The thing is. Pillowfort is not a 1:1 Tumblr replacement. It is, in a way, a mix of early-days Tumblr and LiveJournal, or Dreamwidth if you will. Which is why I like it! I came here from LJ/DW and spent the first several years missing their privacy features until I just kinda gave up.
Unlike LJ and DW, Pillowfort has reblogs! It has likes! But it does not have the ability to add your own two cents to a reblog. You can only comment. PF comments are properly nested so you can always tell who’s replying to whom, unlike the clusterfuck that is Tumblr replies.
They consciously decided against including reblog-with-addition functionality and the PF userbase regularly has discussions on the pros and cons and why most of us ultimately think the feature is too toxic to be worth it. 💁🏻♂ If you can’t live without your beloved reblog chains, the site isn’t for you.
But if you simply want a place to share your art (including NSFW!), to share your thoughts, to have good-faith discussions with other people and to see original posts, then it is very much worth checking out.
Since it’s run by a small team of people and entirely user-funded, development is slow. There are missing features and parts of the site look clunky. But it’s been stable for many years and updates are generally met with whoops of joy rather than rage because they actually improve the site.
Here’s an invite link. It’s completely free to use and ad-free, with optional premium features that exist mostly to help fund the site.




