Why is the discourse on Tildes so much nicer than most places on the internet?
I've noticed that Tildes generally has a way more levelheaded and even friendly caliber of responses compared to many other social media sites that I've seen. I'm genuinely curious as to why this is. I regularly see the same article posted here that I also saw on say Lemmy, but over there the comments tend to be more hostile and explosive. Meanwhile, disagreements on Tildes rarely get THAT heated (at least as far as I have seen), even on posts involving very intense and personal subjects like politics or war. Even the disagreements and arguments I see on Tildes tend to be more respectful and level-headed, so much so that it's jarring to me to see the comments on some other site where someone's response to a user they disagree with is just straight name-calling.
Is it the invite-only nature of it? The lack of downvotes? The moderation? Confirmation bias? The demographics of the people here? Pure luck? Something else entirely?
I think it's a combination of strict moderating and demographics. I think the tildes userbase is fairly liberal, lgbt friendly, etc., and people who hold differing opinions are discouraged from joining or staying active, and if they do, they quickly learn that they have to use a different sort of rhetoric than they use on sites that are more sympathetic to their views. I do think it could potentially be a problem that tildes is a bit too politically and demographically uniform, which risks echo chamber effects, but at the same time, the sort of rhetoric that is strongly discouraged or outright banned is often the sort that outright denies the humanity and right to exist of interlocutors.
I will say that as a North European person, I often feel like I'm always the odd one out in a lot of discussions, and the demographic of North American liberals can feel a bit limiting, even if I largely agree with their opinions (it's not that I disagree so much as you are only talking about a particular socio/cultural/political context which I don't share). I think if you found a very intolerant online community, who hates gays, liberals, "commies", trans people etc, but where almost everyone agrees with these opinions, you might find a similar degree of politeness. Simply because nobody has strong objections to the prevailing sentiment. However, I do think hateful ideologies are more likely to generate animosity than more tolerant ones, even with relatively high degrees of social cohesion and demographic similarity.
You're not wrong, we have a spectrum, but it does get a lot more lopsided because conservatives find themselves having to defend again and again...and often either tire or get banned....depending on which stances in particular they are holding.
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias" and all that. Which is another great bit of history, not just a meme.
This is true. Also, when we have political discussions, it's usually about the specifics of a policy rather than debating the end goals. You and I definitely disagree about some policies, but we broadly share the same liberal values.
It helps that most arguments are assumed to be in good faith. It's much easier to discuss things with someone that's steelmanning your points instead of strawmanning them. :)
The short answer is that if you frequently interact in ways that provoke or escalate conflict, even if you’re an otherwise good contributor, you get whacked. Sometimes it’s a temp-ban, sometimes it’s a permaban. But Deimos polices for tone, so you get a good tone. I myself have been chided in DMs for crossing the line and it prompted me to check myself.
Everything else stems from that.
The internet in general has a culture of seeking to be right and win the argument, and not much concern about whether you’re doing it in an assholish way or not. So the baseline ends up being places that are either filled with people who are wrong while being assholes or people who are not wrong while being assholes. If you filter for assholishness instead of wrongness, you can deal with the wrongness without it turning into a war.
Tildes isn’t perfect at it, nobody is. But that’s the overall gist.
This website is living proof of why I do not take anyone who says that tone policing is inherently a bad thing seriously. We are the evidence that such an opinion is absurd.
Yeah that’s one of those things where I think people get confused as to what’s a healthy norm to carry as a society vs. a healthy norm to have within a communal space.
Tone policing is a problem when tone is used to invalidate someone’s perspective or opinion, because those people exist in the world and they deserve to be happy so you should try to figure out what’s going on underneath the nasty tone so you can get at the kernel of a good point they might have.
But a communal space only works if everyone in the community participates in keeping the space healthy. If you don’t police for tone, you lose the space. The space isn’t the society, that’s just the specific space where you’re all hanging out. You are allowed to, and should, cultivate whatever vibe you want in your space.
Big social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, have megalomaniacal aspirations so they try to conflate themselves with the public sphere as a whole. They are not the public sphere. The Internet is the public sphere. And it needs lots of small, different spaces in it where different communities can all settle on the norms and boundaries that are healthiest for that specific community.
