Oh Tumblr. You cannot stop yelling at me to download

[dragonlady7]

via http://ift.tt/1MBtlKr:
Oh Tumblr. You cannot stop yelling at me to download your app. But it’s been six months since I switched to just reading you in the browser on my phone, and I use a quarter the data and see every photo because they all load. I’m sorry my phone doesn’t blow up with notifications and I do miss things, but I’m really happier seeing the images, and my phone crashes a lot less. Like, never.
So, a cheerful fuck you to your app.

Comments

[wyomingnot]

I really wish tumblr would understand that no, I don't want the app. How do they not understand that it is NOT in any way better than just using a browser? I tried it on my android tablet and UGH.

But tumblr has shown us loud and clear and repeatedly that it does not care one whit about what the users want.

[dragonlady7]

I mean, most of these websites-- they don't care. They care enough to get people to start using the site, but then once there's a critical mass of users that the site is self-sustainingly interesting/compelling (i.e. all one's friends are on it so to know anything one must also be on it) then they don't care anymore and it's all about monetizing.
Which is fine, it's just-- that's what the site is about. You can shout all day long to Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr users that YOU ARE NOT THE CONSUMER YOU ARE THE PRODUCT but that doesn't make them understand it better.

At this point I have to be on Facebook to know about Family Events, and it's yet more unacknowledged emotional labor: my boyfriend is Not On Facebook and so in order to know what's happening with his family, and to keep HIM in the loop, I HAVE to be. I do too for my own family, so-- but I'm the only reason he knows how many cousins he has and who's divorced and whose mother-in-law died and who is coming to town and whether there's a family reunion this year.
Facebook is not providing any of that, but it's the platform upon which these notifications occur.

Boyfriend theorizes that actually, a social media account should be a government-overseen thing, like your social security card and so on-- there should just be a page that is You and is how You exist on the Internet, and he's not wrong but it's also incredibly naive about things like stalking. He doesn't know about those things; most of his friends are youngish men from a particular class/social subset.
His particular class/social subset is the one most likely to design and implement such a platform, naturally.

Sigh. Anyway. We are the product. It's very... well, the media "geniuses" I put up with er I mean took classes with in college could never have foreseen any of this.

[alby-mangroves.livejournal.com]

omg, great tip!