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    1. Three Cheers for Tildes (Android version) is open for alpha testing on the Google Play Store

      ~tildes Text 199 words
      Play Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes Alternatively, opt-in to testing via web:...

      Play Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes

      Alternatively, opt-in to testing via web: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.talklittle.android.tildes

      Three Cheers for Tildes is an unofficial mobile app for Tildes, originally announced on Tildes' 5th birthday. The original announcement answers some basic questions about the app.

      It is still missing tons of features—hence "alpha"—but I felt it would be better to release something instead of waiting too long. Alpha version 0.5 is currently good enough for light use, to help check on Tildes once or twice a day. You can log in, vote, and comment.

      Notable missing features as of v0.5: Submitting topics; Markdown editor; In-app notifications; Comment labels; Sort options.

      The iOS version is underway and I am aiming to have it done by the October deadline achieved during our June fundraiser.

      Other iOS apps are already in beta testing: Backtick by @wababa and Surfboard by @earlsweatshirt.

      I'll try to keep this post updated with changelogs and known bugs.

      I don't have a public issue tracker for feature requests; feel free to leave requests in comments here. Thanks my Tildren!

      552 votes

    2. Thoughts on making Tildes groups more independent

      ~tildes.official Text 1318 words
      Hi. It's been a while since we had a ~tildes.official post, huh? There are a few things I want to discuss today about potential changes to the way that Tildes works. But first, a couple of other...

      Hi. It's been a while since we had a ~tildes.official post, huh? There are a few things I want to discuss today about potential changes to the way that Tildes works. But first, a couple of other things while I have your attention:

      Welcomes and thanks

      Welcome to all the new users! It's been great to see activity here increasing again lately, and I hope a lot of you end up enjoying the site and sticking around. It's really nice to read so many posts and emails from people who are excited about the principles behind Tildes. (And if you're someone who doesn't have an account yet and emailed to request an invite, I hope to get back to you relatively soon—there are about 2000 requests in the queue right now, and I'm trying to gradually work through them over the next week or so)

      I also want to say thanks to all the long-time users who have been welcoming and answering so many questions from the new people. As I mentioned the other day, my time to devote to Tildes recently is more limited, and it's been amazing to find that in practically every thread I open, people have already answered all of the questions (and often more comprehensively and eloquently than I would have). An extra special thank-you as well to @cfabbro and the other people who have been handling the demand for invites via Reddit, and to @mycketforvirrad, the unsung hero of the site who's constantly doing the thankless, almost-invisible job of re-tagging topics and making sure everything is organized.

      Reminders

      Also a couple of reminders and things to keep in mind:

      Whether you're an old or new user, if you haven't set up a recovery email address on your account, I highly recommend that you do. A lot of people who registered years ago are trying to come back this week and finding that they don't know their password any more, and it's much simpler if they did this. (The site itself really should encourage this more strongly—it's done in a secure and privacy-friendly way, and it's impossible for me to use it to send you any email because there's no way for me to see the actual address)

      It's already been brought up in various threads a lot, but I also want to emphasize that Tildes is not the same as Reddit, and is not trying to be a "replacement" for Reddit. There are a lot of similarities between the sites, but there are also a lot of differences. The site structures are different, many of the site mechanics here work differently, and the types and style of posts that are appropriate are not the same. Please try to look around at the site and the docs and get a feel for the place, don't assume that things will work the same way here as they do somewhere else (or that they should).

      One other aspect that's different between the two sites that's coming up a lot is that Tildes does not have user-created groups, and the groups aren't "owned" or run by specific users. Currently, the only person with "true" moderation powers anywhere on the site (like the ability to remove topics and comments) is me. This isn't because I want to keep absolute control or anything like that, but Tildes has been very quiet for the last few years and more moderators haven't been necessary. If the activity stays at this level or keeps increasing, we will probably need to add more moderators soon. And related to that, the actual main topic that I wanted to talk about:

      Should we try separating the groups more?

      Even though Tildes has almost 30 groups, until now, it's really always just been one community. New users are automatically subscribed to all groups and need to manually unsubscribe if they don't want to see the topics from that group, and logged-out users see everything when they visit the homepage as well. Most users stay subscribed to almost everything, with only some of them unsubscribing from more-niche interests like ~anime.

      I've always intended to make the groups more independent, but the site's activity has generally been too low for that to be feasible. All of the groups needed to be able to reach all of the Tildes users, but there have been significant downsides to doing it this way.

      One of the main consequences (which is becoming more obvious over the last few days) is kind of ironic: by showing all groups to all users to increase activity across all of them, it actually discourages activity in any individual one. For example, I follow video game news closely, and it's currently a very busy time with tons of events and announcements. But I wouldn't want to post all of those announcements to ~games, because it would completely flood the site and annoy everyone.

      I think we should probably take advantage of this current high activity level to try moving the groups towards being more independent spaces. This would involve switching away from the current "opt-out" approach to an "opt-in" one, and would probably need updates to a few different sections of the site to support it.

      A lot of the new users have been asking to add new groups for things they're interested in (sometimes very specific, niche things), and this would allow us to try some of them out more easily to see if they'd be able to sustain themselves. One of the benefits of the groups+tags system here is that it's relatively easy to test something as a group, and if it doesn't work out, all of the posts can just be merged back into a "more comprehensive" group as a tag.

      I've also been receiving a decent number of messages from Reddit moderators that are investigating whether they will be able to migrate their community to a different platform. I've had to tell them that the current structure of Tildes wouldn't easily support it, but making the groups more independent would change that.

      So overall, I'm looking for general feedback about whether we should try this soon, and if there are any major concerns we should be careful about. I also have three specific questions I'd like input on, related to how it could be implemented:

      1. What should logged-out users see on the homepage? Just a list of links to individual groups, and they have to pick a specific one to see any posts?
      2. Should logged-in users still have a homepage made up of all their subscribed groups mixed together (Reddit-style), or should we lean further into the separation by requiring groups to be viewed individually (forum-style)? (I think I'd want the mixed style to be available long-term, but maybe starting without it would help establish the individuality more strongly?)
      3. How should we transition existing users over to the opt-in approach? Should we effectively treat everyone as a new user, and get them to select the groups they're interested in from scratch? Or should we do something like use their activity (voting, posting) to pre-subscribe them to some groups?

