Tumblr
Ranked 6 of 12 blogging platforms by recommenders
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.
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.
29 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 13
- criticize it
- 16
- approval share
- 45%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 13 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Friendly art and queer communities
“it's a super positive atmosphere where everyone just wants to make and talk about cool art”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Google is dead. Where do we go now?” “It comes with the added bonus of having a community of other queer weirdos like myself”
Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “Pinterest is drowning in a sea of AI slop and auto-moderation” Pages and RSS feeds
“tumblr still has pages and it has never impeded me”
Comment from 14 Jul 2026 in “The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes” “Tumblr has RSS feeds for each blog.”
Comment from 6 Jul 2026 in “The Great Blogging Collapse: What Happened to 100 Successful Blogs?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Declined after ownership change
“Tumblr didn't hold its shape long enough to hit the ground physically when its new owner did what seemed perfectly reasonable to them.”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe” “It never ends well for the new owner. Not just Stack Overflow but also Tumblr, Vine, MySpace, Twitter, and more.”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore” “The purchase of Tumblr was basically Elon purchasing Twitter without the political gain.”
Comment from 9 Sep 2026 in “Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence” Decline after adult content ban
“Remember when Tumbler banned porn? People migrated to other platforms like Reddit, and it died.”
Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month” “Tumblr died when they banned NSFW content.”
Comment from 21 Oct 2026 in “Pillowfort Is Closing” Spam and unsolicited DMs
“creating an account in Tumblr and getting five solicitations for pig butchering and NFT scams in DM in the first week”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla” “Fraud messages are all over most social platforms that have DMs.”
Comment from 7 Nov 2025 in “Ask HN: Can we talk about bot texts in 2025?” “I get on Tumblr all the time unsolicited shit”
Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning” Considered past its prime
“Tumblr and Medium are of course a bit past their prime at this point.”
Comment from 6 Jul 2026 in “The Great Blogging Collapse: What Happened to 100 Successful Blogs?” “Tumblr is a dead wasteland now though.”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Was modern art a CIA psy-op? (2020)”
Other blogging platforms people recommend
The four most recommended other blogging platforms, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Substack | 87 | 161 | 35% | 12 | 3 yrs5 owners | — |
| Leaflet (leaflet.pub) | 22 | 1 | 96% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Ghost CMS | 21 | 4 | 84% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Bear Blog | 18 | 4 | 82% | 9 | — | Approved |
| TumblrThis page | 13 | 16 | 45% | 8 | — | — |
What people said
28 of the 33 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Tumblr died when they banned NSFW content.”
“The purchase of Tumblr was basically Elon purchasing Twitter without the political gain.”
“Tumblr is a dead wasteland now though.”
“you either disappear like tumblr”
“Tumblr didn't hold its shape long enough to hit the ground physically when its new owner did what seemed perfectly reasonable to them.”
“They learned from the best: Tumblr.”
“tumblr still has pages and it has never impeded me”
“Tumblr has RSS feeds for each blog.”
“Tumblr and Medium are of course a bit past their prime at this point.”
“Tumblr's search has been hilariously bad for ages now, but at least the tagging system is so comprehensive”
“It never ends well for the new owner. Not just Stack Overflow but also Tumblr, Vine, MySpace, Twitter, and more.”
“immediately started raising walled gardens around them to become discovery platforms”
“It sometimes still is, albeit only on niche sites like tumblr”
“I think Tumblr was peak 'what I'm referring to'.”
“the 4chan incubated fash stuff alongside Tumblr and parts of Reddit”
“it seems they don‘t show posts openly anymore”
“It comes with the added bonus of having a community of other queer weirdos like myself”
“Remember when Tumbler banned porn? People migrated to other platforms like Reddit, and it died.”
“for Tumblr you have to try it twice”
“it's actually quite nice these days, mostly because "everyone knows" that Tumblr is passé”
“I get on Tumblr all the time unsolicited shit”
“it's a super positive atmosphere where everyone just wants to make and talk about cool art”
“those platforms tend to invite more nuanced discussions and be less distracting over all”
“Tumblr was a great platform that was not managed correctly”
“I never understood the appeal of sites like Tumblr, Twitter, or Instagram”
“creating an account in Tumblr and getting five solicitations for pig butchering and NFT scams in DM in the first week”
“Fraud messages are all over most social platforms that have DMs.”
“The Tumblr app does this and it's infuriating”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.