I went out of town during the week, didn’t check social media once and only listened to downloaded podcasts or music […]. When I got home, I threw up my Tweetdeck lists on the big screen in the office as usual, and it did not appear that anything had changed in the intervening 24 hours. Except that maybe it becomes clearer that serious testing has informed all media companies that making you angry, sad or confused rrrrrreally brings the clicks home.

Warren Ellis in Orbital Operations 20190714

triskeleaficionado:

funnyreclaimed:

When I was an academic, I would receive “edits” on my manuscripts. Usually these took the form of paragraphs about what I should include more of (“you must integrate findings form Scholar McScholar’s monograph published in 1954 before it can be published”), what I got wrong (“this is a misreading of Adorno’s definition of ideology”), and maybe a comment or two in the margins (“The CIA, not literary theorists, ‘interrogate’).

When I started writing for trade publications, I realized that editing could be much, much, more intensive–and fun. Editors would actually make the changes to correct my summary of Adorno! They would move the last sentence of a paragraph to the first and suddenly everything made more sense! They would correct my dangling modifiers and not even shame me for creating them.

I loved–and still love– being edited heavily and often. It helps the content of my writing, but it also improves my writing per se, and allows me think about my style, voice, and use of rhetorical forms (arguments, analysis, etc.)  in new ways.

Anne Trubek in “Developmental, Line, Copy-, and Proofing: What Editing Means”, in her Notes from a Small Press newsletter

brucesterling:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18266013/tumblr-porn-ban-lost-users-down-traffic

Tumblr has lost 30 percent of web traffic since December

By Shannon Liao@Shannon_Liao  Mar 14, 2019, 4:37pm EDT

Since Tumblr announced its porn ban in December, many users reacted by explaining that they mainly used the site for browsing not-safe-for-work content, and they threatened to leave the platform if the ban were enforced. It now appears that many users have made good on that threat: Tumblr’s traffic has dropped nearly 30 percent since December.

Tumblr’s global traffic in December clocked in at 521 million, but it had dropped to 370 million by February, web analytics firm SimilarWeb tells The Verge. Statista reports a similar trend in the number of unique visitors. By January 2019, only over 437 million visited Tumblr, compared to a high of 642 million visitors in July 2018.

The ban removed explicit posts from public view, including any media that portrayed sex acts, exposed genitals, and “female-presenting” nipples. Some users say enforcement of the ban has been spotty — one user wrote into The Verge to say that they’re still seeing porn on the platform — but even so, users have apparently left Tumblr in droves. We know that the platform was mainly known for its NSFW content, which was often not just porn that could be found on any number of alternative sites. It also included unique communities that discussed sexuality in healthy ways.

On December 3rd, when Tumblr first told The Verge that it would ban porn by the 17th, CEO Jeff D’Onofrio said in a statement at the time that users had other options. “There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content,” he said. It looks like users have taken D’Onofrio up on his offer and gone to other sites.

brucesterling:

*Because it might be MySpace, which just accidentally wiped out everything before the year 2016.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/18/myspace-loses-all-content-uploaded-before-2016?CMP=twt_gu

nunjournal:

These Jezebel commenters are right and they should say it