masterpost of tumblr alternatives

olderglow olderglow

this post will be updated as I find more websites to add! please check with the original before reblogging to see if there’s an updated version, and message me with corrections or more suggestions if you have them!!

websites in red have explicitly forbidden the posting of NSFW content. websites in orange allow certain types of NSFW content or have questionable / unclear guidelines.

for general use

friendproject.net - built on myspace, great blog customization
gab.ai - added for completeness, but has a huge alt-right + racism issue
joinmastodon.org - basically like if twitter and discord had a child??
mewe.com - privacy-focused, has groups and private messages
minds.com - allows you to exchange traffic for being promoted (??)
myspace.com - yes, it still exists, i’m just as surprised as you
nibblebit.com - similar to tumblr with reblogs / likes / customizing of blogs
pinterest.ca - easy sharing and collecting, but has many issues with theft
swarmr.com - an exact tumblr clone down to the default images (??)
twitter.com - allows posting both text and photos in sets, allows retweets

geared towards writers and bloggers

archiveofourown.org - specializes in hosting fic, excellent tagging system
dreamwidth.org - a blogging site similar to livejournal or wordpress
fanfiction.net - another big name in fanfic posting
livejournal.com - technically an option, likely unsafe for LGBTQ peeps
mibba.com - for creative writers, centered around community feedback
quotev.com - decent website for original / fan fic and fandom quizzes
royalroad.com - hosts webnovels and other fanfic, nice dark theme
wattpad.com - modern pretty fic site with direct links to irl publishers
wordpress.com - old and well-established, often considered the default

geared towards artists and photographers

artstation.com - excellent website for posting professional art portfolios
behance.net - meant for professionals posting various visual media types
deviantart.com - huge community, allows posting art + sorting into folders
flickr.com - great community for photographers, can join groups
furaffinity.net - similar to DA but for furries, easy to display commish info
galleria.emotionflow.com - very similar to pixiv, with imo better tagging
instagram.com - photo and video posts, excellent tag search
newgrounds.com - an oldie but a goodie, allows a ton of media types
piczel.tv - allows both streaming and posting art / photosets to a gallery
pixiv.net - huge anime art community, allows livestreaming
vero.co - app only, similar to insta but with MUCH more privacy control

chat or forum based

aminoapps.com - community-based, has blogs + chat, custom themes
discordapp.com - great chat app, text + voice, can join infinite servers
reddit.com - literally a community for everything, SO MANY CAT PHOTOS

18+ only

bdsmlr.com - microblogging + social media for people into kink
blogr.xxx - a tumblr clone created specifically for sharing porn
fetlife.com - considered one of the biggest kink communities online
libertine.center - beautiful + modern site for posting irl nsfw and kink stuff
thefetlibrary.com - for posting of erotic stories, replaces bdsmlibrary

paid platforms

patreon.com - subscription-based access to many diff types of content
typepad.com - similar to wordpress but with reblogging and a dash

up-and-coming platforms

pillowfort.io - closed beta. should function almost identically to tumblr but with many many improvements
poizen.me - development alpha. gorgeous website for artists to post art AND track comms

this one’s still early in development but looks incredibly promising as a platform and super pretty to look at!! go snap up a username before all the good ones are taken! ~~favouritism what’s that~~

qink.co - pre-alpha. 18+ only. plans to be a kink-oriented replacement for tumblr.

defunct platforms

~~(so people will stop telling me i forgot them)~~

jux.com - shut down in 2014 due to lack of funds
shoandtell.me - now redirects to someone’s personal blog
soup.io - more or less closed down this year due to GDPR issues

ways to save your current tumblr posts

use the wayback machine! you do have to archive each page of your blog individually but once you do all the content, including media, will be saved exactly as it was at the moment you archived it.
wordpress allows you to directly import whole tumblr blogs, and if i recall correctly it’s something both dreamwidth and pillowfort have said they are working on.
tumblthree is a great tool with a ton of functions including downloading whole blogs, only posts tagged with a certain tag, all the posts you’ve liked, etc. etc. along with being able to download every type of media hosted on tumblr (pictures, videos, audio, everything). it also has a proper GUI so no computer knowledge required beyond downloading and running programs!
if you have some knowledge of computers you can try this github solution which uses a python script to download your whole blog to your computer. even if you don’t know anything about programming or the command line they give a very good beginners tutorial on how to use it so you should still give it a shot!

if that’s still a little daunting you can try soarcodes’ tumblr post that also has a decent tutorial!

here’s another python script that should allow you to archive all the images from your blog or your likes, though it requires some knowledge of python and the command line or very very good google skills.

some notes

edit: please stop commenting on this post to self-promote your porn accounts on other sites. those replies / reblogs will be deleted or hidden.

