How’s it feel being on Tumblr again?

marco:

My peak-Tumblr era was 2007–2010. When most people think back to their good old days on Tumblr, the time period they’re thinking of is mostly or entirely after that.

Whatever Tumblr is or was, to most people, happened long after I left.

The people I followed back then are mostly gone now, and the people I’ve followed since then (mostly on Twitter) aren’t here. I don’t know who my community is here, or even if I’ll find one.

I no longer know what works here and what doesn’t. I don’t get any of the jokes or references. I feel like the oldest person in the room.

This doesn’t really feel like going “back” to an old hangout — it feels like starting over.

And I don’t know if it’ll stick or not. It depends on where I find my people. If “we” congregate here, or I find a new community here, that’ll be great — and if not, I’ll probably go wherever they end up.

This sums up how I feel about Tumblr, too. For me it was another blog platform to try out back then and a place to run into cool or funny posts and fandom content but over the years Twitter just became a far more compelling and worthwhile place to be, and far more relevant for work needs.

Having returned to Tumblr in recent weeks doesn’t feel like a return to a familiar place, it’s rather a new start at an old neighborhood that’s now populated by new people doing different things.

Bob Iger returns as Disney CEO, replacing Bob Chapek who took over when Iger resigned in February 2020

Chapek has been quite the controversial figure as Disney CEO, not wanting to push back against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis which threatened the company’s presence and the Disney World park in Orlando and made it untenable for non binary-confirming employees. After a bad quarter and a lousy outlook for 2023, the Disney board fired Chapek and requested Iger to return.

I may have more thoughts on this later

DISNEY SHAKEUP: Bob Iger Back as CEO, Bob Chapek Out; Board Cites ‘Complex Industry Transformation’ for Shocking C-Suite Shuffle

Dealing with Growth on Mastodon

Leaving this thread here for future reference on Mastodon’s growth and how to deal with it. People are advised to join or move to smaller servers to help manage the load and donate to their admins.

From the second post in the thread:

Start your own instance. We have 8,000 servers hosting over 7 million users on the #Fediverse. Growing by half a million a week NOW, with just today’s level of crazy.

Assume this will 4X or more after sh*t really starts going downhill at Twitter.

Got a spare computer, or a @Raspberry_Pi maybe? Want to use a good managed host to set one up? Put it to use.

Tim Chambers (@tchambers@indieweb.social)

The rejection of breaking news and other journalistic content on Mastodon

Twitter had been the place to go for breaking news and live reports and reactions of events, incidents, accidents, and pretty much anything else of interest. It’s heaven for news junkies, reporters, and anyone interested with finding out what’s happening. Mastodon hasn’t been it, isn’t it, and most people who have been here for a while don’t want it to be it.

On the other hand, it’s a federated network in which anything and everything can be accommodated. Some server admins and members will block other servers that hosts content they find objectionable simply out of preference, others would love to have such content hosted or shared to theirs.

Mastodon may have been around for six years but it hasn’t gone anywhere near the maturity phase involving massive influx of people with varying expectations like what’s happening now, so a lot of the existing members are trying to protect and defend the Mastodon they know.

Twitter’s own transformation may or may not end up depriving the public of that real time news update so it’s only natural it’s what people are looking for when they seek a replacement. The federated nature of Mastodon shouldn’t be a hindrance to that.

Server admins who share the same views could even advertise that as their primary selling point. Right now it’s already happening with journa.host and newsie.social but some server admins are blocking journa.host for insisting on taking the standard approach they’re used to on Twitter. So anyone who want to connect to anyone on that server must make sure they’re not on a server that blocks it.

This can make things seem more complicated than they ought to be, but also means it can still work for those who want it and not for those who don’t, at the same time.

orgyporgy:

Blocking Spree

My ‘Don server admin has been on a blocking spree and a number of friends and people I follow got caught up. Like a full block, not just limited. This means zero interactions between the servers even if the accounts already follow each other.

Unfortunately this was inevitable with Mastodon growing so rapidly and with so many factors in play. Content moderation is a major thing on the Don and many of the long time admins can be quite strict on it, not to mention personal preferences on certain matters being a factor in deciding reasons for blocking ga limiting access. Unlike blocking, limiting means visibility if the accounts are connected.

I mean, their servers, their rules, no debating that and if it becomes untenable, you have an option to move or start your own.

Having said that, I’m considering running my own server eventually. Haven’t decided if it’s going to be just a personal one or open to registration among friends. Certainly not going to entertain any random person.

Twitter is going really great

As I keep saying, the company is not compatible at all with how Elon Musk thinks how a company should be run. In fact, it’s likely the complete opposite is true, which is why there’s far fewer than 50% of the company’s staff remains.

Originally Twitter wanted to shave 25% of their headcount even without Elon, because they were painfully aware the company was bloated. Elon boasted about wanting to cut 75% of the staff, but when he came in, he ended up Thanosing the company instead.

What he probably wasn’t counting on (or maybe he did to an extent) were the culture clash and staff solidarity so now Twitter ends up with fewer than 3000 employees and that number is likely going to go down even further by the day. Apparently 75% of the remaining staff opt out of the “extremely hardcore” conditions.

From the looks of it, Twitter could break next week with nobody available to fix things. People are already seeing glitches and things not working on the site.

He boasted about cutting 80% of the micro services that he deemed inessential to running Twitter which ended up disabling two factor authentication via SMS and now it looks like his 75% layoff plan is working, albeit perhaps slightly differently than he intended.

Musk is fucking around and finding out.

I was going to post the article about the latest round of resignations but this Techmeme page is more relevant with all the live tweets included

Hundreds of Twitter employees post farewell messages and salute emojis in Slack and tweets, announcing their resignations after Elon Musk’s