Review Insights · App Store
Tumblr: Social Media & Art
Tumblr, Inc. · 366,916 ratings · ★ 4.2
4.2
★★★★★
366,916 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 23 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"tumblr"
11 negative reviews mention this · 48% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Insane amount of ads. The ads are endless and they redirect you to purchase pages while you’re simply trying to scroll past it. They are so ceaseless and unavoidable and no one should download this app. I’ve been on tumblr for literal decades and they have made …" - Stop please i beg you
2
"scroll"
9 negative reviews mention this · 39% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Insane amount of ads. The ads are endless and they redirect you to purchase pages while you’re simply trying to scroll past it. They are so ceaseless and unavoidable and no one should download this app. I’ve been on tumblr for literal decades and they have made …" - Stop please i beg you
3
"while"
7 negative reviews mention this · 30% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Insane amount of ads. The ads are endless and they redirect you to purchase pages while you’re simply trying to scroll past it. They are so ceaseless and unavoidable and no one should download this app. I’ve been on tumblr for literal decades and they have made …" - Stop please i beg you
4
"every"
7 negative reviews mention this · 30% of all complaints
★★★★★ "stay away. if you’re thinking of making the switch to tumblr, just don’t. they’re implementing those ID checks for people in the uk and brazil, and it’s only a matter of time before it’s straight up required for everyone. oh yeah they’re working with …" - simpleskeletons
5
"site"
6 negative reviews mention this · 26% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Broken moderation. Has the makings of a great site but completely undermined by the fact that the system intended to flag mature content has an overwhelmingly high false positive rate especially when it comes to any sort of marginalized group. In other words …" - PancakesandAxolotls
6
"user"
6 negative reviews mention this · 26% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Hostile App Design. I’ve been an active Tumblr user since 2010 but the mobile app is just dreadful to use. Because it’s Tumblr, it scrolls endlessly (this is good), but the ads that they’ve put all over the site play continuously behind the posts so my phone g…" - Neophaim
7
"staff"
6 negative reviews mention this · 26% of all complaints
★★★★★ "stay away. if you’re thinking of making the switch to tumblr, just don’t. they’re implementing those ID checks for people in the uk and brazil, and it’s only a matter of time before it’s straight up required for everyone. oh yeah they’re working with …" - simpleskeletons
8
"trying"
5 negative reviews mention this · 22% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Insane amount of ads. The ads are endless and they redirect you to purchase pages while you’re simply trying to scroll past it. They are so ceaseless and unavoidable and no one should download this app. I’ve been on tumblr for literal decades and they have made …" - Stop please i beg you
9
"past"
5 negative reviews mention this · 22% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Insane amount of ads. The ads are endless and they redirect you to purchase pages while you’re simply trying to scroll past it. They are so ceaseless and unavoidable and no one should download this app. I’ve been on tumblr for literal decades and they have made …" - Stop please i beg you
10
"been"
5 negative reviews mention this · 22% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Insane amount of ads. The ads are endless and they redirect you to purchase pages while you’re simply trying to scroll past it. They are so ceaseless and unavoidable and no one should download this app. I’ve been on tumblr for literal decades and they have made …" - Stop please i beg you
11
"screen"
5 negative reviews mention this · 22% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Hostile App Design. I’ve been an active Tumblr user since 2010 but the mobile app is just dreadful to use. Because it’s Tumblr, it scrolls endlessly (this is good), but the ads that they’ve put all over the site play continuously behind the posts so my phone g…" - Neophaim
12
"especially"
4 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Broken moderation. Has the makings of a great site but completely undermined by the fact that the system intended to flag mature content has an overwhelmingly high false positive rate especially when it comes to any sort of marginalized group. In other words …" - PancakesandAxolotls
📋 All 23 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Broken moderation
Has the makings of a great site but completely undermined by the fact that the system intended to flag mature content has an overwhelmingly high false positive rate especially when it comes to any sort of marginalized group. In other words it flags things as explicit seemingly at random as opposed to based on content of the post. Huge problem given the new age verification thing. Also pornbots are still a problem. The moderation still hasn’t gotten rid of them.
Insane amount of ads
The ads are endless and they redirect you to purchase pages while you’re simply trying to scroll past it. They are so ceaseless and unavoidable and no one should download this app. I’ve been on tumblr for literal decades and they have made it unusable. I only last 5 minutes before getting frustrated and swiping out of the app.
