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I, and many other like me, have a responsibility with invite codes
I’ve been here three days. I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of what makes this place tick, and have only had a glimpse of the culture encouraged here - and I love what I’ve seen thus far.
Thanks to @deimos I now have five invites to share. Sure, they’ll be tracked if I’m being irresponsible by sharing them with nutcase randos, or if I put them up for sale on eBay (obviously I won’t!).
But I love this place so much already that I’m going to be super selective in my distribution.
I love that responsibility! As a newbie I get to be adulting, and it’s SO welcoming!
I posted a few of my invite codes in another private forum I am active in. Perhaps if you have people in your social circle who talk about the reddit situation going on, you could talk about ~ with them.
Yeah, I have a couple other tightly knit online communities I’m in. Ones where I feel more or less comfortable vouching for any random active user.
I’ve given a handful out to folks active in discussions about Reddit’s looking implosion.
They’re folks whose voice and opinions I trust, and I know they’ll be good tenants over here.
What other communities? I'm a new reddit refugee and feel like trying other things out.
I’ve mostly been here, Lemmy, and Lobste.rs.
But I invited people here from my local tech group’s Discord and a global Slack group for $careerField.
I got my invite in one of the bajillion reddit-hate threads when someone mentioned tildes was invite-only. I took a shot and asked if they'd invite and they obliged. I kinda wanna pay it forward but I've not touched reddit since the day before the blackout and never got tight with anyone since I nuked my previous account a few years back.
I don't think there's really any hurry, and certainly no need to evangelize.
I’ve been handing out invites left and right on Reddit. At first I was very careful about who I was sending to, but after read invite-extraordinaire @cfabbro’s post on the matter I realized that my criteria were arbitrary and probably being somewhat unfairly applied.
I say spread ‘em far and wide. Prioritize people you know (either irl or from other smaller online communities), but don’t be scared to take a shot with someone requesting one on Reddit or elsewhere. The vast majority of us here were invited that way!
Your post made me realize I should check my account and well... I got a few invites. But who do you actually give them to? Am I supposed to ask people I meet that make a sane impression on me "Hey, do you want a Tildes invite?"
I've invited two people thus far. One is a person I know irl who I feel has been psychologically harmed by the state of Reddit over the past few years. It was my hope that he could integrate here and experience a new, generally more beneficial sort of online interaction. It has not worked thus far. He is badly addicted to the doomscroll.
The other was a complete stranger who disagreed with me on Reddit in the lead up to the blackout. They argued that people shouldn't delete their data from the site because there a lot of useful information there that could help people. My argument was that while there's certainly good data there, removing it from the hands of that company was better for everyone in the long term. They argued their point so passionately and so empathetically, and most importantly, their argument might as well have been a subsection in the Tildes Philosophy doc. It was obvious that they would fit the general vibe. I got a message a short time later thanking me for the invite, because it was exactly what they were looking for and didn't know it.
I've said this elsewhere, but I think it bears repeating: part of what went wrong with Reddit was that we redditors always accepted that the site was someone else's problem. We never took ownership for the site. We never tended our garden.
I look at Tildes as an opportunity to change the way I engage with social media and the Internet generally, for which I'm grateful. Sure, it takes some hope and trust that people will approach it with the gravity and care that communities always deserve, but nothing good ever happens without hope and trust.
Either I read this exact discussion or it was going on in multiple places :).
Tildes very much reminds me of the very early reddit days, which evokes complex feelings in me. Perhaps the thought of adding people to this (and being "responsible" for them) scares me a bit, too. After reading the many comments of other people here I resolved to figure out if I know anyone IRL that would be interested in being here. I guess this site is on many more peoples radar than it used to be before, so it's not completely out of left field to ask.
Some Redditors did take ownership of the site and its content. They formed entire subreddits dedicated to finding and highlighting outrage bait and brigading other posts. They created groups dedicated to harassing other members or dunking on posts from groups they don’t like. They even started figuring out how to game the sorting algorithm to privilege their ideas and memes and perspectives and shuffle out others (especially bad in the 2016 election).
It’s the HOA problem. When normal people don’t bother, the functions get filled up with power-tripping psychopaths and drama addicts.
I don't think it's just a matter of intrinsic complacency or laziness, though. We've been conditioned to accept that everything is not in our control because levers of control have been taken out of our hands to ensure profitability in so many aspects of our lives.
In another topic, the topic comment (I hesitate to use the term "OP" here, for some reason) said something to the effect of, "no one reasonable is saying Reddit doesn't have the right to move to make profit..."
Well, I like to think I am a reasonable person most of the time, and I have my doubts about that claim.
There are some things in our society in which it isn't acceptable to seek profit at the expense of utility. Healthcare, transportation, policing, fire response, social services, and a great many other things are so essential to the well-being of our society that I believe the profit motive not only has no place, but it's actually harmful and irresponsible to abide. The law recognizes this principle in a lot of ways as well. Copyright expires because of it, and there are laws regarding public utilities and common carriers. Yet somehow the only instance where this principle is vigorously enforced seems to be in labor disputes regarding essential workers.
It may seem ludicrous to include Reddit in that list, but I think the fact that so many people have experienced disruptions due to search results pointing to privatized subs suggests that it's not far off of being that sort of essential service. It's a paradox akin to the Trademark Dilemma: Kleenex as a brand wants their product to be a household name because it's good for sales, but they don't want it so ubiquitous and common that they lose the trademark to the common culture.
Ultimately, I don't think Reddit clears the bar to the status of public utility, but it's certainly flirting with it. The fact that this has been so much more disruptive than even we who started and promoted the user/mod rebellion expected should make us consider the principle, and suggests that there might be an unrecognized need for such a public forum. It should also make us question the axiom that monetary profit should be the prime motivator in all things, and that entities that began as profit-making enterprises should always remain so forever.
Don't mean to butt in to this conversation, just wanted to say that I'd never thought about things through this lens before, so thanks for putting this out there. Gives me a lot to think about. Btw, I just wanted to say thank you for that invite. I am one of those two folks you mentioned above, and yes I am really enjoying this site. It's a breath of fresh air. (Happened stumble upon your comment in here and recognized the username.)
I'd wait until they ask. No hurry.
Well, apparently my account is five years old now (which clearly is a mistake in the database, it's actually impossible it has been this long...), and so far I've been asked exactly zero times :).
But then, this is a time of great change, as evidenced by my being active here after having completely forgotten about it before.
Shhh.
Keep your nines. Don’t trade them for eights.
I've got 10 invites and have no idea how to use them.
Mine have been offered to members of a tight knit discord community I've been active in for years and select friends. This way I know I can trust anyone that uses an invite.
Feels important to be considerate who invited go out to here
Don't fret too much about that. Nobody is ever even going to look at who you've invited unless somehow it becomes a big problem, and that's not likely. Accounts here don't get nuked just because you sent out a couple of invites to people who get banned. The tracking there is more for what happens when you send one invite to the wrong person, and they start inviting in the entirety of stormfront or everyone who works for spam, inc. for kicks. Then we can prune the whole branch, starting with that person you sent the invite to, not with you. The tracking isn't punitive, it's remedial.
Ive only gave out 1 so far, to the admin of another forum I visit, someone else on the forum asked me for one, but then he never responded back when I PMd him, but I'm glad, because he didnt have any post history, so I dont know if he was cool or not
4 more to give out, I made a post if anyone likes tildes, but it didnt get any responses, was going to hand out tildes invites if someone said yes