ms-demeanor:

equalseleventhirds:

i mean like, thoughts that can coexist:

• a website like tumblr requires money to run, and
• post+ is not the way to fucking do it

also thoughts that can coexist:

• individuals should be able and even encouraged to monetize online content creation, and
• post+ is also not the way to do that jfc, ko-fi and patreon are way more reliable lmao

these are like, two separate issues coming together under one terrible idea

Hosting is EXPENSIVE and Tumblr has to generate the blue site from SOMEWHERE so it is totally sensible that they would try to make the site at least break even, even if it isn’t going to turn an enormous profit and have unlimited growth. This makes perfect sense to me and is very reasonable.

I have zero problems with content creators trying to get paid for their content, with the standard caveat of “getting paid for fanworks is actually illegal if the fandom in question isn’t in the public domain” (that said: you paywall that Austen fanfic like a motherfucker, that is a saleable property. Your Hamlet fanart can and should be making you money if you want it to).

But Post+ isn’t a *great* idea on a site where a significant portion of the users have to regularly circulate requests for money in order to keep their housing, it’s a *worse* idea on a site that has as many problems with harassment and dogpiling as tumblr does, and it’s a *monumentally shitty* thing for tumblr to pull this after banning adult content and adult content creators.

Like. I think part of what’s so frustrating about this is that Post+ seems to be saying “haha, turn your fun wacky fandom blog into a passive income generator, monetize your shitposts, turn your social leisure activity into something that you can get a few bucks a month from” when there were people who depended on the networks that they’d created on tumblr for a significant portion of their income who were left out in the cold because apple’s app store said that tumblr did a whoopsie-doodle with the bad no-no parts.

You know what? If I could kick a dollar a month to a few of the blogs that I really like WITHOUT having to leave Tumblr, that would probably be really appealing. As it is, I already have to go offsite for the content I want so I may as well just put that money toward a low-level Patreon subscription or a monthly subscription to Filthy Figments or Slipshine where I can support a bunch of artists or one-time tips via cashapp and ko-fi.

Also, dudes. Do you remember when everyone flipped out because Patreon was going to make subscribers start covering the processing fee, so it would be less expensive to subscribe to one person at twenty dollars a month than to subscribe to twenty people at one dollar a month? I don’t know about y’all but I do NOT have a ton of spare cash floating around and frequently I’ll pay content creators *less* than their minimum subscription just so they can keep making stuff that I’ll see *eventually.*

The INTRODUCTORY price for Post+ is the TOTAL of what I can give to four separate creators I’m subscribed to on Pateron. AND a bunch of that money is going to get taken out by the Apple and Google app marketplaces so the creator isn’t even going to get as much money as I want to give them.

It’s a bad deal, dudes!

Content creators should get paid for their content! It costs money to run social media sites and I’d rather pay a subscription to tumblr as a whole than have them implement algorithmic post sorting in order to get ad dollars.

But this model fucking SUCKS.