The Blog

Tumblr's Support Problem with 'Missing e'

occupyallstreets:

joshishollywood:

missing-e:

As many users have observed, Tumblr has recently given users a choice to uninstall Missing e or revoke support for your account.

The reasons they give for suggesting that you uninstall Missing e are the worst-case scenario for installing browser extensions or browser modifications of any kind. However, Missing e is not a source of these kinds of problems.

At worst, Missing e may cause problems when Tumblr makes changes to their interface and Missing e has not yet been updated to deal with the changes. I usually work very quickly to restore compatibility in these cases.

It is very unlikely that Missing e will cause any data loss. This is especially true of existing posts. Without your interaction, Missing e will not delete anything!

As for privacy, Missing e does not obtain, use or store your email address, password, IP address, search queries or contents of any of your existing posts.

Missing e implements only a small amount of what Tumblr calls page scraping. It is not done regularly, nor is it excessive. The removed features Follow Checker and Unfollower used page scraping a lot more and were taken out of Missing e quite some time ago for this very reason.

All users are encouraged to examine Missing e’s source code to confirm all of the claims I have made!

If you choose to continue using Missing e and want to continue receiving support, you should follow these guidelines:

• If you experience problems with Tumblr, deactivate Missing e in your browser’s extensions list (you can get to this list using the first part of the Missing e uninstall instructions and turning off “Enable” or clicking on the “Disable” button, depending on your browser). If the problem remains, it is most likely not a Tumblr issue.

• Before contacting Tumblr support, deactivate Missing e. Regardless of whether or not you acknowledged that using Missing e means Tumblr will not provide you with support, if you have it deactivated or uninstalled, it is not running! You will be accurately presenting your issue to Tumblr support in informing them that you are not currently using Missing e.

Tumblr will not provide support for those who have Missing e installed. Reblog this and email Tumblr at support@tumblr.com

Tell them to support all users and stop blocking Missing e’s effort to make Tumblr more user-friendly.

Okay, okay, hang on there a second. I have a few things I’d like to say.

1. You agreed to use Tumblr. You accepted their policies. Remember that.
2. Tumblr’s still Tumblr. Even if you don’t use Missing e, your life doesn’t suck. You still have your blog, your posts, your followers and followees. No posts will be blocked, and no one will have access to information they’re not supposed to have access to. And no one’s losing their account.
3. Missing e is actually a bit harmful to Tumblr. To load the links to various things like reblogging yourself and timestamps, Missing e has to load several other pages in the background and extract useful information to insert back to the page you’re viewing. The latter part runs on your computer, but the former means more server strain on Tumblr. Tumblr knows no one likes downtime but it doesn’t have the servers to handle the extra pageloads Missing e requires. So compromises have to be made.
4. Tumblr’s just making you responsible for yourself. Missing e provides shortcuts to doing various things (yes, I’ve done all of those things without Missing e). Tumblr Support doesn’t want to pick up after people who expect them to know Missing e like the back of their hand. All they’re saying is, “We’re didn’t make Missing e, so we’re not responsible if it messes up.”
5. When’s the last time you contacted Tumblr support anyway?