I'm still having to get used to the idea that I won't get 'attacked' for expressing my views. For quite some time I suffered greatly from anxiety(still do to an extend, but not nearly as much as...
Exemplary
I'm still having to get used to the idea that I won't get 'attacked' for expressing my views. For quite some time I suffered greatly from anxiety(still do to an extend, but not nearly as much as in the past due to therapy) and I'm now beginning to wonder just how much anxiety on Reddit, and social media in general, was purely due to it being an anxiety-inducing medium.
Also, I'd add another one to your list I'm still getting used to myself:
Constantly wanting more content even if I've already had a satisfying amount.
The most fascinating part about it all? Society seems to be recognizing the current status on social media is really, really not good for us. Yet it's so convenient most of us don't leave until shit hit the fan badly enough. For me, that was the recent API drama on Reddit.
I can't help but wonder what needs to happen first for society to take an active step against the current status quo regarding social media.
I've felt this too, it feels a lot less "tense" to comment on this platform than it does on reddit or lemmy. Whether that's because of the invite system, the lack of image-sharing, or just the...
I've felt this too, it feels a lot less "tense" to comment on this platform than it does on reddit or lemmy. Whether that's because of the invite system, the lack of image-sharing, or just the relatively small userbase I don't know, but it is nice.
It's very likely just the user base size. With millions of viewers on Reddit, even the tiniest percentage of annoyed people is still probably hundreds. So the chances that your comment is going to...
It's very likely just the user base size. With millions of viewers on Reddit, even the tiniest percentage of annoyed people is still probably hundreds. So the chances that your comment is going to get a reply are fairly high. Combine that with how often people skim rather than fully read and you've got a recipe for out of context aggressive replies.
It still is relatively tranquil in the smaller subs. That is until the resident troll logs in (every community has em) or a post hits front page. Still, those occasions are the exception rather than the rule on small subs. More likely to see is in-fighting from the regulars and that's really no different than here.
It could be size, but I think it's partly culture and choice of groups here. e.g. we don't have a specific ~politics group which tends to attract more heated discussions compared to simply ~news....
It could be size, but I think it's partly culture and choice of groups here. e.g. we don't have a specific ~politics group which tends to attract more heated discussions compared to simply ~news. We also lack certain kinds of groups that top reddit's front page like
domain specific groups (at least, not yet). I wouldn't mind more granularity as the site grows, but as of now the high level groups does help mitigate how certain hyper-invested individuals can start to form echo chambers over various niches. It's a lot easier to do this on something like r/gameofthrones than it is on r/television.
While there are advice topics and tags, there aren't any specific advice groups here. I probably don't need to elaborate on how heated subs like r/relationship_advice can be, as well as subs asking about medical/financial advice. I don't know if we would want a specific group like that here one day, but honestly I see more cons than pros there.
And of course, moderation. Deimos doesn't exacltly let those who want to be disruptive and malicious around for too long. That ability definitely is a product of the site size, though.
I never used Reddit much but I am noticing something like this on YouTube lately - I search for "Python system dynamics modeling" and the results are interspersed with with videos like "[someone]...
I never used Reddit much but I am noticing something like this on YouTube lately - I search for "Python system dynamics modeling" and the results are interspersed with with videos like "[someone] DESTROYS a woke feminist" or "[someone else] HUMILIATES Greta Thunberg". I hate this kind of content with passion and never click on it and yet, I see it every day.
That kind of content generates engagement, be it for agreement or discordance. The fact you have strong feelings towards it indicates that it does provoke the audience; you just don't engage. A...
That kind of content generates engagement, be it for agreement or discordance. The fact you have strong feelings towards it indicates that it does provoke the audience; you just don't engage.
A lot of countries that had extreme right-wing tactics used during elections had massive dissemination of this kind of content. Provoking the animal inside humans works.
That's why I like the stuff like Ying-Yang and Internal Wolves. It shows that we swing both ways, but our control is what matters most.
In YouTube, you can click on the ellipses button (three vertical dots) and select "Not Interested" or "Do Not Recommend Channel. " Hopefully that tells their algorithm to lighten up on the...
In YouTube, you can click on the ellipses button (three vertical dots) and select "Not Interested" or "Do Not Recommend Channel. " Hopefully that tells their algorithm to lighten up on the aggressive video recommendations for you.
Unfortunately, I am convinced those do nothing. I have tried many times. There is one channel I especially hate - supposedly dedicated to cycling, but it is in fact cycling-themed rage-bait - made...
select "Not Interested" or "Do Not Recommend Channel.
Unfortunately, I am convinced those do nothing. I have tried many times. There is one channel I especially hate - supposedly dedicated to cycling, but it is in fact cycling-themed rage-bait - made up doping allegations in titles of most of the videos, throwing up emoticons, thumbnails with creepily distorted faces and syringes... I've clicked "do not recommend" many times, I have never watched any of those videos, now I simply close YouTube every time it pops up... yet, they still have not figured out that I do not want to see that.
This is basically what I was going to respond to this question. Tildes is not based on magical code. It’s based on magical people. By which I mean it’s users of course. @Deimos has spent enough...
This is basically what I was going to respond to this question. Tildes is not based on magical code. It’s based on magical people. By which I mean it’s users of course.
@Deimos has spent enough time on Reddit to understand how to culture a healthy community and has done precisely that with this site.
I wonder if the answer to some of the issues with sites like reddit is to have hard caps on the size of the user base, or at least the user base that any one user can interact with. I don't know...
And of course, moderation. Deimos doesn't exactly let those who want to be disruptive and malicious around for too long. That ability definitely is a product of the site size, though.
I wonder if the answer to some of the issues with sites like reddit is to have hard caps on the size of the user base, or at least the user base that any one user can interact with. I don't know what the right number is, a hundred thousand, a million, I'm not sure. I think there may be an ideal useful size for general discussion sites like tildes.
User base size, in terms of user experience, is a mixed bag. On the plus side, more users means more potential commenters and posters, more unique perspectives, etc. Larger user bases also allow for more niche communities. However, size has downsides as well. If any comment could potentially be seen by millions of a site's regular users, that potential starts attracting bad-faith actors. All sites of any size are targets of automated spam bots. But sites have to get sufficiently large before actual humans start using a site for nefarious purposes. You get white nationalists running elaborate influence operations trying to slowly and subtly introduce their ideas to the mainstream. You get companies creating fake post and comments about fictional events that never happened, all as a means of cheap advertisement. You get influencers using a site's larger user base as a tool to increase their own fame and wealth.
You don't get many con artists operating on small sites (beyond automated spam.) For example, consider someone writing up an elaborate fake sob story, posting it to social media, hoping to trick people into sending them money. In this day and age, people are on the alert for grifts. It's hard to write a fake but convincing sob story that will convince people to part with their hard-earned money. It takes a lot of time to get everything right, and to make sure you have your story down good enough that you can convincingly respond to those questioning the veracity of your plight. If a site only has a few thousand users, it's never going to be worth your time to run this scam. Few people ever willingly give money to people panhandling on the side of the road, let alone anonymous users doing so on social media. Instead, it's a numbers game. Spam bots can operate on sites of any size. But for the real dangerous stuff, scams run and scam comments written by actual human beings, you need a large user base for them to be viable.
And ultimately, even beyond bad faith actors, larger sizes inevitably start affecting the types of comments that rise to the top. As sites grow, users have to be ever more edgy and manipulative in order to have their comments rise even be visible. People ultimately come, or are at least supposed to come, to sites like tildes and reddit for conversation. They want to read what other humans wrote, occasionally create their own responses, and occasionally get replies. This is the point of a discussion site. But as a site's user base increases, if you want to keep having any kind of conversation, you need to work harder and harder to have it rise to visibility. Large sites effectively force you to use more cheap emotional appeals, rage-bait, etc. if you want to have any hope of participating in the conversation.
So there may very well be a sweet spot for discussion sites. A level where you have enough users to have a pretty diverse user base across a wide variety of interests, but not large enough that the place becomes dominated by bad-faith actors and toxic comment culture. Again, I'm not sure what that number is, but I would guess somewhere in the order of 100,000-1,000,000 active users.
So what happens when a site reaches a million users but more people still want to join? Perhaps discussion sites should take a queue from the techniques employed by MMO games. These games often will be organized around "servers" or similar, just multiple instances of the same game. For example, maybe when tildes gets big enough, there could be independent instances of tildes. Each are completely independent with their own groups, sub groups, tags, etc. And each user name is tied to a single instance of tildes. The million or so users in your tildes instance are your "discussion group." Anyone, logged in or not, can still see all comments and replies, but only people in your tildes instance will ever be able to respond to you, vote on your comments, etc. If you make a really profound comment, people can still share your comment to other tildes instances or other social media sites, but the only ones actually upvoting and replying will be those on your tildes instance. Each account is locked to a particular instance. Hell, you might even allow different people to sign up for the same username on different instances. On a different instance, I could sign up for the username raze2012, or you could register isleepinahammock. People in your own discussion community will be able to follow you and know you are posting something, but it makes it harder to build a name and fame off of your username and comment history. If your username is ownthelibs420, it's hard to attract followers and influence if there are many instances of the site you are on, and you can only ever comment on one. On a different instance, someone can register their own version of ownthelibs420. Also, you can't really try to draw in followers from elsewhere, as they'll be randomly assigned to a tildes instance when they register. Thus, it's a roll of the dice whether they'll ever be able to interact with you at all.
This would also make the site less about individual users. If ten friends all sign up for tildes, they'll just be randomly assigned to different instances. There's no guarantee they'll ever be able to respond to each other. This also makes brigading and influence operations more difficult. It's hard for a small group to coordinate to upvote each others' posts if you get randomly assigned to an instance of tildes.
I wonder if this is the best path forward for sites like tildes. Simply accept that there is a sweet spot in terms of the size of an online discussion site. Again, I don't know what that exact number is, but I would guess somewhere in the range of 100k-1M regular active users, the population of a medium-large sized city. This is big enough that all but the most niche of topics will have a viable community. At 100k users, a topic that only appeals to 0.1% of the user base will still have 100 people willing to participate in the discussion. It's large enough to have some pretty niche communities, but no so large that the worst aspects of sites like reddit start to bleed through.
What you're talking about is essentially the Fediverse. While it is true that federation allows for seeing content from and interacting with other servers, it's nowhere near as seamless not...
What you're talking about is essentially the Fediverse. While it is true that federation allows for seeing content from and interacting with other servers, it's nowhere near as seamless not ubiquitous as Fediverse advocates claim. As a user, you really are limited to your server primarily with the occasional trip out to other servers. It is unlikely to get more cohesive as time goes on. If anything, the Fediverse will be more subdivided and siloed as time goes on due to the server costs limiting the size of any particular instance combined with warring factions blocking each other.
This hasn't been my experience at all. Now, I'm not a huge Fediverse user (I'm not really a huge anything user... ), but I've been using Mastodon and Lemmy for a little while now. My accounts are...
As a user, you really are limited to your server primarily with the occasional trip out to other servers
This hasn't been my experience at all. Now, I'm not a huge Fediverse user (I'm not really a huge anything user... ), but I've been using Mastodon and Lemmy for a little while now. My accounts are on a less-popular server, so nearly all of the content I follow/interact with is elsewhere. I mod a couple low-traffic Lemmy communities that exist on a different server than my home server.
Maybe my expectations are on the low side because I'm hardly a "power user", but I really haven't found my experience very limited at all. I don't want to sound like a shill here -- I don't really mean to advocate for one thing or another; I just wanted to chime in with a different view.
It's not quite seamless, but the vast majority of communities I follow on Lemmy are not local to my chosen instance, nor are the people I follow on Mastodon. Mastodon has some issues with search...
It's not quite seamless, but the vast majority of communities I follow on Lemmy are not local to my chosen instance, nor are the people I follow on Mastodon. Mastodon has some issues with search functionality, and Lemmy still feels very beta, but I don't feel limited to my chosen servers. Could you expand what you mean by that?
I haven't found reply notifications and similar to work very well cross instance. Additionally, you have the moderation problem where you can't really see the actual community, just a slice of it....
I haven't found reply notifications and similar to work very well cross instance. Additionally, you have the moderation problem where you can't really see the actual community, just a slice of it. So it's difficult to gather the vibe of remote communities.
That's not a problem at all! Until your instance or one of the others defederates and you're now forcibly separated from the communities you had joined.
That's not a problem at all! Until your instance or one of the others defederates and you're now forcibly separated from the communities you had joined.
Every architecture has its own pros and cons, and I prefer the federated model to traditional centralized ones, but understand why someone might disagree. I do not think that was what merry-cherry...
Every architecture has its own pros and cons, and I prefer the federated model to traditional centralized ones, but understand why someone might disagree. I do not think that was what merry-cherry was referring to, however.
well, it's not quite a fediverse either. Fediverse instances can talk to each other, and the goal here is to purposefully separate large communities for potential payoffs in privacy and civility....
well, it's not quite a fediverse either. Fediverse instances can talk to each other, and the goal here is to purposefully separate large communities for potential payoffs in privacy and civility.
It could be replicated in a fediverse instance, but I haven't seen anything like this as of yet. Especially since the Fediverse isn't large enough to try this yet.
The rage posts and sympathy bait stories are something I really don't miss - especially as so many of them are made up, and don't even stand up to minor scrutiny. There's a post/update going...
The rage posts and sympathy bait stories are something I really don't miss - especially as so many of them are made up, and don't even stand up to minor scrutiny. There's a post/update going around the main page at the moment that's cartoonishly fake, but people lap it up because they want to feel righteous, to feel like their hate against a fictional person means something.
As soon as a sub's population increases, the quality goes down. It's part of the reason I'm really happy about how Tildes grows.
This will be noise considering the top post, please tag accordingly. I would still like to address your point of view. I know a lot of people assume that such relationship stories on reddit are...
This will be noise considering the top post, please tag accordingly. I would still like to address your point of view.
I know a lot of people assume that such relationship stories on reddit are fake.
My own personal life experiences are worse than most of those stories. The instinct to dismiss such happenings as too horrible to be true - someone else would surely have done their job and fixed it if it was... Is exactly how my life experiences ended up as bad as they did.
Because the really illogical, malicious people in this world will cut off their own nose just to spite their face. In real life terms that means they will say and do things to others just to see them hurt, even if they also suffer some kind of social, interpersonal, or tangible loss themselves (money, items, social standing, whatever).
That kind of behaviour is so illogical to most people that it is very hard to believe there isn't at the very least some bad behaviour coming from the impacted party/victim as well.
They also tend to avoid doing their job if they are responsible for acting. Police,
healthcare workers, teachers, HR dept, etc. Even though the course of action should be obvious. Something about the situation is so off that it triggers an instinct to just back away.
This in turn make the victims full of doubt as to how much they're exaggerating or being overly sensitive since other people aren't doing anything to correct the situation. Despite the boss, partner, coworker, neighbour, whomever it may be is acting blatantly antagonistic.
10-15 years ago I would likely assume such stories are mostly fake.
These days I don't think they are. Some, sure, but not most. The very nature of the harmful person that puts harm over everything. Even over more logical, more typical self serving interests means the victims will often seek out random outside perspectives due to sheer desperation.
This is one of my passions in life. Unasked for, but still. The very nature of such situations means it self perpetuates. Very few can imagine it to actually be what it seems like. It's too illogical, too improbable. So they don't do anything. The situation then continues.
I am very grateful for the people that find the energy to respond to such stories with sensibility.
People like that in online forums helped me realise what was what, and ultimately helped me seek outside professional help. I
It helped me finding words and phrases to use when approaching the relevant professionals or departments. Descriptions that cut through the chaos, and adressed the very core issues in a way that didn't have me delve too much into the illogical, exhausting, detailed mess that made people disgusted with the whole thing to the point of not helping when they should.
