Tumblr 17+

I like Tumblr a lot. It has a few bugs, but not too many more than other apps. However, it really, REALLY bothers me that you can’t switch between which blogs you want to be your primary. My primary blog was one I made when I was 13, ignored for years, then logged back into and wanted to start fresh. When you tap the search bar on your profile, it has suggested tags that someone can select to see all posts on your page with that tag. Even when you delete all posts with that tag, it remains, and you can’t delete that.

So, I decided to make a side-blog since I didn’t have another email to use, and the email I was using prior was specifically my art email, and it would be unprofessional to have several emails on my different art accounts for different apps. This was fine, but whenever I comment on other peoples posts, it automatically uses the primary blog, and there’s no way to change that.

I’m not the only person with this issue, and it could be easily solved by adding the option to switch which blog you want to be your primary. It’s extremely frustrating, and I can’t deactivate my primary to reuse the email and make a new account, so I’m stuck. It makes me want to uninstall the app if I can’t use it how I planned to, when the solution to the problem isn’t that difficult.

This app has so many issues that have yet to be solved after at least a year or two of them existing. Despite the messaging system, which I’m sure has been critiqued plenty, inconsistently and unreliably updating or not updating while you’re using the app- you also can’t click on asks or even keep track of your asks in any way through the app. If you want to go look at one of your apps, you had better be keeping constant track of whoever asked it because all you’re going to get is a notification, and clicking on the notification (if it was answered) only takes you to the person’s profile. The app will randomly crash for seemingly no reason, even while under little to no stress. The double-click-to-like feature doesn’t work unless you tap a large body of text or an image and even then, it may not register properly (maybe user error but still inconvenient). You also can’t keep track of submissions in any way unless you just miraculously remember- I think you get notified but I don’t even think you get that much. Aside from all this, there’s a myriad of other functionalities and nuances that are almost entirely unimportant (like how if you click on a person’s name that’s attached to a post, it’ll take you to a dedicated page with nothing but that post and a couple other posts from that person’s profile below it). This was a poorly-thought-through review but I think it covers most bases. Otherwise, it works enough.

I’ve reviewed before but gave it the same rating. Before Tumblr was a mess because of their bad coding — crashing after a little while of use, GIFs and images refusing to load almost constantly, videos not playing correctly, the list goes on.

But the new algorithm for detecting NSFW content to be “kid friendly” when it was never meant to be a website for kids is lazy. Staff are condescending and don’t listen to the user base. Not only that, but a large portion of users are here for nsfw content. I understand that there is legal trouble and it’s not necessarily tumblr’s fault, but what is their fault is not doing anything about actually illegal content and instead punishing everyone whether they were involved or not. Porn bots are still rampant, neo-nazis and white nationalists and pedophiles are still free to roam while artists and content creators suffer greatly from the way this algorithm works. Up the age requirement to be on and keep your safe mode thing, it wasn’t perfect but it was way better than getting my post removed for having a single pixel of skin tones visible on a selfie or a piece of innocent fan art.

The only reason this isn’t one star is because I’ve been using this site for years and years and it is honestly my favorite social media platform. It’s niche, doesn’t invade your privacy, and has a lot to offer within its user base. It has so much potential wasted by a terrible management.