this website i think fundamentally cannot sustain a mass exodus of tumblr users because i dont think it can sustain a mass anything. if i had a fraction of the followers i had on tumblr on this website, like, a tenth, i would immediately feel deeply unsafe at not being able to know how many followers i have (and therefore not knowing e.g. what's reasonably safe to post, how far outside my circle and cultural sphere i can expect posts to end up going, a lot of other things which are pretty important to basic safety as a trans girl online). this hippie burning man 'no numbers ever' shit is borderline unusable. the fact that theres no fucking way to see a post's replies, too! how are you meant to know if a wave of harassment is coming from a specific share? or, stepping away from the safety angle for a moment, have a fucking conversation on here?
most of the bad UI stuff is whatever, i know it's a small team and you can't expect sleek functional responsive UI from them and it'll improve eventually. but what i really don't like is the deliberate design decisions that seem (to me) to remove most of the ways that i as a user can actively protect myself! i'm not a baby. i like not being able to see other people's followers and following and likes, i think that was a big part of why tumblr was good and it's good here. but not being able to see shit like how many people you follow (and an apparent ideological resistance to DMs???) is just silly

