This is a long rant, and I rarely do this. So just bare with me and hear what I've got to say. And if you want to comment at the end, do so on the DSNG Facebook Page, over HERE.Guess I'll be leaving Tumblr today... it's been an extra art-dump site that I really don't use much. The "child porn controversy" a few months ago led to the Tumblr site owners and Yahoo management [who bought them out, back in 2013] to decide for a radical change: Remove all NSFW art / adult content / sexy furry art completely out of the site, via a Sweeper Bot Program that assess each piece of art on the site [more than 5 billion posts of art ] and randomly flags any pic as adult content [based on certain inaccurate code guidelines].
And once flagged, the pic will disappear from your feed, until you can successfully verify its clean nature. So random website visitors won't see that questionable art, since it will be censored, and maybe it will get deleted later by the site, I dunno...
But the Sweeper Bot / Computer Algorithm / System Sweeper program of Tumblr was never tested on a small scale to see and fix the bugs, before the site owners decided that they would roll it out, and fully implement it on the 17th of December 2018 [less than 3 weeks after the announcement]. The sweeper bot is already active and thousands of bloggers & fans have complained online. And amidst their site-wide outcry, a mass migration has started to occur, to other sites.
And I'm just not going to sit around and wait to see how this pans out. So I'll be deleted my tumblr... plus honestly, it's something that I considered doing earlier in the year, because despite the 529 posts that I've done and the fan base there of like 576 people, I rarely interact with most of them... But most fans there just look at my art, love it, download it as their new wallpaper on their phone / tablet, and then scroll on. That can't be helped, as people do whatever they want with the free art. And those fans who want paid art with specific designs are the ones that request the Commissions and they pay for it via Paypal.
Anyway, there's something else that I noticed. The lady CEO at the top of Yahoo, who gave the green-light for the purchase of Tumblr back in 2013, did so without fully knowing what the site was all about, or its true use & its delicate fan base.
Tumblr is a very "unique and delicate" site, like the Vines website was also very delicate, before it was shut down. And there are ways to make money from such sites, but only if you understand the mentalities of the main bloggers and their fans.
Because I've been one of them for a long time, I understand them.
[You may need to Click on the word link that says "Read More", below on the lower right, to see the rest of this article!]
But I'm not going to tell Yahoo Management how to make money with their owned delicate site. I've stopped giving Websites free consultations and free exclusive advice on how to improve their structure / upgrade their framework for making money or attracting more users.
I've got a story along those lines from Facebook that dates back to over 7 years, which I'll only tell you in person.... it taught me a hard lesson about giving idea s to website owners... Facebook was probably paying their consultants, fellow Harvard grads, over $100,000 annually. But I got nothing for an idea that I gave them, which they "twisted and implemented".... but that idea eventually came back to bite them in the ass last year, so it turned out to be funny.
Anyway back in 2013, Tumblr was bought for over 1 Billion dollars and yet was not profitable for Yahoo. And it didn't take-off as the "new Instagram-styled art viewing website" or the "new facebook alternative" that would invite Sponsors to come in like a tsunami flood. And I strongly suspect that the top-dogs at Tumblr and Yahoo now want to perform a rapid purge, and clean up the entire site, by taking out the porn. And then they'll probably rebrand it as something new in 2019, fresh and clean, for the major sponsors & advertisers to come and behold - so that the 550 million monthly visitors will finally be able to start being converted into a profit equivalent of $1 or more, per visitor.... that sort of thing.
But shiiiiit, it's not gonna work. LOL
Once the top bloggers start to leave Tumblr, their fans who are thirsty for more art and memes will leave with them, like a mass exodus.
Tumblr was once called the site for "Hippie porn and free ideas". And it was built upon the framework of people sharing uncensored pics with their friends, and reblogging the pics that they like, which may be fetish related. And the Sweeper Bot has already started tagging the pics of everyone on the entire site that they deem to be adult related.
There are roughly 450 million blogs on Tumblr as of December 7th 2018. And that number is sure to drop... because clean pics of the incredible Hulk [the shirtless green guy] and Garfield [the naked orange cat] have already been flagged all over the website, and they are being grouped as porn.
And users with 5,000 or more pics have to scroll through each if them individually to see if they were tagged as porn... which is a headache in itself.
I laughed real hard when I read some fan say that "Hulk's tittys were too big" and that's why he was being flagged as porn in various pics, all over Tumblr. Someone else that drew the cover of a children's book, with fully clothed characters, was tagged as porn.
A lot of my art pics were flagged as well [including the thicc / thick Jessica Rabbit and Majin Android 21 pics shown above, which were labeled as porn / violations].
Some of my numerous pics were nude art, and some were not. So I don't have time to debate with the site's admin.
I'm not the biggest supporter of X-rated art on the web. But I'm an artist. And when a fan Pays you to draw a Commission of Donald Duck banging the hell out of Mrs Incredible... then you laugh and do it, and let them enjoy their fetish.
Anyway, I know the backlash of Tumblr's abrupt change is destined to come from the offended fans & users, starting on December 17th 2018. And per the swiftness of the changes, it's probably been brewing behind the scenes for over a year...
Therefore, I'll just close down my account on Tumblr and move on.
Sometimes Business owners / website owners do dumb things. It's almost like they've succeed for many years, without fully having any understanding of the mentalities behind those that pushed them to success by buying their products and supporting them.
In other instances, the business managers / site owners grow complacent and they relax; and they do dumb things amidst their relaxed state of satisfaction, due to the pride they've taken in their success. And they just loose touch with the reality of their fans... or the new director just doesn't understand the fans to begin with, or thoughts of greed step in and it makes the director initiate drastic changes - like introduce an untested Sweeper Bot after announcing it, within a span of less than 3 weeks notice.
Anyway, the folks at Yahoo and Tumblr will just have to they reap the consequences of what they've sown.
I'll end by saying this: Thanks to all the fans that have supported my work on Tumblr, and a Bigger Thank You to everyone that has ever paid me for Commissioned art!!
And You can still catch The Art of DSNG on other sites!! –>