Social Media and Blogging

Why Tumblr Might Terminate an Account

A paradoxical situation that seems to go against micro-blogging principles and norms

Blogging is one of the best communication tools in the 21st century. It is an excellent form of information dissemination.

Microblogging is valuable for content developers, primarily freelance writers, bloggers, researchers, and entrepreneurs.

Large microblogging sites are monitored and managed by artificial intelligence systems as they deal with millions of transactions daily.

These unique platforms can efficiently distribute content in small chunks to subscribers and followers on the Internet.

Readers also love microblogs because they include little text and easily accessible links to the original content source with attractive images.

Twitter is the lead and biggest microblogging site globally. I have been using Twitter since its inception. I have a love-hate relationship with it.

Since it is such extensive administration of the site is a challenge; therefore, sometimes accounts get hacked and suspended accidentally, as I mentioned in this article.

On the other hand, I enjoy sharing my content, followed by thousands of readers. Twitter also has several other social networking tools and an excellent dashboard showing content performance. I met many inspiring content developers through Twitter.

Another Microblogging site is Tumblr. It is relatively smaller than other platforms. I have also used this site since its inception. Sharing content is very easy on this platform. It is similar to tweeting. I just copy and paste the link to my articles, and the system fetches the title, subtitle, and photo of the article.

Then I usually copy the first paragraph of articles that I read on Medium or other platforms to give an idea to my readers and followers about what the article is about. This is an excellent productivity tool for bloggers. It takes me only a few seconds to post a microblog on this site.

David Karp founded Tumblr in 2007. It is owned by Automattic, an American content distribution company that was founded in 2005. The site is known as an American microblogging and social networking platform.

Their service is designed to post content in a short-form blog format. In addition, the site allows links to articles, podcasts, photos, and videos.

To compare the size of Tumblr and Twitter, I looked at the stats from multiple reliable sources. Based on my comparison of stats, approximately 20 million posts are created on Tumblr daily. However, around 500 million tweets are posted to Twitter every day.

So, Twitter is more prominent than Tumblr in order of magnitude. Despite Twitter's challenges, I admire the vision and strategy of Jack Dorsey, who was the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter.

The motto of Tumblr is “make stuff, look at stuff, talk about stuff, and find your people”.

This is music to the ears of bloggers and microbloggers. I love this motto. Therefore I joined Tumblr. I create valuable content for my loyal and potential readers.

I write about important issues affecting society based on my scientific and technological research. And I find readers who value my content. Therefore, I joined Tumblr years ago and enjoyed its services.

I am a writer on multiple platforms. Recently, the central writing platform for me has been Medium because it is most accessible for self-publishing, exceptionally functional, user friendly, and collaborative with high domain authority in search engines such as Google.

Numerous of my articles went viral on this platform. As a result, my content from Medium consistently ranks much higher than other platforms. In addition, I had a chance to meet thousands of writers and readers through this platform.

Sharing content from Medium is very easy. Another excellent benefit of this platform is to allow a Friendlink where readers can read content without using the paywall of the platform.

Similar to Mr. Dorsey, my respect and appreciation for the vision and strategy of Mr. Evan Williams are high, as they both revolutionized the blogging and microblogging world with their remarkable contributions.

I usually share a Friendlink of my Medium articles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Quora, Reddit, Typepad, Blogger, WordPress, Many stories, and Tumblr. These platforms helped me find a large audience.

The impressions of my content on these social media platforms are usually over four million monthly. My posts perform the best on WordPress, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Quora.

When I attempted to share Medium article links on Tumblr a few days ago, the site informed me that they had terminated my account. They gave three reasons. A possible hacker attack, violation of the content policy, and potential spamming.

My initial thoughts and gut feeling were related to a hacker attack similar to my credit card, which was hacked recently and caused me grief, as mentioned in this article. It was good that the company provided an appeal process.

I sent this message as an appeal:

“Dear Support Team, I received an account termination notice. This surprised me. I am a published author and editor of seven publications on Medium and several writing platforms with thousands of readers. I only share links to my high-quality and curated content. Could you please advise why my account was terminated?”

