With Tumblr Sale, Verizon Continues To Stumble In Bungled Pivot Away From Telecom

from the ill-communication dept

So for years we've been pointing out that Verizon's attempt to pivot from grumpy old telco to sexy new Millennial ad brand hasn't been going so well. Oddly, mashing together two failing 90s brands in AOL and Yahoo, and renaming the coagulated entity "Oath," didn't really impress many people. The massive Yahoo hack, a controversy surrounding Verizon snoopvertising, and the face plant by the company's aggressively hyped Go90 streaming service didn't really help.

By late last year Verizon was forced to acknowledge that its Oath entity was effectively worthless. And this week, Verizon issued a statement saying that it would be selling Tumblr to WordPress owner Automattic after a rocky ownership stretch. Rather amusingly, Verizon tries to suggest that this was all part of some ingenious master plan:

"Today’s announcement is the culmination of a thoughtful, thorough and strategic process,” said Verizon Media CEO Guru Gowrappan. “Tumblr is a marquee brand that has started movements, allowed for true identities to blossom and become home to many creative communities and fandoms. We are proud of what the team has accomplished and are happy to have found the perfect partner in Automattic, whose expertise and track record will unlock new and exciting possibilities for Tumblr and its users."

Except there's nothing "thoughtful, thorough, or strategic" about any of this. Tumblr you'll recall was bought by Yahoo for a cool $1.1 billion in 2013. Bored with the slow ROI of broadband and hoping to challenge Google and Facebook in the ad space, Verizon bought most of Yahoo for $4.48 billion in June 2017. And while Verizon didn't announce how much it sold Tumblr for, reports suggest that the company was effectively forced to almost give Tumblr away for less than $3 million after it spent much of the Spring looking for a suitor. Yes, great job, everybody.

None of this is what you'd call "thoughtful." But it does once again emphasize how telecom giants eager to jump into the online ad space often have no idea what they're doing. Companies like Verizon are good at two things: running networks, and lobbying government to hamstring broadband competition. Every time Verizon has tried to stumble outside of its core competencies (whether it's running its own app store, its VCast apps, or the Go90 fracas), Verizon has fallen flat on its face, because as a government-pampered telecom monopoly, innovation, disruption, and pleasing customers are alien phrenology.

Verizon's ownership of Tumblr is most notably marked by the company's decision to ban porn on the platform (and anything even vaguely determined to be naughty), driven both by FOSTA and Verizon's more puritanical management. That decision drove the site's most creative users away in droves, though new owner Automattic says the ban is likely to remain in place.

A big part of Verizon's attempted pivot to Millennial video ads was courtesy of newer executives like Lowell McAdam and Hans Vestberg. Their predecessor, Ivan Seidenberg, believed that Verizon should remain focused on what it does best (sometimes): building better, faster fiber networks. Seidenberg was a big reason for the company's $24 billion push into pure fiber with "FiOS." McAdam and Vestberg came in, froze most of those deployments, then tried to turn a legacy telco into Google by mashing together a few failed 90s internet brands. It's not working, and anybody who is surprised by that hasn't watched Verizon do business.

Filed Under: tumblr
Companies: automattic, tumblr, verizon, yahoo

Filters Suck Out Loud: Tumblr's Porn Filters Flag Tumblr's Examples Of Allowed Content

from the tumble-in-the-sheets dept

As you'll recall, Tumblr recently decided to go the Puritan route with its platform, announcing that it would begin filtering "porn" from its platform. As we pointed out, this was bound to go hilariously wrong, with plenty of innocent content getting swept up in the auto-filters. There were already examples of this, ranging from pictures of cartoons to what looks to be accidental photos people took on their couches. You may have thought at that time that no better example could be found for how dumb auto-filters like this tend to behave.

But Tumblr itself accidentally just provided such an example. Seeking to clarify what is and is not allowed, Tumblr posted a GIF of the kinds of images that would be allowed on the site: artwork, educational material, etc. It all went swimmingly... until others tried to post the exact same GIF to see what would happen.

When Gizmodo posted the gif to Tumblr ourselves, it was immediately flagged as a potential violation and hidden by the platform’s filter. When the images shown in the gif were uploaded individually, two of the four examples—which appeared to show a breast ultrasound and a pro-choice protest, respectively—were similarly flagged and hidden.

And that really should tell you everything you need to know about how effective these types of filters are at completely pooping the bed on their most basic function. That Tumblr did this to itself makes it all the more sweet, particularly when it did so as part of a message that would supposedly clarify things for users of its service.

And, yet, it's not as though the filters will go away. Platforms are incentivized to screw up on the side of over-blocking and collateral damage by misguided legislation that seeks to solve a non-problem but instead only makes it worse. In other words: bang up job all around, guys.

