# Tumblr

13 Hacker News commenters recommended Tumblr and 16 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended for its comprehensive tagging, friendly art community and RSS feeds. Critics say it declined after ownership changes and the adult content ban, with spam DMs and weak search.

## Why people recommend it

- Friendly art and queer communities (2 comments): "it's a super positive atmosphere where everyone just wants to make and talk about cool art" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46429618)) "It comes with the added bonus of having a community of other queer weirdos like myself" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47123058))
- Pages and RSS feeds (2 comments): "tumblr still has pages and it has never impeded me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48903438)) "Tumblr has RSS feeds for each blog." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808779))

## What people warn about

- Declined after ownership change (3 comments): "Tumblr didn't hold its shape long enough to hit the ground physically when its new owner did what seemed perfectly reasonable to them." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49019053)) "It never ends well for the new owner. Not just Stack Overflow but also Tumblr, Vine, MySpace, Twitter, and more." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48273389)) "The purchase of Tumblr was basically Elon purchasing Twitter without the political gain." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49636073))
- Decline after adult content ban (2 comments): "Remember when Tumbler banned porn? People migrated to other platforms like Reddit, and it died." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46949747)) "Tumblr died when they banned NSFW content." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50180432))
- Spam and unsolicited DMs (3 comments): "creating an account in Tumblr and getting five solicitations for pig butchering and NFT scams in DM in the first week" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45928592)) "Fraud messages are all over most social platforms that have DMs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45850716)) "I get on Tumblr all the time unsolicited shit" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46599483))
- Considered past its prime (2 comments): "Tumblr and Medium are of course a bit past their prime at this point." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48802445)) "Tumblr is a dead wasteland now though." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49432609))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [LiveJournal](https://hackerapproved.com/p/livejournal.md): 7 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://www.tumblr.com/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Tumblr", https://hackerapproved.com/p/tumblr/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).