      Thanks, please let me know what you think. The current growth and activity is a great opportunity for us to try some new things on Tildes that would be able to move it forward, and I hope we can figure out ways to do it well. (And if it ends up not working, we can always change things back)

      I've also given 5 invites to every current user, so feel free to use those if you know anyone that would like to join: https://tildes.net/invite

      (Edit: and to set expectations, I'm not sure how much time I'll have to reply to anything substantially, but I'll absolutely be reading all the discussions)

      533 votes

    4. Reddit CEO pledges to not force subreddits to reopen. Admin team then immediately threatens moderators who closed their subreddits with removal.

      ~tech Text 265 words
      In this article from The Verge posted today "While the company does “respect the community’s right to protest” and pledges that it won’t force communities to reopen, Reddit also suggests there’s...

      In this article from The Verge posted today "While the company does “respect the community’s right to protest” and pledges that it won’t force communities to reopen, Reddit also suggests there’s no need for that"

      Ironically mere minutes before this article went live, Reddit admins posted this to /r/modsupport.

      "Leaving a community you deeply care for and have nurtured for years is a hard choice, but it is a choice some may need to make if they are no longer interested in moderating that community. If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users. If there is no consensus, but at least one mod who wants to keep the community going, we will respect their decisions and remove those who no longer want to moderate from the mod team."

      This statement not only completely contradicts what was "pledged" by Spez, but is also a very clear threat to subreddit moderators telling them to fall in line or get replaced by someone who will.

      More articles that came out today about this subject:

      Kotaku: Reddit's CEO Is Just Making Everything Worse

      NBC: Reddit CEO slams protest leaders, saying he'll change rules that favor ‘landed gentry’

      MacRumors: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators From Subreddits Continuing Apollo-Related Blackouts

      ARS Technica: As the Reddit war rages on, community trust is the casualty

      NPR: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman: 'It's time we grow up and behave like an adult company'

      The full Verge interview Reddit CEO Steve Huffman isn’t backing down: our full interview

      397 votes

    5. Let's add (and rearrange?) some groups + a few notes about other short-term plans

      ~tildes.official Text 363 words
      Some really great feedback and ideas came out of the discussion we had about the group structure recently, and while I do want to work on implementing some things from that eventually, it won't...

      Some really great feedback and ideas came out of the discussion we had about the group structure recently, and while I do want to work on implementing some things from that eventually, it won't happen immediately. I'm also not sure if the influx of new users is going to calm down somewhat (which might make some of those changes feel less necessary), but I guess we'll see what happens in the next couple of days as the third-party Reddit clients start actually shutting down.

      Anyway, something that we can do immediately is create some new groups, and/or adjust some of the existing ones. This could encourage some more activity on certain subjects, and also make it easier for people to control what they see on Tildes through their group subscriptions. So I'm looking for input on where you feel there are currently gaps in the groups, or some new ones we could add that feel like we might have enough activity to get started.

      I also just want to quickly mention a few other things I'm trying to work on in the near future (now that I'm finally almost caught up on all the email invite requests). They're things that stagnated over the last few years but are more important to update if the site's activity is going to increase again:

      • Updating the open-source code and development environment, and ensuring people can get a local version running easily to be able to contribute fixes/changes.
      • Reviewing and organizing the issues and existing merge requests in the GitLab repo, so it's more clear what changes are wanted/needed.
      • Doing a pass through places like the Docs site and the group wikis to clean up and update some of the outdated information.

      Let's try to keep the discussion in this topic more centered around suggestions for changes to the groups though, I just wanted to let you know some of the other things I'm hoping to do in the near future.

      Thanks! And I've also given 5 invites to every current user, so feel free to use those if you know anyone else that would like to join: https://tildes.net/invite

      366 votes

    6. Tildes fundraiser June 2023: Encourage an app developer (me) to work on a Tildes app faster, by donating to Tildes (not me)!

      ~tildes Text 525 words
      Hey Tildes, with the renewed interest in the site, it got me thinking that we should hold a fundraiser for the not-for-profit company—which currently consists of just one person—that runs Tildes....

      Hey Tildes, with the renewed interest in the site, it got me thinking that we should hold a fundraiser for the not-for-profit company—which currently consists of just one person—that runs Tildes. It's overdue.

      Disclaimer: These are my words as a member of the community. I haven't run this message by the admin before posting. I may have gotten some details wrong.

      Where to donate

      History

      A bit of history: The site admin, @Deimos ran the first three years of the site working full-time on it, paid only by donations, plus a $5000 GitHub sponsor match one year, which I'm not even sure was fully achieved, or only just barely.

      For that time period 2018-2020, a lowball salary as a software engineer with his experience would have been $100,000 USD per year not including benefits.

      If he received $5000 in donations per year (almost certainly an overestimate for more recent years) plus the $5000 GitHub match for the first year—for the 5 years of Tildes' life, that's about $30,000.

      The remaining opportunity cost of $270,000 was essentially paid out of pocket by himself, as a donation to the community. Plus remember there are server expenses, legal incorporation expenses, etc. And, y'know, rent.

      In recent years he had to take a full-time job because the situation was, of course, unsustainable.

      App?

      I announced in April that a mobile app is under development. Originally, I was planning to take my time and release a first alpha by the end of 2023.

      How about if we struck a deal: get the donation numbers up and I will devote more time to the app, as opposed to splitting my time between it and contract work and other projects.

      What's the deal?

      • 150 active donors combined on GitHub Sponsors and Patreon—I'll release an alpha by November.
        GOAL REACHED
      • 300 active donors—I'll release an alpha by October.
        GOAL REACHED
      • 500 active donors—I'll release an alpha by September.

      The dollar amounts don't matter.

      As of writing, we are at 46 active donors.

      What's in it for you, though?

      Feeling like I did a good deed, I guess? I'm not looking for a "slice of the pie," to be clear. In some sense I'd be matching your donations with my time, aka opportunity cost.

      If I donate, can I bother the admin to work more on the site?

      No.

      Again, I haven't run this fundraiser by the admin. He will certainly keep his full-time employment for the foreseeable future, and will not magically have more hours in the day to devote to Tildes.

      With a sustainable budget, though, a lot can happen in the future. Contracting out work to others, for example.

      But the point of this fundraiser is more to make a small dent in the past debt we owe the admin, not making any promises whatsoever on the future of the site and how it's run.

      Let's go, my fellow Tilderinos!

      313 votes

    7. Group updates for July 2023

      ~tildes.official Text 1045 words
      As I'm sure some of you have already noticed in your sidebars, I've just added a bunch of new groups based on the discussion we had last week. That ended up being a very large discussion with a...

