21
votes
How linked is an account to the original invite code?
I tried looking through the docs but couldn't find an answer to this question: What is the nature of the link that is established to the sys-admin and devs of tildes for an account and the invite account?
as in, do they store the invite code that I used to create this account permanently and will be able to link that invite back to the issuing user? so that my account and the issuing user will always be linked in that way?
If I'm reading the code right, the used invite code itself is currently stored indefinitely unless a user specifically requests account deletion.
The Inviter (user who generated the invite) is recorded at the time of the new user registration, therefore the admin always knows who invited whom. It's possible for the admin to query the database to generate an invite tree to trace the lineage of an account or see how a user's invitees have sent out more invites through time.
Personally I think this would be really interesting to see, (if anyone who has access to the data fancies doing it…). I imagine it would look like the spread of covid, but plateauing much quicker
Pretty sure it’s a permanent link. It used to be publicly stated on your user page who invited you. But that was made private pretty quickly.
Only @Deimos can answer this definitively since he is Tildes sole admin, and nobody else has access to Tildes database. But AFAIK, yes, the invite code you used to join is permanently linked to your account, as is the user that sent you that invite. This is so spammer networks can be rooted out more easily, to help prevent ban evasion, and to also hold users somewhat accountable for who they invite. Nobody is going to get banned because a single other user they invited was banned... but if someone repeatedly invites other users that get banned I imagine Deimos would likely warn/question them about that.
Fairly sure if inviting bad users is grounds for removal, you'd be the first one to be cut, if only due to sheer size of your invites and the impossibility to vouche for so many. That is to say, I think the current system puts a lot of trust in people acting in good faith.
Yeah, Deimos is pretty sensible. My case is a little bit of an exception since I have probably sent out 10k invites over the years so the majority of banned users were probably invited by me. :P But even ignoring my case, I don't think anyone has ever actually been banned for inviting other users that were eventually banned. So it's more of a hypothetical at this point, reserved for a situation like if someone was ever intentionally reinviting a previously banned user back to the site, or something egregious like that. I have even inadvertently/accidentally reinvited a few banned users back myself though, but in those few cases Deimos has simply let me know about it so that I could try my best to avoid sending another invite to that same person again.
Per the privacy policy, I believe that information is stored indefinitely. I think the "if applicable" parenthetical is there with an eye towards some unspecified future time when this site is not invite only — for now, everyone here was invited. I think this is done so that invites can be restricted if one user continually invites problematic or disruptive people (but this is speculation on my end). @Deimos would be the only person with access to that data, I think.
Time to develop the tildes invite code tumbler