Tone policing is incredibly important to maintain culture. I mean even the places that claim to be against tone policing are very commonly policing tone but the other way. If you aren't angry enough that's something to be questioned.
However the problem with tone policing is always that we don't want to have an undercurrent of passive aggression, bad faith posting in hiding. I think Deimos does a good job of keeping people who would abuse the request for polite tone on this site to advocate for garbage.
If he did not do that the site would... well frankly the site would eventually be hackernews, with all the implications that brings.
I'll be partially a devil's advocate and say that
Sometimes tone policing is overzealous. The classic version is nitpicking every single spelling error in a post that is otherwise readable, or making very minute corrections on facts (the classic "actually...."). Likewise, sometimes tone policing is done in bad faith.
Malice can still appear under an otherwise neutral or even kind tone. So not cursing nor using bigoted words directly won't solve every bad faith comment.
But with that said, tone policing in good faith is one of the easier ways to remove a lot of low effort comments and content. A decent rule of thumb on if someone wants to discuss or to simply preach or rant. Not that tildes bans the latter, but generally people who want to complain here will put some effort into expressing their frustrations instead of just saying "fuck the media. Fuck corporations".
I did not know that, but it makes a lot of sense.
Are you familiar with the malice tag? Anyone can flag a comment for review if it seems to be hateful, malicious, assholish etc. There is no guarantee that Deimos will agree or act, but the community can alert him to hateful content.
If you do that, you are then blocked from replying to the flagged comment. There is a lot going on under the hood of this website. The design supports the goals and philosophy.
You know, I’ve been here basically since the beginning (going back before the label feature was imagined) and I don’t think I’ve ever actually used the Malice label. Maybe once. Which is a testament to the quality of conversation on Tildes, but also it sounds like you have a looser idea of what it’s for than I do. I’ve been reserving for stuff like direct name-calling and threats, which if they happen here at all are usually wiped clean before I see them. But I’ve never thought to label a comment just for having an assholish tone. I do see those from time to time, rarely, but absent explicit hostility it seems a bit heavy-handed to drop a Malice on there when it happens. I guess it’s a matter of personal judgment.
I always tend to be mindful of my tone when I post. I think I'm just an agreeable person IRL so as far as I know I’ve never been on the receiving end of moderation here. But I still find it a bit disquieting if actual tone policing is happening, which I was unaware of. Maybe blissfully ignorant. How much of that is actively occurring on Tildes?
I try to steer clear of site drama and controversy when it does spring up, so I’m maybe not up to speed on the current zeitgeist about how to deal with concerns about tone. I think my gut reaction is “first they came for the impolite posters, but I said nothing because I’m socially well-adjusted” or something. Is tone policing the right thing to do? Clearly it results in a really nice conversational tenor for the site, I can’t argue with that. I’m just wondering about neurodivergent folks, people on the spectrum for whom managing tone is not a simple ask. Are we stifling contributions from them?
Not long ago someone posted what felt to me a somewhat callous take on a thread about a youth demographic struggling. I had replied to it, saying that I think that a society worth living in would want to help those who are struggling, rather than shrug its shoulders.
Shortly afterwards, that top comment was removed, I assume because of the malice label and subsequent removal. I suppose it shows the gray line between callous and malice; saying something cruel out of indifference versus hate.
I don't disagree with the removal of that comment, though I was struck by the difference between my reaction, to respond with a firm and polite counter position, versus removal. That is my tell I suppose for having worked most of my life in higher education.
I do think that in general, we are sometimes too quick to give up on discourse in the face of objectionable view points. But at the same time, perhaps people engaging in these marginal behaviors need that wake up call to grow.
I will say that I have engaged in a number of contentious threads, and held to my position on many topics without any great turmoil, reports, and no removals. Which is a credit to this site and community.
I do think many folks would benefit from a slight tweak to their language when engaging in volatile topics. Things such as saying "I feel" instead of "you said," or using probabilistic language when dealing with unknowns or uncertainty can really soften the reception of your message, especially when many folks disagree. With the right language, you can stick to your guns while being polite, and not putting words in your fellow conversationalists mouth.