It took years, but I got away from situations both in my personal and professional life that would absolutely be flagged as too unrealistic if written down like in those subreddits.
Engaging in stories like that isn't something most emotionally healthy people want to do, and probably shouldn't either.
But that's not the same as them being mostly fake.
Unfortunately.
All I would ask is for people to not dismiss such situations as unrealistic.
I have found it immensely healing that most people don't even realise such things are going on!
Once someone manages to remove themselves from such situations, being able to start interacting with healthier people that don't even know such things are happening is a way to attain much needed, healthy relationships. Platonic, professional, and romantic.
Instead of dismissing it as unrealistic, maybe just shrug and say it shouldn't be like that before moving on? A small difference to most people, but a strong signal to those in situations like that.
Your post isn't noise, and I appreciate you taking the time to respond. I admit, assuming that people are lying on the internet is a cynical and selfish reaction. I've come across many people in...
Your post isn't noise, and I appreciate you taking the time to respond.
I admit, assuming that people are lying on the internet is a cynical and selfish reaction. I've come across many people in my years that have ended up lying about pretty major things, things that I trusted them about. I struggle to get emotionally invested in people because I've been burnt so many times in the past.
And that's what these posters want - whether being truthful or lying, they want you to be emotionally invested in their story. I just don't have the mental energy to do it nowadays. I'm too tired, depressed, and burnt out.
I agree with you that forums can help people, if they're set up to do so properly. I honestly wish I'd had that kind of place to go when I was going through my worst times. It can be good to ask questions, get advice and support, and signposting to further information or professional help.
My issue is that a lot of the stories on reddit don't want that. Getting into specifics, this post was in TrueOffMyChest - so they aren't seeking help or opinions, or they'd have posted in a legal advice, relationship advice, or AITH sub. They're just there to have a vent. Everyone needs a vent from time to time, but with stuff like this, you're just spreading negative energy and upset to thousands, if not millions of people.
The people responding and upvoting those responses are also unhealthy - they're not helping, they're not offering any advice that isn't blindingly obvious in a situation like this. It's all "Oh, if it was me I'd have done XYZ", or insults towards the antagonist, which then just devolves into people patting each other on the back and agreeing how terrible this person must be, and sympathy for the poster. There's nobody helping, just people getting a good old torch-and-pitchfork mob together to feel good about themselves. They're not doing anything. They're just blasting emotion into the void.
And that's why fake posts get me really upset, because they're emotionally manipulating people so the poster can get some attention. A ton of red flags went off with the one I specifically mentioned, and I still believe it to be fake - including the very quick update to garner yet more points and sympathy. People just seem unable - or unwilling - to think critically and notice details that don't add up. It has all the hallmarks of a new fiction writer.
I should clarify, I try not to engage with posts like that. I don't seek them out, or reply to them. But with reddit's nosedive in quality, more and more show up on the main feed, and I do end up clicking on some of them out of habit.
I just think that if people want help, reddit isn't the place to go. Reddit is where people go for attention and validation, and liars are taking advantage of that.
I agree that interacting in any way with such posts isn't something to do unless you're overflowing with surpluss mental energy to spare. Avoiding such drama alltogether is best, and also the...
I agree that interacting in any way with such posts isn't something to do unless you're overflowing with surpluss mental energy to spare. Avoiding such drama alltogether is best, and also the typical thing to do for most people.
Drama like that creates it's own "forcefield" that pushes "normal" people away. I have been on both sides of it. While it sucks that there aren't more "normal" people to align with when you are in the thick of it, it really isn't a state of being that many people willingly stay around for.
I will disagree that Reddit isn't the place to go for that very reason. Being too open about these issues causes normal people that would otherwise interact with you to avoid you. Throwing the frustration and confusion into the void is better. Because you don't taint yourself in the eyes of others around you.
I was never the instigator or power-holder in the situations I experienced, but for normal, emotionally healthy people that doesn't matter. That kind of stuff is unpleasant to the core. I am not trying to victim shame, it is just a fact of life that as a victim of interpersonal abuse of some kind, it's hard to find help due to the very reason you needing help will make others stay away. Extremely frustrating and also re-traumatising at times.
Even with all my experience of not being helped when things might have been solved sooner if others stepped in, I still understand why people don't. I will always reccommend that you stay away unless you feel particularly overflowing with love for life. For lack of a better way to describe it.
Even staying away from beinbg exposed to it through random reddit posts. It is soul sucking even then.
As far as frequent updates... Yeah, that is also a particular trait of some abusers. They really do have a way to escalate situations very quickly.
It sucks to be on the victim side of it, as it really destroys your ability to take a deep breath and take things one issue at a time. You don't get that choice. It's like predators seeing their prey weaken, they go ALL IN then. And it makes other people utterly confused and exhausted. As a victim you often don't have the privelege of calming down the escalation.
As much as I would like for the outside world to always step in and prevent such situations from happening, the healthy thing to do is avoid the entire thing and anyone that is attracted to the drama could do well by asking themselves why.
It's a real catch-22 for those seeking to get away from shitty situations, as not saying anything makes others less likely to avoid you, but you won't get help if nobody knows you need it.
I very much appreciate the more measured discussion and exchanges of opinions here on Tildes when it comes to anything emotionally charged like this. I've had such interactions on Reddit as well, but much more seldom.
At the end of the day, making sure to keep yourself healthy by avoiding that kind of stuff makes you actually more able to help if the day comes that someone close to you has something bad going on. I 100% believe that. So I support you staying away, blocking subreddits etc to not have to even see anything to begin with.
Agree, small, not popular communities on reddit is just like that. Immediately when community become popular it become flooded with easy and quick to judge people that will downvote and harras...
Agree, small, not popular communities on reddit is just like that. Immediately when community become popular it become flooded with easy and quick to judge people that will downvote and harras anyone which view is different from popular narrative. I saw it with community about bearded dragons, aquarium community, expirienced developers community..
I still remember literall harrasment of one the proffesional hobbiest because his aquarium look too small on photos. Configuration of aquarium was not usual, usually aquariums are hight but this one is more wide, and looks smaller on the photos, so he was downvoted to oblivion, called murderer, etc. etc.
I actually feel the opposite. In theory I like the lack of a downvote option; in reality it means that users who are aggressive towards others go pretty much unchecked. The vote system ends up...
I actually feel the opposite. In theory I like the lack of a downvote option; in reality it means that users who are aggressive towards others go pretty much unchecked. The vote system ends up being almost entirely pointless when its only real purpose is to elevate comments and there usually isn't enough activity for that to be necessary anyway.
I really liked Tildes at first (having come from the reddit shutdown) but the more I use it, the more I see this kind of behavior pop up. It isn't people threatening others or any extremely concerning behavior like that, but rather users eager to shout others down.
I find that instead of using Tildes more, I've been using it less, and have severely reduced my reddit usage with no real need to replace much of it.
Most of the groups here are more on the chill side but I find the recently added life.men and life.women are both really unpalatable to me.
I have but it isn't like those users frequent only those groups. It's the same smaller group of users across the whole site. Some Lemmy instances are seemingly have trouble like this too. Perhaps...
I have but it isn't like those users frequent only those groups. It's the same smaller group of users across the whole site.
Some Lemmy instances are seemingly have trouble like this too. Perhaps moreso. There are instances spun up by users who were unhappy with X Y Z kind of discourse on reddit and decided to create their own so they can control the conversation in a way that pleases them. I'll use Beehaw as an example -- its claimed goal is to create a safe and diverse community (not a bad goal at all) but that's accomplished by sanitizing + excluding any train of thought that doesn't seem to fit the norm there. I don't usually buy into the "Liberal echo chamber" thing but this example is the kind of place where you can really see it happening because the space is so new to so many users and the community is currently being built at this time. And while I don't begrudge particular groups of people their own spaces, it seems disingenuous to say "this is an inclusive space" and then nudge people out because they don't fit in with the hivemind (which... makes the name Beehaw a little ironic). I don't think it helps the people there, either, but perhaps they feel differently (I don't hop on there constantly but when I do I see so many posts full of self-loathing and circular thinking that it just makes me sad).
This has been both the hardest adjustment for me to make, and the one I appreciate the most. I first became aware of Tildes a couple of years ago, and my initial reaction was "no thanks, it's not...
Constantly wanting more content even if I've already had a satisfying amount.
This has been both the hardest adjustment for me to make, and the one I appreciate the most. I first became aware of Tildes a couple of years ago, and my initial reaction was "no thanks, it's not active enough." I only joined just ahead of the Reddit API fiasco, but I was honestly eager for a change anyway by that point.
But I was judging "active enough" by the standards of Reddit and Twitter, which at the time were my main (sole, rather) sources of consuming the Internet. Basically endless content, and definitely quantity over quality. Same thing many of us came here to get away from, but at the time I wasn't ready--I felt like stepping away from the firehose for any amount of time meant I was "gonna miss something important".
Tildes is plenty active if you compare it to poking around the Internet between, say, 2003-2007--that is, post-mainstream adoption of the web, pre-launch of the iPhone, which I'd argue put us where we are now. It's fine to read and participate with some forum content or what have you and say "that's enough". It's alright to go outside at some point. You're not really going to miss anything.
It's only been a short time but I find "smaller" communities like Tildes and Bluesky preferable...hell, almost nostalgic. I still technically have my Reddit and Twitter accounts active but I barely use them at all now and will likely delete soon.
I don't think a ton of activity is a must but I have to disagree here. I used to frequent a lot of forums and many sizable ones had constant activity in some form. Meanwhile, if I hop onto even...
Tildes is plenty active if you compare it to poking around the Internet between, say, 2003-2007
I don't think a ton of activity is a must but I have to disagree here. I used to frequent a lot of forums and many sizable ones had constant activity in some form. Meanwhile, if I hop onto even some of the more active groups on Tildes they sometimes don't get more than a couple new posts a day with a handful of comments.
I frequented Weezer forums during that timeframe that had more posts/comments in a day than Tildes has in a week.
I can't even tell you how many times I started a comment on Reddit, got like 10 mins of editing and typing done and just said "no". It just wasn't worth it to post in almost any of the large subs...
I can't even tell you how many times I started a comment on Reddit, got like 10 mins of editing and typing done and just said "no". It just wasn't worth it to post in almost any of the large subs just for what you said, someone is going to disagree with you and be an absolute prick about it.
I can't get enough of that not happening on Tildes.
I still think Reddit has some niche communities that probably can't be emulated on Tildes due to how the website works. As someone who is pro capitalism it's hard to find groups that agree with...
I still think Reddit has some niche communities that probably can't be emulated on Tildes due to how the website works. As someone who is pro capitalism it's hard to find groups that agree with this, and as someone who is a professional in Healthcare it's pretty clear we don't have experts here to interact with.
This is very interesting to me and I thank you for sharing it. I feel like certainly most people are in favour. It is hard to find thoughtful groups looking to modify or temper the capitalistic...
As someone who is pro capitalism it's hard to find groups that agree with this
This is very interesting to me and I thank you for sharing it.
I feel like certainly most people are in favour. It is hard to find thoughtful groups looking to modify or temper the capitalistic society we live in. I'm really surprised that you find the opposite!
So again, thanks for sharing. Following the charitable view we are all on board here with, I wonder at your choice of "pro-capitalism" as a phrase. I'm not sure what that means, but if this were reddit I would assume the worst. Obviously I am not doing that here. If you feel like expanding on that thought, I'm all ears!
There's only a certain stable of "breadtube" (and I think the label is falling off a bit anyway) I really follow these days anymore and they're mostly the folks who produce maybe a big video once...
There's only a certain stable of "breadtube" (and I think the label is falling off a bit anyway) I really follow these days anymore and they're mostly the folks who produce maybe a big video once every month or two and imo have taken a lot more time in building their argument. It isn't uncommon that they'll quote from books they ended up reading to prepare for the video and you'll find a bibliography in the description. I find the faster more prolific creators end up being insufferable or lazy even if I theoretically agree with whatever point they're making.
The reason I bring up "speed" is a lot of online discourse moves at lightning speeds with conversations beginning and ending in just a few hours with hundreds of participants. There's little room to be all nuanced and "capitalism has created the largest prosperity the Earth has ever seen, but let me pick apart some negative aspect of it from a leftist perspective."
The folks who give either a full throated endorsement or diatribe is going to have a lot more "success" in the conversation. How incredibly polarized (and extreme) rightwing and leftwing Twitter became is probably the poster child example of this phenomenon, but other social media is certainly susceptible to it.
If you don't mind me asking, what about it was anxiety-inducing for you? If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine, obviously. I never used social media much, except for Hacker News (for...
I'm now beginning to wonder just how much anxiety on Reddit, and social media in general, was purely due to it being an anxiety-inducing medium.
If you don't mind me asking, what about it was anxiety-inducing for you? If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine, obviously.
I never used social media much, except for Hacker News (for years) and now Tildes (since very recently). When the war in Ukraine started, I started using Twitter, but I stopped after a few months because it felt like a mix of useful info with anger-inducing crap, and it seemed the added informational value was not worth the emotional price. When I read posts like yours, I wonder what I am getting myself into.
So, I'm an autist and have been treated for cptsd. This is obviously one thing that can cause it. However, if I had to pinpoint a specific thing, it's more difficult. Fearing negativity over a...
If you don't mind me asking, what about it was anxiety-inducing for you? If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine, obviously.
So, I'm an autist and have been treated for cptsd. This is obviously one thing that can cause it.
However, if I had to pinpoint a specific thing, it's more difficult. Fearing negativity over a comment, doomer news, and more can all cause those but it feels very different here on Tildes. Even if, say, something about climate change pops up.
For me, it feels more like a difference in atmosphere. That's rather vague and abstract but it's the only way I can explain it.
Thank you. This reminded me of something that I've forgotten - a few times, I received a comment or even a personal message that was clearly intentionally designed to be extremely negative -...
Thank you.
Fearing negativity over a comment
This reminded me of something that I've forgotten - a few times, I received a comment or even a personal message that was clearly intentionally designed to be extremely negative - someone unknown spouting hate at me personally, unrelated to the topic that was discussed. That did make me feel a bit uneasy. I can imagine this could be anxiety-inducing if I were exposed often enough.
I think I was habitually a bit "attacky" on a comment I made at least once on Tildes, because I was used to Reddit. I asked some questions in a matter that was less curious and more...
I'm still having to get used to the idea that I won't get 'attacked' for expressing my views.
I think I was habitually a bit "attacky" on a comment I made at least once on Tildes, because I was used to Reddit. I asked some questions in a matter that was less curious and more self-righteous. I remember that feeling of dread that's like "oh now I've done it and I'm going to get attacked back, I regret my post." I was so surprised when I wasn't attacked back at all; the other users nicely clarified their viewpoints and I then thanked them for doing so and hopefully I acknowledged that it wasn't right of me to come off so assumptive in the beginning.
I enjoy participating on Tildes. It feels much nicer than Reddit.
Well, in the US we have a pretty distinguished history of putting the onus of change on the disadvantaged (school shootings? Bulletproof backpacks! Desegregate public pools? Close the pools!), so...
Well, in the US we have a pretty distinguished history of putting the onus of change on the disadvantaged (school shootings? Bulletproof backpacks! Desegregate public pools? Close the pools!), so my bet is it just becomes a crippling problem for some people that we collectively ignore.
I don't know how we're supposed to solve any social woes if everything has to generate money or IPO buzz to be worth doing.
I feel like there's a lot of self-congratulating on this platform and a lot more reverence to moderation than i am comfortable with. There's also an aversion to controversy which i think creates...
Exemplary
I feel like there's a lot of self-congratulating on this platform and a lot more reverence to moderation than i am comfortable with. There's also an aversion to controversy which i think creates an echo chamber and prevents effective dialogue. This is all just personal preference of course and users have to decide if they are willing to accept it for themselves.