Moderation sucks :/
Tumblr is like a home to me I met great people on it. It’s also actively hostile to said people. The moderation is so obviously biased against transwomen and people that point out their issues. Along with that it’s starting to implement id verification which is why im writing this report cause I will genuinely just stop using it if I need to input my id, especially when its had so many data breaches in the past. Oh yeah also can the ads stop making noise when i just glance at them omg
Hostile App Design
I’ve been an active Tumblr user since 2010 but the mobile app is just dreadful to use. Because it’s Tumblr, it scrolls endlessly (this is good), but the ads that they’ve put all over the site play continuously behind the posts so my phone gets physically hot to the touch if I use the app longer than a few minutes (presumably from constantly loading and playing video ads in the background). Not only that, but the ads themselves are the same size as my phone screen so I inevitably end up clicking them and opening them while trying to scroll down. I’m planning on uninstalling soon because I’m tired of opening the App Store while scrolling-though I’m lucky it’s only been the App Store so far and nothing more malicious given the state of the ads shown. It’s just sad, Tumblr is genuinely one of the better social media sites but this app is practically unusable.
stay away
if you’re thinking of making the switch to tumblr, just don’t. they’re implementing those ID checks for people in the uk and brazil, and it’s only a matter of time before it’s straight up required for everyone. oh yeah they’re working with k-ID-y’know the company that had a massive data breach with this same exact thing. ads are broken and filled with explicit content (which is famously not allowed despite all the bots that roam free), but trans women are banned left and right, and photos of inanimate objects are marked as mature. i had a picture of a dress flagged as explicit content the other day. what a joke.
staff generally refuses to listen to user feedback, and i’m sure they’ll ignore us again this time too!
staff generally refuses to listen to user feedback, and i’m sure they’ll ignore us again this time too!
Bad Management
Staff regularly push out widely unpopular updates to the UI and ToS while ignoring pertinent, long-standing issues. They then get really snarky and aggressive with the community about any and all criticism, then wonder why its users are so hostile.
Now pushing out age verification for Brazil and UK despite banning adult content and marking random stuff and fully SFW selfies as mature.
Now pushing out age verification for Brazil and UK despite banning adult content and marking random stuff and fully SFW selfies as mature.
Ad Bloat
There is an ad every 3 posts. Every ad takes up the whole screen, and you can “interact” with the ad. Interacting with the ad does not allow you to scroll past the ad. The ad takes up the entire page. So you must close and reopen the app.
Now, if i hold down on a post and there is an ad above the post, it will open the ad instead. Ads. The whole app is ads now. Bad ads. Ads for stupid phone games that I did not start playing a decade ago, and will not start now. Some of the ads are inappropriate, which is hilarious considering that porn and trans women have been banned from the site for daring to exist.
If you want to pay $70 you can get rid of the ads. Except for I don’t want to give this company $70 so that they can use that $70 to ban one of my trans women mutuals, because that’s the only thing the company feels is worthwhile to do. That and destroying the functionality of the website with “updates to the user experience” that zero users asked for and most users actively hate.
Now, if i hold down on a post and there is an ad above the post, it will open the ad instead. Ads. The whole app is ads now. Bad ads. Ads for stupid phone games that I did not start playing a decade ago, and will not start now. Some of the ads are inappropriate, which is hilarious considering that porn and trans women have been banned from the site for daring to exist.
If you want to pay $70 you can get rid of the ads. Except for I don’t want to give this company $70 so that they can use that $70 to ban one of my trans women mutuals, because that’s the only thing the company feels is worthwhile to do. That and destroying the functionality of the website with “updates to the user experience” that zero users asked for and most users actively hate.
app should be considered malware
ads will open automatically if you so much as look at them, redirecting you to different suspicious tracking websites. doesn’t help that every other post is followed by yet another unescapable pop-up. staff and support do not care-they’ve been made aware of this issue numerous times and find no reason to change it so long as they get the revenue they desire. i’ve never seen an app as derelict as this one.
Update: Developers responded and told me how to report ads-guess what: I’ve already *been* doing this. That’s the entire problem. That’s why I wrote this report. I report anywhere from 15-25 ads per DAY (and that’s if I have the energy to report the same ad in the five separate instances it shows up across 10 minutes). Absolutely nothing changes. These same malicious ads continue to be present for days on end regardless of what I try to do.
Update: Developers responded and told me how to report ads-guess what: I’ve already *been* doing this. That’s the entire problem. That’s why I wrote this report. I report anywhere from 15-25 ads per DAY (and that’s if I have the energy to report the same ad in the five separate instances it shows up across 10 minutes). Absolutely nothing changes. These same malicious ads continue to be present for days on end regardless of what I try to do.