But now I start to ramble. Thanks for your comment, and have a great night!
If you moderate a forum for long enough, you start to see patterns. It's just the consequence of dealing with user problems on the day to day. You're buried in the stuff and it's taking a toll. It's also starting to piss you off, because you have better things to be doing with the time you donate than playing traffic cop. Turns volunteer moderation into a second job.
So, you learn to recognize types of users, patterns of conversation, and other trivia that are inevitably present in any online discussion space. Seeing a certain two comments next to each other, you know what the next fifty look like before they are typed. Seeing ten comments from a specific user, you already know what their next ten will be like.
You're not right all the time, but you're right often enough and short on time enough that you don't care - it's not worth even the time it takes to wonder if you are right it happens so often. Bad user behavior becomes a silent one-click solution, like deleting a spam email reflexively. No jury, no appeal, the warning is optional, usually just for first offenders.
It's not fair, and it's not exactly draconian either. It's just instinct and efficiency. I have to imagine the people who run a debate club or support group or courtroom develop the same instincts for real world conversations and how they flow if they've done it long enough. They know in less than one sentence if the person speaking is going to be a problem, they just read it somehow.
It sucks when a couple good comments get clipped with a problematic thread, but it's going to suck a lot more if that pruning isn't done, and it's just not worth the effort of trying to save the rest of the comments like a dead branch from the tree. They are still visible in one's own comment history, and that's enough to make sure they don't get lost.
It's possible, I am the one misunderstanding the use of the tag. And I've used it maybe twice? Both for times where I thought the content was actively hostile and harmful . But at the end of the day I rely on Deimos to draw the line. He is under no obligation to act
I've used the tag a couple times to essentially say "hey things aren't bad yet but they're definitely getting close" to Deimos. The fact that you have to leave a comment to him anyway helps there. But idk if that's an intended use of the tag -- I just assume it's not actively discouraged because Deimos hasn't DMed me complaining about it yet lol
I doubt anyone is perfectionist about the use of any tag. It's useable and the privilege can be taken away.
I've used the noise tag some 5 times over my 5-6 years here. I've only maybe considered using the malice tag twice but chose against it.
To be fair, one trend about my posting habits tends to be me checking most posts hours later, so other users seem to sort out a lot of that before I come in. I'm almost never the first person to comment on a post.
I was familiar with it but I think I’ve only felt like using it once in probably like 8 months or so on the site. Which is my point I guess. There’s been some stuff I disagreed with for sure, but only once did I think someone went way out of line. Based on all these replies, it seems that the moderation of the site is just very responsive and proactive. So much so that I rarely notice it.
I think some form of 'gentle chiding' mechanic might be able to help encourage this, and more importantly, encourage people to actively help in the maintenance of civility. A simple first test might be just adding a new moderation label - 'tone' is probably good enough. You'd use it on the posts you see that aren't anything like malicious, but perhaps could be phrased better. It could require a short anonymous comment exactly like the malice label does. It'd be best as a neutral label, no effect at all on sorting.
No visible indicators to anyone else in the thread, a label that is private and visible only to the person receiving it and the administrators of the forum. If that sort of thing is made visible to others, it becomes an attack signal to the group and everyone piles on. That's why it's got to be private. Maybe color it yellow and have it disappear post-edit under the assumption that the edit cleared it up. No real reason to keep that data around longer than that.
Try that out for a little while and see if it doesn't blossom into something better.
On a forum like Reddit they would abuse it to absurdity in ten minutes, but Reddit is a child's forum not so different from 4chan - just less honest about it. This is a more adult inclined forum, and we think that that a good or powerful tool is worth providing even if it can be abused because adults don't abuse those things. We'd instead just take away a person's ability to use the labels after they abuse the privilege of having them. Everyone gets access to them seven days after signup under the assumption they will be used in good faith. If they are not, it's a simple thing to shut them back off.