      As I'm sure some of you have already noticed in your sidebars, I've just added a bunch of new groups based on the discussion we had last week. That ended up being a very large discussion with a ton of suggestions, and while we can't add everything, I am adding a fairly large set of groups this time. Some of these are definitely experimental, and I expect that we'll need to make some more adjustments based on how they actually do in practice.

      Before I get into the specific updates, there are a few general things I want to mention first:

      Many of the discussions about groups turn into debates about how things should be organized in the hierarchy. I want to try to clarify that the hierarchy is not intended to be some kind of perfectly logical system, or that there should never be any crossover, etc. The groups are more of a social organization method, like "for people interested in X".

      For example, a common suggestion is to add something like an "entertainment" top level group that could contain ~games, ~music, ~tv, etc. This makes sense from a logical perspective, but not if you're basing it on interest. Someone's interest in gaming content doesn't really have any influence on them being interested in talking about music. There are similar reasons for other cases like having ~comp outside of ~tech and ~anime outside of ~tv, even though they feel like they should fit inside. The current hierarchy certainly isn't perfect for this either (for example, ~hobbies is extremely broad), but it's the general idea.

      As part of this, I also want to mention that something being a sub-group instead of top-level shouldn't be seen as being "less important" or somehow inferior. As a convenient example, ~tildes.official is one of the most important groups on the site, but it was the first sub-group (and the only one for a year). It's not significant yet while we're still subscribing everyone to all groups by default, but when we move away from doing that, it could actually be an advantage to be a sub-group, since it would give a larger audience to its content through the parent one(s).

      And finally, I want to mention that expanding the groups (and having higher activity in general) makes it more pressing to improve the capabilities for controlling subscriptions, filtering out groups and tags, and so on. This is something I want to treat as a high priority as I get back into Tildes development. I know there are also some existing problems such as topics from sub-groups being shown inside the parent group even if you're unsubscribed from them, and I'm hoping to resolve that one this weekend.

      Anyway, on with the changes and some brief comments on each. Note that I still need to do some administrative tasks like adding descriptions to the groups and moving old topics into them, and will be doing that over the next day or so.

      • Added ~comics, ~engineering, ~transport, ~travel (everyone auto-subscribed)
        The subjects of these groups are currently kind of awkward to fit into the existing groups, and I think there's potential for good content and discussion in all of these.

      • Added ~life sub-groups (auto-subscribed if you were subscribed to ~life)

        Whether to create groups for men and women took up a lot of the air in the suggestions topic (and was the source of some strife—please don't restart that in here). I think it's worth trying them, but it's definitely an experiment. I also think it's important to have them be sub-groups, because having a common parent group enables posting similar topics without feeling like posting in one of them is a binary choice. Much like ~lgbt, moderation will be somewhat stricter for posts in these groups (and yes, we need a way for the site itself to indicate that).

        ~life.pets also needs some clarification: this will not be a group full of images. There will be a weekly scheduled post for posting photos and casual chat about pets (the first one will post tomorrow), but separate topics like that will be removed. The standard content in ~life.pets should be of a similar quality level to the rest of the site, such as articles, requests for discussion/advice, and so on.

      • Added ~sports sub-groups (auto-subscribed if you were subscribed to ~sports)

        This is also fairly experimental, and I don't know if we'll keep all of these sub-groups. I'd like to see if this can help encourage more posts about specific sports. I also don't like the name ~sports.american_football much at all, but I don't know what a better option is. Should we just call it ~sports.nfl? That's not quite right either.

      • Added ~health.mental (auto-subscribed if you were subscribed to ~health)
        A lot of the topics in ~health are about mental health, and I think having a clearer separation could be useful (including having a more clearly defined space for stricter moderation, as mentioned before).

      • Added ~humanities subgroups (auto-subscribed if you were subscribed to ~humanities)

        History topics are probably the most common subject posted in ~humanities currently, and I'm curious if these subgroups will help encourage posting both more history and more non-history.

      • Removed ~games.game_design (topics merged into ~games)
        This group has always been quite inactive, and I don't think the few topics in it still need their own separate space from ~games right now.

      That's it for this time. If there were other suggestions that you were hoping to see that weren't added this time, don't take that as an indication that we won't add them someday. But this is already a lot of new groups (likely too many), and I had to stop somewhere. Let's revisit in a month or so once these new groups and the new users have had some time to settle.

      And as usual when making a ~tildes.official post, I've also topped up every current user's invites to 5: https://tildes.net/invite

      295 votes

    8. New users: Ask your questions about Tildes here!

      ~tildes Ask (advice)
      This thread is officially retired. Please see the new version to ask any new questions. We have a lot of new users joining the site. Welcome to Tildes! This thread is for you to ask any question...

      This thread is officially retired. Please see the new version to ask any new questions.

      We have a lot of new users joining the site. Welcome to Tildes!

      This thread is for you to ask any question you have about the site, from “what is the moderation philosophy?”to “what does that blue line next to some comments mean?” to “what is the general vibe like here?” Tildes has a lot of documentation, history, and embedded social norms that can be daunting or opaque at first glance, so here’s your opportunity to get help with anything you need.

      Questions about anything and everything are fair game. Follow-up questions are encouraged! No question is too simple.

      Also, a quick note: the only person who can speak in any official capacity on Tildes is our admin @Deimos. Everyone answering who is NOT him is just a helpful community member!

      EDIT: To be clear, is perfectly okay to ask any question — even if you think it’s been asked before, or even if you didn’t search for an answer beforehand. There are an overwhelming number of comments here to sift through, so don’t worry about trying to read all of them. Just ask away, and someone will answer you!

      294 votes

    9. Some general advice for all the new Tildes users

      ~tildes Text 443 words
      I've noticed a significant amount of mod actions taking place over the last few days, and quite a few locked topics, so I just wanted to offer some basic advice for all the new users to help...

      I've noticed a significant amount of mod actions taking place over the last few days, and quite a few locked topics, so I just wanted to offer some basic advice for all the new users to help prevent that from continuing, or getting worse.

      Don't bring the bad habits you learned on reddit here to Tildes, please. Consider this a chance to start fresh.

      It's okay to walk away from a disagreement here before it escalates into a heated argument. And when arguments happen, please don't resort to insulting the other person, as that just escalates things even further, and pollutes the atmosphere here. Not everyone who disagrees with you, or misinterprets your meaning or intent, is acting in bad faith. So try to assume good faith before responding. And if you can't do that, then just walk away. Take a breather. It's not the end of the world if you let someone else have the last word in a disagreement.

