Tumblr

[olivermoss]

Tumblr is putting in paid subscriptions to blogs, kind of like a Patreon model. I doubt this is going to go much of anywhere, so it's not a big deal.

However, they are explicitly going after monetizing access to fannish content. "[E]mpower your favorite artists, fanfic writers, or maybe even that one mashup Supernatural/Studyblr blog you’ve been following since 2016." Tumblr is mostly fan content these days, so of course that is what they are looking to monetize. But it's interesting that they are explicitly saying it.

I am expecting this attempt to fall on it's face, but if it succeeds think about how many Ao3 fics link to tumblrs and what a mess that will be. Fic from 10 years ago could suddenly have a link that has the same legal problems as a link to a patreon.

Comments

[bluedreaming]

This was definitely one of my first concerns upon reading about it. Links to Twitter and/or Tumblr often even appear at the end of each chapter.

[mistressofmuses]

That is a big ol' yikes. I'm not surprised that's where they're aiming, and I agree that I can't imagine it's going to go anywhere...

But still. I hadn't directly considered old links on AO3 now being a legal problem for fanworks.

I can also see this being a bigger issue for creators who don't remember the pre-AO3/OTW fandom-scape. The ones who DO think it should be no big deal for fanfic to be paid. If they try to utilize the tumblr+ thing and DO ultimately get into legal trouble due to the monetization, I feel like tumblr isn't going to have their backs legally.

[alexseanchai]

I sort of agree? my point of disagreement is, where Patreon and Paypal and the like have never to my knowledge encouraged fanwork creators to use those platforms to monetize fanworks, hopefully the fact that Tumblr is explicitly so encouraging will mean, if this means fandom gets burnt in the courts, Tumblr's owners will at least inhale a few lungfuls of smoke. like, Tumblr may not care one way or another about its users, but if any of the IP Smaugs go after fanwork-monetizing creators because of Tumblr, then I don't see how Tumblr can defend itself without also defending its users.

[mistressofmuses]

Might depend on how well a "we take no responsibility for what our users post" defense holds up. They ARE encouraging it, but at least in the current text they're aiming it toward supporting the creators, not specifically the works they're producing, which is kind of a fine line. (And not necessarily one that's meant to be weaselly or anything!)

I'm absolutely no kind of legal expert though, and it's true that they probably would wind up having to defend the users to at least some degree, even if it's just a side-effect of defending themselves as the hosts.

But I can also easily see them (like with the nsfw ban) just deleting any posts or user accounts that come into question. OR, in a world where this is successful, they build the feature on fandom creators and later place restrictions on that content to avoid potential broader legal issues. (Also not unlike the ultimate nsfw ban, after having built that up as a moderately significant userbase.)

All of that is probably utter nonsense, because I am far from an expert! Mostly it all just feels like a can of bad-idea worms.

[olivermoss]

When I ran dealer's room and AAs for cons we could not advertise fan art or other fan craft being sold there ... even thought it was the main thing sold, a main reason why people bought tickets and came in the first place and also VAs and Funi reps would buy up all sorts of fan stuff.

Pretending that isn't happening was an important legal thing according to our lawyer and also the Funi lawyers. It's a polite fiction. That's why I was surprised they said it. You can go 'oopsie, is that shippy art of Disney chatacters ... yanno I am sure it was just a misunderstanding lemme fix that real quick' if they are advertising doing that.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, it seems like that's always been a pretty stark dividing line, where the fan-content can't ever be advertised even when everyone knows it's the main draw. But that plausible deniability has always been really important.

So I definitely think that's one of the things most shocking about the tumblr announcement... and absolutely one of the places it could go the most wrong the most quickly.

[alexseanchai]

there's a blue plus badge on tumblrs that are opting in to this. hopefully only those tumblrs will be prohibited from being linked to from AO3.

[olivermoss]

But you can likely turn that feature on at a later point. Maybe even turn it on and off. I am not seriously worried about Tumblr becoming Worse!Patreon, but it does it would be a mess.