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Verizon sells Tumblr to WordPress owner, Automattic
A mere two years after acquiring it, Verizon is selling Tumblr. Full details of the deal have not yet been revealed, but the micro-blogging service is being bought by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.
Tumblr came into the spotlight last year when it introduced a ban on all adult content, and anyone hoping for this to change is going to be disappointed. Automattic says the ban will remain in place.
Tumblr turns family-friendly and bans ALL adult content
Tumblr has announced that it is to introduce a ban on all adult content across the platform in a major reversal of policy. The site has long been home to all manner of explicit content, and this lack of censorship is part of the reason for Tumblr's popularity.
The site says that, as of December 17, "adult content will not be allowed on Tumblr, regardless of how old you are". The announcement was made in the Tumblr Help Center, and it comes as the company aims to appeal to a wider age range.
Et tu, Tumblr? Blogging site says it was used by Russia to spread fake news in 2016
When it comes to talk of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election that saw Donald Trump catapulted to power, the focus has been very much on Facebook and Twitter. But now the blogging platform Tumblr has held its hand up and revealed that it was used by Russian trolls to disseminate disinformation and propaganda.
Tumblr says that it discovered a number of accounts that were used by Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA), and that it helped with an investigation and prosecution of numerous individuals.
Tumblr apologizes for blocking innocuous LGBTQ+ content with Safe Mode
Google recently caused controversy and upset by censoring LGBTQ videos from appearing in Restricted Mode on YouTube. The company later apologized, fixed the problem, and then updated its policies. Now Tumblr has found itself caught up in a similar hullabaloo.
Complaints were raised after -- just like YouTube's Restricted Mode -- Tumblr's Safe Mode was found to be filtering out LGBTQ+ content. The site has now apologized, updated its algorithms, and explained why the problem came about in the first place.
Tumblr now classifies all torrent talk as adult content
The idea of online censorship is nothing new, particularly when it comes to content of questionable legality. Just last week it transpired that Valve was blocking talk about Kickass Torrents in Steam chat and now Tumblr is engaged in similar activity.
Rather than blocking bloggers from posting about torrents, or stopping people from reading such posts, Tumblr now classifies torrent-related content as 'adult'. This means that many people will not be able to see posts that make reference to torrents unless they change their account settings.
Tumblr rolls out two-factor authentication for the cool kids
Yahoo's cool kid's blogging service Tumblr is the latest site to adopt the additional security of two-factor authentication.
But as with the introduction of SSL encryption in February it's up to the site's users to enable the feature for themselves.
Yahoo ramps up security but Tumblr users have to do it themselves
Following last month's announcement that Yahoo Mail connections would be getting default HTTPS encryption, the company has gone a stage further, enabling HTTPS access to Yahoo Contacts and Profile APIs.
In a post on its developer blog Yahoo advises that API settings will need to be changed by February 27.
Tumblr takes a leaf out of Twitter's book, introduces @ mentions
Today Tumblr introduces a new feature that makes it easier to interact with other users of the blogging/photo-sharing/Twitter-on-steroids/sort-of-social-network service. It's something that has been done in plenty of other places, most notably Twitter and, more recently, Facebook, but Tumblr now includes the option to @mention other users. This is not a feature that is going to cause outbreaks of mass hysteria around the globe, but it is certainly useful, and brings the service in line with many of its competitors.
The idea is very simple. When writing a new post, type an @ symbol and as you continue to type, a list of suggested users will be displayed ready to select from. Any user who is mentioned in a post will receive a notification that someone is writing about them, and this opens up a new realm of interactivity for Tumblr.
Tumblr ‘hack’ leads to a spate of undeletable posts
Tumblr is downplaying a suspected hack attack that left users facing the appearance of a series of undeletable posts in their blogs. Reports of problems spread through Tumblr itself as well as Twitter. The problem is not just that posts are undeletable, but also that they were not created by the blog owners.
While some of the content is fairly tame, some users have complained about the appearance of pornographic posts. Researchers at ThreatTrack Security Labs are advising users to change their account passwords, as bloggers are left facing not only undeletable posts, but many also finding themselves unable to access their dashboards.
What will it take for people to care about Yahoo again?
Yahoo is a media and technology giant. It is claimed that around 700 million people still visit Yahoo websites every month, and yet I personally can’t remember the last time I went to a Yahoo site, and I don’t know anyone who uses Yahoo for search, email, or news -- or visits the fabled Yahoo home page.
To me Yahoo mostly exists in the past, largely forgotten and gathering dust. I have photos stored on Flickr, but I haven’t uploaded anything there for ages. The last time I tried Yahoo -- following a lackluster revamp of the site -- I stumbled across broken link after broken link and gave up.
Yahoo buys Tumblr for $1.1 billion -- 'We promise not to screw it up'
As has been widely rumored over the last few days, Yahoo has paid $1.1 billion for blogging platform Tumblr. In recent times this is the most paid for an Internet acquisition since Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion last year.
Founded by David Karp in 2007 from a bedroom of his mother's New York apartment, the attraction of Tumblr has always been its clean interface and ease of use, which allows people to be up and blogging within minutes. The service has around 217 million users worldwide and is the 24th most popular site in the US according to research company Quantcast. The company employs 175 people and claims to have more than 100 million blogs.
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