The Economics of Social Media Assignment: Tumblr

 I decided to research the site Tumblr which was insanely popular at one point before a specific policy banning certain material is what essentially purged the majority of its users and left the site for dead. This policy change was not meant for the benefit of the people but instead to please the overlord executives who wish to control and censor specific parts of the internet. In this blog assignment I will be breaking down in the most simple terms why tumblr failed and why censorship had a huge role to play in it. 

I used tumblr for years as a means for inspiration for photography and hearing about specific movements that were really obscure to the majority of the internet. Even from using tumblr in an wholesome and innocent way, there would still be a way that un-family friendly content could pop up on my feed. This of course is something really dangerous as most of tumblr users were in middle school or high school. A slippery slope of clicks would lead users down a rabbit hole of unwanted content that they were not initially looking for. This was a problem for a lot of users that eventually become accepted within the community. Guidelines and search results were indiscriminate of what users previous interaction activity followed. After several incidents involving users complaining of EXTREME "dark web" material and other inappropriate behavior, Apple threatened tumblr to remove their app from the app store if they did not clear up this issue plaguing the community. Instead of actually coming up with solutions for a balanced community to keep certain mature content on the site like (Reddit/Twitter), tumblr instead decided to completely and totally censor all forms of inappropriate content and nudity to prevent further incident reports. This caused a complete meltdown within all of the tumblr community making the majority of its users flock to other sites where censorship was not much of an issue. 

After the dust settled the community came to the conclusion that tumblr did not ever have the best interests of its users at heart but instead higher stake holders, and extremely powerful executives. tumblr never decided to take action against online predators, drug dealers, illegal content producers while the site was growing; It was only until Apple gave them an ultimatum and a huge financial incentive to change their platform or risk alienating their audience. The rest is history and the fall of tumblr is over.