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What is tildes' take on NSFW content?
Reddit has been changing their rules and quickly sanitizing NSFW subs recently. What would Tildes do to prevent this and how would it handle NSFW content in general?
Reddit has been changing their rules and quickly sanitizing NSFW subs recently. What would Tildes do to prevent this and how would it handle NSFW content in general?
I don't even really care if there's porn here or not (and I'm fairly certain there never will be), but if it did exist, it would likely still be striving for the quality goals of the rest of the site.
That is, we don't have to allow for the kind of thing that you're talking about. We could delete all that garbage and encourage comments that are more about recommendations or discussing why you think a certain bit of porn works so well. Basically, we could treat it just like we do movies or TV. The fact that it strives for sexual pleasure rather than sadness or some other typical response doesn't inherently restrict the conversation possible.
It limits the appeal of that section, for sure, but it could prove to be a place that really stands out.
You should read my comment below.
But why ban porn rather than avoid it? Let the community decide if they want to ignore it.
This is a sentiment that usually results in low effort content rising to the top. See reddit's "let the votes decide" for an example of how that turned out.
How will it rise to the top? Tildes have a different voting system, and nothing prevents from assigning a weight of almost zero to all NSFW [sub]groups (as well as to fluff) so that no content from there can appear e.g. on the front page even if not filtered.
Yeah, we don't have downvotes.
Has this been discussed by Deimos yet? In any case, my first thought to that is weighting votes for particular types of content inevitably makes whoever decides the weights seem biased. In any case, I'd argue that if you weight types of content, discussions about sex and relationships should be given a much higher weight than porn.
Tildes should not be promoting fluff if it wants to retain quality discussions. There is a difference between allowing the occasional joke post and opening the floodgates for any and all memes, reaction images, titty fuck compilations, pun threads, etc.
I agree entirely, and it seems quite clear to me that there is consensus that discussions about sex/relationships are completely regular Tildes content.
Thanks to other users' comments in this topic, I arrived at the following opinion: fluff/NSFW, when eventually allowed, should be restricted to Free Talk format (similar to Free Talk threads in some subreddits), i.e., there would be places where people sharing the Tildes' goal of HQ content could have a moment of rest as the quality rules in such places would be relaxed (but not removed); in any case, Free Talk should be downweighted or even zero-weighted so that there is no way to gain Internet points via boobs or gallowboobs.
The most important ≠ the only allowed. (Though I agree that this [Edit: NSFW] type of content should not be allowed for now as I already replied elsewhere in this topic.)
Reddit does fine with just requiring to click the 18+ button when not logged in, and with the user claiming to be 18+ when logged in. Many NSFW sites just have smallprint texts that by using the sites one confirms being legally able to watch such content.
Actually, I do agree that when NSFW is allowed here, then a user would have to confirm that they are legally allowed to see such content when they navigate there (i.e., only if they indeed navigate to NSFW content) for the first time in a session.
In my response to @Deimos elsewhere in this thread, I suggested 50k.
I share this concern, so in addition to agreeing that many more users are needed, I also suggested that NSFW/fluff content (BTW, I think HQ erotica is better than memes) is downweighted; maybe, voting on such content (fluff included) should be completely disabled to make any post-for-Internet-points completely impossible. I think NSFW should be eventually allowed but not encouraged.
I hope the majority of the users here are mentally strong enough to keep focusing on HQ discussion and not be led astray by a pair of
gallowboobs. I also hope that eventually I will not have to switch to other sites to have a quick look at a few HQ softcore pics before returning to discussion on serious topics.A.S. Reddit is not exactly unique in addressing multiple heterogeneous niches, all social networks are basically like that. The special feature of Reddit is its topic-centered rather than user-centered structure.
I would like to thank you for asking as 4. below, which I consider the strongest point, occurred to me after I read your question.