Filed Under: filters, tumblr
Companies: tumblr, verizon

As A Final Fuck You To Free Speech On Tumblr, Verizon Blocked Archivists

from the seriously-guys? dept

By now, of course, you're aware that the Verizon-owned Tumblr (which was bought by Yahoo, which was bought by Verizon and merged into "Oath" with AOL and other no longer relevant properties) has suddenly decided that nothing sexy is allowed on its servers. This took many by surprise because apparently a huge percentage of Tumblr was used by people to post somewhat racy content. Knowing that a bunch of content was about to disappear, the famed Archive Team sprung into action -- as they've done many times in the past. They set out to archive as much of the content on Tumblr that was set to be disappeared down the memory hole as possible... and it turns out that Verizon decided as a final "fuck you" to cut them off. Jason Scott, the mastermind behind the Archive Team announced over the weekend that Verizon appeared to be blocking their IPs:

On Sunday, Scott announced that the Archive Team has figured out a way to get past the blocks:

Still, this is a pretty fucked up thing for Verizon to do. It's one thing to decide to completely change the kind of content you host. That's their call. But, at the very least, allow the people who focus on archiving the internet for historical purposes the chance to actually do what they do best. Blocking the Archive Team is a truly obnoxious move, cementing Verizon's reputation as really not caring one bit about the damage the company does.

Filed Under: archive team, archives, blocking, tumblr
Companies: tumblr, verizon

Even With Its 'Public Facing' Tumblr Blog, The Intelligence Community Is Still Avoiding The Surveillance Discussion

from the IC-begrudges-the-record dept

We've discussed this several times before, almost always as a preface to any document release by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. NSA-related documents are now being declassified and handed over to public. James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, delivers each document dump with a canned statement that almost always includes this sentence:

These orders are available at the website of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (http://www.dni.gov), and ODNI’s public website dedicated to fostering greater public visibility into the intelligence activities of the Government (IContheRecord.tumblr.com).

But the ODNI's website isn't necessarily as dedicated to this cause as Clapper's introductory statement makes it appear. As we've pointed out before, nearly every document released has been the result of court orders in FOIA lawsuits pursued by the ACLU, EFF and EPIC. Others have been compelled by executive orders (Obama's surveillance reforms) or are nothing more than official statements and press releases. There's no transparency here, no intrinsic effort to "foster greater public visibility." The agency has been forced out of the shadows and its awkward embrace of openness is nowhere more apparent than at its Tumblr blog.

The fact that a national security agency is operating a public blog that's more than just press releases and help wanted ads is very unusual. But underneath the talk of connecting with the public, there's very little going on here that isn't self-serving or fulfillment of legal obligations.

The Guardian notes, however, that a recent post finally did what no other post to date had done: acknowledge that the documents in question were forced out of the NSA's hands.

Amie Stepanovich was doubly rewarded when she won her transparency lawsuit against the US government. Not only did Stepanovich, formerly a lawyer for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, receive some of the surveillance documents she sued to obtain, but the office of the director of national intelligence credited her effort on its Tumblr.

Here's the ODNI's official release statement:

On Friday, the Attorney General through the Department of Justice, declassified and released 24 documents that were responsive to a portion of a Freedom of Information Act request by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. These one-page documents, titled “The Attorney General’s Report on the Use of Pen Registers and Trap and Trace Devices under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” are reports to the Congressional intelligence and judiciary committees that identify how many applications the U.S. Government filed with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) seeking authorization to use pen registers and/or trap and trace devices, and how many the FISC authorized, during specific time periods. The documents cover the time period from 2001 through 2012.

Will this sort of acknowledgement accompany future releases? It's hard to say. While the short intro points out that the documents' release was compelled, there's nothing that indicates this sudden burst of honesty was. Did someone finally explain to Clapper's office that "fostering public visibility" means identifying the impetus behind the document releases? Ultimately, as long as the documents are freed, those compelling the releases aren't too concerned about the ODNI's opaque (and lightly self-aggrandizing) statements.

“As far as we’re concerned, the government can explain the disclosures however they’d like to. The important fact is that most of this information should never have been secret in the first place. We’ll continue to press the government to disclose more,” said ACLU attorney Alexander Abdo.

“EFF’s number one priority is making sure this information is provided to the public, whether or not the government wants to give us credit for it,” said EFF lawyer Mark Rumold.

Hopefully, this is the process going forward. The NSA isn't really making itself a part of the surveillance debate. It's only fulfilling obligations. The public should be aware of how little it's actually doing to increase visibility. Just using the blog-platform-du-jour isn't enough. The fact is that the US government's legal reps did all they could to block the release of these documents, which means the administration itself is just as complicit in the agency's effort to avoid the debate.

Filed Under: foia, icontherecord, intelligence community, james clapper, odni, transparency, tumblr