That's probably true. And I agree that there's more of this than there probably should be. This is just another internet forum and, to be blunt, it's not like any of us made this forum. We just...
I feel like there's a lot of self-congratulating on this platform
That's probably true. And I agree that there's more of this than there probably should be. This is just another internet forum and, to be blunt, it's not like any of us made this forum. We just found it and signed up. We can't really congratulate ourselves for that. We also can't congratulate ourselves for not being dicks while we're here; that should be a basic expectation of internet discourse.
and a lot more reverence to moderation than i am comfortable with.
As you say, this is always going to be a subjective matter.
Different internet forums take different approaches to moderation, from totally hands-off to extremely hands-on - and each forum will tend to attract people who agree with its approach to moderation. So, Tildes, with its interventionist pro-moderation founder/creator, will attract a pro-moderation crowd. People who prefer hands-off minimalist moderation or no moderation at all are unlikely to find Tildes appealing, so they're not likely to be here.
Some anti-moderationists have signed up here, either through ignorance, or because they wanted to change the place, but they've usually ended up moving on, one way or another. Tildes just doesn't suit them. And that's fine. It doesn't have to. This round hole suits round pegs, and there are square holes out there for square pegs.
It's like walking into a book shop and pointing out that everyone in there seems to like reading. Well... yes. That's only to be expected.
There's also an aversion to controversy which i think creates an echo chamber and prevents effective dialogue.
people always use "echo chamber" like a self-evident description of an undesirable type of community, but in reality, a lot of the aspects of an "echo chamber" are what people would want out of a good community.
I agree with most of your comment heh -- echo echo echo echo But I think you're doing the users too little credit. Like, yeah, this is just an internet forum, so not like something that important...
I agree with most of your comment heh -- echo echoechoecho
This is just another internet forum and, to be blunt, it's not like any of us made this forum. We just found it and signed up. We can't really congratulate ourselves for that.
But I think you're doing the users too little credit. Like, yeah, this is just an internet forum, so not like something that important in the grand scheme, but the platform would be an empty site without the users. So those commenting, posting things, voting, etc... are adding lots of value to the place.
And also, to put on my sociology hat. The pretty common meta discussion that happens on ~tildes is a kind of performative ritual to affirm the etiquette and expectations here. New users walk in and see old the users explaining what they like to see and hopefully the newbies emulate it. This the same kind of discussion used to be common on reddit back when reddiquette was a thing and people were somewhat self-policing about it. Speaking of which I found this amusing post from way back when lamenting its death:
Yeah, I get it. These posts help to acculturate the newbies. But these posts are usually by the newcomers, rather than by the oldtimers. "Oh My God. I found this great site, and ain't I great, and...
The pretty common meta discussion that happens on ~tildes is a kind of performative ritual to affirm the etiquette and expectations here.
Yeah, I get it. These posts help to acculturate the newbies. But these posts are usually by the newcomers, rather than by the oldtimers. "Oh My God. I found this great site, and ain't I great, and aren't we all great, for being here?" There is quite a bit of self-congratulatory back-slapping around here. [EDIT: Sometimes by people who haven't been around long enough to do anything to be congratulated for.] (And maybe I'm not immune from this. But... #NotLikeOtherTilders!) It does get a bit much sometimes.
Speaking of which I found this amusing post from way back when lamenting its death:
People were lamenting the death of reddiquette 11 years ago? I was sure it lasted much later than that. Oh well. There's always an old guard that's lamenting the death of something from the old days, even if it's not dead yet. And then a year later, there's another generation of old guards lamenting the death of something else that's not dead. And so on. To recycle something I wrote here a couple of days ago: "Every generation discovers a version of Reddit/Tildes at a single point of time, and they automatically consider that particular version to be the One And Only True Reddit/Tildes. Changes made 12 months before they arrived are part of this One And Only True Reddit/Tildes, while changes made 12 months after they arrived are an obvious degradation of the website."
"It's like walking into a book shop and pointing out that everyone in there seems to like reading. Well... yes. That's only to be expected." I would describe it more like walking into a bookshop...
"It's like walking into a book shop and pointing out that everyone in there seems to like reading. Well... yes. That's only to be expected."
I would describe it more like walking into a bookshop and trying to talk about certain genres of books only to be told that those genres are too controversial or that those genres have already been deemed worthless to talk about. I think there is worthwhile discussion that is lost with this approach and that minds could be changed and learning could take place otherwise. I recognize that Deimos feels differently and im okay with that. As we've said, its up to individual users to decide if they will accept the way tildes is moderated.
I feel like my personal philosophy is more comfortable with conflict and controversy and i realize that a lot of people do not feel the same way.
If conflict is is good faith, then it can be helpful. In moderation. Sometimes. For example, if the hypothetical "we" are investigating a scientific truth, and are hashing out data and theories to...
Exemplary
If conflict is is good faith, then it can be helpful. In moderation. Sometimes. For example, if the hypothetical "we" are investigating a scientific truth, and are hashing out data and theories to find accurate truth, sure some head-to-head "conflict" can be beneficial to the process of arriving at that truth.
But what usually happens is people just scream. They treat conflict as "a game", and one they're going to win. So they raise their voice (online represented by aggressive and dismissive communication), raise strawmen, redefine terms, distract with process and other debating tactics, all in an effort to throw "their opponent(s)" off guard and off topic and off message. Pushing people to emotion, which shatters any attempts at conversation.
After all, how many Internet conversational threads go something like this:
Bob: (says something about a thing)
Rob: (aggressive response that not only disagrees, but in a way that flames Bob)
Bob: "Hey, that's uncalled for. We're talking about X, and you're flying off the handle."
Rob: lol u mad bro?
And then it devolves further into yet more accusations, this time about whether or not people are mad, if the responses and emotional layers were justified or relevant, and on and on and on. Shit that has nothing to do with whatever might have been (briefly) talked about before Rob the asshole showed up with his aggression just to be funny. Or to change the subject. Or to ensure his opponents cleared out so he could preach his version unopposed.
Conflict, especially over the internet where everyone's a tough guy, is just a complete waste of time. I see so many threads online where people just repeat themselves at each other, progressively adding more and more emotion. And often where one (usually both, but sometimes one of them is trying for a time to be an adult) utterly ignores any points or data brought up in their rush to repeat their prior comments.
Not restating their position, or reframing it, or incorporating the ongoing conversation in a way that indicates their ideas and views might be somewhat shifted or informed by the thread of communication. Just raising the volume and gunning for "that win" where the other person gives up, leaving the aggressive conflict person with the ability to post a couple of hours later "lol, they couldn't take the heat or my sick factz."
There's something to be said for decorum. I've seen video from British Parliament sessions sometimes, where MPs from opposing sides are hopping up from their seat to speak and plunking themselves back down in it when it's someone else's turn (sometimes in rapid fire progression) whilst being sure to lace their comments with "as the Right Honorable member" or "as the good gentle might recall" and so on.
Is that silly? Sure, sort of. Is it logical? Not necessarily ... until you consider human emotion and the importance humans place on it. Then, watching two diametrically opposed legislators argue with tense voices but very polite words becomes quite logical and very serious. If nothing else, it keeps the bullshit they'll fling at each other through quotes in the paper from press conferences off the floor of what's supposed to be a civilized place of serious discourse.
Everything on the Internet has become so casual to the point of incoherence sometimes. And conflict through a screen, with people who feel safe hiding behind it, is just tiring and boring. At least in real life, if someone decides to argue, they've had to pass a dice check for something along the lines of "is this important enough to me to be an ass about it?"
Of course too many people these days are willing to be assholes, but that's at least partially a function of how economically stressed we all increasingly are. When your life is tight, you have a harder time not fighting any battle you might think you can win. On the Internet, the investment to be an asshole is so low a lot of people decide to go all in.
It's tiring, and boring. Moderation and civility are welcome. After all, if I wanted to be flamed and doxxed and dragged through the mud for every thought I put online that didn't hew to the groupthink partyline, I'd be on fucking Twitter. Or Reddit for that matter.
This is really well said and explained. I’ve seen tonnes of respectful disagreement on tildes, but not much disrespectful conflict. It’s a little baffling to me why someone would want the latter,...
This is really well said and explained. I’ve seen tonnes of respectful disagreement on tildes, but not much disrespectful conflict. It’s a little baffling to me why someone would want the latter, but like you say there are plenty of other places for that. Personally, and I expect I speak for a lot of other users, it’s the main plus point of being here.
You don't like the moderation style around here. That's fine. There are plenty of other sites out there with moderation styles that will suit you better. Even with my penchant for being...
You don't like the moderation style around here. That's fine. There are plenty of other sites out there with moderation styles that will suit you better.
Even with my penchant for being argumentative and contrary, I realise there are limits. We don't want every single thread to devolve into flame wars. As a moderator who's had to mop up the blood from flame wars (particularly political ones!), it gets tiresome. And it encourages nastiness. People can't seem to discuss political issues calmly and civilly. It almost always devolves into insults, name-calling, and sometimes even hate speech. That's not the way to encourage nice people to join a website. Nice people see that shit and nope right out of there. And then all you're left with are the rude arseholes.
I think these are two different things: what are you comfortable posting, and what kinds of discussions are you comfortable with? I’m hesitant to share some links because I think they will be...
I think these are two different things: what are you comfortable posting, and what kinds of discussions are you comfortable with?
I’m hesitant to share some links because I think they will be “difficult reading” for some Tildes users. That is, people will react badly to them, and the discussion will be terrible.
I’ve occasionally been successful in posting something I thought was difficult reading, but it actually worked out well. Maybe it was because I was wary and wrote a comment putting it into context, pointing out that some things about the article are problematic? Or maybe it was just chance.
It would be nice if I could be less wary. But that’s different from being happy when a discussion goes bad.
If I want to avoid bad discussions, I have to accept that the range of discussion is somewhat limited by our collective abilities to handle it. There are “hot topics” that rarely or never work. If they do work then it will likely be because the person who started the topic did a good job of setting up the discussion. This isn’t just moderation. It’s more like being a good host.
This is putting the quality of discussion first. I don’t always do a good job of it, but I think that’s the way to go.
Sure, but please don't forget that tildes has been around for 5 years so there's been lots of time to experiment with allowing those discussions to happen. And at some point you just have to...
I think there is worthwhile discussion that is lost with this approach
Sure, but please don't forget that tildes has been around for 5 years so there's been lots of time to experiment with allowing those discussions to happen. And at some point you just have to accept that there are some hot button topics that are important, that do have the possibility for reasonable discussion, but which always turn out to be a massive shit show with many comments getting deleted.
If you can think of a way of allowing those discussions that hasn't been tried post the idea in ~tildes which is where all the meta discussion happens.
Yeah. I've found that people were quick to congratulate themselves for being here but honestly, I've been noticing that it still suffers from the same thing that happens everywhere online. People...
Yeah. I've found that people were quick to congratulate themselves for being here but honestly, I've been noticing that it still suffers from the same thing that happens everywhere online.
People do get heated in political threads, not really listening to each other. Using Examplary as a super agree label. There have been several posts where I've read the article only to notice that the top comments haven't and have just been making assumptions based on the headline. People wanting to silence the UFO hearing without taking into account why there might be merit for discussion.
There was also someone who posted a really long video and the comments shat on the idea of the video without actually watching it and then tried to justify why it was okay to judge it without watching. There were people that did watch it though and that was nice.
I'm not saying Tildes is bad. It is definite calmer and even within all that, I've had people change their views and admit to their own faults. I've also passed judgement only to see a comment making me question my own reaction to things. Which is a big positive for me.
So I do like the place and am more comfortable here. I like walls of text.
But what bothers me is the self-congratulatory behavior that happens without acknowledging that Tildes has the same problems as everywhere else. And I think it's okay to acknowledge that Tildes isn't exempt from such things.
We're only human. We can only try to not let that run us.
Yeah, I see (and am guilty of) this. I think partly people want to be on a platform that succeeds so cheerleading it (while it is still small) becomes a natural response. As far as modding is...
I feel like there's a lot of self-congratulating on this platform and a lot more reverence to moderation than i am comfortable with.
Yeah, I see (and am guilty of) this. I think partly people want to be on a platform that succeeds so cheerleading it (while it is still small) becomes a natural response.
As far as modding is concerned, I think of this place like Deimos's coffee shop. He runs the place, so he gets to make the rules. As long as people are comfortable with that, it's a nice place to hang out. I do like the "everybody participates in modding" philosophy that is baked into the docs but isn't quite developed or flushed out yet. I hope that becomes more apparent in the future, which it would be as the site grows and more people will need to pitch in to moderation.
Every platform that I have experienced is self-congratulatory to some extent. I'm on kbin and Lemmy, and occasionally on Squabbles (now called Squabblr). It's easy to find posts or comments about...
Every platform that I have experienced is self-congratulatory to some extent. I'm on kbin and Lemmy, and occasionally on Squabbles (now called Squabblr). It's easy to find posts or comments about how great X platform is because Y, how much better we are than those others. I shrug it off as a little but of insecurity coming from the person doing the cheerleading.
I've stopped assuming the worst about other users. I no longer anticipate people being seemingly unable to read and therefore coming to the most bizarre interpretations of my comment. Now I write...
I've stopped assuming the worst about other users. I no longer anticipate people being seemingly unable to read and therefore coming to the most bizarre interpretations of my comment. Now I write comments assuming people here will be able to understand them, without me clarifying endlessly and simplifying things excessively.
I don't worry nearly as much about people who are rude to me anymore. Whenever someone has been genuinely an asshole to me here, or is spreading awful, hateful, incorrect information, they have been promptly banned or had comments deleted. (Interestingly enough, I've never even used the Malicious label, despite all banned users complaining that everyone here just "reports anything they don't like." Sorry rude people, but you kinda tell on yourself just by acting the way you do, I haven't needed to tell on you yet.) The result of all this is that I waste no time or energy trying to prove that anyone is wrong, convince anyone of anything, or fight pointlessly against something I disagree with. I just click away now, because if that person is truly inappropriate or dangerously wrong about what they're saying, it will be taken care of in time.
I am more likely to be polite and kind to others because I know we are likely to interact again in this small space, and I want us both to be able to enjoy it. Also, it's a hell of a lot easier to be nice when you're not surrounded by rude, irritating people. Pretty much just comes naturally.
I strongly agree with your first point! It's really nice that the average commenter on Tildes seems to assume good faith and even follow the principle of charity. While I don't mind people...
I strongly agree with your first point! It's really nice that the average commenter on Tildes seems to assume good faith and even follow the principle of charity.
While I don't mind people pointing out grammar or spelling mistakes, I appreciate that most replies focus on the intent of a comment rather than surface level errors. I mistakenly called the fediverse the metaverse in a comment, yet the replies still focused on the main idea of my comment instead of dogpiling me for using the wrong word!
It's actually funny - the people that complained on Reddit about this place is specifically why I then sought it out. A place where you can't just be rude nor spam low effort comments? Yes please....
Sorry rude people, but you kinda tell on yourself just by acting the way you do, I haven't needed to tell on you yet.
It's actually funny - the people that complained on Reddit about this place is specifically why I then sought it out. A place where you can't just be rude nor spam low effort comments? Yes please.
Like you said, they're just telling on themselves. And advertising what community to join that will actively reject people like them.
Exactly like that old Alamo Drafthouse commercial where it was nothing but a customer calling in complaining that they were kicked out for being on their phone during a movie. All the person did was help advertise that the kind of people like them aren't going to be there.
Same for me, I saw people complaining about Tildes on /r/redditalternatives and their comments were actually more informative than people saying Tildes was a good site, haha. Those comments...
It's actually funny - the people that complained on Reddit about this place is specifically why I then sought it out. A place where you can't just be rude nor spam low effort comments? Yes please.