Summary: I suggest that NSFW/fluff—I deliberately make no difference—is eventually allowed as Free Talk but not encouraged (IIUC the rep system will allow for gaining rep from mere browsing, in which case no rep should be gained from browsing Free Talk content).
P.S. All edits are minor spelling/grammar ones.
It's signed with Let's Encrypt Authority X3. Is your CA store outdated?
A.S. = ante scriptum (A.S. to P.S. is the same as AM to PM)
OK, I see your point that LQ will inevitably spill over if allowed. I think good moderation can prevent this. For example, in r/Cricket there have been at least two successful rule changes to increase the quality of posts and comments (bear in mind that it is a sports sub so do not expect Pulitzer-worthy stuff everywhere, but the community works well to report LQ so things like meme posts and emoji copypasta comments do not survive long). This is accompanied by regular Free Talk posts and the so-called Sledge Threads, wherein on-topic and civility rules are relaxed. In addition, there are even Shitpost Threads and the entire sub r/CricketShitPost, so if one really cannot refrain from posting LQ cricket-related content they can do so (BTW I am a mod of r/CricketShitPost, and we do not allow outright spam or very low quality stuff there).
This is actually an interesting idea. Though if something indeed becomes a complement to Tildes (in the sense of the civility rules in place with only the quality rules relaxed), spillovers will be still possible (actually, what is the real difference between "This was okay on ~aww!" and "This was okay on Facebook"?), so moderation will be still required.
And notabug.io seems an “everything goes” type site rather than an alternative to Tildes in this sense.
I really hope this will change (and AFAIU it is planned), for otherwise the site will basically be, as someone else said in this topic, “dry as a 5-foot well in a desert.;”
Have you ever been to r/pornhubcomments?
Why? Why can't you use different sites for different purposes? You won't be able to use Tildes for lots of things: for shopping, for banking, for watching movies/shows, for booking concert tickets, for job-searching, for looking up bus/train timetables, and so on. Why is porn the exception? Why do you need porn on a website for discussion? Why can't you go to XTube or the millions of porn sites out there?
Different websites specialise in different things, and that's perfectly all right. Not all sites need to be all things to all people.
There is a clear line between posting/discussing content and shopping/banking/etc. However, there is no clear line between erotic art and artistic erotica, and then between erotica and porn (and all of these are content that can be discussed). For some people, even XTube is art, for others, a woman dressed in anything less than a burqa is porn (and they will claim that whenever they see such a woman they only think about sex, so no quality discussion is possible).
There are many cases in nudity-involving art where quality discussion is possible (at least at the level of ~tv or ~movies, though not necessarily at the level of ~science—I hope there is a consensus that quality standards differ across groups), and if the outright ban on NSFW (I agree that is needed now until the site becomes big enough) is not lifted, then such discussions will be inevitably stormed by packs of petulant, militant prudes.
I also made a “Free Talk” argument: in many specialised places (and Tildes is specialised in quality discussion) there are Free Talk sections where on-topic rules are relaxed, and Tildes mechanics would easily prevent Free Talk stuff from overtaking the site. The raison d'être for such Free Talk sections is that like-minded people sometimes want to discuss off-topic stuff among themselves—rather than in other places dedicated to that off-topic stuff.
P.S. For me, NSFW ≈ fluff, and not NSFW ≡ porn.
P.P.S. I find it amusing that so many people immediately think of XTube and the like whenever NSFW is mentioned.
There is, however, a clear line between nude content and non-nude content. There's also a clear line between simply posting images, and encouraging a discussion.
I would not expect to see simple posts of images of Da Vinci's 'Vitruvian Man' or Botticelli's 'The Birth of Venus' in ~creative.arts.visual, either. That is not high quality content. If someone wants to discuss the nude in art, I would expect a little more effort than a bare link to one of these works. Maybe a few paragraphs, with links to various images, to encourage a discussion.
But, whenever people say "I want NSFW content!" they almost invariably mean they want to just post links to pictures of naked women (and, sometimes, maybe men) for prurient voyeurism.
