again, didn't we?😭

Just finished watching the third season of Sonic Prime and immediately went on here seeing if people were talking about it-

-needless to say, I was not disappointed with the trending. We’re all very predictable, it’s concerning

✨TWINK POLL GRAND FINAL✨

Howl Jenkins Pendragon (Howl's Moving Castle) vs Luke Skywalker (Star Wars)

IT'S FINALLY HERE, GANG! You know who they are, you have your biases, you have your propaganda ready...

VOTE FOR THE ULTIMATE TUMBLR TWINK!

@mydarlingdearestdead

Howl would wear that title with pride

pmmm fans stay winning!

Sometimes the Tumblr stars align just right. 🌟

Ilustradora e estudante de astronomia a indigena Maybí Machacalis lança sua mais recente criação, a Constelação do Boto Cor de Rosa. Indigenous illustrator and astronomy student Maybí Machacalis launches her latest creation, the Constellation of the Pink Dolphin.

DO NOT USE TUMBLR LIVE

So I've been warning people to not use the tumblr live feature and i had this discussion in the notes of one of the people i warned

said person already used live themselves and was not aware of what all TumblrLive's partner MEETME collects with its feature and i wanted to take the time to make a post going over the privacy policy for anyone who is interested

for the first part here MEETME talks about how creating an account (downloading) (or having a tumblr account that auto updated to include the tumblr live feature (which is a vast majority of the tumblr mobile population in the US rn)) automatically makes any information they collect visible to any of the partners they have

the three partners mentioned there Skout Flurv and Boy Ahoy are all dating sites that promote primarily their location tracking fuck all knows what they want with your live data most likely they want to advertise singles near you??? but MEETME's other current partners are apps like PlentyfFish Zoosk Chispa and Badoo which is Match.com and Bumble

the main important parts to notice from section ii of the privacy policy is the location information limit mobile ad tracking and do not track signals the rest of the section mainly puts the onus of revealing private information that can be used maliciously on the user ie. don't share your password say your full name in a live video where you live etc.

as far as the location information goes what its saying here is that they collect the location information when you first register for tumblr live when you first log in and whenever your phone is on even if youre not using tumblr live

what does it use this information for??? well advertising purposes of course!!!

now they try to get around saying they dont track your location or share it with other users by using this word precise several times now what that means is they have a rough geotag of your location

(your ip address they dont say here its your ip address but in later parts of the document they do in fact say they collect your ip address and if you want an idea how close an ip address can get to your exact location enter your ip address in google maps sometime)

theyre being intentionally vague about that so when you see on the live tab something that says near you you could probably not follow that exactly to said persons house but you can damn well be you will at the very least find their city

heres a reminder to all of you who havent most phones now bury in the settings an option to disable adID do it now!!! but remember that TumblrLive can still use all other information they gather they do not at all process do not track signals so you arent safe there and what data would that be that they can collect other than your location and adID??? glad you asked!!!

this is a non exhaustive list which means there is DEFINITELY other data they collect about and from you

so they collect:

your email and phone number

any info in your tumblr bio

any metadata connected to any photo youve ever uploaded

adID

ip address

cookies and beacon

which devices you use

which features you use

which pages you visit

which chats you use

anything in your private chats or posts

anything from any connected social media accounts

how well ads are doing

what youre interested in

and in some cases even your biometric information

and what do they do with this information???

ads of course

and to give anything they want to cops :)

i dont make this post in order to like ruin peoples fun when it comes to this new feature or to try to talk down to anyone or make anyone feel stupid or anything im not here to make fun of people or belittle anyone but i think its real fucking important people know what privacy rights they are forfeiting by having their phone on right now with this new feature

also everyone please feel free to give a kind fuck you to tumblrs current ceo @photomatt

TLDR: DONT USE TUMBLR LIVE

This is a lot of text just to tell you the main thing you can do is DONT use Live.

BUT YOU CAN DO MORE. YOU CAN BLOCK ITS CONNECTIONS FROM YOUR PHONE ENTIRELY.

Step 1) Install a DNS-based adblocker if you don't have one. The best one available on Android and iOS is Blokada. It's free to use and straightforward to set up.

Step 2) Block any domains that look related to Tumblr Live. So far I've blocked:

But if you see any others that look suspicious, block them too!

Now you'll no longer see those tumblr live ads in between posts, and if you go to the Tumblr Live tab, it will simply show nothing!

I see there's some confusion, so let me clarify:

You want to install Blokada 5, which is free. If the first thing you see on Blokada.org is "Cloud" or "Plus," you need to scroll the page.

"Blokada 6" is their set of premium cloud-security and VPN apps, which require a subscription. These are not needed to get system-wide adblocking on your phone!

staff literally took these images down and deleted op's account like within the last few hours I've seen this post multiple times today with OP still active and the images still there

adding on, i did a search in case OP has remade so i could add that info. they havent yet to my knowledge, but this account was active since at least 2015

imagine using a site for 8+ years and you get shot down because the people who run it dont like how you talked about their latest scam

screenshots of the post can be found here