Same for me, I saw people complaining about Tildes on /r/redditalternatives and their comments were actually more informative than people saying Tildes was a good site, haha. Those comments smelled of "free speech is more important than anything" and while that's great for those people, it's somewhat the opposite of what I believe (particularly for casual online forums, I'm not really talking about the First Amendment.) So I figured I would probably like it here.
It's not that I would enjoy every site with a "benevolent dictator" or moderation like this, as it's certainly a difficult balance to pull off, but it just turns out to be executed quite well here.
Yes, on reddit, a very common conversation goes like this: Same with those bizarre conversations. On reddit, I have had so many conversations where the end result--after several comments where the...
I've stopped assuming the worst about other users. I no longer anticipate people being seemingly unable to read and therefore coming to the most bizarre interpretations of my comment.
Yes, on reddit, a very common conversation goes like this:
A: Fact about thing x
B: Elaboration about thing x
A: Yeah, mother fucker, that's exactly what I was saying.
B: Yes...I was agreeing with you...
Same with those bizarre conversations. On reddit, I have had so many conversations where the end result--after several comments where the other guy is arguing with me--is that the other guy finally reads one of my comments and realizes that I've been saying the same thing as him the whole time. Luckily, on Tildes I can actually write a long comment that expresses what I think, and even though I don't expect people to read every single word, I can expect that they will attempt to understand me before responding.
Along the same lines, I have been banned multiple times from subreddits for agreeing with mods. They just didn't have the patience to read past the first few words and banned me.
Yes! This is exactly what I mean. And I have seen the exact scenario you described first (people assuming you're disagreeing with them when really you're adding to their point,) so many times on...
the other guy finally reads one of my comments and realizes that I've been saying the same thing as him the whole time.
Yes! This is exactly what I mean.
And I have seen the exact scenario you described first (people assuming you're disagreeing with them when really you're adding to their point,) so many times on reddit that I became trained to always start writing those comments with "Yes, and..." or "Agreed, and..." Basically to spoon-feed my opinions to people as blatantly as I can. It was exhausting and I don't miss it one bit.
Those arguments are so stupid, and I know I've been on both sides of them (usually because I've come to assume that no one is actually reading my comments before reading them). Please don't...
Those arguments are so stupid, and I know I've been on both sides of them (usually because I've come to assume that no one is actually reading my comments before reading them).
Please don't crucify me for not starting my comment with "yes!"
One difference is that I'm not even surprised to vote on your comment and then read the rest of the comment only to find that I was one of the people you're talking about. You get to recognize...
One difference is that I'm not even surprised to vote on your comment and then read the rest of the comment only to find that I was one of the people you're talking about. You get to recognize people here, but not everyone, which is a unique experience for me compared to reddit or forums that I used before reddit.
I didn't have to de-reddit when I started using Tildes, because I was Tildesing before Tildes existed. The subreddits I subscribed to, and especially the subreddits I moderated, were like Tildes:...
I didn't have to de-reddit when I started using Tildes, because I was Tildesing before Tildes existed. The subreddits I subscribed to, and especially the subreddits I moderated, were like Tildes: discussion over memes, civility over rudeness, thoughtfulness over shallowness. That's been my style since I signed up to Reddit 12 years ago. I didn't change it on Reddit, and I haven't changed it here.
So, I never did these things on Reddit:
Edited a post down to three dot points so it will be read. I wrote long comments and long posts (where that was appropriate).
Instinctively looked for a downvote button when something is incorrect. I always knew what the downvote button was for - and what it was not for.
Deleted comments/post history. If I posted it, I stood by it. I did, however, sometimes self-censor and not post things - especially information that might personally identify me. But I do that here on Tildes, too.
Regarding this point:
Obviously the invite system makes [throwaways/alt accounts] impossible
Ah... no, it doesn't. You can just generate your own invite code and invite yourself (assuming you've been around long enough to get one of the invite-code top-ups that Deimos distributes to all users - the last one being one month ago). In fact, the Tildes Code of Conduct specifically says that "you may register and use multiple Tildes accounts", as long as you don't use your alt accounts for nefarious purposes.
By the way...
I don't think Tildes is indexed
Yes, it is. You can search on Tildes via Google and probably other search engines.
As for your final point...
The assumption of who's behind the keyboard has changed - for whatever reason (prose complexity? syntax?) I'm making the assumption that the people I'm reading are older, not trying to provoke outrage, and have more diverse life experiences.
This might be the main one I agree with you about. Regardless of whether people on Tildes are older (on average), than people on Reddit, they're certainly more mature, which gives a sense that Tilders are older (on average) than Redditors.
One thing I do do on Tildes, particularly since I started being more active here again in the past couple of months, is make more of an effort to be less blunt, direct, and argumentative than I usually would tend to be. In real life, I'm extremely blunt, but people can see me and hear me and recognise there's no ill-intent or aggression; I'm just very direct. However, that doesn't translate well to the internet when I'm restricted to only text. I get away with this bluntness on Reddit, but I have been practically lynched for it on Tildes numerous times. There was a time, back in the very early days of Tildes, when Deimos told me I was attracting more 'Malice' labels on my comments than any other user.
So, I'm putting extra effort into making sure my tone doesn't come across as combative - with varying degrees of success. ;)
You mostly saved me a comment, but I definitely don't agree with this: Downvotes are for people not contributing to a conversation. In my opinion, people authoritatively stating incorrect facts...
You mostly saved me a comment, but I definitely don't agree with this:
Instinctively looked for a downvote button when something is incorrect. I always knew what the downvote button was for - and what it was not for.
Downvotes are for people not contributing to a conversation. In my opinion, people authoritatively stating incorrect facts are detracting from the conversation.
I had a bit more typed out, but I think that summarizes it all well enough.
From the rediquette, which nobody reads anymore: Consider this from a different perspective. You believe something is incorrect. You downvote, you don't say anything else. Did anyone learn...
Consider posting constructive criticism / an explanation when you downvote something
Consider this from a different perspective. You believe something is incorrect. You downvote, you don't say anything else. Did anyone learn anything? Was this interaction constructive at all?
Assuming good faith, fhe person you downvoted doesn't know why you did so. They received no information that explains why their comment is wrong. They'll go on believing, and saying, the same thing.
Worse, there's a chance that you are wrong and they are right, but since you didn't join the discussion you didn't have the oportunity to learn anything, either. I don't know you, and maybe you're incredibly wise and knowledgeable, but frankly a lot of people on reddit have a lot to learn about at least some of the subjects they like to discuss.
Sure, there's a threshold below which you can assume bad faith or otherwise have reason to believe replying to someone would be a waste of time - that's true on Tildes, too. But otherwise, the truth is that the symmetry of upvotes and downvotes on reddit itself detracts from constructive conversations. Even before I joined Tildes I've always believed that, by default, you should explain why someone is wrong or upvote someone else's explanation/response in these situations.
If reddit has broken you and you are instinctively anxious about being the one posting the reply (because it will expose your username and allow the person to keep talking to you), just remember that at least on Tildes you always have the option to abandon the conversation. It's a moderated space, there are no downvotes and no karma, nothing will happen to you in retaliation. Your perspective will remain out there for others to read and learn from.
What made you think I just downvote without commenting? I'm trying to be assertive rather than aggressive with this, but I don't really appreciate being admonished to assume good faith in a...
What made you think I just downvote without commenting? I'm trying to be assertive rather than aggressive with this, but I don't really appreciate being admonished to assume good faith in a comment that's making negative (maybe neutral) assumptions about me.
I appreciate this approach. I feel like a discussion is more than just a collection of independent posts. It is something that we are building together. People removing their posts feel like "I...
Deleted comments/post history. If I posted it, I stood by it.
I appreciate this approach. I feel like a discussion is more than just a collection of independent posts. It is something that we are building together. People removing their posts feel like "I don't like this building anymore so I will take my bricks away" - that does not feel fair to the others that still use that building.
I agree with this. I try to not delete my posts, even if I'm embarrassed by them later. The most I'll do is use the "strike through" effect, so it's still technically readable and conveys I don't...
I agree with this. I try to not delete my posts, even if I'm embarrassed by them later. The most I'll do is use the "strike through" effect, so it's still technically readable and conveys I don't agree with what I wrote previously anymore, and/or I'll append an edit to the end of the comment explaining my new viewpoint.
What changed massively for me is that I now spend 80% of my time lurking, instead of just posting whatever I felt like under every second post. Posts here are just way more interesting and the...
What changed massively for me is that I now spend 80% of my time lurking, instead of just posting whatever I felt like under every second post. Posts here are just way more interesting and the people here feel a lot more genuine and knowledgable, so I often don't feel like adding to the discussion - since there's an actual discussion going on, and not just mainly "who's writing the funniest quip"
When I first joined Reddit I was amazed by how funny people were. I assumed it was because only the funniest people were upvoted. Like there was some awesome crowdsourcing of the funniest content...
When I first joined Reddit I was amazed by how funny people were. I assumed it was because only the funniest people were upvoted. Like there was some awesome crowdsourcing of the funniest content possible.
Then after a few months I noticed it was the same jokes over and over again, often just a Simpsons or LOTR quote. That gets old. Also, somehow a very large portion of the top comments have the same “voice”. I’m not sure but I think the site molds people into a certain personality after a while.
The biggest change I have noticed is that I am not constantly scrolling, looking for new things. If I have time to sit down and read, I check out the front page, sorted by activity, just so I see...
The biggest change I have noticed is that I am not constantly scrolling, looking for new things. If I have time to sit down and read, I check out the front page, sorted by activity, just so I see where people are talking. I poke around, look for something interesting/new, then I'm done. I don't sit on my phone for hours looking for content. If I don't see something interesting to engage in, I just leave the page.
I only delve into the deeper content when I feel I have the time or desire to learn about or discuss something specific. I find I now have a lot more free time and I have picked up a lot of my old hobbies. I also feel a lot less anxiety, which seems to given me some more clarity into life.
Overall, this has been great, learning how to not Reddit.
I've tried to quit Reddit several times now. The first few times it was simply due to toxicity and how annoyed I tend to get with the community. I always end up coming back to "doom scroll"...
I've tried to quit Reddit several times now. The first few times it was simply due to toxicity and how annoyed I tend to get with the community. I always end up coming back to "doom scroll" because of the habit of pulling out my phone when I'm bored.
The last time I quit, I had finally realized that the app was preventing me from doing anything even mildly productive. There were loads of other things I could be reading other than memes and annoying discussions. I managed it for a couple weeks. Reading webcomics and articles or books. I found myself convincing myself that it was ok to scroll a little bit and that eventually snowballed into old habits.
Really my "de-Redditing" journey consists of finding other ways to occupy my time and learn that I can occupy my time in more meaningful ways. Even if it's just to waste 30 minutes, I can find something more productive than melting my mind into Reddit. Tildes is really just another major step in that journey as it's something I've been looking for, for a long time. I've really missed this style of forum. A style of forum with a new twist that really seems to care about how the community grows.
That's exactly how I feel. What I find interesting is that when I first came here, I was thinking "boy, this really how reddit used to be ten years ago". And after a few days of coming every few...
That's exactly how I feel.
What I find interesting is that when I first came here, I was thinking "boy, this really how reddit used to be ten years ago". And after a few days of coming every few hours, refreshing, looking for the new stuff and that dopamine hit, I realized that to me it isn't what reddit used to be.
To me, this is a community of people who seem to genuinely care about the site, the content, and the other members of the community. I think that is how reddit used to feel and how I felt about it. I believe over time, it evolved into just another social media platform, married with a deep-rooted forum.
As I get older, I find that I am coming to terms with things ending more. Shows that I like, movie franchises, book series, and now even internet content. I am finding that prolonging the life of something beyond the reasons I sought it out only makes for me to become more disillusioned.
For me, reddit has been sunset, and that's okay. I don't need something to 'be the new reddit'. I need to find a new outlet for my desire to be part of a community. And honestly, in the last month, I have found it in more than the internet. I have found I am less engaged online and moreso in the real world, which I am finding to be truly wonderful.
I still get to come here and talk to people, see their insights, hear their stories, but then I know when it's time to leave and I am comfortable doing it.
I didn’t find a better place to post this, but I’ve noticed an unfortunate increase in the level of passive aggressiveness in comments here recently which I think is semi-related to bringing over...
I didn’t find a better place to post this, but I’ve noticed an unfortunate increase in the level of passive aggressiveness in comments here recently which I think is semi-related to bringing over old tendencies. I’ve in particular noticed an uptick in comments that include implications that another poster “couldn’t seriously believe” something, or is in some other way being disingenuous in their comment. I’m probably guilty of it too. This type of thing really changes the tenor of a conversation and has increasingly made me less likely to engage.
This type of shade is obviously better than outright vitriol or mockery that you see on other platforms, but it would be a shame if people are trading one type of bad commenting habit for another.
I’m probably being a bit sensitive because I happened to interact with a number of these in short succession, and to some extent it’s probably unavoidable when you have thousands of people in one space.
More or less, yes. I’ve noticed people casting others’ positions as positions that beggar belief. Sometimes they’re not even that wild of positions too.
More or less, yes. I’ve noticed people casting others’ positions as positions that beggar belief. Sometimes they’re not even that wild of positions too.
I have seen more experienced Tildes users comment about how they had to detoxify their habbits when first leaving reddit. I do think the structure and the exemplary tag in particular provide some...
I have seen more experienced Tildes users comment about how they had to detoxify their habbits when first leaving reddit. I do think the structure and the exemplary tag in particular provide some incentive for being better. I have hope that things get better with time.
I joined only near the beginning of the latest influx, and already in that short time I’ve seen the exemplary label start to be used as more of a “I super agree with this point” instead of “this...
I joined only near the beginning of the latest influx, and already in that short time I’ve seen the exemplary label start to be used as more of a “I super agree with this point” instead of “this is a really valuable contribution/this is factually correct”. I’ve seen it used for statements which I know are incorrect, or which assume something to be true which is only opinion, or which are sort of inflammatory and part of an argument. I hope it comes back to the original intention because I agree with you that it’s a good incentive! But currently I’m not sure it’s always working as designed
Not sure if you saw it, but Deimos asked people to message him with examples if we saw misuse of the exemplary tag. I do believe the site design and community will shape our behavior in good ways,...
Not sure if you saw it, but Deimos asked people to message him with examples if we saw misuse of the exemplary tag. I do believe the site design and community will shape our behavior in good ways, but removing the label privilege from people who don't play nice is also part of the strategy.
Oh, I did miss that, thanks! I was wondering if I should do something like that and then wasn’t sure if I was sort of telling tales. Especially being new myself. I’ll remember this if I see it...
Oh, I did miss that, thanks! I was wondering if I should do something like that and then wasn’t sure if I was sort of telling tales. Especially being new myself. I’ll remember this if I see it happen again
Yeah I’d only report if it were particularly egregious I think. It would be nice to see a little reminder in the exemplary pop up of the intended use, but I’m not sure it’s necessary to change...
Yeah I’d only report if it were particularly egregious I think. It would be nice to see a little reminder in the exemplary pop up of the intended use, but I’m not sure it’s necessary to change things until and unless it becomes a bigger problem
I have found Deimos very receptive to messages with suggestions, even when he tells me exactly why he's going to reject my suggestion, he's polite about it.
I have found Deimos very receptive to messages with suggestions, even when he tells me exactly why he's going to reject my suggestion, he's polite about it.
This is refreshing. I've never been on a site where you could actually contact the devs and just provide suggestions - didn't even dawn on me this was possible :)
This is refreshing. I've never been on a site where you could actually contact the devs and just provide suggestions - didn't even dawn on me this was possible :)
Ah yes, I did use that thread (a previous version of it). It was very useful, got some lingering questions answered. But I don't think it had dawned on me that I could suggest something to...