      Don't use the Exemplary label (which many of you have recently unlocked the ability to use) as a "super-agree" between two people having an argument. It's not meant for picking a side. That's not what it's for. And if you do use it that way your ability to use Exemplary labels may be revoked.

      And finally, try to be nice. Please. Don't be a jerk. As Eevee said in On a technicality (which I recommend everyone read, since it inspired some of the core philosophies behind Tildes):

      There are some nice people in the world. I mean nice people, the sort I couldn’t describe myself as. People who are friends with everyone, who are somehow never involved in any argument, who seem content to spend their time drawing pictures of bumblebees on flowers that make everyone happy.

      Those people are great to have around. You want to hold onto them as much as you can.

      But people only have so much tolerance for jerkiness, and really nice people often have less tolerance than the rest of us.

      The trouble with not ejecting a jerk — whether their shenanigans are deliberate or incidental — is that you allow the average jerkiness of the community to rise slightly. The higher it goes, the more likely it is that those really nice people will come around less often, or stop coming around at all. That, in turn, makes the average jerkiness rise even more, which teaches the original jerk that their behavior is acceptable and makes your community more appealing to other jerks. Meanwhile, more people at the nice end of the scale are drifting away.

      And Tildes wants to hold on to those nice people.

      293 votes

    11. Introducing Surfboard for Tildes

      ~tildes Text 449 words
      Hello, Tildes Allow me to introduce myself. I came over to Tildes fairly recently after Twitterriffic died and Apollo announced it would shut down. As a relative youngster, I tend to mostly browse...

      Hello, Tildes

      Allow me to introduce myself.

      I came over to Tildes fairly recently after Twitterriffic died and Apollo announced it would shut down.

      As a relative youngster, I tend to mostly browse on mobile.

      While I do appreciate Tildes' philosophy of having a simple website that works well on desktop and mobile, I've always preferred mobile apps. I'm a strong believer that a well-built native application will always provide a richer experience than a website.

      But enough talking.. showing is way more fun - here's a lil' something I've been messing around with:

      Introducing Surfboard for Tildes

      The goal is simple: to be the best way to interact with Tildes on mobile.

      Features

      Surfboard is still extremely early, and is missing many features.

      With that said, here is what it currently supports:

      • Login to Tildes (supports 2FA)
      • Browse topics
      • Filters & sorting
      • Browse comments
      • Advanced rendering is still in early stages..
      • Supports comment collapsing behavior from the web version
      • Reply/vote/bookmark/ignore on topics, comments, & notifications (requires login)
      • Search topics
      • Global search
      • Search within groups
      • Option for in-line images
      • Clean browsing interface
      • In-line markdown preview when composing replies
      • Share topics & comments
      • Notifications
      • View read & unread notifications
      • Reply, vote, bookmark, mark as read...
      • Customizable
      • Toggle settings, set custom gesture actions, etc.
      • Free, as in beer

      The design draws some inspiration from Apollo for Reddit, an app that I loved & am very sad will be discontinued.

      Try it yourself

      I would love to get some feedback from other Tildes users on the app. If you are interested in trying it for yourself, you can get it here via TestFlight

      Surfboard is built for iPhone, and requires iOS 16.0 or higher.

      Inside the app is a 'roadmap' of sorts which is basically a list of things I know are missing, but if there's something you want that isn't listed there, I'm all ears.

      Formatting is a little rough at the moment, although I made enormous improvements on the parsing & rendering there over the last day.

      It should support just about anything you throw at it other than a <details>

      (I'll get around to them, I swear..)

      If you run into issues viewing a post/comment, you can easily open them in an in-app safari window from the menu.

      As mentioned above, it's very early, but it's already becoming my favorite way to browse Tildes. I hope that others will enjoy it as well. Consider it my gift to the Tildes community.

      Cheers !

      Edit:

      The best way to submit feature requests & bug reports is to add it to the issue tracker and/or leave a comment on this thread and I’ll get around to adding it myself.

      Thanks !

      278 votes

    12. The Apollo app for Reddit closes this evening. End of an era.

      ~tech Text 85 words
      Mixed feelings about it all. I think Reddit suffers from the same ‘1 discussion keeps you coming back for ten years in hope of a repeat’ that most if not all social media struggles with. It also...

      Mixed feelings about it all.

      I think Reddit suffers from the same ‘1 discussion keeps you coming back for ten years in hope of a repeat’ that most if not all social media struggles with. It also has excellent dogs in hilarious situations and because of the amount of users, a constant refresh of what should be a tired genre but which just dosnt seem to die.

      I have enough respect for r/pics for the John Oliver death march, that I cant go back.

      265 votes

    13. Please help keep the signal high and the noise low

      ~tildes Text 120 words
      I've found I need to use the noise label a lot more than I used to. Given the influx of new user, this was to be expected in some way but I also found that, at least in the first couple of weeks,...

      I've found I need to use the noise label a lot more than I used to.

      Given the influx of new user, this was to be expected in some way but I also found that, at least in the first couple of weeks, new people were behaving a lot better.

      So this is a friendly reminder to try to keep the noise level low. Recurring themes I would like to see less of:

      • Shallow dismissals / dismissals based on zero evidence.
      • Pointless cynicism
      • Taking cheap shots

      I don't want to see these being normalized. If this isn't you, then great, but this post is also for you: It's an invitation to (very politely) call these things out when you see them.

      252 votes

    15. Not entirely sure how to fill the void Reddit has left

      ~talk Text 225 words
      With the Reddit blackout, and me deleting my account, I'm not entirely sure how to fill the void that Reddit has left. I'm using Tildes and Kbin as a replacement, and they're amazing for...

      With the Reddit blackout, and me deleting my account, I'm not entirely sure how to fill the void that Reddit has left. I'm using Tildes and Kbin as a replacement, and they're amazing for discussing the topics I'm interested in, but I had grown to rely on Reddit for keeping up with the news topics that interest me; gaming, tech, astrophysics, hip hop, fantasy novels, and many more. And while alternative communities exist for each of my examples, they aren't the one-stop-shop that Reddit had become for me. On top of that, my initial reaction to a lot of questions or queries would be to Google "Steam Deck vs ASUS Ally reddit.com" (for example), to get some first hand community opinions. I know that it took Reddit many years to get to such a point, and that I can't expect any new alternative to be at the same level right now. I've thought about trying to get into RSS feeds, which I've never tried, but again my gut reaction would be to look on Reddit as to what are the best sources to add. I don't have much of a point to my ramble, just wanted to vent and lament that I'm kind of lost without Reddit at the moment; it had become such a useful and ingrained tool in my life.