Invite only spaces are a bit different. There's the sense you can 'lose' something - access to the system. It's not so easy to get back in as it is on corporate sites where they love new accounts to pump growth reports for investors. This creates a somewhat different expectation and therefore behavior in the users. People are a bit more guarded, because they are playing survivor and don't want to get voted off the island. When someone is voted off, the rest of the tribe gets nervous and is suddenly more well behaved. :)
On the other hand, I’d actually say it all (including what you are describing too) stems from the fact that Tildes was specifically designed to be resilient against the influence of private interests.
https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes
I'm not native English speaker and I consider myself capable, but I fail to comprehend "Deimos polices for tone". Would you please cae and try to explain a bit?
So far tone has been either musical or color thing for me. Or tone as in conversation, whoch probably is this case. Does it mean Deimos polices (wants) the conversations to be, say, reasonable? Not getting into personal attacks, shouting at each other? Like toning down the conversation?
It's being used as definition 4 here. The tone of the conversation is how polite or angry the conversation is (just how the conversation feels). It can also be used like you said to "tone down a conversation". You can think of it as similar to how an out-of-tune instrument has a harsh tone. Or how a painting could be described as "comforting with warm tones".
I thought it would be something like hat but wanted to be sure I understand clearly. Thanks!
Yeah exactly
-- God Emperor Leto II, Frank Herbert
Keep in mind that really heated discussions are often removed. People will imitate what they see, so that helps, but it also results in a somewhat rosier view of things.
You actually got it right, it's a combination of all of the above.
Except for "pure luck".
And things do get heated on a regular basis but that is usually removed.
That comment was still up? I’m surprised it wasn’t removed.
Props to the moderation of the site then, since even the 'heated' debates I've seen here on Tildes are miles away from the stuff I regularly see on other sites. Hell, I could pull up nearly any youtube video right now and find a ton of vitriolic comments about the most mundane things without much searching at all. Tildes definitely feels like the exception to the norm.
But that's also what made me worry that maybe it's just my own confirmation bias. I don't often see comments that I flat out disagree with on Tildes, so are people here as nice as I think they are, or am I in a bubble with a bunch of people of a similar demographic that tend to share my world-views?
Tilders are routinely not nice. We're not special. Moderation keeps bad behavior at bay, and also stimulates good behavior. There are definitely topics and situations that will bring the worst in us. But that is way less frequent than in other places.
It also helps once we get to recognize each other a bit. I have a list in my head of users whom I know better than to engage more than a post or two (and I'm sure I'm on that list for them as well), as I think we bring out the worst in each other.
It's part of why slow growth is essential.
There are certainly combinations that often lead to unfortunate results. However, I also enjoy "seeing" my mental list shrink more and more as a lot of people demonstrate that they are actively trying to improve.
It is confirmation bias but not for that reason.
Deimos often purges entire comment trees, not just the problematic post, and fast too.
There was a reply to my comment in another thread today that was purged before I saw it, and that was during my active participation in the thread.
There's heated discourse, it's just gone before you see it.
It's also helpful that he frequently locks topics where discussion gets heated, and because the default sorting is based off activity, that basically destines them to plummet away from people's front page.
that's funny because I was just looking at that too, insta nuked.
I was wondering what the hell was going on! it's honestly so cool that he's that on top of things that 3 of us were actively looking at a thread and none of us actually saw the offending comment. Well that and that people are aggressive enough with the report button when needed! Probably why I keep coming back to this site
I always secretly wonder what was said, it's why I always opened downvoted posts on Reddit, but I totally understand and agree with the philosophy to just ignore it and move on. Nuking and paving works better if your intent is to keep it copacetic.
On one thread that I apparently generated some strong feelings as I kept seeing my comment notification go on, and then off. Then on. Then off. By the time I looked there were several deleted threads in response to my comment.
I really appreciate the moderation, and likely saving me a few deep breaths and a sigh, but I will say it aroused my curiosity!
Have a great night!
I'll share a little secret about the internet that almost no one knows. Try that with music on youtube - or any service that has music and comments together in the same space. You'll be surprised how consistently that stuff is minimized when music is part of the focus. I have literally seen people who have daily death matches with each other on other parts of reddit chatting about music in the various music communities as if they are lifelong friends. I don't even think they recognize each other's handles when that happens.