Ah yes, I did use that thread (a previous version of it). It was very useful, got some lingering questions answered. But I don't think it had dawned on me that I could suggest something to someone. :) Not that I have anything useful to suggest, or any plans to do so, I just think it's cool that the site is small enough of a community (and that the dev participates) that it is possible.
I suspect if the site gets huge that Deimos will be forced to create formal mechanisms for feedback and take away the ability to just message him. But for now, things are informal, which is nice.
I suspect if the site gets huge that Deimos will be forced to create formal mechanisms for feedback and take away the ability to just message him. But for now, things are informal, which is nice.
The structure of the site definitely helps to promote de-escalation, which I think helps to prevent things from getting too out of hand. But these more mild forms of hostility have their impact...
The structure of the site definitely helps to promote de-escalation, which I think helps to prevent things from getting too out of hand. But these more mild forms of hostility have their impact too. I’ve been on Tildes for a few years so I’m more talking about changes i’ve noticed since the influx which, to be clear, I’m very happy about. These are perhaps some unfortunate growing pains.
A little. But it's more about how conversation is approached here on Tildes. It's not hostile with sides being picked instantly. I'm having a chatter with one user about Feminism and Patriarchical...
A little.
But it's more about how conversation is approached here on Tildes. It's not hostile with sides being picked instantly.
I'm having a chatter with one user about Feminism and Patriarchical outing via conversation tests, another about the environment and climate... and they're just really good conversations. There's sides, but it's a chat about what we think is good, bad, worries and loves.
I just still use both - I don't think too much about it to be honest. CEO's gonna CEO 🤷♀️ Been on Reddit for 11-12 years and Tildes for 5 years, so I never felt like I had to use one or the...
I just still use both - I don't think too much about it to be honest. CEO's gonna CEO 🤷♀️
Been on Reddit for 11-12 years and Tildes for 5 years, so I never felt like I had to use one or the other. But yeah there's a different sort of social contract, depending which site you're using - I was here since the beginning so we all learned as we went though
In my experience, the generalist groups (life, gender etc.) tend to attract the "Reddit"(=poor) quality posts and discussions on Tildes, so I just unsubscribed from them completely. On the other...
In my experience, the generalist groups (life, gender etc.) tend to attract the "Reddit"(=poor) quality posts and discussions on Tildes, so I just unsubscribed from them completely.
On the other hand, the quality of posts and discussions in technical groups (comp, in particular) is stellar, and has quickly become my favourite place to read and engage in technical discussions on the internet.
I'm still learning how to tildes. I'm much more active on lemmy, honestly, which has much of the best parts of reddit without a lot of the worst parts. But the biggest change is that, near the...
I'm still learning how to tildes. I'm much more active on lemmy, honestly, which has much of the best parts of reddit without a lot of the worst parts.
But the biggest change is that, near the end, I was interacting on reddit primarily as a moderator and only secondarily as a user, which was very stressful, especially once radmin became hostile. So I'm also relearning how to just read and discuss without having to worry about either curation or consequences.
The one thing for me is not being surprised by being downvoted for simple statements. This was in response to a video where a person learned the holes in the trash bin are to tighten a trash bag...
The one thing for me is not being surprised by being downvoted for simple statements.
I didn't know that's how it worked either
This was in response to a video where a person learned the holes in the trash bin are to tighten a trash bag in the bin. Literally got several downvotes.
I have to agree. Comments are for contributing, not just for marking that you were present. If all you're going to say is "me too," then you should just be upvoting. 83 extra comments saying the...
I have to agree. Comments are for contributing, not just for marking that you were present. If all you're going to say is "me too," then you should just be upvoting. 83 extra comments saying the same thing just dilute the actual conversation.
Yea, but the context of the post wasn't for insight or discussion. That's how it works here, but if the post is for humor or the like, then it feels pretty dumb that it's downvoted. I know enough...
Yea, but the context of the post wasn't for insight or discussion. That's how it works here, but if the post is for humor or the like, then it feels pretty dumb that it's downvoted.
I know enough not to do that here. Point I was trying to make is that I don't feel like I'd be downvoted for some dumb reason. If that were possible of course.
I think the most de-redditing I had to do was to stop obsessing over how many votes I was getting. It doesn't matter. I like that I can't see the total. But other than that, it's kind of the same....
I think the most de-redditing I had to do was to stop obsessing over how many votes I was getting. It doesn't matter. I like that I can't see the total.
But other than that, it's kind of the same. I maybe make less dumb jokes. But most of my comments on reddit were discussion based and also polite. Hopefully.
I've always felt bad about making someone else feel bad even if I've never seen them. That has stayed consistent in every platform I've been on.
I really do want to make dumb jokes sometimes though.
Yeah. Here a very good post may get 100 votes and take a few days for that. It definitely trains you to stop chasing it. I wasn’t extremely into Reddit karma but I admit there were a few times I...
Yeah. Here a very good post may get 100 votes and take a few days for that. It definitely trains you to stop chasing it.
I wasn’t extremely into Reddit karma but I admit there were a few times I would check New or Rising posts to be the first to give some obvious comment that would get thousands of upvotes.
And even that's a new paradigm. It used to be a "big" post would get 20-30 votes, with 10 votes as a threshold for having gotten the site's attention. The Tildes of today is noticeably different...
And even that's a new paradigm. It used to be a "big" post would get 20-30 votes, with 10 votes as a threshold for having gotten the site's attention.
The Tildes of today is noticeably different from 3 months ago. I'm okay with that - but there are a few users that need to either adjust their behavior or get banned. I think given that growth has slowed down we'll be in a good place in another couple of months. Tildes is in a "September" phase - thankfully not an "Eternal September".
Side note: I think the Eternal September Wikipedia page is one of the most important pages and it's surprising the page is so small.
Interesting. The lack of a downvote button confused me initially, I thought "how do I upvote? Oh the vote count is a button? Well how do I downvote? Oh, no one can downvote? ... Oh that's nice!"...
Stopping instinctively looking for a downvote button when something is incorrect or off topic, and trusting that the votes system will work (I have found it does).
Interesting. The lack of a downvote button confused me initially, I thought "how do I upvote? Oh the vote count is a button? Well how do I downvote? Oh, no one can downvote? ... Oh that's nice!" And I felt happy that there are no downvotes.
It reminds me of the saying "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Quietly downvoting feels cowardly to me, because it rarely used for the purpose Reddit intended it as, it mainly became a "dislike" button. I also think downvoting brings negative energy into a space. If you disagree with a person, just tell them why in a kind manner. Downvoting does nothing good; it can make a person feel isolated and possibly humiliated.
Also while there are no downvotes on Tildes, you can use labels to mark comments as "malicious" or "off-topic." It's not visible to the user, I think it helps site moderators?
There's a section in the Tildes Docs that explains how the comment labels work. 'Exemplary' is the only one that's visible to the user. You type a brief note when you're applying the label, and...
you can use labels to mark comments as "malicious" or "off-topic." It's not visible to the user, I think it helps site moderators?
'Exemplary' is the only one that's visible to the user. You type a brief note when you're applying the label, and the user can see that note.
'Exemplary' and 'Offtopic' and 'Joke' and 'Noise' quietly adjust the vote value of the labelled comment, so that it is sorted higher or lower on the page.
'Malice' is the only label that's seen by a moderator. This sends a notification to the moderators (currently only one person) that there's a problematic comment to look at.
To be honest, ive had an reddit account for at least 10 years, been only a regular user the last 3 or so. Not had to do any of the things you mentioned in the OP. Guess im not a power user :P
To be honest, ive had an reddit account for at least 10 years, been only a regular user the last 3 or so. Not had to do any of the things you mentioned in the OP. Guess im not a power user :P
Interesting point about deleting Reddit comment history. I never thought to do that unless I wrote something that was being wildly misunderstood. I did eventually delete all of mine in “protest”...
Interesting point about deleting Reddit comment history. I never thought to do that unless I wrote something that was being wildly misunderstood. I did eventually delete all of mine in “protest” of the killing of Apollo, but now I wish that I had regularly cleaned them, except maybe leave a few tech support answers that would be useful to a human later.
Other than not being a pithy jerk (I save that for my Mastodon presence!) I haven't changed much. I also am making an effort to not be so taciturn; I naturally am offline and on. (Except when I...
Other than not being a pithy jerk (I save that for my Mastodon presence!) I haven't changed much.
I also am making an effort to not be so taciturn; I naturally am offline and on. (Except when I get good on a rant.) I try to state a thing, but go into the why of it, if I can.
I'm still having to get used to the idea that I won't get 'attacked' for expressing my views. For quite some time I suffered greatly from anxiety(still do to an extend, but not nearly as much as in the past due to therapy) and I'm now beginning to wonder just how much anxiety on Reddit, and social media in general, was purely due to it being an anxiety-inducing medium.
Also, I'd add another one to your list I'm still getting used to myself:
The most fascinating part about it all? Society seems to be recognizing the current status on social media is really, really not good for us. Yet it's so convenient most of us don't leave until shit hit the fan badly enough. For me, that was the recent API drama on Reddit.
I can't help but wonder what needs to happen first for society to take an active step against the current status quo regarding social media.
I've felt this too, it feels a lot less "tense" to comment on this platform than it does on reddit or lemmy. Whether that's because of the invite system, the lack of image-sharing, or just the relatively small userbase I don't know, but it is nice.
It's very likely just the user base size. With millions of viewers on Reddit, even the tiniest percentage of annoyed people is still probably hundreds. So the chances that your comment is going to get a reply are fairly high. Combine that with how often people skim rather than fully read and you've got a recipe for out of context aggressive replies.
It still is relatively tranquil in the smaller subs. That is until the resident troll logs in (every community has em) or a post hits front page. Still, those occasions are the exception rather than the rule on small subs. More likely to see is in-fighting from the regulars and that's really no different than here.
It could be size, but I think it's partly culture and choice of groups here. e.g. we don't have a specific ~politics group which tends to attract more heated discussions compared to simply ~news. We also lack certain kinds of groups that top reddit's front page like
And of course, moderation. Deimos doesn't exacltly let those who want to be disruptive and malicious around for too long. That ability definitely is a product of the site size, though.
I never used Reddit much but I am noticing something like this on YouTube lately - I search for "Python system dynamics modeling" and the results are interspersed with with videos like "[someone] DESTROYS a woke feminist" or "[someone else] HUMILIATES Greta Thunberg". I hate this kind of content with passion and never click on it and yet, I see it every day.
That kind of content generates engagement, be it for agreement or discordance. The fact you have strong feelings towards it indicates that it does provoke the audience; you just don't engage.
A lot of countries that had extreme right-wing tactics used during elections had massive dissemination of this kind of content. Provoking the animal inside humans works.
That's why I like the stuff like Ying-Yang and Internal Wolves. It shows that we swing both ways, but our control is what matters most.
In YouTube, you can click on the ellipses button (three vertical dots) and select "Not Interested" or "Do Not Recommend Channel. " Hopefully that tells their algorithm to lighten up on the aggressive video recommendations for you.
Unfortunately, I am convinced those do nothing. I have tried many times. There is one channel I especially hate - supposedly dedicated to cycling, but it is in fact cycling-themed rage-bait - made up doping allegations in titles of most of the videos, throwing up emoticons, thumbnails with creepily distorted faces and syringes... I've clicked "do not recommend" many times, I have never watched any of those videos, now I simply close YouTube every time it pops up... yet, they still have not figured out that I do not want to see that.
This is basically what I was going to respond to this question. Tildes is not based on magical code. It’s based on magical people. By which I mean it’s users of course.
@Deimos has spent enough time on Reddit to understand how to culture a healthy community and has done precisely that with this site.
I wonder if the answer to some of the issues with sites like reddit is to have hard caps on the size of the user base, or at least the user base that any one user can interact with. I don't know what the right number is, a hundred thousand, a million, I'm not sure. I think there may be an ideal useful size for general discussion sites like tildes.
User base size, in terms of user experience, is a mixed bag. On the plus side, more users means more potential commenters and posters, more unique perspectives, etc. Larger user bases also allow for more niche communities. However, size has downsides as well. If any comment could potentially be seen by millions of a site's regular users, that potential starts attracting bad-faith actors. All sites of any size are targets of automated spam bots. But sites have to get sufficiently large before actual humans start using a site for nefarious purposes. You get white nationalists running elaborate influence operations trying to slowly and subtly introduce their ideas to the mainstream. You get companies creating fake post and comments about fictional events that never happened, all as a means of cheap advertisement. You get influencers using a site's larger user base as a tool to increase their own fame and wealth.
You don't get many con artists operating on small sites (beyond automated spam.) For example, consider someone writing up an elaborate fake sob story, posting it to social media, hoping to trick people into sending them money. In this day and age, people are on the alert for grifts. It's hard to write a fake but convincing sob story that will convince people to part with their hard-earned money. It takes a lot of time to get everything right, and to make sure you have your story down good enough that you can convincingly respond to those questioning the veracity of your plight. If a site only has a few thousand users, it's never going to be worth your time to run this scam. Few people ever willingly give money to people panhandling on the side of the road, let alone anonymous users doing so on social media. Instead, it's a numbers game. Spam bots can operate on sites of any size. But for the real dangerous stuff, scams run and scam comments written by actual human beings, you need a large user base for them to be viable.
And ultimately, even beyond bad faith actors, larger sizes inevitably start affecting the types of comments that rise to the top. As sites grow, users have to be ever more edgy and manipulative in order to have their comments rise even be visible. People ultimately come, or are at least supposed to come, to sites like tildes and reddit for conversation. They want to read what other humans wrote, occasionally create their own responses, and occasionally get replies. This is the point of a discussion site. But as a site's user base increases, if you want to keep having any kind of conversation, you need to work harder and harder to have it rise to visibility. Large sites effectively force you to use more cheap emotional appeals, rage-bait, etc. if you want to have any hope of participating in the conversation.
So there may very well be a sweet spot for discussion sites. A level where you have enough users to have a pretty diverse user base across a wide variety of interests, but not large enough that the place becomes dominated by bad-faith actors and toxic comment culture. Again, I'm not sure what that number is, but I would guess somewhere in the order of 100,000-1,000,000 active users.
So what happens when a site reaches a million users but more people still want to join? Perhaps discussion sites should take a queue from the techniques employed by MMO games. These games often will be organized around "servers" or similar, just multiple instances of the same game. For example, maybe when tildes gets big enough, there could be independent instances of tildes. Each are completely independent with their own groups, sub groups, tags, etc. And each user name is tied to a single instance of tildes. The million or so users in your tildes instance are your "discussion group." Anyone, logged in or not, can still see all comments and replies, but only people in your tildes instance will ever be able to respond to you, vote on your comments, etc. If you make a really profound comment, people can still share your comment to other tildes instances or other social media sites, but the only ones actually upvoting and replying will be those on your tildes instance. Each account is locked to a particular instance. Hell, you might even allow different people to sign up for the same username on different instances. On a different instance, I could sign up for the username raze2012, or you could register isleepinahammock. People in your own discussion community will be able to follow you and know you are posting something, but it makes it harder to build a name and fame off of your username and comment history. If your username is ownthelibs420, it's hard to attract followers and influence if there are many instances of the site you are on, and you can only ever comment on one. On a different instance, someone can register their own version of ownthelibs420. Also, you can't really try to draw in followers from elsewhere, as they'll be randomly assigned to a tildes instance when they register. Thus, it's a roll of the dice whether they'll ever be able to interact with you at all.
This would also make the site less about individual users. If ten friends all sign up for tildes, they'll just be randomly assigned to different instances. There's no guarantee they'll ever be able to respond to each other. This also makes brigading and influence operations more difficult. It's hard for a small group to coordinate to upvote each others' posts if you get randomly assigned to an instance of tildes.
