Even in its prime, Tumblr was never profitable. It was sold and resold to several companies who never had a clear vision for what to do with it, other than run ads to generate revenue. Its main draw was its users. For several years it was the social media platform for LGBTQ and fandoms, along with many niche interests.
Like Reddit, many users had a love-hate relationship with it, and as its policies grew more and more at odds with its power users, the communities which existed fell apart. Banning NSFW content and the heavy-handed automated moderation meant to enforce it was the final straw for me. AI was used to try to detect images of nudes, but tagged a huge amount of false positives such as pictures of animals or even sand dunes. I had my main blog incorrectly tagged as NSFW which made it harder to keep in contact or be discoverable by other users, so I quit. Reddit’s over-reactions to large subs being set to NSFW shows this is a pain point for them. u/spez has made it clear that he will push through whatever policies he wants, regardless of vocal feedback for the actual users of the site.
Tumblr still exists, but it’s a shell of its former self. I check in every so often. Only a handful of the blogs I followed are still active, mostly ones that didn’t interact much with others to begin with. Trending content is incredibly generic, even moreso than /all. Very few of these posts hit more than a few thousand “notes” (for comparison I, a fairly obscure blogger, had about 80,000 notes on my most viral post). When July 1 rolls around I expect Reddit will start to follow a similar pattern. The power users who haven’t left already will drop off the grid one by one until Reddit loses its center of gravity.
Further reading, first one with NSFW-ish photos
https://boingboing.net/2018/12/03/the-death-of-tumblr.html
Yeah I agree Tumblr is a good example of the mistakes Reddit is likely to make.
Yahoo started the mess with Tumblr by trying to contain "NSFW" content both by restricting access for users and making it harder for content makers. Then Verizon took over and they banned it outright in some bizarre moralising. Ultimately its very hard to keep shareholders and advertisers happy - for advertisers it's difficult to guarentee their ads wot appears next to nsfw content. Their focus wasn't they users, it was their shareholders and customers - the advertisers they were seeing their users to.
Reddit is making the same mistakes. It forgets it is nothing more than a host for content. The users make the content, the users moderate the content and the users want the content. The users are the entire value of the company. When you start messing around with that to monetise it and to keep shareholders and advertisers happy you're on a road to self destruction. Reddit thinks the content it hosts has value - it does but that content mostly has value when it's current and if you lose the users you lose the content.
Power users including many moderators seem to be the first out the door. Those are amongst some the highest value users in terms of generating and maintaining content on the site. It started a couple of years ago when Reddit started banning whole communities - some of that made sense, particularly more extreme communities but I suspect NSFW content will be next.
Ultimately there is cognitive disonnance in social media. Banning NSFW content to "protect children" and to make it easier for keeping advertisers happy seems like an "easy" choice, but ultimately adult users don't want to be stuck in censorship black zones, restricted by over zealous rules and rule keeps or frustrated by being caught up in the unintended consequences. Reddit is a site for adults, made by its users - damage that and you don't have a website.