post-Gundam cryptographyFeb 20, 2024

the usual game of telephone is afoot, but apparently:

  • Tumblr flagged a trans woman's transition photos as explicit content and human moderation refused to overturn the decision
  • predstrogen (the woman mentioned) posted a jokey death threat involving a car covered in exploding hammers
  • Tumblr/Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg, who is also a WordPress cofounder (and according to his Wikipedia article, "can type over 120 wpm") is having an ongoing and extended meltdown about said jokey death threat on his personal Tumblr, responding to anonymous asks from randos and spouting all sorts of bullshit
  • queer ex-Tumblr staff weigh in to explain how much this guy sucks
  • in conclusion, never trust a guy who keeps reminding you that he's a CEO. gullotine emoji.

further citations:

#Tumblr

Matt Mullenweg - Wikipedia

Show threadpost-Gundam cryptographyFeb 20, 2024

oh and predstrogen is now banned for life ofc.

but go on, tell me again how federating with Tumblr and WordPress corporate sites is an unalloyed good

Show threadpost-Gundam cryptographyFeb 20, 2024
commentary by former staff member Tinystepsforward on Matt's behavior (again, i am relying on third-party commentary here, i'm not On Tumblr enough to keep track of who is actually on staff)
tender mercy

matt is supposed to be on fucking sabbatical rn. the last time he refused to log off and caused problems swinging his dick around was on the wordpress.org twitter hawking a fundraiser for his birthda…

Tumblr
Show threadpost-Gundam cryptography

Cohost's CEO of Posting jkap adds their perspective:

i can not imaging having 25000 times as much money as i currently do and still wanting to post. at that point is it entirely optional and he does not appear to be in it for love of the game. skill issue.

Feb 20, 2024 at 5:23pmWeb
Show threadpost-Gundam cryptographyFeb 21, 2024

https://www.tumblr.com/photomatt is back at it as of a few minutes ago, making a great point about Fedi

I'm continuing to get harassment and death threats here, in a way that is overwhelming the account. If it's hard for me to deal with this, with the team behind me, if nothing else this has given me a lot of empathy for how pile-ons must be totally unmanageable for users with the interface of Tumblr, especially the lack of basic things like bulk actions that have been in WordPress for a decade-plus.

oh wait no he's still talking about Tumblr

sorry

it's confusing since Fedi has the exact same tooling problems

Matt on Tumblr

Co-founder WordPress; CEO Automattic; Currently running Tumblr

Tumblr
Show threadpost-Gundam cryptographyFeb 21, 2024

but really this is Tumblr's fault, not the CEO of Tumblr. so much for "the land and the king are one" i guess, we're back to "this is a web site i bought because it was cheap".

As far as I'm aware improving moderation tools both for staff and regular users wasn't on Tumblr's roadmap when I left, but I hope this raises awareness within the team.

he also wants you to know that he contributes to open source so he can't be transphobic

I have dedicated my life since the age of 19 to open source software, which I believe to be radically inclusive, and democratizing publishing, commerce, and messaging. My hope is this work contributes, even if in a small domain-specific way, to a more fair and just society.

okay cool i've been doing open source since i was 18 so i guess i'm good to do some transphobia myself?