      243 votes

    16. The Tildes code is now open-sourced

      ~tildes.official Text 304 words
      Disclaimer: this post/information will probably only be interesting to more technical people It's long overdue, but Tildes is now open-sourced: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes There's still a ton...

      Disclaimer: this post/information will probably only be interesting to more technical people

      It's long overdue, but Tildes is now open-sourced: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes

      There's still a ton to do in terms of writing more documentation, filling out the issue tracker with known issues/plans and so on, but it should be ready enough to get started.

      I'm planning to make a post on the Tildes blog tomorrow or Thursday announcing this more formally, but I'd like to keep it a bit quiet until then, in case there are any issues or major gaps in the docs discovered when some of you start looking at it. I'd especially appreciate it if any of you would like to try setting up a local development version and let me know how it goes, and if the instructions all make sense.

      There are two new pages on the docs site as part of this as well:

      • Development Setup - describes how to do the initial setup necessary to get a local development version of the site running
      • Development - a general page with information and instructions related to a lot of aspects of site development. It's very scattered right now and I intend to split it into multiple pages eventually, but that will require some more work on the blog to support being able to organize it well. There are still some definite gaps in here, but it should describe most of the major pieces.

      I'd appreciate any feedback about the documents, code, etc. As mentioned, I'd be especially grateful if some of you want to try setting up a local development version by following my instructions, and give feedback about if any parts of the process are unclear, incomplete, or otherwise need more work. Please feel free to ask any questions you have as well.

      235 votes

    17. Reddit admins are now approaching mod teams of closed subreddits, looking for moderators who will cooperate and re-open them

      ~tech Text 247 words
      I just saw this post in the /r/ModCoord subreddit, which lists multiple instances of Reddit admins contacting moderator teams of closed subreddits with this message: Hi everyone, We are aware that...

      I just saw this post in the /r/ModCoord subreddit, which lists multiple instances of Reddit admins contacting moderator teams of closed subreddits with this message:

      Hi everyone,

      We are aware that you have chosen to close your community at this time. We are reaching out to find out if any moderators currently on the mod team would be willing to take steps to reopen the community. Subreddits exist for the benefit of the community of users who come to them for support and belonging and in the end, moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. Your users rely on your community for information, support, entertainment, and finding connection with others who have similar interests. The ability to find and make these connections is incredibly important to many people and ensuring that active communities are able to remain stable and active (and open) is very important.

      Our goal here is to work with the existing mod team to find a path forward and make sure your subreddit is usable for the community which makes its home here. If you are not able or willing to reopen and maintain the community please let us know.

      Shit is getting real. The admins are looking for scabs who are willing to cross the picket-line and do the work the strikers are refusing to do.

      It's not like this wasn't predictable. We all knew this was coming. It's still surprising to see it actually happen.

      229 votes

    19. Let's talk about Reddit alternatives, shilling, and Tildes bans

      ~talk Text 846 words
      @Deimos can tell us how many bans we've had so far on Tildes. Last count I knew was in the 50s months back, and some of those were the same person - out of 13,000 users. I'm sure it's rising right...

      @Deimos can tell us how many bans we've had so far on Tildes. Last count I knew was in the 50s months back, and some of those were the same person - out of 13,000 users. I'm sure it's rising right now, I'm also pretty sure it's still under a hundred, and I don't actually care if it's 1500. (Edit: It was four new bans, omg so nazi.)

      If you take the time to learn something about social forums, you'll discover that 1% of the users cause 90% of the problems. Tildes will ban that 1% aggressively. Act like an asshole, attack someone, and you will find the door. You do not however have to tiptoe around like there are landmines here - nobody is going to ban you unless you start attacking other users or trolling all the time. You are in fact allowed to swear here, just not at people. Take a lesson from Louis Black - rants are best when aimed at inanimate objects. :)

      Have you ever been to a nice big social party? Did you act like an asshole there? Did the bouncer throw you off the balcony? Probably not. That's because you didn't punch people in the face, piss all over the kitchen floor, or set the living room rug on fire while you were there (I hope). Try pretending that this is a real world party and adjust your behaviors accordingly. It is really not that difficult. Extend people here the same courtesy at a minimum that you would for a real world social gathering - maybe even go as far as you would for a black tie affair. The rest of us would appreciate it, I promise.

      I'm sure by now most of you know about /r/redditalternatives. It's an old subreddit that has been collecting links to anything and everything even remotely like a social site for years that came out of the 2015 blackouts. Most of their favorites are long dead, and most of the ones they love now will be dead in a few years. They've been telling us we would be dead in two months for the last five years - which tells you how much their average user knows about social software. They are not exactly well read on the topic.

      They are a useful link archive, and also a place for people to whine about the bans they've earned from other websites, or to shill for their own websites. Plenty of astrotrurfing for lemmy and squabbles going on there. Some of you folks are over there right now trying to sell them on Tildes, or worrying about the complaining about the bans.

      I'd advise you not to waste your time commenting in that place. They do not want us there shilling, and you will never convince a redditor of anything due to the mindfuckery that place has inflicted on its users for decades. Let them be. Everyone who gets banned here (or on most other sites) posts a thread about it over there, and always has - this is tradition now. Laugh at it, like I always do. It's Shawshank all over again - everyone in there is innocent, lawyer fucked them.

      Tildes was linked in the /r/videos post, which was #1 on reddit and why Deimos has an inbox taller than mount everest today. The 'secret' is out now. You do not need to go into forum warrior mode and try to defend Tildes. That's what your instincts are telling you to do, because 'tribes' are a thing, but it's not the right course of action. I guarantee you will have a better day if you just go for a ten minute walk, right now, rather than posting on reddit.

      Frankly, bettervanilla's big collection here is the only useful thing to show up in that place in years, so good on them for giving that place a purpose again.

      If you do want to help out, then use your invites. It's better if you pick, rather than just emails and invite threads. You do realize if Deimos tops everyone up to 5 codes, that's almost 100k new invites available and almost 20k people who can send them out, five at a time. This place is already past the point where it can die from the evaporative cooling effect, which did in fact have us on ice for a while there, but that's over now.