The support team responded with a courteous message informing me via email. They have terminated my Tumblr account for spam or for using my blog with the primary purpose of affiliate marketing and deceptive means to generate traffic and revenue. Tumblr prohibits such activity.

The support team member kindly informed us that, unfortunately, they couldn’t restore an account that had been terminated for violating several of their Terms of Service or Community Guidelines. It is fair enough. I understand their limitations.

I have no issue with the support team, who are messengers to communicate terms and conditions to their clients. This is a good practice. I am grateful that they had the courtesy of informing me via a personalized email.

However, my problem is the wrong assessment of my microblogging practice on the Tumblr site. I do not share affiliate links on this site. I only share my articles from content platforms such as Medium, Vocal Media, and NewsBreak.

These articles are informative, engaging, and research-based, reflecting my decades of hard-learned lessons. These content platforms are open to the public and screened for harmful materials.

My second problem with this Tumblr policy is driving traffic with deceptive means. I do not understand how an article link from established and respectful content platforms can be called “deceptive”.

So, if every article link were considered deceptive, then Twitter would not exist today. I shared thousands of article links from my publications on microblogging sites like Twitter. I tweet every article as a principle to give writers a chance to gain visibility.

Of course, not all links might be valuable for everyone, but the readers have the option to click on the link based on the title, subtitle, photo, and a brief abstract of the article indicating the value of the content.

Thus, if Tumblr is a microblogging site, how could blogging an article using their technology be considered deceptive? Isn’t the purpose of microblogging to share information in bit size with the readers?

My third problem with Tumblr is the quality of content on their site. As a long-term user of this platform, some content disgusted me. I came across low-quality, deceptive, and even harmful materials such as overt racism, defamation, and pornographic.

I understand that screening such content is not easy. I assume their artificial intelligence (AI )system is removing offending accounts. However, curated information, such as from Medium, which is a company that does not allow advertising is valuable for readers. Readers pay Medium to be able to read ad-free content. Immature AI systems can be detrimental to content platforms.

Undoubtedly, high-quality articles contain affiliate links on almost all writing and blogging platforms. It is the reality of modern business life.

Millions of business people and even celebrities use affiliate marketing. It is a legitimate business practiced by millions of ethical organizations and marketers.

I sometimes share relevant affiliate links in my articles, but I always declare them as the best marketing practice. I shared my views on the ethical use of affiliate links in this article.

While I respect their decision of Tumblr to terminate my accounts, I disagree with their assessment of my ethical microblogging on their site. It is a private company, and they have the right to terminate accounts that do not comply with its policy.

However, in my case, their policy does not reflect my ethical practice, prudence, and diligent compliance.

I have no affiliation with Tumblr and have no hard feelings about their decision. However, I see it as their loss, depriving their readers of quality and curated content from a writer and researcher with decades of experience giving back to society. In my informed opinion, I believe that their policy clashes with the spirit of micro-blogging.

What is left to share in a microblogging site if links from curated content platforms are considered spam? I

am glad Twitter understands this value proposition and supports links to articles in tweets; therefore, Twitter is growing bigger and faster than Tumblr. In addition, Twitter always reminds and encourages readers to click on the link and read the article before retweeting it.

I want to conclude my article by showing the big picture and reality. Large and lucrative social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Quora, Pinterest, and Tumblr do not create content. They earn millions of dollars from free content donated by bloggers and writers whom they sometimes reject.

Ironically, these organizations might think that they are the boss, but content developers are really the boss in honest reality. Imagine everyone stops posting to Facebook or Twitter tomorrow. Let’s ask a fundamental question. What will be the market value of these gigantic business organizations creating billions of revenues from free content?

This post is not about criticizing the blogging sites but sharing my insights, perspectives, and experience for their improvement. I respect the rules and policies of all content platforms and strive to comply with them. They help us to connect and amplify our messages.

However, I hope social media sites like Tumblr understand unique cases with exceptions and become more diligent and prudent while terminating accounts of legitimate bloggers and content sharers.

Otherwise, their business may not be sustained if their valuable creators stop serving free, engaging, and valuable content. I prospect this reality is understood by policymakers and implementers of social blogging platforms.

Thank you for reading my perspectives.

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