I wonder if this is the best path forward for sites like tildes. Simply accept that there is a sweet spot in terms of the size of an online discussion site. Again, I don't know what that exact number is, but I would guess somewhere in the range of 100k-1M regular active users, the population of a medium-large sized city. This is big enough that all but the most niche of topics will have a viable community. At 100k users, a topic that only appeals to 0.1% of the user base will still have 100 people willing to participate in the discussion. It's large enough to have some pretty niche communities, but no so large that the worst aspects of sites like reddit start to bleed through.
What you're talking about is essentially the Fediverse. While it is true that federation allows for seeing content from and interacting with other servers, it's nowhere near as seamless not ubiquitous as Fediverse advocates claim. As a user, you really are limited to your server primarily with the occasional trip out to other servers. It is unlikely to get more cohesive as time goes on. If anything, the Fediverse will be more subdivided and siloed as time goes on due to the server costs limiting the size of any particular instance combined with warring factions blocking each other.
This hasn't been my experience at all. Now, I'm not a huge Fediverse user (I'm not really a huge anything user... ), but I've been using Mastodon and Lemmy for a little while now. My accounts are on a less-popular server, so nearly all of the content I follow/interact with is elsewhere. I mod a couple low-traffic Lemmy communities that exist on a different server than my home server.
Maybe my expectations are on the low side because I'm hardly a "power user", but I really haven't found my experience very limited at all. I don't want to sound like a shill here -- I don't really mean to advocate for one thing or another; I just wanted to chime in with a different view.
It's not quite seamless, but the vast majority of communities I follow on Lemmy are not local to my chosen instance, nor are the people I follow on Mastodon. Mastodon has some issues with search functionality, and Lemmy still feels very beta, but I don't feel limited to my chosen servers. Could you expand what you mean by that?
I haven't found reply notifications and similar to work very well cross instance. Additionally, you have the moderation problem where you can't really see the actual community, just a slice of it. So it's difficult to gather the vibe of remote communities.
Ah, I could totally see issues with the notifications. I'm not sure I follow regarding only seeing the a slice of the communities?
That's not a problem at all! Until your instance or one of the others defederates and you're now forcibly separated from the communities you had joined.
Every architecture has its own pros and cons, and I prefer the federated model to traditional centralized ones, but understand why someone might disagree. I do not think that was what merry-cherry was referring to, however.
well, it's not quite a fediverse either. Fediverse instances can talk to each other, and the goal here is to purposefully separate large communities for potential payoffs in privacy and civility.
It could be replicated in a fediverse instance, but I haven't seen anything like this as of yet. Especially since the Fediverse isn't large enough to try this yet.
The rage posts and sympathy bait stories are something I really don't miss - especially as so many of them are made up, and don't even stand up to minor scrutiny. There's a post/update going around the main page at the moment that's cartoonishly fake, but people lap it up because they want to feel righteous, to feel like their hate against a fictional person means something.
As soon as a sub's population increases, the quality goes down. It's part of the reason I'm really happy about how Tildes grows.
This will be noise considering the top post, please tag accordingly. I would still like to address your point of view.
I know a lot of people assume that such relationship stories on reddit are fake.
My own personal life experiences are worse than most of those stories. The instinct to dismiss such happenings as too horrible to be true - someone else would surely have done their job and fixed it if it was... Is exactly how my life experiences ended up as bad as they did.
Because the really illogical, malicious people in this world will cut off their own nose just to spite their face. In real life terms that means they will say and do things to others just to see them hurt, even if they also suffer some kind of social, interpersonal, or tangible loss themselves (money, items, social standing, whatever).
That kind of behaviour is so illogical to most people that it is very hard to believe there isn't at the very least some bad behaviour coming from the impacted party/victim as well.
They also tend to avoid doing their job if they are responsible for acting. Police,
healthcare workers, teachers, HR dept, etc. Even though the course of action should be obvious. Something about the situation is so off that it triggers an instinct to just back away.
This in turn make the victims full of doubt as to how much they're exaggerating or being overly sensitive since other people aren't doing anything to correct the situation. Despite the boss, partner, coworker, neighbour, whomever it may be is acting blatantly antagonistic.
10-15 years ago I would likely assume such stories are mostly fake.
These days I don't think they are. Some, sure, but not most. The very nature of the harmful person that puts harm over everything. Even over more logical, more typical self serving interests means the victims will often seek out random outside perspectives due to sheer desperation.
This is one of my passions in life. Unasked for, but still. The very nature of such situations means it self perpetuates. Very few can imagine it to actually be what it seems like. It's too illogical, too improbable. So they don't do anything. The situation then continues.
I am very grateful for the people that find the energy to respond to such stories with sensibility.
People like that in online forums helped me realise what was what, and ultimately helped me seek outside professional help. I
It helped me finding words and phrases to use when approaching the relevant professionals or departments. Descriptions that cut through the chaos, and adressed the very core issues in a way that didn't have me delve too much into the illogical, exhausting, detailed mess that made people disgusted with the whole thing to the point of not helping when they should.
It took years, but I got away from situations both in my personal and professional life that would absolutely be flagged as too unrealistic if written down like in those subreddits.
Engaging in stories like that isn't something most emotionally healthy people want to do, and probably shouldn't either.
But that's not the same as them being mostly fake.
Unfortunately.
All I would ask is for people to not dismiss such situations as unrealistic.
I have found it immensely healing that most people don't even realise such things are going on!
Once someone manages to remove themselves from such situations, being able to start interacting with healthier people that don't even know such things are happening is a way to attain much needed, healthy relationships. Platonic, professional, and romantic.
Instead of dismissing it as unrealistic, maybe just shrug and say it shouldn't be like that before moving on? A small difference to most people, but a strong signal to those in situations like that.
Your post isn't noise, and I appreciate you taking the time to respond.
I admit, assuming that people are lying on the internet is a cynical and selfish reaction. I've come across many people in my years that have ended up lying about pretty major things, things that I trusted them about. I struggle to get emotionally invested in people because I've been burnt so many times in the past.
And that's what these posters want - whether being truthful or lying, they want you to be emotionally invested in their story. I just don't have the mental energy to do it nowadays. I'm too tired, depressed, and burnt out.
I agree with you that forums can help people, if they're set up to do so properly. I honestly wish I'd had that kind of place to go when I was going through my worst times. It can be good to ask questions, get advice and support, and signposting to further information or professional help.
My issue is that a lot of the stories on reddit don't want that. Getting into specifics, this post was in TrueOffMyChest - so they aren't seeking help or opinions, or they'd have posted in a legal advice, relationship advice, or AITH sub. They're just there to have a vent. Everyone needs a vent from time to time, but with stuff like this, you're just spreading negative energy and upset to thousands, if not millions of people.
The people responding and upvoting those responses are also unhealthy - they're not helping, they're not offering any advice that isn't blindingly obvious in a situation like this. It's all "Oh, if it was me I'd have done XYZ", or insults towards the antagonist, which then just devolves into people patting each other on the back and agreeing how terrible this person must be, and sympathy for the poster. There's nobody helping, just people getting a good old torch-and-pitchfork mob together to feel good about themselves. They're not doing anything. They're just blasting emotion into the void.
And that's why fake posts get me really upset, because they're emotionally manipulating people so the poster can get some attention. A ton of red flags went off with the one I specifically mentioned, and I still believe it to be fake - including the very quick update to garner yet more points and sympathy. People just seem unable - or unwilling - to think critically and notice details that don't add up. It has all the hallmarks of a new fiction writer.
I should clarify, I try not to engage with posts like that. I don't seek them out, or reply to them. But with reddit's nosedive in quality, more and more show up on the main feed, and I do end up clicking on some of them out of habit.
I just think that if people want help, reddit isn't the place to go. Reddit is where people go for attention and validation, and liars are taking advantage of that.
I agree that interacting in any way with such posts isn't something to do unless you're overflowing with surpluss mental energy to spare. Avoiding such drama alltogether is best, and also the typical thing to do for most people.
Drama like that creates it's own "forcefield" that pushes "normal" people away. I have been on both sides of it. While it sucks that there aren't more "normal" people to align with when you are in the thick of it, it really isn't a state of being that many people willingly stay around for.
I will disagree that Reddit isn't the place to go for that very reason. Being too open about these issues causes normal people that would otherwise interact with you to avoid you. Throwing the frustration and confusion into the void is better. Because you don't taint yourself in the eyes of others around you.
I was never the instigator or power-holder in the situations I experienced, but for normal, emotionally healthy people that doesn't matter. That kind of stuff is unpleasant to the core. I am not trying to victim shame, it is just a fact of life that as a victim of interpersonal abuse of some kind, it's hard to find help due to the very reason you needing help will make others stay away. Extremely frustrating and also re-traumatising at times.
Even with all my experience of not being helped when things might have been solved sooner if others stepped in, I still understand why people don't. I will always reccommend that you stay away unless you feel particularly overflowing with love for life. For lack of a better way to describe it.
Even staying away from beinbg exposed to it through random reddit posts. It is soul sucking even then.
As far as frequent updates... Yeah, that is also a particular trait of some abusers. They really do have a way to escalate situations very quickly.
It sucks to be on the victim side of it, as it really destroys your ability to take a deep breath and take things one issue at a time. You don't get that choice. It's like predators seeing their prey weaken, they go ALL IN then. And it makes other people utterly confused and exhausted. As a victim you often don't have the privelege of calming down the escalation.
As much as I would like for the outside world to always step in and prevent such situations from happening, the healthy thing to do is avoid the entire thing and anyone that is attracted to the drama could do well by asking themselves why.
It's a real catch-22 for those seeking to get away from shitty situations, as not saying anything makes others less likely to avoid you, but you won't get help if nobody knows you need it.
I very much appreciate the more measured discussion and exchanges of opinions here on Tildes when it comes to anything emotionally charged like this. I've had such interactions on Reddit as well, but much more seldom.
At the end of the day, making sure to keep yourself healthy by avoiding that kind of stuff makes you actually more able to help if the day comes that someone close to you has something bad going on. I 100% believe that. So I support you staying away, blocking subreddits etc to not have to even see anything to begin with.
Agree, small, not popular communities on reddit is just like that. Immediately when community become popular it become flooded with easy and quick to judge people that will downvote and harras anyone which view is different from popular narrative. I saw it with community about bearded dragons, aquarium community, expirienced developers community..
I still remember literall harrasment of one the proffesional hobbiest because his aquarium look too small on photos. Configuration of aquarium was not usual, usually aquariums are hight but this one is more wide, and looks smaller on the photos, so he was downvoted to oblivion, called murderer, etc. etc.
I actually feel the opposite. In theory I like the lack of a downvote option; in reality it means that users who are aggressive towards others go pretty much unchecked. The vote system ends up being almost entirely pointless when its only real purpose is to elevate comments and there usually isn't enough activity for that to be necessary anyway.
I really liked Tildes at first (having come from the reddit shutdown) but the more I use it, the more I see this kind of behavior pop up. It isn't people threatening others or any extremely concerning behavior like that, but rather users eager to shout others down.
I find that instead of using Tildes more, I've been using it less, and have severely reduced my reddit usage with no real need to replace much of it.
Most of the groups here are more on the chill side but I find the recently added life.men and life.women are both really unpalatable to me.
As a quick aside, have you decided to unsubscribe from those groups, and has that improved things on your end?
I have but it isn't like those users frequent only those groups. It's the same smaller group of users across the whole site.
Some Lemmy instances are seemingly have trouble like this too. Perhaps moreso. There are instances spun up by users who were unhappy with X Y Z kind of discourse on reddit and decided to create their own so they can control the conversation in a way that pleases them. I'll use Beehaw as an example -- its claimed goal is to create a safe and diverse community (not a bad goal at all) but that's accomplished by sanitizing + excluding any train of thought that doesn't seem to fit the norm there. I don't usually buy into the "Liberal echo chamber" thing but this example is the kind of place where you can really see it happening because the space is so new to so many users and the community is currently being built at this time. And while I don't begrudge particular groups of people their own spaces, it seems disingenuous to say "this is an inclusive space" and then nudge people out because they don't fit in with the hivemind (which... makes the name Beehaw a little ironic). I don't think it helps the people there, either, but perhaps they feel differently (I don't hop on there constantly but when I do I see so many posts full of self-loathing and circular thinking that it just makes me sad).
This has been both the hardest adjustment for me to make, and the one I appreciate the most. I first became aware of Tildes a couple of years ago, and my initial reaction was "no thanks, it's not active enough." I only joined just ahead of the Reddit API fiasco, but I was honestly eager for a change anyway by that point.
But I was judging "active enough" by the standards of Reddit and Twitter, which at the time were my main (sole, rather) sources of consuming the Internet. Basically endless content, and definitely quantity over quality. Same thing many of us came here to get away from, but at the time I wasn't ready--I felt like stepping away from the firehose for any amount of time meant I was "gonna miss something important".
Tildes is plenty active if you compare it to poking around the Internet between, say, 2003-2007--that is, post-mainstream adoption of the web, pre-launch of the iPhone, which I'd argue put us where we are now. It's fine to read and participate with some forum content or what have you and say "that's enough". It's alright to go outside at some point. You're not really going to miss anything.
It's only been a short time but I find "smaller" communities like Tildes and Bluesky preferable...hell, almost nostalgic. I still technically have my Reddit and Twitter accounts active but I barely use them at all now and will likely delete soon.
I don't think a ton of activity is a must but I have to disagree here. I used to frequent a lot of forums and many sizable ones had constant activity in some form. Meanwhile, if I hop onto even some of the more active groups on Tildes they sometimes don't get more than a couple new posts a day with a handful of comments.
I frequented Weezer forums during that timeframe that had more posts/comments in a day than Tildes has in a week.
I can't even tell you how many times I started a comment on Reddit, got like 10 mins of editing and typing done and just said "no". It just wasn't worth it to post in almost any of the large subs just for what you said, someone is going to disagree with you and be an absolute prick about it.
I can't get enough of that not happening on Tildes.
I still think Reddit has some niche communities that probably can't be emulated on Tildes due to how the website works. As someone who is pro capitalism it's hard to find groups that agree with this, and as someone who is a professional in Healthcare it's pretty clear we don't have experts here to interact with.
This is very interesting to me and I thank you for sharing it.
I feel like certainly most people are in favour. It is hard to find thoughtful groups looking to modify or temper the capitalistic society we live in. I'm really surprised that you find the opposite!
So again, thanks for sharing. Following the charitable view we are all on board here with, I wonder at your choice of "pro-capitalism" as a phrase. I'm not sure what that means, but if this were reddit I would assume the worst. Obviously I am not doing that here. If you feel like expanding on that thought, I'm all ears!
There's only a certain stable of "breadtube" (and I think the label is falling off a bit anyway) I really follow these days anymore and they're mostly the folks who produce maybe a big video once every month or two and imo have taken a lot more time in building their argument. It isn't uncommon that they'll quote from books they ended up reading to prepare for the video and you'll find a bibliography in the description. I find the faster more prolific creators end up being insufferable or lazy even if I theoretically agree with whatever point they're making.
The reason I bring up "speed" is a lot of online discourse moves at lightning speeds with conversations beginning and ending in just a few hours with hundreds of participants. There's little room to be all nuanced and "capitalism has created the largest prosperity the Earth has ever seen, but let me pick apart some negative aspect of it from a leftist perspective."
The folks who give either a full throated endorsement or diatribe is going to have a lot more "success" in the conversation. How incredibly polarized (and extreme) rightwing and leftwing Twitter became is probably the poster child example of this phenomenon, but other social media is certainly susceptible to it.
If you don't mind me asking, what about it was anxiety-inducing for you? If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine, obviously.
I never used social media much, except for Hacker News (for years) and now Tildes (since very recently). When the war in Ukraine started, I started using Twitter, but I stopped after a few months because it felt like a mix of useful info with anger-inducing crap, and it seemed the added informational value was not worth the emotional price. When I read posts like yours, I wonder what I am getting myself into.
