mistressofmuses

So, the Tumblr CEO having a very public and extended meltdown at a trans woman sure is a thing. I know people were real mad about the site being silent about what seemed to be a pretty clear case of a user being targeted and then erroneously banned (for those not plugged into tumblr drama: a trans woman had her account deleted over alleged "adult content", but the post in question was a pair of completely SFW, fully clothed selfies. Since there was nothing even close to rule-violating in the images, it was suspected the post had been targeted by TERFs or other transphobes reporting it. That was tumblr's initial excuse, that it had probably been an algorithmic error due to a wave of reports, and so the human moderators would have to take a look... then they didn't do anything about it and she remained banned.)

... but bro, this was NOT the way to break the silence. Fucking yikes. (Going from "but think about how sad it makes me when people are mad about bad decisions, because we're not transphobes, we have trans friends and employees" to "after months of frustration, the user makes an hyperbolic silly 'fuck you, hope you die' comment that you're suddenly interested in contacting the FBI over as a credible threat of violence even though many, many users [ESPECIALLY trans users!] have reported much more serious and genuine threats and harassment and are met with crickets" to "DMing users who have expressed support for the user in question to argue" to "FUCKING STALKING THE USER TO HARASS HER ON OTHER PLATFORMS WHERE YOU SHARE ALL OF HER OTHER USERNAMES?" jesus.)

[Plus now there are credible rumors from staff that there is an unspecified deal being discussed about partnering with Midjourney, which is making a lot of artists go "ah fuck no."]

So. While THE DEATH OF TUMBLR is a bianual tradition at this point, there ARE a lot of people who are either definitely bailing or considering bailing from the platform because... well. The CEO is making his thin skin into everyone else's problem like a value-brand Elon Musk, particularly as he continues to harass this woman. (And maybe it would be kind of ha ha funny to watch him lose his shit if he weren't targeting and attacking a specific person.) A lot of the people who ARE bailing from tumblr are the weirdo queers that I'm on the platform to see posts from, so.

Taylor is considering bouncing to somewhere else, because hey, Site Actively Unsafe To Trans People. They're I guess considering trying out cohost, which I have zero experience with. It was one that SEEMED initially promising when various platforms were vying for Twitter refugees, and then I remember there being some pretty serious TOS issues that were pointed out here. I don't know if those issues were addressed. It seemed to sort of fade away, but it sounds like the place I'm seeing mentioned the most when it comes to people looking to leave tumblr (or to have a backup.)

As is always the issue when platforms crash and burn (or whimper and limp into oblivion), it feels like the biggest hurdle to finding somewhere new is the critical mass. (/mass of the people one wants to stay in contact with.) People talk about longing for the days of LJ, but refuse to come to DW. Tumblr was my other social media of choice because it is where the highest number of people I knew on LJ were going when LJ collapsed. I ultimately came to really enjoy tumblr as its own thing, even if it didn't ever feel like LJ did.

Bluesky seems to have a fairly good cross-section of the types of creatives (authors, artists, etc.) that I *wanted* to use Twitter to follow, and I'm glad it gave me somewhere else to go for that... but I haven't been using it enough to really feel comfortable with it, and it doesn't seem to be something that would fill the tumblr niche for me. 

The critical mass stuff now as far as social media goes seems to be to instagram, tiktok, and discord, and while I lurk in a couple discord servers, I just don't LIKE any of the above.

So... Cohost? Anyone have an account there that I could follow, if I do end up trying it out? If it's where Taylor goes, I'll probably at least try to give it a go.

I'm grateful that they posted a reminder about the posting page and the inbox... I'm much happier getting a chance to choose to use it and learn it rather than suddenly having it be my only choice!

This may also be my chance to finally learn to use markdown, which I know is simpler in a lot of ways than html (simpler to read, when making a long entry or formatting writing, as opposed to the mess of html tags.) It'd be easier for me to read my own posts as I write (or fix) them, but I've just been so loath to figure out the basics, heh.

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Playing around with the new post creator feels vaguely appropriate, I guess, because today is Big Feels About The Internet Day.

I told olivermoss earlier, but... I miss the good internet. (Yeah, yeah, nothing was ever all good, all the time, but still.)

( It got long, what a shock! )

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In other news, my manager has been sick all week. She'd completely lost her voice yesterday, and today it was only slightly better, but she was coughing quite a lot. (It was also her birthday! Fun!) But she hasn't wanted to stay home, so she's been in the office all week. And today my throat has started to feel a little scratchy and hot, and now a bit swollen... Fuck.

I can't even really say she got me sick, since yesterday was the first day I was around her, and that'd be a sonic-fast infection-to-symptom timespan. It's more likely that we both caught it sometime last week or I got it over the weekend. We've had drivers out sick, we've had sick students, etc. Tis the season.

But uuuuugh.