Tuesday, February 17, 2009

It's official: Tumblr sucks.


UPDATED: With this hilarious photo of David Karp as JAB's lapdog, sent by reader meadolus@gmail.com.

UPDATED 2: We have some interesting info on the Charlsie situation, TK soon. Keep an eye out. Until then, here are a bunch of tumblr blogs that add some smart commentary to the situation:

bunnynico
Doublethink
Deuce Loosely
think on this
day macha
do the luminosa dance
The Phenthouse

And one we find very interesting, because of this:

I, too, have a serious problem with this. Also, they are not being transparent with their users, something I asked for in an email yesterday. I asked them to be clear with everyone on exactly what their “investment babies’ role” (my words) was in all of this. Marco responded telling me the Nonsociety girls had no role in their deletion; however, notice that I never mentioned them in my original email.

UPDATED 3: A reader sends some info for those who want to back up their Tumblrs:

Here's a useful tool for quickly archiving a Tumblr blog: http://boutofcontext.com/tumblr_backup.php

I'm not really sure what to do with the data, once you archive it, and I don't have any experience exporting it to another platform, but I wanted to do my part, and share the useful link. It works better in IE than Firefox.

Also, here's more information from Webmonkey: http://www.webmonkey.com/tutorial/Back_Up_Your_Tumblr_Blog

So it's no secret that RBNS started out as a Tumblr blog back in the beginning of January 2009. After we'd been up for just a few days, we were mysteriously locked out of our account. We received no notification or anything, just a complete freeze-out. Real professional like.

Since we kind of hate Tumblr's platform (I've said it before and I'll say it again, Tumblr is like the short bus of content management systems), we didn't care too much. We figured that Julia and her crew contacted Karp and Ko. to complain and had us shut down. Later, we thought we might have violated a particular Tumblr TOS; now, we're reevaluating that idea.

Some of our favorite sites, such as Baugher and Trainwrecks, mysteriously vanished yesterday. Apparently, many Tumblr users noticed and contacted Tumblr management to find out what was up. Here's their response today:

Regarding questions we’ve received about five accounts that were suspended yesterday:

These accounts were suspended by our moderators, reflecting internal discussions about our community guidelines.

I’m sorry for not clarifying these changes earlier. But after serious consideration, we recently decided that accounts with the explicit purpose of reblogging content in a derogatory way are a detriment to our community. Although these accounts were removed prematurely, we’re confident this was the right decision, and have updated our Content Policy accordingly:

Harassment. Accounts with the sole or primary purpose of repeatedly harassing or abusing specific members or groups within the Tumblr community will be suspended.

I’m really sorry for the confusion. Your content and freedom of expression are the reasons we’re building Tumblr.

- David

Oh, lovely. So basically Tumblr got rid of these sites and THEN amended its content TOS to reflect the new rules. Not only is that a shitty thing to do, it's also a horrible business practice. We know from Trainwrecks that they were just suddenly frozen out; we haven't heard from Baugher yet. But we're assuming none of these blogs had a chance to salvage their content.

Do any of you know which other blogs were frozen out? Surely there have to be some other blogs out there that would violate Tumblr's new policy; why were these five singled out?

We love Baugher so much, we went through Google's cache and were able to salvage pages 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8 and 11. If any of you are able to scrounge up 4, 6, 9 and 10, let us know. We may try to republish Baugher's content here if the OG permits.

This post will be updated if we learn anything new.

Update: Just wanted to add: Which is it, Karp? The new TOS says that "Accounts with the sole or primary purpose of repeatedly harassing or abusing specific members or groups within the Tumblr community will be suspended" while your little manifesto claims that "accounts with the explicit purpose of reblogging content in a derogatory way are a detriment to our community." Isn't that sort of subjective? Baugher was smart, well written and offered solid (if snarky) criticism, but it hardly constituted harassment or abuse. Jesus, this is more ridiculous the more we think about it.

Julia: Are Those WHITE Pantyhose?

Monday, February 16, 2009

By Popular Demand: Signs of Meghan's Displeasure

Our litle bunny is depressed!


I know it’s not PMS (maybe it’s Fashion Week overload?) but I just can’t snap out of this depressed mood.


See, this picture proves it! Life is So. Hard. No pink for the Pink Lady tonight, bunnies. She's all in black to reflect her mood. Mary's birthday be damned!

Ugh, so typical of Jules to be in a pissy mood while someone else celebrates. We've never liked brats who have to bring the attention back to MEMEMEME! when it's someone else's time to shine, but Jules figures out a way. Pobrecita!

p.s. Baugher, email us!

It makes my eyeballs bleed


Why is she trying on Momser jeans? Furthermore, why is she doing this and hoping peoples watch?