So, I'm an autist and have been treated for cptsd. This is obviously one thing that can cause it.
However, if I had to pinpoint a specific thing, it's more difficult. Fearing negativity over a comment, doomer news, and more can all cause those but it feels very different here on Tildes. Even if, say, something about climate change pops up.
For me, it feels more like a difference in atmosphere. That's rather vague and abstract but it's the only way I can explain it.
Thank you.
This reminded me of something that I've forgotten - a few times, I received a comment or even a personal message that was clearly intentionally designed to be extremely negative - someone unknown spouting hate at me personally, unrelated to the topic that was discussed. That did make me feel a bit uneasy. I can imagine this could be anxiety-inducing if I were exposed often enough.
I think I was habitually a bit "attacky" on a comment I made at least once on Tildes, because I was used to Reddit. I asked some questions in a matter that was less curious and more self-righteous. I remember that feeling of dread that's like "oh now I've done it and I'm going to get attacked back, I regret my post." I was so surprised when I wasn't attacked back at all; the other users nicely clarified their viewpoints and I then thanked them for doing so and hopefully I acknowledged that it wasn't right of me to come off so assumptive in the beginning.
I enjoy participating on Tildes. It feels much nicer than Reddit.
Well, in the US we have a pretty distinguished history of putting the onus of change on the disadvantaged (school shootings? Bulletproof backpacks! Desegregate public pools? Close the pools!), so my bet is it just becomes a crippling problem for some people that we collectively ignore.
I don't know how we're supposed to solve any social woes if everything has to generate money or IPO buzz to be worth doing.
I feel like there's a lot of self-congratulating on this platform and a lot more reverence to moderation than i am comfortable with. There's also an aversion to controversy which i think creates an echo chamber and prevents effective dialogue. This is all just personal preference of course and users have to decide if they are willing to accept it for themselves.
That's probably true. And I agree that there's more of this than there probably should be. This is just another internet forum and, to be blunt, it's not like any of us made this forum. We just found it and signed up. We can't really congratulate ourselves for that. We also can't congratulate ourselves for not being dicks while we're here; that should be a basic expectation of internet discourse.
As you say, this is always going to be a subjective matter.
Different internet forums take different approaches to moderation, from totally hands-off to extremely hands-on - and each forum will tend to attract people who agree with its approach to moderation. So, Tildes, with its interventionist pro-moderation founder/creator, will attract a pro-moderation crowd. People who prefer hands-off minimalist moderation or no moderation at all are unlikely to find Tildes appealing, so they're not likely to be here.
Some anti-moderationists have signed up here, either through ignorance, or because they wanted to change the place, but they've usually ended up moving on, one way or another. Tildes just doesn't suit them. And that's fine. It doesn't have to. This round hole suits round pegs, and there are square holes out there for square pegs.
It's like walking into a book shop and pointing out that everyone in there seems to like reading. Well... yes. That's only to be expected.
You might be interested in reading Deimos' thoughts on echo chambers:
I agree with most of your comment heh -- echo echo echo echo
But I think you're doing the users too little credit. Like, yeah, this is just an internet forum, so not like something that important in the grand scheme, but the platform would be an empty site without the users. So those commenting, posting things, voting, etc... are adding lots of value to the place.
And also, to put on my sociology hat. The pretty common meta discussion that happens on ~tildes is a kind of performative ritual to affirm the etiquette and expectations here. New users walk in and see old the users explaining what they like to see and hopefully the newbies emulate it. This the same kind of discussion used to be common on reddit back when reddiquette was a thing and people were somewhat self-policing about it. Speaking of which I found this amusing post from way back when lamenting its death:
There does seem to be a kind of "tildiquette" around here at least for now.
Yeah, I get it. These posts help to acculturate the newbies. But these posts are usually by the newcomers, rather than by the oldtimers. "Oh My God. I found this great site, and ain't I great, and aren't we all great, for being here?" There is quite a bit of self-congratulatory back-slapping around here. [EDIT: Sometimes by people who haven't been around long enough to do anything to be congratulated for.] (And maybe I'm not immune from this. But... #NotLikeOtherTilders!) It does get a bit much sometimes.
People were lamenting the death of reddiquette 11 years ago? I was sure it lasted much later than that. Oh well. There's always an old guard that's lamenting the death of something from the old days, even if it's not dead yet. And then a year later, there's another generation of old guards lamenting the death of something else that's not dead. And so on. To recycle something I wrote here a couple of days ago: "Every generation discovers a version of Reddit/Tildes at a single point of time, and they automatically consider that particular version to be the One And Only True Reddit/Tildes. Changes made 12 months before they arrived are part of this One And Only True Reddit/Tildes, while changes made 12 months after they arrived are an obvious degradation of the website."
"It's like walking into a book shop and pointing out that everyone in there seems to like reading. Well... yes. That's only to be expected."
I would describe it more like walking into a bookshop and trying to talk about certain genres of books only to be told that those genres are too controversial or that those genres have already been deemed worthless to talk about. I think there is worthwhile discussion that is lost with this approach and that minds could be changed and learning could take place otherwise. I recognize that Deimos feels differently and im okay with that. As we've said, its up to individual users to decide if they will accept the way tildes is moderated.
I feel like my personal philosophy is more comfortable with conflict and controversy and i realize that a lot of people do not feel the same way.
If conflict is is good faith, then it can be helpful. In moderation. Sometimes. For example, if the hypothetical "we" are investigating a scientific truth, and are hashing out data and theories to find accurate truth, sure some head-to-head "conflict" can be beneficial to the process of arriving at that truth.
But what usually happens is people just scream. They treat conflict as "a game", and one they're going to win. So they raise their voice (online represented by aggressive and dismissive communication), raise strawmen, redefine terms, distract with process and other debating tactics, all in an effort to throw "their opponent(s)" off guard and off topic and off message. Pushing people to emotion, which shatters any attempts at conversation.
After all, how many Internet conversational threads go something like this:
And then it devolves further into yet more accusations, this time about whether or not people are mad, if the responses and emotional layers were justified or relevant, and on and on and on. Shit that has nothing to do with whatever might have been (briefly) talked about before Rob the asshole showed up with his aggression just to be funny. Or to change the subject. Or to ensure his opponents cleared out so he could preach his version unopposed.
Conflict, especially over the internet where everyone's a tough guy, is just a complete waste of time. I see so many threads online where people just repeat themselves at each other, progressively adding more and more emotion. And often where one (usually both, but sometimes one of them is trying for a time to be an adult) utterly ignores any points or data brought up in their rush to repeat their prior comments.
Not restating their position, or reframing it, or incorporating the ongoing conversation in a way that indicates their ideas and views might be somewhat shifted or informed by the thread of communication. Just raising the volume and gunning for "that win" where the other person gives up, leaving the aggressive conflict person with the ability to post a couple of hours later "lol, they couldn't take the heat or my sick factz."
There's something to be said for decorum. I've seen video from British Parliament sessions sometimes, where MPs from opposing sides are hopping up from their seat to speak and plunking themselves back down in it when it's someone else's turn (sometimes in rapid fire progression) whilst being sure to lace their comments with "as the Right Honorable member" or "as the good gentle might recall" and so on.
Is that silly? Sure, sort of. Is it logical? Not necessarily ... until you consider human emotion and the importance humans place on it. Then, watching two diametrically opposed legislators argue with tense voices but very polite words becomes quite logical and very serious. If nothing else, it keeps the bullshit they'll fling at each other through quotes in the paper from press conferences off the floor of what's supposed to be a civilized place of serious discourse.
Everything on the Internet has become so casual to the point of incoherence sometimes. And conflict through a screen, with people who feel safe hiding behind it, is just tiring and boring. At least in real life, if someone decides to argue, they've had to pass a dice check for something along the lines of "is this important enough to me to be an ass about it?"
Of course too many people these days are willing to be assholes, but that's at least partially a function of how economically stressed we all increasingly are. When your life is tight, you have a harder time not fighting any battle you might think you can win. On the Internet, the investment to be an asshole is so low a lot of people decide to go all in.
It's tiring, and boring. Moderation and civility are welcome. After all, if I wanted to be flamed and doxxed and dragged through the mud for every thought I put online that didn't hew to the groupthink partyline, I'd be on fucking Twitter. Or Reddit for that matter.
This is really well said and explained. I’ve seen tonnes of respectful disagreement on tildes, but not much disrespectful conflict. It’s a little baffling to me why someone would want the latter, but like you say there are plenty of other places for that. Personally, and I expect I speak for a lot of other users, it’s the main plus point of being here.
You don't like the moderation style around here. That's fine. There are plenty of other sites out there with moderation styles that will suit you better.
Even with my penchant for being argumentative and contrary, I realise there are limits. We don't want every single thread to devolve into flame wars. As a moderator who's had to mop up the blood from flame wars (particularly political ones!), it gets tiresome. And it encourages nastiness. People can't seem to discuss political issues calmly and civilly. It almost always devolves into insults, name-calling, and sometimes even hate speech. That's not the way to encourage nice people to join a website. Nice people see that shit and nope right out of there. And then all you're left with are the rude arseholes.
I think these are two different things: what are you comfortable posting, and what kinds of discussions are you comfortable with?
I’m hesitant to share some links because I think they will be “difficult reading” for some Tildes users. That is, people will react badly to them, and the discussion will be terrible.
I’ve occasionally been successful in posting something I thought was difficult reading, but it actually worked out well. Maybe it was because I was wary and wrote a comment putting it into context, pointing out that some things about the article are problematic? Or maybe it was just chance.
It would be nice if I could be less wary. But that’s different from being happy when a discussion goes bad.
If I want to avoid bad discussions, I have to accept that the range of discussion is somewhat limited by our collective abilities to handle it. There are “hot topics” that rarely or never work. If they do work then it will likely be because the person who started the topic did a good job of setting up the discussion. This isn’t just moderation. It’s more like being a good host.
This is putting the quality of discussion first. I don’t always do a good job of it, but I think that’s the way to go.
Sure, but please don't forget that tildes has been around for 5 years so there's been lots of time to experiment with allowing those discussions to happen. And at some point you just have to accept that there are some hot button topics that are important, that do have the possibility for reasonable discussion, but which always turn out to be a massive shit show with many comments getting deleted.
If you can think of a way of allowing those discussions that hasn't been tried post the idea in ~tildes which is where all the meta discussion happens.
Yeah. I've found that people were quick to congratulate themselves for being here but honestly, I've been noticing that it still suffers from the same thing that happens everywhere online.
People do get heated in political threads, not really listening to each other. Using Examplary as a super agree label. There have been several posts where I've read the article only to notice that the top comments haven't and have just been making assumptions based on the headline. People wanting to silence the UFO hearing without taking into account why there might be merit for discussion.
There was also someone who posted a really long video and the comments shat on the idea of the video without actually watching it and then tried to justify why it was okay to judge it without watching. There were people that did watch it though and that was nice.
I'm not saying Tildes is bad. It is definite calmer and even within all that, I've had people change their views and admit to their own faults. I've also passed judgement only to see a comment making me question my own reaction to things. Which is a big positive for me.
So I do like the place and am more comfortable here. I like walls of text.
But what bothers me is the self-congratulatory behavior that happens without acknowledging that Tildes has the same problems as everywhere else. And I think it's okay to acknowledge that Tildes isn't exempt from such things.
We're only human. We can only try to not let that run us.
Yeah, I see (and am guilty of) this. I think partly people want to be on a platform that succeeds so cheerleading it (while it is still small) becomes a natural response.
As far as modding is concerned, I think of this place like Deimos's coffee shop. He runs the place, so he gets to make the rules. As long as people are comfortable with that, it's a nice place to hang out. I do like the "everybody participates in modding" philosophy that is baked into the docs but isn't quite developed or flushed out yet. I hope that becomes more apparent in the future, which it would be as the site grows and more people will need to pitch in to moderation.
Every platform that I have experienced is self-congratulatory to some extent. I'm on kbin and Lemmy, and occasionally on Squabbles (now called Squabblr). It's easy to find posts or comments about how great X platform is because Y, how much better we are than those others. I shrug it off as a little but of insecurity coming from the person doing the cheerleading.
I've stopped assuming the worst about other users. I no longer anticipate people being seemingly unable to read and therefore coming to the most bizarre interpretations of my comment. Now I write comments assuming people here will be able to understand them, without me clarifying endlessly and simplifying things excessively.
I don't worry nearly as much about people who are rude to me anymore. Whenever someone has been genuinely an asshole to me here, or is spreading awful, hateful, incorrect information, they have been promptly banned or had comments deleted. (Interestingly enough, I've never even used the Malicious label, despite all banned users complaining that everyone here just "reports anything they don't like." Sorry rude people, but you kinda tell on yourself just by acting the way you do, I haven't needed to tell on you yet.) The result of all this is that I waste no time or energy trying to prove that anyone is wrong, convince anyone of anything, or fight pointlessly against something I disagree with. I just click away now, because if that person is truly inappropriate or dangerously wrong about what they're saying, it will be taken care of in time.
I am more likely to be polite and kind to others because I know we are likely to interact again in this small space, and I want us both to be able to enjoy it. Also, it's a hell of a lot easier to be nice when you're not surrounded by rude, irritating people. Pretty much just comes naturally.
I strongly agree with your first point! It's really nice that the average commenter on Tildes seems to assume good faith and even follow the principle of charity.
While I don't mind people pointing out grammar or spelling mistakes, I appreciate that most replies focus on the intent of a comment rather than surface level errors. I mistakenly called the fediverse the metaverse in a comment, yet the replies still focused on the main idea of my comment instead of dogpiling me for using the wrong word!
I've noticed that too! People here don't seem to enjoy correcting others just for the sake of it. So refreshing.
It's actually funny - the people that complained on Reddit about this place is specifically why I then sought it out. A place where you can't just be rude nor spam low effort comments? Yes please.
Like you said, they're just telling on themselves. And advertising what community to join that will actively reject people like them.
Exactly like that old Alamo Drafthouse commercial where it was nothing but a customer calling in complaining that they were kicked out for being on their phone during a movie. All the person did was help advertise that the kind of people like them aren't going to be there.
Same for me, I saw people complaining about Tildes on /r/redditalternatives and their comments were actually more informative than people saying Tildes was a good site, haha. Those comments smelled of "free speech is more important than anything" and while that's great for those people, it's somewhat the opposite of what I believe (particularly for casual online forums, I'm not really talking about the First Amendment.) So I figured I would probably like it here.
It's not that I would enjoy every site with a "benevolent dictator" or moderation like this, as it's certainly a difficult balance to pull off, but it just turns out to be executed quite well here.
Yes, on reddit, a very common conversation goes like this:
Same with those bizarre conversations. On reddit, I have had so many conversations where the end result--after several comments where the other guy is arguing with me--is that the other guy finally reads one of my comments and realizes that I've been saying the same thing as him the whole time. Luckily, on Tildes I can actually write a long comment that expresses what I think, and even though I don't expect people to read every single word, I can expect that they will attempt to understand me before responding.
Along the same lines, I have been banned multiple times from subreddits for agreeing with mods. They just didn't have the patience to read past the first few words and banned me.
Yes! This is exactly what I mean.
And I have seen the exact scenario you described first (people assuming you're disagreeing with them when really you're adding to their point,) so many times on reddit that I became trained to always start writing those comments with "Yes, and..." or "Agreed, and..." Basically to spoon-feed my opinions to people as blatantly as I can. It was exhausting and I don't miss it one bit.
Those arguments are so stupid, and I know I've been on both sides of them (usually because I've come to assume that no one is actually reading my comments before reading them).
Please don't crucify me for not starting my comment with "yes!"
