heads up before you spend $$ on pillowfort, especially note the paypal thing. the io domain concern does not seem carefully enforced but is in the TOS so 🤷
These are valid concerns but like. Have we tried not making a call out post to promote hate against a brand new company made by fandom for fandom? This is the same shit that has been pulled on AO3 this year. Contact them and ask them to clarify their content moderation. Ask them about their concerns about Paypal – they’ve already mentioned on their Twitter that they’re changing domains because of the adult content ban on .io domains. They’ve been nothing but open and honest about everything since they were first announced and far more patient than is reasonable with the amount of questions they receive. And the site was down because it was fixing security issues in order to make the site safer for users. They’ve been absolutely transparent about this issue, which is unheard of these days.
Pillowfort will only survive if we support it. We need our own space that isn’t going to get sold out. Do you think Twitter is gonna allow NSFW content forever? Instagram doesn’t give a shit about fandom. And while Dreamwidth would be great, it would be a total culture shock to a lot of people – they have a 500mb cap for images, a tag limit, and communities decentralize fandom unlike Tumblr’s ability to just look at all of the posts under a single tag.
I’ve been looking into Pillowfort a lot. Obviously, there have been lots of tumblr-adjacent projects that haven’t worked out in the past, so it’s reasonable to be cautious. However;
Pillowfort has existed in beta for months now, with a fairly small user base. They created, funded, and closed their kickstarter over 3 months ago- you can check, it’s dated. They earned $57k, reasonable to get started, but not enough to create a fully operational social media site in 3 months. And unless they’re psychic, their site was clearly NOT created to take advantage of users fleeing tumblr, but rather out of genuine desire to create a platform that addressed the concerns of tumblr users.
With the money they earned, they have been working on the site, and the site being down was SCHEDULED (posted about before and while it was happening, keeping registered users updated on why it was taking so long and when it would be up again) maintenance to, you know, work on the site like they promised they were going to. It is literally in beta.
Again, unless they’re psychic, they had no idea tumblr was going to drop this bombshell while they were doing their maintenance (and again it’s in beta, ie the time when the site is SUPPOSED to be under maintenance!!)
They address the .io domain on their twitter (plan to change) and their FAQ addresses their business plan and how they plan to implement it. Plans to on board moderators are discussed on their FAQ.
So yeah, I get being cautious, but you should actually DO the research on this instead of knee-jerk reaction deciding it’s a scam. I’m not saying it IS going to turn out like everyone is hoping, but I have scoured all the info on their kickstarter, social media, and website; i have checked out the demo version of the site; I like what I see and so far everything checks out. So yeah I’m willing to bet a whole $5 on this site.
sky's stuff 