      Look for conversations not where people are looking for alternatives, but where people are talking about real forums, pining for the old days of the internet, deep discussions, and complaining about cat posts and low effort content. Those are the people who will thank you for telling them about Tildes. Let's not be the same spamming, astroturfing jerks that every other website has become.

      Edit: I take it back, this is also a remarkable post about the fediverse's moderation problems and I wish that place had more discussions of that nature. Also, Deimos says he banned 4 people in the last week, out of thousands of new users. Clearly, we're being unreasonable. :P

      228 votes

    20. The long-awaited moment... Dracula theme added! Oh also, the site is publicly visible now (but let's not be too noisy about it yet).

      ~tildes.official Text 454 words
      Alright, after repeatedly delaying it for various reasons, Tildes is now publicly visible. This means that people no longer need to get an invite to be able to browse the site. An invite is still...

      Alright, after repeatedly delaying it for various reasons, Tildes is now publicly visible. This means that people no longer need to get an invite to be able to browse the site. An invite is still required to register and participate though (and I'm intending to keep it that way for the foreseeable future).

      This should be a huge boon to the overall process—people will be able to check out the site before requesting an invite, which will save a lot of effort giving out "wasted" invites to people that just wanted to look and don't continue visiting afterwards. I want to talk more soon about making the process of getting an invite easier, but this should help a lot for now.

      Please don't try to bring a lot of attention to the public visibility just yet (you're welcome to tell friends or small groups though). I fully expect some people to notice it naturally, but I'd like to try to keep it a little quiet still over the weekend. There are still a few things that I'm working on, and I'd like to get a bit more done before we start promoting it too widely. Early next week I'll make a post on the Tildes blog announcing it, and then we can go all out with it.

      A couple of other notes about public visibility:

      • Logged-out users can select their theme - there's a dropdown box in the site footer for them to change it, but they'll have to set it individually on each device.
      • Logged-out users can only see the most recent 20 posts on user pages, they don't have access to the full pagination like logged-in users do. That was discussed a little in this thread. I don't know if it will stay this way permanently, but we can try it out for now.

      I've also topped everyone back up to 5 invite codes again. The public visibility may cause some of you to get requests from people for invites, so please let me know if you need more. You can access your invite links here: https://tildes.net/invite

      And as one other thing, I've also added the tirelessly-requested Dracula theme. This is the first time I've tried using the revamped theme system that @Bauke set up to add a completely new theme, so please let me know if you notice any oddities with it (or if you think I used the colors of it wrong or anything, I don't use Dracula personally).

      Please let me know if you have any questions, concerns, feedback, etc. about the public visibility. This is a huge step in the site's progress, and I'm definitely both excited and terrified about it.

      222 votes

    21. This feels dumb to ask, but how do you get your news?

      ~news Ask (recommendations)
      I’m embarrassed to admit that after the whole Reddit shutdown, I’m at a loss on how to get news. The past 10+ years my internet routine has been browse Something Awful for discussions, and use...

      I’m embarrassed to admit that after the whole Reddit shutdown, I’m at a loss on how to get news. The past 10+ years my internet routine has been browse Something Awful for discussions, and use Reddit as a glorified RSS. I would open up Reddit, browse World News, Politics, Technology, Games, Apple, and Electric Vehicles for any interesting articles for the day. Then go to SA for more granular discussions, which I’m now using Tildes to supplement since I love the community here.

      I have tried downloading Inoreader and adding some of their default feeds but it feels super cluttered, not like the quick concise headlines I’m used to casually browsing. I’ll admit I’m guilty of just glancing at headlines and not actually reading news, but it was nice to just have an inkling of what’s going on in the world

      So the question I ask is how (mostly on the internet) do you get your news? RSS? Dedicated news app? Read a site?

      215 votes

    25. I gave Lemmy, Kbin, and Beehaw a chance. I think I'll be sticking with Tildes.

      ~tech Text 1038 words
      This month, I have been exploring reddit alternatives due to the ongoing events currently going on the site. It resulted in me requesting to be invited to this site, but I also played around with...

      This month, I have been exploring reddit alternatives due to the ongoing events currently going on the site. It resulted in me requesting to be invited to this site, but I also played around with Lemmy, Kbin, Beehaw, and other sites within the lemmy/mastodon network. The conclusion I have come to is that these federated sites shows a lot of potential into becoming something interesting if proper care is put into it by the community and the mods and admins. But as it is now, it is fundamentally broken, ill-equipped to handle the userbase it has inherited from the reddit fallout, and potentially dangerous if steps aren't taken to protect users and their communities.

      The signature feature, greatest strength and biggest weakness of these sites all lie within the "fediverse" (which I hate the term. gives me "metaverse" vibes.) From how I understand it, There are several different instances of lemmy that acts as its own site, hosts it's own content and users, and can have its own rules, features, and restrictions. All the content of these instances can be featured on other instances, basically allowing you to see all the communities, users, and content within the fediverse without having to leave the instance you are on. The admins are also able to restict the content of other instances from being shown on their site, though how this works I don't completely understand, and I'll go into detail later.

      Anyway, I figured all this out through a lot of trial and error. When I first tried to search for and join Lemmy, I ended up joining the Canadian instance by mistake, and my feed was mostly Canadian related news and communities. I eventually figured out there were several differences I could join. I ended up joining lemmy.world and kbin because they were the most popular, but I basically had to create sepperate accounts on each.

      I started out spending most of my time on Kbin. I was mostly following gaming communities, hobby communities, a few tech communities, and the lgbtq community. one thing I noticed in the comments in some of the lgbtq posts were a lot of transphobic comments. Granted they were heavily downvoted, and there was a lot of pushback from the community members, but they were featured near or at the top of the comments, as if I were sorting by controversial on reddit.

      I also noticed there were a lot of pro-Russian articles featured in the news, with the majority of the comments pushing Z-propaganda. Apparently a lot of these came from an instant called lemmygrad, which is a pro-China, pro-Russia instance of lemmy. To the fediverse's credit this particular instance is blocked by most other instances, but it didn't stop me from seeing many of these posts featured, or users from that instance commenting in other subs.

