If you love ads, then this post is not for you. If you love Tumblr but hate ads and want the one to continue without having to endure the other, then this post is literally for you. Hello, you.
As of today, you can set up ad-free browsing on your personal desktop computer, from anywhere in the world, and then enjoy the same effervescent Tumblr you know and love (yes, including mobile) without the interruption of ads. Scroll away.
Some caveats:
It’s $4.99 for a month of pure, unadulterated nonsense.
If you like a discount, you can get 33% off (that’s four months for free) at $39.99 for a whole year. Imagine.
This is opt-in. You don’t have to do this. We won’t make you.
How do you opt in?
Easy! Just go to your Account Settings on desktop and hit “Go Ad-Free.” From there, you can choose to pay monthly or yearly:
And that’s it! You’ll be able to enjoy your favorite blogs and posts without any pesky ads getting in the way.
That’s all for now, Tumblr. Back to your blorbos.
I browsed the notes for this a bit and saw many people tag-commentating that they’d never pay for this since it is trivially easy to adblock.
If you feel this way – please reconsider your outlook.
It takes money to store your blog and the blogs of the people you enjoy reading. Tumblr has to get this money from somewhere for its blogs to continue existing. Tumblr is a service that happens to exist in a universe where it is weird to pay social networks directly, and so companies like Tumblr have to do a weird convoluted money-and-attention juggling thing where various entities that are not Tumblr try to sell you things you probably don’t want. This makes Tumblr have priorities that are closer to “help these people sell to you” than to “make the users have a good time so they keep paying”.
We have good cultural reasons to be reflexively hostile to Tumblr’s decisions. But the one they’re making here where they’re trying to tunnel through to the nicer universe where social networks make money by providing value to users is not one that deserves your anger.
I’m not saying you should pay Tumblr! It is indeed easy to get what they are selling by downloading a few extensions. And even if it weren’t, you shouldn’t pay for things you don’t value. But please don’t have an incredulous “fuck you, why should I?” reaction to a company (that makes a product that benefits you) trying to make money in the most direct, honest way they can.
This attitude prolongs our stay in the ad timeline.