One difference is that I'm not even surprised to vote on your comment and then read the rest of the comment only to find that I was one of the people you're talking about. You get to recognize people here, but not everyone, which is a unique experience for me compared to reddit or forums that I used before reddit.
Here is the comment about Mars in case anyone is wondering.
Haha, I'm glad you liked my post about Venus so much.
I didn't have to de-reddit when I started using Tildes, because I was Tildesing before Tildes existed. The subreddits I subscribed to, and especially the subreddits I moderated, were like Tildes: discussion over memes, civility over rudeness, thoughtfulness over shallowness. That's been my style since I signed up to Reddit 12 years ago. I didn't change it on Reddit, and I haven't changed it here.
So, I never did these things on Reddit:
Edited a post down to three dot points so it will be read. I wrote long comments and long posts (where that was appropriate).
Instinctively looked for a downvote button when something is incorrect. I always knew what the downvote button was for - and what it was not for.
Deleted comments/post history. If I posted it, I stood by it. I did, however, sometimes self-censor and not post things - especially information that might personally identify me. But I do that here on Tildes, too.
Regarding this point:
Ah... no, it doesn't. You can just generate your own invite code and invite yourself (assuming you've been around long enough to get one of the invite-code top-ups that Deimos distributes to all users - the last one being one month ago). In fact, the Tildes Code of Conduct specifically says that "you may register and use multiple Tildes accounts", as long as you don't use your alt accounts for nefarious purposes.
By the way...
Yes, it is. You can search on Tildes via Google and probably other search engines.
As for your final point...
This might be the main one I agree with you about. Regardless of whether people on Tildes are older (on average), than people on Reddit, they're certainly more mature, which gives a sense that Tilders are older (on average) than Redditors.
One thing I do do on Tildes, particularly since I started being more active here again in the past couple of months, is make more of an effort to be less blunt, direct, and argumentative than I usually would tend to be. In real life, I'm extremely blunt, but people can see me and hear me and recognise there's no ill-intent or aggression; I'm just very direct. However, that doesn't translate well to the internet when I'm restricted to only text. I get away with this bluntness on Reddit, but I have been practically lynched for it on Tildes numerous times. There was a time, back in the very early days of Tildes, when Deimos told me I was attracting more 'Malice' labels on my comments than any other user.
So, I'm putting extra effort into making sure my tone doesn't come across as combative - with varying degrees of success. ;)
You mostly saved me a comment, but I definitely don't agree with this:
Downvotes are for people not contributing to a conversation. In my opinion, people authoritatively stating incorrect facts are detracting from the conversation.
I had a bit more typed out, but I think that summarizes it all well enough.
From the rediquette, which nobody reads anymore:
Consider this from a different perspective. You believe something is incorrect. You downvote, you don't say anything else. Did anyone learn anything? Was this interaction constructive at all?
Assuming good faith, fhe person you downvoted doesn't know why you did so. They received no information that explains why their comment is wrong. They'll go on believing, and saying, the same thing.
Worse, there's a chance that you are wrong and they are right, but since you didn't join the discussion you didn't have the oportunity to learn anything, either. I don't know you, and maybe you're incredibly wise and knowledgeable, but frankly a lot of people on reddit have a lot to learn about at least some of the subjects they like to discuss.
Sure, there's a threshold below which you can assume bad faith or otherwise have reason to believe replying to someone would be a waste of time - that's true on Tildes, too. But otherwise, the truth is that the symmetry of upvotes and downvotes on reddit itself detracts from constructive conversations. Even before I joined Tildes I've always believed that, by default, you should explain why someone is wrong or upvote someone else's explanation/response in these situations.
If reddit has broken you and you are instinctively anxious about being the one posting the reply (because it will expose your username and allow the person to keep talking to you), just remember that at least on Tildes you always have the option to abandon the conversation. It's a moderated space, there are no downvotes and no karma, nothing will happen to you in retaliation. Your perspective will remain out there for others to read and learn from.
What made you think I just downvote without commenting? I'm trying to be assertive rather than aggressive with this, but I don't really appreciate being admonished to assume good faith in a comment that's making negative (maybe neutral) assumptions about me.
I think by "you" they meant the general "you" and not you personally
I appreciate this approach. I feel like a discussion is more than just a collection of independent posts. It is something that we are building together. People removing their posts feel like "I don't like this building anymore so I will take my bricks away" - that does not feel fair to the others that still use that building.
I agree with this. I try to not delete my posts, even if I'm embarrassed by them later. The most I'll do is use the "strike through" effect, so it's still technically readable and conveys I don't agree with what I wrote previously anymore, and/or I'll append an edit to the end of the comment explaining my new viewpoint.
What changed massively for me is that I now spend 80% of my time lurking, instead of just posting whatever I felt like under every second post. Posts here are just way more interesting and the people here feel a lot more genuine and knowledgable, so I often don't feel like adding to the discussion - since there's an actual discussion going on, and not just mainly "who's writing the funniest quip"
When I first joined Reddit I was amazed by how funny people were. I assumed it was because only the funniest people were upvoted. Like there was some awesome crowdsourcing of the funniest content possible.
Then after a few months I noticed it was the same jokes over and over again, often just a Simpsons or LOTR quote. That gets old. Also, somehow a very large portion of the top comments have the same “voice”. I’m not sure but I think the site molds people into a certain personality after a while.
The biggest change I have noticed is that I am not constantly scrolling, looking for new things. If I have time to sit down and read, I check out the front page, sorted by activity, just so I see where people are talking. I poke around, look for something interesting/new, then I'm done. I don't sit on my phone for hours looking for content. If I don't see something interesting to engage in, I just leave the page.
I only delve into the deeper content when I feel I have the time or desire to learn about or discuss something specific. I find I now have a lot more free time and I have picked up a lot of my old hobbies. I also feel a lot less anxiety, which seems to given me some more clarity into life.
Overall, this has been great, learning how to not Reddit.
I've tried to quit Reddit several times now. The first few times it was simply due to toxicity and how annoyed I tend to get with the community. I always end up coming back to "doom scroll" because of the habit of pulling out my phone when I'm bored.
The last time I quit, I had finally realized that the app was preventing me from doing anything even mildly productive. There were loads of other things I could be reading other than memes and annoying discussions. I managed it for a couple weeks. Reading webcomics and articles or books. I found myself convincing myself that it was ok to scroll a little bit and that eventually snowballed into old habits.
Really my "de-Redditing" journey consists of finding other ways to occupy my time and learn that I can occupy my time in more meaningful ways. Even if it's just to waste 30 minutes, I can find something more productive than melting my mind into Reddit. Tildes is really just another major step in that journey as it's something I've been looking for, for a long time. I've really missed this style of forum. A style of forum with a new twist that really seems to care about how the community grows.
That's exactly how I feel.
What I find interesting is that when I first came here, I was thinking "boy, this really how reddit used to be ten years ago". And after a few days of coming every few hours, refreshing, looking for the new stuff and that dopamine hit, I realized that to me it isn't what reddit used to be.
To me, this is a community of people who seem to genuinely care about the site, the content, and the other members of the community. I think that is how reddit used to feel and how I felt about it. I believe over time, it evolved into just another social media platform, married with a deep-rooted forum.
As I get older, I find that I am coming to terms with things ending more. Shows that I like, movie franchises, book series, and now even internet content. I am finding that prolonging the life of something beyond the reasons I sought it out only makes for me to become more disillusioned.
For me, reddit has been sunset, and that's okay. I don't need something to 'be the new reddit'. I need to find a new outlet for my desire to be part of a community. And honestly, in the last month, I have found it in more than the internet. I have found I am less engaged online and moreso in the real world, which I am finding to be truly wonderful.
I still get to come here and talk to people, see their insights, hear their stories, but then I know when it's time to leave and I am comfortable doing it.
I didn’t find a better place to post this, but I’ve noticed an unfortunate increase in the level of passive aggressiveness in comments here recently which I think is semi-related to bringing over old tendencies. I’ve in particular noticed an uptick in comments that include implications that another poster “couldn’t seriously believe” something, or is in some other way being disingenuous in their comment. I’m probably guilty of it too. This type of thing really changes the tenor of a conversation and has increasingly made me less likely to engage.
This type of shade is obviously better than outright vitriol or mockery that you see on other platforms, but it would be a shame if people are trading one type of bad commenting habit for another.
I’m probably being a bit sensitive because I happened to interact with a number of these in short succession, and to some extent it’s probably unavoidable when you have thousands of people in one space.
More or less, yes. I’ve noticed people casting others’ positions as positions that beggar belief. Sometimes they’re not even that wild of positions too.
I have seen more experienced Tildes users comment about how they had to detoxify their habbits when first leaving reddit. I do think the structure and the exemplary tag in particular provide some incentive for being better. I have hope that things get better with time.
I joined only near the beginning of the latest influx, and already in that short time I’ve seen the exemplary label start to be used as more of a “I super agree with this point” instead of “this is a really valuable contribution/this is factually correct”. I’ve seen it used for statements which I know are incorrect, or which assume something to be true which is only opinion, or which are sort of inflammatory and part of an argument. I hope it comes back to the original intention because I agree with you that it’s a good incentive! But currently I’m not sure it’s always working as designed
Not sure if you saw it, but Deimos asked people to message him with examples if we saw misuse of the exemplary tag. I do believe the site design and community will shape our behavior in good ways, but removing the label privilege from people who don't play nice is also part of the strategy.
Oh, I did miss that, thanks! I was wondering if I should do something like that and then wasn’t sure if I was sort of telling tales. Especially being new myself. I’ll remember this if I see it happen again
It's a judgement call imho. I wouldn't do it casually but sometimes it's called for imho.
Yeah I’d only report if it were particularly egregious I think. It would be nice to see a little reminder in the exemplary pop up of the intended use, but I’m not sure it’s necessary to change things until and unless it becomes a bigger problem
I have found Deimos very receptive to messages with suggestions, even when he tells me exactly why he's going to reject my suggestion, he's polite about it.
This is refreshing. I've never been on a site where you could actually contact the devs and just provide suggestions - didn't even dawn on me this was possible :)
Did you find this? https://tildes.net/~tildes/182p/new_users_ask_your_questions_about_tildes_here_v2
Ah yes, I did use that thread (a previous version of it). It was very useful, got some lingering questions answered. But I don't think it had dawned on me that I could suggest something to someone. :) Not that I have anything useful to suggest, or any plans to do so, I just think it's cool that the site is small enough of a community (and that the dev participates) that it is possible.
I suspect if the site gets huge that Deimos will be forced to create formal mechanisms for feedback and take away the ability to just message him. But for now, things are informal, which is nice.
The structure of the site definitely helps to promote de-escalation, which I think helps to prevent things from getting too out of hand. But these more mild forms of hostility have their impact too. I’ve been on Tildes for a few years so I’m more talking about changes i’ve noticed since the influx which, to be clear, I’m very happy about. These are perhaps some unfortunate growing pains.
All I'm saying is that it may take us time to fully adapt and lose bad habits. That is what I hope will happen.
A little.
But it's more about how conversation is approached here on Tildes. It's not hostile with sides being picked instantly.
I'm having a chatter with one user about Feminism and Patriarchical outing via conversation tests, another about the environment and climate... and they're just really good conversations. There's sides, but it's a chat about what we think is good, bad, worries and loves.
It's such a breathe of fresh air.
I just still use both - I don't think too much about it to be honest. CEO's gonna CEO 🤷♀️
Been on Reddit for 11-12 years and Tildes for 5 years, so I never felt like I had to use one or the other. But yeah there's a different sort of social contract, depending which site you're using - I was here since the beginning so we all learned as we went though
In my experience, the generalist groups (life, gender etc.) tend to attract the "Reddit"(=poor) quality posts and discussions on Tildes, so I just unsubscribed from them completely.
On the other hand, the quality of posts and discussions in technical groups (comp, in particular) is stellar, and has quickly become my favourite place to read and engage in technical discussions on the internet.
I'm still learning how to tildes. I'm much more active on lemmy, honestly, which has much of the best parts of reddit without a lot of the worst parts.
But the biggest change is that, near the end, I was interacting on reddit primarily as a moderator and only secondarily as a user, which was very stressful, especially once radmin became hostile. So I'm also relearning how to just read and discuss without having to worry about either curation or consequences.
The one thing for me is not being surprised by being downvoted for simple statements.
This was in response to a video where a person learned the holes in the trash bin are to tighten a trash bag in the bin. Literally got several downvotes.
I would downvote a comment like that, but because it's noise. To me, that's like saying "this". It doesn't provide any insight.
I have to agree. Comments are for contributing, not just for marking that you were present. If all you're going to say is "me too," then you should just be upvoting. 83 extra comments saying the same thing just dilute the actual conversation.
Yea, but the context of the post wasn't for insight or discussion. That's how it works here, but if the post is for humor or the like, then it feels pretty dumb that it's downvoted.
I know enough not to do that here. Point I was trying to make is that I don't feel like I'd be downvoted for some dumb reason. If that were possible of course.
I think the most de-redditing I had to do was to stop obsessing over how many votes I was getting. It doesn't matter. I like that I can't see the total.
But other than that, it's kind of the same. I maybe make less dumb jokes. But most of my comments on reddit were discussion based and also polite. Hopefully.
I've always felt bad about making someone else feel bad even if I've never seen them. That has stayed consistent in every platform I've been on.
I really do want to make dumb jokes sometimes though.
Yeah. Here a very good post may get 100 votes and take a few days for that. It definitely trains you to stop chasing it.
I wasn’t extremely into Reddit karma but I admit there were a few times I would check New or Rising posts to be the first to give some obvious comment that would get thousands of upvotes.
And even that's a new paradigm. It used to be a "big" post would get 20-30 votes, with 10 votes as a threshold for having gotten the site's attention.
The Tildes of today is noticeably different from 3 months ago. I'm okay with that - but there are a few users that need to either adjust their behavior or get banned. I think given that growth has slowed down we'll be in a good place in another couple of months. Tildes is in a "September" phase - thankfully not an "Eternal September".
Side note: I think the Eternal September Wikipedia page is one of the most important pages and it's surprising the page is so small.
Interesting. The lack of a downvote button confused me initially, I thought "how do I upvote? Oh the vote count is a button? Well how do I downvote? Oh, no one can downvote? ... Oh that's nice!" And I felt happy that there are no downvotes.
It reminds me of the saying "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Quietly downvoting feels cowardly to me, because it rarely used for the purpose Reddit intended it as, it mainly became a "dislike" button. I also think downvoting brings negative energy into a space. If you disagree with a person, just tell them why in a kind manner. Downvoting does nothing good; it can make a person feel isolated and possibly humiliated.
Also while there are no downvotes on Tildes, you can use labels to mark comments as "malicious" or "off-topic." It's not visible to the user, I think it helps site moderators?
There's a section in the Tildes Docs that explains how the comment labels work.
'Exemplary' is the only one that's visible to the user. You type a brief note when you're applying the label, and the user can see that note.
'Exemplary' and 'Offtopic' and 'Joke' and 'Noise' quietly adjust the vote value of the labelled comment, so that it is sorted higher or lower on the page.
'Malice' is the only label that's seen by a moderator. This sends a notification to the moderators (currently only one person) that there's a problematic comment to look at.
To be honest, ive had an reddit account for at least 10 years, been only a regular user the last 3 or so. Not had to do any of the things you mentioned in the OP. Guess im not a power user :P
Interesting point about deleting Reddit comment history. I never thought to do that unless I wrote something that was being wildly misunderstood. I did eventually delete all of mine in “protest” of the killing of Apollo, but now I wish that I had regularly cleaned them, except maybe leave a few tech support answers that would be useful to a human later.
Other than not being a pithy jerk (I save that for my Mastodon presence!) I haven't changed much.
I also am making an effort to not be so taciturn; I naturally am offline and on. (Except when I get good on a rant.) I try to state a thing, but go into the why of it, if I can.