I don't know what this effect is, but I do know moderation of music communities is easy mode. :)
Youtube Music adding comments on songs is either the most horrible or most brilliant design decision they've made in awhile.
You mention lack of downvotes, but I think the lack of persistent karma is a related yet perhaps more important feature of the site. At the end of the day there is simply no incentive to carry on a discussion once you lose interest, or to perform for the community. Sure, you get votes in a thread, but you forget about them as soon as you click away. It makes it much easier to disengage when there are few incentives baked in to keep you engaged past when you should.
All of those, I think.
If you just make it abundantly clear a certain type of behavior is expected in a place (where it's entirely optional to go), you'll largely get that kind of behavior, because people strongly opposed to behaving that way will just refuse to go there. People who
likecan't imagine a space without meme shitposts will come here, see the lack of meme shitposts, and become disinterested. People with overly extreme views on some axis of the political spectrum will see that we're not really that sort of people and decide we're not fun to hang out with.Invite-only is a slight barrier to entry that makes it annoying to register accounts for trolling. Other places have achieved the same thing with one-time registration fees. It's not a filter in itself in the sense that we're only inviting people who we know will fit the culture. The people doing most of the inviting during the big influxes have outright said they're not really filtering.
I mean, I like meme shitposts, but I fill that need elsewhere so that this space stays a worthwhile place to have a conversation. It helps to have different spaces for different kinds of activities.
Maybe that's a bigger factor than I thought. On Reddit there were plenty of subreddits that were full of very low-effort shithousing and then there were others that were meticulously curated/moderated and did not tolerate simple jokes and puns as top-level answers. And of course most of the site was more towards the former, so when a new subreddit popped up, the default was to allow jokes and low-effort memes and posts.
I sometimes find myself thinking of a funny quip or reply to a post on Tildes, but then I never actually comment it, because it just 'feels' wrong and inappropriate for the tone of the site. Because like you said, this isn't that kind of space.
And it's not that Tildes is super dry and high-brow or anything like that. I'm just not sure what the right word for it is. It's not exactly neutral, since I see plenty of strong opinions on the site (of which I typically agree with). Respectful maybe? People seem to be level-headed and civil even when two users completely disagree with each other, which is no small thing on the internet.
Personally it's just that I want to actually contribute something. A quip on its own in the 1st-3rd level of comment clutters things up and is low effort. But the threshold for contribution gets lowers deeper into a comment thread. If I've engaged with someone down to a 3-4+ depth I'm more likely to end my participation with a friendly quip.
And it's something I like about this community. It's possible to actually engage in brief conversation. Learn something, understand a different perspective, and leave the discussion positively. Because you're probably going to interact with that person again.
I think this is a big part of the answer to your OP question: Culture. It's a powerful force. We're wired from way back to read the room and find a graceful way to participate. It's often not even conscious, which is to say that it can influence our behavior in spite of ourselves. Social animals, survival and all that.
Of course we're also wired to sometimes test limits and break shit, which is where the moderation comes in.
Other than the points mentioned by everyone else which are all various degrees of valid, also, just size at the moment. It's a relatively small community, which not only makes it easier to moderate, just statistically, there are less people trying to start fires.
Good point, I hadn't considered that. Will be interesting then to see how and if the site grows and what new challenges that will bring regarding moderation.
In addition to the moderation, I'd say the quality of comments here begets high quality comments. I'm often hesitant to post a comment, for fear of not having it contribute anything meaningful to the discussion. I don't have this same feeling of quality with Lemmy / the Fediverse, which I've given up on.
In addition to what has already been mentioned, and in my humble opinion a result of many of those factors, is the cultural norm of "assume good faith". We've got a higher level of trust that on the other side of the screen is a person who genuinely believes in what they are saying and seeks to enrich their own and others' understanding. We can add our own contributions with less fear, as whatever we might be ignorant or incorrect about will be treated graciously.
Oh I completely agree, but was curious as to why that's the case. Seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy type of thing.
