Tumblr users slam new reblog UI update that gives each reblog its own notes

Tumblr is rolling out a significant change to how reblog chains work, and, as with any major UI change, a large portion of its user base is not taking it well.

The new implementation gives each post in a reblog chain its own set of notes: likes, reblogs, and replies all go to the specific reblog’s author rather than funneling back to the original post. Tumblr framed it as giving contributors “the recognition they deserve.” But, well, users have taken this in an entirely different way. They’ve called it, among other things, “rancid,” “awful,” and “the worst update ever.”

Adding fuel to the fire, Tumblr briefly went down in the US around the same time the update started rolling out, and users on Reddit immediately suspected the two were connected.

One Reddit post in r/RecuratedTumblr showing a screenshot of the new chain UI pulled over 330 upvotes within hours.

According to a comment on a post in r/CuratedTumblr, over 100,000 complaints had been submitted to Tumblr’s feedback system by the time the staff posted a response.

The response in the spotlight was posted on the official “changes” blog and went over about as well as expected. There are well over 28,000 comments under the post, most of which are leaning towards the negative side or at least asking Tumblr to change how it works.

Staff said they were reading replies and reblogs and that “nothing about this change is meant to limit” creativity. They did not say they’d roll it back. The top comment on the Reddit thread sharing the post called it “an absolute nothingburger of a response.”

Part of what’s driving the anger is visual. The updated UI breaks reblog chains into what looks like separate posts, making it noticeably harder to follow a thread.

One Tumblr user, thatlittleegyptologist, broke it down clearly. As an example, they mentioned that if a large account reblogs your post and it takes off from there, all those downstream notes go to the reblogger, not you. An artist could have 200 notes on their own post, while someone who added a one-line comment sits at 9,000, and the original creator would have no idea their work traveled that far. There’s another concerning aspect to this as well. If someone reblogs your post to mock it and then blocks you, you’ll catch the harassment in your inbox with no way to see where it started.

Beyond the look of it, users are reading the change as the start of something bigger. A popular theory in the Reddit threads: this is laying groundwork for engagement-based algorithms and possibly public follower counts, neither of which Tumblr’s user base has any appetite for. One commenter said, “It’s like they’re trying their hardest to make it like Twitter.”

Tumblr said more changes are coming “as we keep building this out.” So we’ll just have to wait and see what the team has been cooking.

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