Hey Tumblr people: Welcome to the Automattic family!

Matt –Automattic’s CEO– announced it on a Tumblr post and completed the news with some more info on his ma.tt WP blog. I love this quote from Matt post.

There has also been a lot of speculation on the purchase price, which I think is missing the real story.
Matt

When someone points at the moon, don’t keep looking at the finger ¯_(ツ)_/¯. After reading these posts, I’m grateful that Verizon cared to find a future for Tumblr and its team. I’m also glad that Automattic is willing to learn from Tumblr, respecting the identity it has, but also attracting it to the bright Open Source side.

Time to dust off Remotefrog on Tumblr (divergente.tumblr.com)

What about the not-only-porn ban?

After that, there are some misguided analysis (e.g. this at elpais.com, the main Spanish journal) where

We considered Tumblr facing the ostracism even being ranked 77th in Alexa, vs 460th (elpais.com). (°ω°)

We mix WordPress.com and WordPress. I have the hope they read this post 😛 so they could find some explanations of the differences here: http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
We mix freedom of speech and abuse. And consequently, Tumblr not-only-Porn ban at the end of 2018 seems to just have a pure business-money perspective.

I’m proud to be an Automattician because we are creating a new workspace. And working to apply neat rules for the Internet, where Open Source and quality, inclusive, genuine content cand depict the future (rather than echolalia, hate speech, get-money-at-any-costs, and just-ads-content).

Because we are more motivated by impact than money (our Creed). In Automattic, we work for Freedom and we are coherent: freedom of speech is about media literacy and does not mean that we allow anything on our servers (curious about what’s not allowed in WordPress.com?). So e.g. we don’t trade with firearms, pornography or personal information in WordPress.com. If you think this means attacking freedom of speech, then we don’t share the same perspective.

Being clearer, I’m not worried by the drop in Tumblr stats motivated by the not-only-porn-ban. We are -together- in a marathon to make the Internet more inclusive, more democratic. This is not a sprint.

And so, happy to welcome Tumblr to the Automattic family! Eagerly waiting to see you listed here.

Note: this post contains my free and personal perspective and opinion, not WordPress.com’s, Automattic’s or Tumblr’s. (I imagine this was already clear, but just in case)