Tildes does have bills to pay. The donations are open, but I'd like to go beyond the basic donations for a moment.

Right now, tildes has server costs, and also the lead developer (Deimos) is donating his full time to the project rather than working for someone else. He can't do that forever, so if we want him full time, we need to get him paid by the non-profit. In the future, that cost is probably going to expand to larger server costs, multiple developers, possibly community managers and other staff - though nothing ridiculous like reddit with 300 people doing marketing.

When we talked about funding, we wondered if we could get all users to toss in one dollar a month, and if there were enough users (millions) even reduce that to one dollar a year. Now that we have a lot of new people here, I'd like to ask what everyone thinks of those funding ideas, and if they have any other good ideas on how to raise money to pay for whatever tildes' costs are.

Hi there!

First things first, I just want to say thank you for the invite, but more importantly, thank you for taking the time to create this platform. I, as I imagine most people on here, have a love-hate relationship with reddit. Clearly the site has had a tremendous impact, in many ways positive, but with many things structurally and fundamentally holding it back. I've been a subscriber to /r/RedditAlternatives/ for a while, and there have been very few sites that have compelled me to learn more and actively take part in them, and yours is of course one of them. I just got done reading all of the articles on your docs page and was very pleased - "finally", I thought, someone who's taken into account all of the articles on the internet that have been written about designing and building communities, from both a social and technical perspective, and put it into practice. You've addressed many issues that are often ignored by the platforms themselves and done it in a brilliant way so as to ensure that our voices are heard first and foremost, and I think that's just awesome.

Okay, now that all the praise is out of the way... :P

I did notice something that was not addressed in the docs pages, so I'll be blunt and simply ask: how do you plan to address the filter bubble, or rather, do you plan to address it at all? Maximizing user freedom regarding which communities you want to see content from seems obvious, but that inevitably ends up with users being stuck in their own bubble. reddit already has an infamous reputation of being an echo chamber, and gives users tools to make it an even bigger echo chamber. A long time ago, there was a commonly held belief that the internet would bring us closer together because it would force us to expand our worldviews and interact with people as people, not knowing where they're from or who they are (the "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" saying about anonymity). As reddit moves more and more toward becoming a social network like Facebook and less like the pseudonymous and anonymous internet discussion forums of old, this problem has only gotten worse, to the point of having real-world political and social consequences (especially with the increasing deluge of so-called "fake news"). I'd really like to hear your take on it.

I do have other concerns, namely: scalability, and the stance on free speech. The donation model has worked well for Wikipedia, but, well, they're Wikipedia. They're an incredibly important resource and people have clearly valued their resource so as to have sustained their model, mass donation drives with Jimbo Wales' face plastered all over the site notwithstanding. If tildes becomes the Wikipedia of internet discussion platforms, I am sure many people will find it valuable enough to donate to, though I am still not sold on how sustainable it really is.

The stance on free speech in the announcement blog post also has me concerned. As you mentioned, it is a difficult topic; that much is clear. I am mostly just curious as to where the lines are drawn in regards to how "threats, harassment, and hate speech" are defined. With an absolutist position like "we are 100% pro-free speech", things are very clear and simple, whereas any other position, I believe, comes down to the whim of the moderators/admins. Certainly most people will generally follow the golden rule and abide by basic common sense and decency (i.e. "don't be a dick"), but when discussions get heated I think it's important to not have a reasonable fear that you're going to get permabanned because you hurt someone's feelings (just as an example).

All these issues aside, I am very excited about the development of tildes and hope you & the community can come up with excellent technical and social solutions to these difficult problems.

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

(p.s. apologies for not posting this in the daily discussion topic, thought it warranted its own topic)

edit: formatting

Hello tildes, sorry if this is the wrong ~tilde to ask about it.

I have been a mod of /r/brasil for almost a year now, and recently became a mod of /r/europe. One of the things that I really kept me on Reddit were the AMAs (I loved the Obama and Bill Gates AMA) and cultural exchanges. You see, since 2015, /r/brasil organized this event between different national subreddits like /r/de, /r/AskAnAmerican, /r/singapore, /r/portugal, /r/CasualUK, etc. You can see the full list here. Also, we're currently running one cultural exchange with some Canadian subreddits (link). I really like how the Internet can still help us learn different perspectives, new music, food, and some funny banter between countries.

When I see people lamenting the current state of the Internet, I try to point them out to this kind of thing, because I genuinely see good things. I see opportunity to learn, to understand, to gracefully disagree or agree with someone.

When I first found out about tildes I thought, "how can we do this kind of awesome event between different cultures and nations?", and I guess there's no way to do this unless it's relevant for the context of a post. In a way what I want to say is, "there's more to internet discussions than the US and their issues".

Anyway, I guess this way kind of a ramble, kind of a question to y'all.

Make it possible to donate in exchange for placing a monocle, sticker or gold star cough on a comment. It's karma and it's an instant way to donate to keep the site afloat.

Also donating could give the donater a special sticker on their username like "supporter" or something.

Currently you can only do one or the other, but I feel that this results in low efforts posts where a user simply post a link and walks away. If we can post text along with a link to, say, a news article, the OP could then start some sort of discussion around that article without having to go into the comments and post whatever they were going to say.

Hey I'm just typing along and then BAM: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~lotsa

tildes, maybe even just one long string of ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Then something with extra tildes: ~tildes~~

Okay, how about a ~tildes.~.~.~.~

hey there

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~doggos~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~dogs


LOTS OF ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Also 
~https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL
~[url](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL)
~tildes.net/~tildes

Other people can tag my posts as jokes, but I can't. Is there a good reason for this to be the case? Obviously I'm not going to tag my posts as Noise, Troll, or Flame, but Joke and Offtopic aren't necessarily negative.