My main problems with #tumblr when I stopped using it were:

• You couldn't op-out of data collection by advertising parties
• The mobile app was always broken in a variety of interesting ways
• Posts, and even hashtags, were not compatible between mobile and desktop; I mean, how did they even achieve this?
• They didn't take any action against obviously bad accounts, even after they took action against accounts that didn't hurt anyone; lots of follow-spam

So it was with dread that I noticed they now force you to accept their terms and conditions upon login, rather then showing a persistent banner after login. But it looks to me you can now opt-out of the third party data collection, so that's good.

Nowadays my web experience is first going through loads of buttons of 'legitimate interest' that I switch off before I can read the first page. This wasn't that much worse.

I'm still looking for something that can replace my tumblr itch though, but I also still need to define what itch that is. I think what it offered for me included:

• Able to publish publicly where it can be found by people with similar interests, beyond followers or even members
• Able to follow blogs and reshare their posts on your own blog, when they fit your aesthetic or you have something to add
• Posting photo sets where you could arrange and order them in rows of 1 to 3 photos, i.e. control over the visual appearance of your post and its attachments
• Until a few years ago, it was the opposite of a conversational platform, you couldn't even reply. When they did add replies, you weren't bothered by them with notifications and stuff; the whole right-wing world could fall over your post and you just wouldn't know until you looked. The main interactions with other posts remained the retweets and the quote-tweets; everything you posted was presented as an OP on your own blog
• Edit. Rich text. Long form. Hashtags with spaces. Basically, no artificial limitations.
• In my experience, people were just having fun, showing their admiration for what interested them. I know other people's experience may have been different.

Maybe I can already do all this with the current fediverse tools. Maybe a theme onto Wordpress or Friendica can make it behave like this. But I keep feeling that the focus of the current fediverse platforms on privacy and conversations is opposite to a tumblr-like publishing platform.