      At this point I was starting to get a little skived out. It gave me the same vibes Voat gave me during the reddit migration of 2014. I decided to try lemmy. world instead, since it seemed a little more down to earth. Had a few of the same problems there, though I began to sort some of them out as I began to learn the site better. It was around this time when the news that Beehaw, one of the instances that hosted many of the lgbtq and other communities I followed basically unfederated lemmy.world and a few other popular instances due to harrassment from the instances. At this point I was getting fed up, but thought, maybe I'll stick it out, and just follow Beehaw and Lemmy. world separately. After joining beehaw, I posted some of my grievances on the chat community there. In the end, I ended up getting an inbox flooded with notifications, which I couldn't turn off, many of which were replies from the post ranging from supportive to accusational, to some harrassing DMs. This happened on beehaw, which was supposed to be one of the "safer" instances, but many of the replies came from off the instance, and even from instances defederated by beehaw. What's worse is I even posted one of the means spirited replies as an example, and many people accused me of making it up because they couldn't find the reply itself, which I guess you can or cannot see depending on the instance your on and WHO THE FUCK KNOWS AT THIS POINT!

      I ended up deleting all my accounts on the fed instances I had accounts on, except for beehaw, because the interface would often keep infinitely loading. The gripes mentioned above aside, I would frequently have issues with the site breaking, up and downvotes not showing the proper numbers, replies disappearing into the ether, accidentally double posting, seeing infinite amounts of the same comment posted over and over again, infinite loading, and so one, no matter what instance I was on.

      At this point I have given up on the fediverse. Maybe if all the bugs are ironed out, and the site(s) are better managed, maybe I might return to it. But as it is now there are just way to many fundamental flaws that get in the way of me getting any enjoyment out of it. And none of the communities ever felt like a replacement for the subreddits I left behind.

      That all being said, I have enjoyed my time on Tildes so far, and I think it is due to the fact that it is a smaller and better managed site than anything on the fediverse. The discussions here feel a lot more down to earth, the communities safer. And hell even the disagreements actually worth engaging in. Granted, there are a lot of niche topics missing here because subs aren't community created, but it's nice being able to view a site, and not have to self filter half the site because anything and everything is overloading my feed.

      Anyway, forgive me if this was hard to follow. I wrote this at 4am with not a lot of clear direction. Just wanted to get my thoughts on lemmy and the fediverse out there, and why I decided not to stick with it.

      203 votes

    27. Redditors of Tildes, which subreddits are you missing the most during the blackout?

      ~tech Ask (survey)
      I am really struggling without r/selfhosted. I truly believe it is, by far, the best community for self-hosters that I have come across. What I am missing most of all is, whenever I search for...

      I am really struggling without r/selfhosted. I truly believe it is, by far, the best community for self-hosters that I have come across. What I am missing most of all is, whenever I search for questions to self-hosting problems - especially for smaller projects - the answers are nearly always found within posts on that sub.

      At least with things like programming, there is stackoverflow and a bunch of other small communities.

      I'm going to end up going to Discord to find my solutions, which is the next big community. But it means having to go on there and ask the question (that has probably been asked hundreds of times before), rather than just searching the issue.

      198 votes

    29. Happy 6th Birthday, Tildes!

      ~tildes Text 38 words
      Happy birthday, Tildes! Thanks again to @Deimos for making the best little link aggregator community on the net, and keeping it running so well. And thanks to all you lovely people for all your...

      Happy birthday, Tildes! Thanks again to @Deimos for making the best little link aggregator community on the net, and keeping it running so well. And thanks to all you lovely people for all your worthwhile contributions here too. :)

      194 votes

    30. Looking for beta testers for my Tildes.net iOS app!

      ~tildes Ask
      Happy Friday everyone! I'm making a post to see if anyone wants to beta test my Tildes.net iOS app Backtick. Background I've been wanting to create a Reddit app for quite a while, and just when I...

      Happy Friday everyone! I'm making a post to see if anyone wants to beta test my Tildes.net iOS app Backtick.

      Background

      I've been wanting to create a Reddit app for quite a while, and just when I got started, the API change chaos happened. Thankfully, I remembered signing up for Tildes.net a few years ago and decided to pivot to make an app for this site instead! The app is still a work in progress, but I believe releasing early and getting as many eyes on it during development results in a better end product (and it's more fun for me 😊).

      Features

      Here are the current features of Backtick:

      • Light mode/dark mode
      • Login to Tildes.net (suports 2FA)
      • Front page feed with sorting support
      • View, vote, and comment on posts
      • Reply and vote on comments
      • Collapse comments
      • View notifications
      • Full markdown rendering
      • Text-to-speech for posts and comments

      Here is a video demo of the app in its current state (updated for v1.8.1): https://youtube.com/shorts/iukQJyJbtw8?feature=share

      I know there missing features, but as I mentioned before, I would love to get as many people in as early as possible to help shape Backtick's future.

      Testing

      If you're interested in testing the app as I continue to work on it during my free time you will need:

      • An iOS 16 device
      • TestFlight (Apple's testing app)

      You can access the beta here: https://testflight.apple.com/join/gNH18NE9. If you have any issues please DM me your Apple ID email and I will send you an invite manually.

      Thanks, everyone! Have a great weekend.
      - Ash

      Edit:
      Getting some great feedback! I'll be tracking bugs and potential features here if anyone is curious: https://chatter-brick-3d3.notion.site/Backtick-Tracker-888150b641ae4c0ab39dc0345783bc50?pvs=4

      Edit2:
      I created the Discord server to help facilitate better collaboration with those who wish to be more involved. It will be a place for discussion around potential features, bugs, and general chat. I will still be taking in feedback via TestFlight and Tildes.net, so it's perfectly fine if you don't want to join.
      Join here: https://discord.gg/aah7nkfpBY

      194 votes

    31. A "low-risk" AMA thread for everyone

      ~talk Ask
      Historically, I've found the most interesting AMA's came from seemingly "ordinary" people. (touchmyfuckingcoffee's vacuum AMA's come to mind!) I think that most everyone has one or two life...

      Historically, I've found the most interesting AMA's came from seemingly "ordinary" people. (touchmyfuckingcoffee's vacuum AMA's come to mind!) I think that most everyone has one or two life experiences, points of view, or specialized knowledge that would be fun to share or fun to learn about.

      I've toyed with the idea of hosting an AMA for awhile, but I've been afraid that maybe I wasn't "interesting" enough. Then, I realized that others might be in the same position! So instead of hosting my own AMA, I wanted to make space for a collective "Low-Risk" AMA, that I think would work especially well with Tildes' philosophy and format.

      With that preamble, I'm wondering if you would like to join me in an experiment? Let's make mini-AMA's out of top-level comments, with the Q's and A's as child comments.

