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Ask HN: Account terminated on Tumblr, zero contact

1 points by soco ↗ HN
More than a week ago my girl's blog was terminated. She was kicked out of the session then at login got greeted with the stern message "your account was terminated. You can contact support here". Or something along the lines. Well, support didn't come around answering all these days and she slipped into a reclusive episode, because in her major depression, she believed the blog was her only accomplishment in life. Yeah, the hellsite was known for supporting those in trouble, those lonely, those misunderstood. Until now, at least. On the other hand I've been (on my own tumblr) contacted in the last week by the regular amount of hookers (dozens) and they're all fine, spreading their porn and spam, against all the reports I ever did. But no, instead they had to terminate an active account with 9k followers, posting daily for the last three years original street photography and reblogging classical art, flowers and cats. Maybe also Tumblr is going the way of big social media, random automated moderation and zero humanity? The messages I got from other fellow tumblers tell me this was not a singular case, so looking from here and squinting a bit it seems like becoming a warmer home to hookers and crypto spam than to original creators - or to simple people trying to find a little bit of appreciation from strangers. Oh yes, I'm upset, upset for seeing her thrown out with the garbage, actually rather no, thrown out INSTEAD of the garbage. But is there something one can do to reach some human in Tumblr support? I'm level zero on Twitter so I tried to reach through engineering - which politely sent me back to support, and support doesn't bother replying (yes, I sent reminders). Ironically, when in the past I reported wrong button colors I had answers within two days...

6 comments

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groffee
See this as an opportunity, start your own Tumblr site. Your girl can start over and be safe knowing it's your site, and she can bring her friends (network effect!)
liberia
There are tumblog themes and plugins in Wordpress you can use. Don’t build castles on other people’s land. Use this as a learning point.
superchroma
Honestly that's just cruel to say. It doesn't take a lot of effort, and does the receiver no good. Worse, the receiver who you intend this comment for won't even read it, so it appears purely performative. If they are smart, they'll puzzle that out on their own, and if they're not, they'll just take offense if they heard it from a stranger.

Besides, the land is advertised for building castles on. People have built castles on it before and there are people with some big castles on it right now. It's not an unreasonable move to see that and try and participate.

liberia
All I’m suggesting is self hosted Wordpress that you control. You can even backup Wordpress so if the hosting provider shuts down you just use another provider and migrate over. Something you can’t do with Tumblr. And you’re at the whim of Tumblr who can ban you for having something even remotely controversial.
soco
A Wordpress site is a website. Tumblr is a social network. There's a difference.
superchroma
There's a lot of learning to get to that point that we have had as relative professionals that someone off the street just hasn't. Since smartphones took off, people haven't been getting more computer literate and competent the way we predicted they might looking at the statistics around the turn of the millennium.

The journey to functioning website may never have been easier than it is right now, but it's still a lot of effort to ask of someone, and it's contrary to the point of society - if chefs are forced to grow wheat just to have bread at their restaurant, that's not efficient. It may be better bread, and they ought to have a right to if they choose, but an effective society will optimize such that they don't have to.