work in progress (Posts tagged followers)

Answer: Hi there, @aconitum-nerium!

So, we must assume here that you are referring to being subscribed for notifications when new reblogs and replies come in. This would be nice, for sure, but it's very unlikely at present. It's not clear where we’d put it, for one thing, or indeed when we would have a chance to build it. 

We're sorry to be the bearers of bad news, but keep your questions coming folks. 

Answer: Hey there, @tgcarahart.

We would love to build more bulk-action tools on Tumblr as a core platform improvement! Gardening your following and followers are one of the areas where that would make a lot of sense. However, we’re not sure yet where it fits on our priority list, but it may be a part of our plans next year. Stay tuned to @changes blog for updates on that.

In the meantime, if you want to do this kind of thing yourself and dip your toes into some programming, you can leverage the public Tumblr API to do exactly what you want. In fact, we just published an example of how to get a list of who you’re following based on activeness and mutual status here. You could probably tune that to do what you want with a little work! We’d love to have more examples in that repository.

Thanks for your question, and we hope this helps!

Answer: Hello, @cowboybreakdowns!

So, those aren’t supported right now, but we appreciate you mentioning them. And we must add that, while it would be cool to do so, alas it is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

But we do have another suggestion. You could build this yourself via our public API if you were so audacious. 👀

We hope this helps, and thanks for your question. Have a lovely day!

Answer: Hey, @arunneronthird!

We understand what you’re looking for! But adding an allowlist (on top of the existing blocklist) makes content filtering more complex—both in terms of engineering and how easy it is for users to learn and use.

At the moment, let’s say you follow an artist, and they post something with a tag in your blocklist. That post will still show on your feed, just with a cover on it. You can click on this cover to reveal the content. While you do need to take an extra click to enjoy this post, we think this is the easiest and the most straightforward solution to this issue—at least for now.

We will give this some thought, though. There may be a better, third way. If there is anything more to say on this question, you will find it here on WIP or over at @changes.

Answer: Hello there, @higherhell!

This is admittedly incredibly complex to do, but it still might be worthwhile. 

What we can say is that we would love for us to do this: to enable more private/small-group interactions. We have talked about it, possibly, as much as one billion times internally. It has been on our idea backlog before, and the good folks at the @labs blog are working in this direction. We would certainly hope to make it happen someday. 

What we would also add is that the only workaround in the product right now is to create a private group blog, one with those people you want able to see the content you’re trying to share with them privately. That’s the best we can offer right now.

We may well get to this in the future. If so, you will find updates either here on WIP or over at @changes.

Answer: Hello, @did-you-fall-for-a-shooting-star!

So, while we don’t plan on making a “mutuals only” view like that, we are working to make it much easier to see who you’re mutuals with when you’re using Tumblr normally. Just take this recent WIP, for example.

Love,

—Cyle

Answer: Hello, @ruimtetijd.

Thank you for your question—it’s clear this means a great deal to you.

Firstly, while we are unable to promise anything, there are no plans in the short, long, or indeed medium term to change this. However, we could not agree more with you—we, too, wholeheartedly believe that those things are what help make Tumblr special and different from other social networking sites. It is vital to the values and culture of our platform, and we are just as attached to it as you folks. If ever we were to change this, then it would be a very big pivot indeed, and we’d have to make it a loud departure from what Tumblr is today. So, while unlikely, it is never say never.

Thanks also to @dangerbooze and @the-best-url-on-this-site for getting in touch with the same question.

Love,

—Cyle (Tumblr Engineering)

Answer: Hey there, @onyuchii.

A simple but important answer here: we’re aware, we’re fighting them, please keep reporting them as you find them.

Thank you for your feedback, and keep it coming. Thanks also to the others who brought this to our attention, including: @idkart-111, @lynxslayer-yandereblog, @an-abyss-called-life, and @lilacandladybugs.

Love,

—Cyle

Answer: Why, hello there @unsureprincess!

So we have an answer for you, only we’re afraid it is, unfortunately, a touch complex: yes, those blogs are no longer being counted. However, the task of counting is not the same as listing. The list will still load those blogs and filter them out per-page.

With everything else we are working on, we haven’t quite gotten around to fixing it yet. However, rest assured it’s on our list, and we will take a look at this as soon as we can. In the meantime, keep watch @changes for any progress.

Best,

—Alexey and Cyle (Tumblr Engineering)

Answer: Hello, hello, @mewharley!

Hmm. Now that is an interesting idea. At the moment, the closest we have is either:

• If you’re mutuals, you can see via the green icon how long you’ve been mutuals in your following list.
• Or, if you want to hit the API directly, you can get the following duration when querying for their blog info.

Thanks for your question, and have a great day!

Love,

—Cyle (Tumblr Engineering)