Worst app ever
Been using tumblr since 2010. The app has just gotten worse. Ads are massive and now the app is constantly freezing. I have to force reset the app after 5min every time
Ads autoplay forever
Fix this.
And stop banning trans people.
And stop banning trans people.
Fix Your Ads.
I am a longtime user, and the mobile app has become unusable because of the ads that send you to a website every time you try to scroll past. Especially the Hwaehae ads. Please fix the sensitivity settings on those stupid ads, I don’t want to have to close a Safari tab every three seconds while I try to scroll through my dashboard.
Just use your browser
The ads make this app impossible to use. Some are now so big and sensitive to screen touch you cannot scroll by them without opening a new window and taking you out of the app entirely. Some of them have “interactive” features that think you’re trying to play instead of scroll by. Not worth it.
Buggy and Ad-Riddled
Full of bugs that staff seemingly ignores with every update while trying to change how reblogs work (the primary function of the site, mind you) against the vast majority of the userbase’s wishes. Ads are everywhere, are often unskippable when you try to go to someone’s blog, and if you mistap you will be redirected from the app to any number of sketchy websites. I’m convinced one of these ads is gonna bug my phone out one day. Download at your own risk. It’s a shame too- tumblr is the only social media platform that’s still actually good. If only it’s app wasn’t terrible.
stop it
stop banning trans women.
Can’t scroll past adds
As a follow up to the attempt to break reblogs, tumblr has rolled out a feature where you can’t scroll normally due to ads. This is particularly bad when the app is having some kind of error and you need to refresh it, because the ad will be prioritized over functionality at all costs and you pretty much have to delete the app and redownload it.
Additionally, the msg features are freezing constantly and you WILL lose whatever reply you’re trying to write and not be able to use any app features while it’s frozen or even copy/cut your text to paste and retry. Pretty awful when you’re trying to talk to a friend about something important and you have to close and relaunch an app 3 times gambling on if you have to repeat yourself
Additionally, the msg features are freezing constantly and you WILL lose whatever reply you’re trying to write and not be able to use any app features while it’s frozen or even copy/cut your text to paste and retry. Pretty awful when you’re trying to talk to a friend about something important and you have to close and relaunch an app 3 times gambling on if you have to repeat yourself
Pop-up Ads!!!!
Tumblr. Stop making this app IMPOSSIBLE to use!! WHY am I getting 10 second pop-up ads that I can’t get out of and that frequently freeze and crash the app!? I swear, staff WANT us to leave the site
Abusive Advertising
I am considering deleting my account of almost 15 years because of how untenable the ad situation has become. It does not matter how many times I report an ad as spam or malicious or even, apparently send a ticket to tumblr staff about this. I have primarily seen ONE ad for almost two months (hwahae skin care) that crashes my app and force opens my browser with multiple tabs. This is abusive and malicious advertising that makes the site unusable. However tumblr staff is apparently uninterested in maintaining a functioning website for their user base. I hope the ad revenue is worth it.
opens ads in safari every few times u scroll even when no ads are on your screen
i hate you you ruined my life
Malicious adveristements and poor performance
The current run of advertising is basically a 50/50 between gambling apps and kingshot. The kingshot ones in particular autoplay loud obnoxious music and hijack your ability to scroll properly by forcing you to control a game. All of this while sucking your phone’s battery dry.
Ads are so bad
I’m usually on tumblr a lot but I’m about to switch to other platforms cause it’s so annoying with the ads.
Idk
Why does it only be for 13 or older !?
Ads are making the app miserable
Love this app first off, it’s my primary social media these days, but yall need to get your act together with the ads on mobile,, I don’t imagine this feedback will do anything at all, and when reporting ads also does nothing I’m at a loss of what to do as a user who would love to continue using the platform.
Ads have sound on automatically more often than not, they ‘stick’ onscreen/won’t let you scroll but the second you touch it you’re redirected to the appstore or a website, they take up the entire screen, and reporting them does absolutely nothing. One of the more frustrating and disappointing app experiences I’ve seen something devolve into, especially when I love the platform so much, you should care about fixing this
Ads have sound on automatically more often than not, they ‘stick’ onscreen/won’t let you scroll but the second you touch it you’re redirected to the appstore or a website, they take up the entire screen, and reporting them does absolutely nothing. One of the more frustrating and disappointing app experiences I’ve seen something devolve into, especially when I love the platform so much, you should care about fixing this
Ad infestation, I think tumblr dying
The algorithm is horrible, I see the same post every single day, I’m barely introduced to any new blogs :( and now there’s an ad before you open a page.
Sentiment summary
80%
Positive (4-5★)
3%
Neutral (3★)
17%
Negative (1-2★)