At least in my experience, I remember the culture on Reddit being more similar to this a decade ago as well. I don't think it was just a size thing. Reddit has made intentional design choices to prioritize users scrolling and seeing more ads. This is why digging into comment chains is such a pain on New Reddit.
Tildes has a huge number of intentional design choices which prioritize positive interactions and minimize less important stuff. For example, the part of my brain that wants dopamine wishes we had a karma system that tallied votes or labels on a user level, but that kind of system encourages fishing for votes and labels even if they're just fake internet points.
Deimos created AutoModerator and has obviously thought a lot about designing a social website! I'd totally recommend reading Tildes' Philosophy Docs: https://docs.tildes.net/philosophy/site-design
That philosophy doc is actually what made me want to sign up for Tildes in the first place. Felt like a breath of fresh air compared to the social media that I was used to previously. I even mentioned it in my email asking for an invite to the site. Thanks for linking it, as I'm sure there are others that might like to see it but didn't know it existed.
And I did not know that Deimos created AutoModerator, that honestly makes so much sense now that I think about it. This site seems so proactive when it comes to its moderation that I honestly don't even notice it. So much so that I made this post essentially asking 'what the heck guys why is this place so nice'. But that information about automoderator explains a lot about how the site is able to rapidly deal with the typical crap you see on other websites.
Tildes supports regex like automod, but also lua scripting to take it to the next level. It's a long overdue upgrade to community modding, and it'll make for vastly more intelligent modding capability in larger and more wily groups down the road. Tildes itself kinda is Automoderator v2. This time it's the site itself instead of a bolt-on.
Deimos also made SubredditSimulator. :)
Didn't know that either, but again, super impressive.
It just never occurred to me that someone made automoderator (I mean, obviously someone made it, I just never bothered to think about it). It was just such an integral part of damn near every subreddit. And then to find out that the website that essentially replaced reddit for me has that automoderation built-in because it was made by the same person is pretty eye-opening. I'm not tech-savvy enough to understand the inner workings of a site like Tildes (or Reddit), but the more I learn about it, the more impressed I become.
This is the reason why I keep on coming back here, it feels like the world still has sane and nice people left.
The internet and other Social media in general has always contained toxic elements but these days with the rise of new gen social media, most discourse have turned into toxicity and eco-chambers so it's nice to see people have differing opinions and still have a polite debate.
Just as some others I believe it is partly due to small community. I atill have all my invites as people that I wanted to.invite would prove not worthy by their actions and I don't want to be involved as the one who invited them (not even morally). I want this community to be like it is so I didn't drag in troublesome individuals with me.
All of the responses so far were great. But I'm pretty sure the real answer is that Tildes is Canadian (this is a joke, but I do know many polite Canadians).
I confess I still keep using reddit- there are a few things on Reddit that I just haven't found a good replacement for- but Tildes is where I can (usually) find calm and sanity. And I think it's two parts.
The first is, this a text-based site. Memes and images are non-existent... so you actually have to type out your thoughts. More than once on Reddit, it's been asked if people actually still write long messages... and a fairly frequent reply is "I do, but then I realize that almost no one is going to read it or care, so I delete it"- which means the short-form activity is what you see tons of on Reddit. Tildes seems to stay calm because users here are expected to actually put in said effort... and if you don't, it just means that discussion stays calm, wiht no short-form activity taking over. I find this to be a GOOD thing.
The second part, of course, is the invite-only nature. True, "gatekeeping" is a dirty word online... but the best communities I've been in these days are HEAVILY gatekept- or more accurately, there's a very high barrier of entry (though i guess technically it's the same thing?). Keep in mind that online, there's a HUGE spectrum of people, from those who are malicious actors who intentionally cause harm (trolls and worse), to people who are still generally good. When you want to keep a good culture, you want to limit who can get in... and place a high enough barrier of entry, and you'll get only those who are truly dedicated to something. While needing an invite here isn't the biggest barrier to entry... well, it helps to a certain degree.
Oh, and there's always the fact that there IS some moderating occurring- Reddit lost a ton of that when they killed the third-party apps.