      Edit: Wow! I wasn't expecting this thread to have so much staying power! Love all the conversations that are being had. FYI The early posters including myself are still answering questions, so don't be shy!

      191 votes

    34. I'm thoroughly done with my choices being only "yes" or "not now"

      ~tech Ask
      I've noticed this changing over the years from my options when interfacing with a website or app going from "yes" or "no", to "yes" or "maybe later". I've tipped over the point from being mildly...

      I've noticed this changing over the years from my options when interfacing with a website or app going from "yes" or "no", to "yes" or "maybe later". I've tipped over the point from being mildly annoyed by this trend to now being angry about it.

      Navigate to my bank's web portal to pay bills, "did you want to try and qualify for this new Visa card?"

      Launch and use an app, "leave a rating!"

      It's even a part of Windows now. When running through update prompts, setting up a Microsoft account is "yes" or "remind me in 3 days". The answer is no thank you!

      I want to be able say no! And don't ask me anymore, ever again! How often should a product be allowed to nag you into doing something you have absolutely no intention of doing? It feels like a situation where the dial on the nags could just keep getting turned up to try and force people into just submitting into whatever it is they're nagging us to do. They'll just keep prompting you over and over until you get fed up and just say yes.

      Is this mindset actively being pushed by large companies to take away our ability to say no, and stop asking? Are there rules in place for this kind of thing?

      178 votes

    43. Tildes Minecraft server launch - Java Edition SMP

      ~games Text 213 words
      Hey everyone! Since it was brought up in this thread I've created a Minecraft server. Details: Version: 1.20 (Join from Bedrock) Host: tildes.nore.gg Plugins: Basics for server administration and...

      Hey everyone! Since it was brought up in this thread I've created a Minecraft server.

      Details:

      • Version: 1.20 (Join from Bedrock)
      • Host: tildes.nore.gg
      • Plugins: Basics for server administration and rapid leaf decay

      I know there was some push back on running v1.20. I am operating under the assumption that the majority of Minecraft players here aren't opposed to the newest version.

      Currently the server is un-whitelisted.

      I used to run moderately large Minecraft servers years ago. I'd love for us to have a healthy player base so that we can have periodic events (in game lore, UHC, etc.)! I play more of a game master role - so don't be surprised if you see me just floating around in creative mode!

      Edit:

      Updates:

      • Set sleep threshold to 50% of online players in beds
      • Disabled chat verification enforcement server-side. You need to install a mod to disable it client side if you're afraid of the chat reporting system.
      • Disabled mob griefing
      • Installed a fast leaf decay plugin
      • Upped from 20 to 32 player slots (we hit 20/20 today!)
      • Created a site to get build access (You can use /nonick in game to revert this - and /realname to reveal the Minecraft account name for another player with a nickname)
      162 votes

    45. Daily Tildes discussion - our first ban

      ~tildes.official Text 297 words
      After reaching a nice milestone yesterday of over 1000 users registered, we've followed it up with a slightly less nice one—I've now banned someone for the first time. This almost certainly won't...

      After reaching a nice milestone yesterday of over 1000 users registered, we've followed it up with a slightly less nice one—I've now banned someone for the first time. This almost certainly won't happen with every ban, but I'm going to be quite transparent with this one since it was the first one, and it gives a good starting point for a discussion today.

      Trying to be transparent about this one is actually a bit funny, because the user I banned was named "Redacted" (really, I promise!). I had removed his comments from the thread, but I've un-removed them for now so that you can see exactly what I banned for: https://tildes.net/user/Redacted

      There were two reasons that I decided to ban him:

      1. Those last 3 comments, all in the ~talk thread. That thread has been a bit heated in places, but overall it's been civil and going pretty well. He came into it without being involved in the discussion at all and went straight to personal attacks.
      2. He went through and tagged almost all of Mumberthrax's comments as some combination of "troll", "flame", and "noise"—sometimes even all 3 tags on a single comment. That's just blatant misuse of the tags, with no possible reasonable excuse. (Note that I've already removed all his tags, so you won't be able to see them any more)

      So that's a pretty clear case of being an asshole, in my opinion. Let me know what you think—I'm not sure that there's any particular focus for the discussion today, so we can just talk about this specific case as well as banning/removing in general since this is the first time I've had to do anything (and I was just saying how nice it had been).

      161 votes

    47. Welcome new reddit refugees

      ~tildes Text 139 words
      Hey all, I think we're getting a lot of new people over the past and next couple days thanks to Reddit's latest ideas of how to manage a social media website. First of all, welcome! Tildes caught...

      Hey all, I think we're getting a lot of new people over the past and next couple days thanks to Reddit's latest ideas of how to manage a social media website.

      First of all, welcome! Tildes caught your eye probably partly because of its community / friendliness and we'd all like to keep it this way.

      Recommended reading:

      • All the documentation is on docs.tildes.net. Most of it is current.
      • The philosophy page especially will answer some of your immediate questions
      • Since you're here and like the site, think about donating :)

      Some personal words: Tildes is not Reddit. But, at least if you're anything like me, it can replace Reddit as your own online social/discussion outlet.

      Tildes aims to:

      • Grow slowly, not exponentially.
      • Elevate the discussion, not lower the bar
      • Offer an alternative, not be the new Reddit
      158 votes

    49. I'm a little concerned with the prevalence and popularity of topics and videos seemingly designed to upset people and "get people fired up" in social media

      ~talk Text 192 words
      I was part of the reddit exodus, and I just discovered that when I sign out of my account, I'm still able to browse RIF from my phone. But my feed was no longer curated by me, so I saw what most...

      I was part of the reddit exodus, and I just discovered that when I sign out of my account, I'm still able to browse RIF from my phone. But my feed was no longer curated by me, so I saw what most people see when they visit that site from the "sort by hot" option of browsing.

      I was a bit shocked. Almost every other top post was something ragebait-y. Something filmed to get you upset, to get your heart rate up and release something pleasurable in your brain. The comment sections followed suit, with folks bashing people in the videos(deservedly most of the time) and hundreds of upvotes following.

      I believe what I'm witnessing is the real life version of the "10 Minutes Of Hate" described in Orwell's 1984. People enjoy getting mad. We've all felt it - an increase in heart rate but something, maybe dopamine being released at the same time, and a need to share that anger with others.

      I don't like it, and I don't see it stopping. An entire generation has been raised on videos and stories designed to upset them and evoke this feeling.

      156 votes