What happened to Tumblr joining the Fediverse?

3 years ago by QuazarOmega to c/fediverse

Do we know any more about the plans of Tumblr for when it will join the Fediverse?
Matt did say "ASAP" at the time. Start of July saying they're still working on it, did he simply underestimate how big of an undertaking it would be?

Gormadt 58 points 3 years ago

Probably underestimated the difficulty in doing it

ASAP simply means As Soon As Possible, so they're still perfectly on goal for that

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QuazarOmega 15 points 3 years ago

Yeah, I mean, you are technically right, which is the best kind indeed!

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Corvid 40 points 3 years ago

This reply from July shows they're still working on it, it's just challenging: https://nitter.net/...

Is Tumblr still working on this? It's a little depressing to think Facebook of all companies might beat you to it.

Yeah 😕 They are orders of magnitude bigger and better capitalized than us. Not an excuse, just reality.

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skullgiver 11 points 3 years ago

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ramplay 10 points 3 years ago

I would say the level of contempt would be much less though.

I never used tumblr personally but I know I would see screenshots of it all the time elsewhere. I also don't view them as a huge corp that's done anything particularly insidious

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skullgiver 5 points 3 years ago

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paraphrand -2 points 3 years ago

Well, they did take away pornography. People sure acted like that was insidious. Every single platform should offer porn, you know.

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PostmodernPythia 6 points 3 years ago

More like “Platforms that built their popularity largely on NSFW content suddenly abandoning those creators/users is a dick move.” Plus, all platforms should have nipple gender equity. (The ban on”female-presenting nipples” was instituted in the same rule change.) Because being a woman doesn’t make my nipples inherently pornographic.

No one’s coming onto Puritan sites and making them host porn. You are free to avoid all sex-related sites on the internet if you like, but most people would prefer not to.

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QuazarOmega 2 points 3 years ago

Yep, I linked it in the post text, I just wonder how difficult it could truly be

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Kinglink 25 points 3 years ago

Tumblr scared, there's porn on the Fediverse...

Also I have a feeling they lose something valuable (The ability to serve ads) for something not as important (Access to more publcly available content)

PS. They can of course serve ads, but what stops lemmy.world from connecting to them and sharing the same content ad free?

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QuazarOmega 5 points 3 years ago

what stops lemmy.world from connecting to them and sharing the same content ad free?

That's true, I hadn't thought about that, but I wonder if he thinks that maybe Tumblr isn't popular enough to see a big loss in doing that, since at most it would just get more interactions from a community that wouldn't have joined a proprietary social network in the first place, so the missed ads would have always been missed, while in this way he gains more "free" engagement

About the porn, they could probably defederate from the largest NSFW instances at least

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ada 24 points 3 years ago

did he simply underestimate how big of an undertaking it would be?

I'm betting that's it

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roguetrick -7 points 3 years ago

Once you look into it, you realize the interoperability isn't there like some claim. "Joining the fediverse" as a single instance means nothing. Activitypub doesn't make everything instantly interoperable, and being able to crosspost on everything is a large (and pretty futile) undertaking.

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noodlejetski 8 points 3 years ago

@roguetrick you've posted a reply in a Lemmy thread from your kbin account.
@QuazarOmega @ada

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roguetrick 5 points 3 years ago

Two services that are very interoperable (because kbin is designed to be, specifically able to bring in microblogging content while lemmy can't) and still have problems. Did you know boosts are what make comments appear higher on kbin while favorites work that way on Lemmy? That's the sort of thing I'm taking about. Every implimentation of activitypub kind of makes its own rules on what tokens mean and if you want to be compatible, you have to change your service as they change theirs (which is what happened, lemmy changed and kbin hasn't gotten around to it yet since it's not a big priority).

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AphoticDev 17 points 3 years ago

What do you mean underestimate? He said "ASAP". That means "as soon as possible", not "very soon". ASAP can mean next week, or three years from now. He didn't underestimate, he simply gave no time frame.

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QuazarOmega 7 points 3 years ago

Maybe it's just me, I know that it literally means "any time", but I always felt it is used to say "very soon" in practice.
Anyway, I was just curious, I wouldn't want them to rush it

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semidetached 6 points 3 years ago

possibly realised there is no money to be made from doing it?

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3laws 5 points 3 years ago

Ads, it has always been about ads.

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codapine -1 points 3 years ago

Always has been

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QuazarOmega 1 point 3 years ago

Always ads* been

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QuazarOmega 1 point 3 years ago

That's a good point honestly, although the guy sounds like he means well, since he's also behind WordPress and he's planning to add ActivityPub to it too

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maegul 1 point 3 years ago

I don't have links, sorry, but I've seen posts on the fediverse from someone who claims to work there and someone who claims to have worked there up until recently.

From them it seems that they are technically still working on it but in a way that it's clearly either a low priority or something that is now mostly a gesture that is never going to be done. The reason being that Tumblr isn't in great financial condition right now and once they started thinking about federating it became clear that there's no financial gain for what would be a decent amount of work.

Basically, it doesn't seem like there's any good reason for an independently large and profit-driven social media platform to federate. In the case of Threads, they're most likely driven by avoiding anti-trust activities.

For-profit entities can work here. Mozilla, Flipboard, Medium seem to all be having a crack. But for-profit social media entities? Dunno, seems like a bust. And if you want a Tumblr like platform here, we might have to build it ourselves (misskey/calckey/firefish might meet your needs in the mean time).

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