please note that every site on this list will have pros and cons, and i haven’t listed them here since this post would be a mile long otherwise. please do your research before moving completely over to another site in case they have policies you disagree with.

also, because I see a lot of misinformed people ranting about this: deviantart does not own the art you post. some years ago hot topic stole a ton of art from DA and sold it on merchandise and people assumed that DA gave them permission to do it despite there being literally zero evidence for that claim. DA explictly states in their TOS that you retain copyright and sole license of the art you post.

and related, mastodon does not allow or condone CP or pedophilia. the people spreading this info are misinformed about what mastodon is. it is not an exact twitter clone; anyone anywhere can host a mastodon instance using their personal computer as a server, which means mastodon as a company can’t do jack shit to moderate them. what they DO is permanently block all users from every other instance from viewing or interacting with that instance, and add that instance to a publicly viewable list along with the reason for the block. please give their post about anti-abuse measures a read before making snap judgements.

post version 5.1, 2018-12-04 23:46 AST

baron-x

https://baron-x.bdsmlr.com/

honedperfection

December 17th - a rescue plan

Some good news, I’ve been talking to two developers now and got them working together, we just had a meeting with the guys behind an existing large (millions of users) site similar to Tumblr, with a vibrant and open-minded community, and more importantly, it has open-minded owners who believe in free speech. They think we can get something done here to rescue the whole community.

I’m not allowed to reveal the site name yet. I can tell you it’s mainstream, open to everyone, open-minded and welcoming. (It’s not WordPress or any site owned by Facebook or Twitter. It’s not Pillowfort, that’s in closed beta. It’s not Ello, that’s mainly for artists. It’s not kinkspace or fetlife, those are too specialist. It’s not jux, that seems to be closed. It’s not Soup, that seems still in development and too small.)

One of the reasons for delaying the announcement for next few days is they don’t want a “land grab” where people take the names of current popular Tumblr users over there (cyber squatting). So they are looking at ways for existing Tumblr users to keep the same names on the new site.

More info over the days to come.

The plan is, broadly:

1. By December 9th, announcement of the new site and how to secure your username there

2. By December 10th, an online tool for bloggers to copy their existing content to the new site automatically, with the same tags and captions.

3. Bloggers will need to copy their content across between December 10th and December 17th if they want to use the automatic tool.

4. My understanding is that after December 17th there will be no public access to any “flagged” posts on Tumblr, but the original poster will still be able to see the flagged post (for a short time at least). Therefore, the original poster may still be able to manually download a post to their own PC or phone, after December 17th, and manually upload it to the other site. But if you have lots of posts that will take a long time, it will be better to use the automatic tool before December 17th.

Please understand that these dates are approximate and may change for technical or other reasons.

There may be a few rough edges or not so perfect looking site design on the transfer tool. Everyone is doing their best. The main goal here is to help as many people as possible preserve access to their content, in the short space of time Tumblr has allowed us, and preserve as much as possible of the Tumblr community spirit somewhere new.

The new site will cater for photo, GIF, text and html posts. It will not offer video and audio posts, due to cost reasons - maybe in future, but for now you will need to preserve video and audio content yourself in some other place.

If your Tumblr blog has a mixture of original content and reblogs, or all reblogs, all of that can be copied over to the new site. Reblogs will become “your” original content if nobody else posted them yet, otherwise they will be shown as reblogs. The devs are looking at ways to preserve attribution of reblogs back to the original Tumblr poster, if that person also moves to the new site.

Important: your Likes cannot be copied from Tumblr to the new site. You will have to go find the same posts again on the new site, and like them afresh.

(Similarly, existing reblog comments, asks, messages and other user interaction on Tumblr cannot be copied to the new site - that’s just too much to do, in the short time available.)

If you want to preserve any of your existing Liked posts on Tumblr, you will need to either: (1) download the post to your own PC, or: (2A) reblog it now to your own Tumblr blog, and then (2B) use the automatic tool, before December 17th, to move your whole Tumblr blog across to the new site.

If you have Liked a lot of posts here on Tumblr, the gridllr.com webapp should be able to help you do steps 1 and 2A quickly, I mean download or reblog.

(Someone complained to me today about the appearance of Gridllr on a phone. It’s best to use Gridllr on a PC, Mac or Tablet with a large screen.)

If you have liked a post here on Tumblr and the original poster decides to delete it, or even to delete their entire blog, some time before December 17th, then that post will be permanently lost. So if you want to be sure to preserve any of your Liked posts, you should best download or reblog as soon as possible. If it’s reblogged to your own blog it is safe from deletion, at least for next few days.

Obviously, you will lose access, after December 17th, to all past posts you have liked, if Tumblr has flagged them as NSFW. Again, the steps (1), or (2A) and (2B) covered above will be the only way to hold on to these posts.

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

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