Unless you're planning to write occasional mini-essays about the development of certain trends in porn, using image links as supporting evidence for your discussion? However, I highly doubt that, given this remark of yours in the comment I originally responded to: "I will not have to switch to other sites to have a quick look at a few HQ softcore pics before returning to discussion on serious topics." That doesn't look like you want a nice intellectual discussion about the development of the nude in Renaissance art! That looks like you just want to check out a few naughty pics on the interwebs.
A.S. It is so good that the Reddit's downvote-to-disagree mentality is disabled on Tildes…
Can you read the sentence in the comment you reply to following the sentence you are replying to? You are better than that. Yes, there is this line. Moreover, I expect that you and I will draw it in basically the same way. However, there are people who draw that line differently. Some do not consider female breasts anything special, whereas some others, and I am really concerned here, are willing to impose 19th century (if not outright Sharia) standards.
This is actually a broader question I also mention in the comment you are replying to: should all groups be subject to exactly the same quality standards? I find this approach unsustainable: if ~science and ~talk are forced to have the same quality standards, then either the former will be crappy or the latter will be bland. So what if the community in ~creative.arts.visual (subsubgroup, and every ‘sub-’ generally raises the bar as to scope but lowers the bar as to quality) decides that just posting the image is a call for discussion (this is how many SFWPorn and Imaginary Network subreddits work; BTW, so does r/Museum, and AFAIK they are exempt from NSFW tagging on Reddit to some extent)?
Both works you mention have more (I would say, much more) to discuss than just nudity. Also, would you apply this reasoning for art that does not contain nudity?
Actually, I would not mind some nice medium-to-high quality discussion about the development of the nude in the Internet era softcore, but I am realistic that such discussions will be attacked by prude hordes.
OK I know that my Free Talk idea is disputable. As for me, I can do without boobs or gallowboobs (once agin: for me, NSFW ≈ fluff, and not NSFW ≡ porn) on Tildes. As @deimos wrote, Tildes will be open source and he does not mind if one creates “Tildes for porn.” However, someone (not me, I will be fine with either final decision, though I think I have my opinion clear) might try “Tildes not against porn.”
What constitutes a real discussion though? Who draws the line? This is ultimately a question of what gets censored. In the overall goals of this site it talks about letting users make their own decisions about what they want to see. This was discussed in the context of not placing algorithms on the site that would create an echo chamber of content but I think the mechanics apply to the general philosophy.
If anything, I think in depth discussions should be chosen and rewarded by the community and not from above. Let the people decide what they want to support but whatever you do, don't outright ban it. This doesn't just apply to porn either. NSFW content is an umbrella term applying to many controversial topics
I have no intention to allow porn. I haven't added any formal rules against it or anything yet, but I don't think it belongs here at all. Here's a comment I posted a while back about it:
This is definitely the way to go. There's a billion and a half other places on the internet to find porn, but not many places to find good, healthy discussion about sexual topics.
Those subreddits also get a high quantity of scuzzy links to some really scammy shit.
What I will say, though, is that that usually happens in abandoned subreddits without mods. The nature of tildes' tagging system would make for far fewer groups, and a reliance on tags rather than totally new communities would mean that people could look at highly specific content which would still be moderated. In fact, I can almost guarantee that your model would work far better for that kind of content (any content, really) than Reddit does.
I don't support an outright ban because I think it would marginalize people who are honestly attempting to post things which are tasteful and interesting, and many of those people are already marginalized enough.
Truth be told, I'm actually losing faith in your site the more I use it. Not that the model isn't useful, but I was led to believe that Tildes was a technical advancement to Reddit intended to fill a philosophical purpose which was similar, though more egalitarian and high-minded. I thought that any differences in content and community were going to be driven more by the technology itself than by the humans running it--the whole goal was to foster a different platform, or so I thought.
Instead I'm finding Tildes to be a more 50-50 split between using technology to better the conversation (as compared to Reddit) and you basically imposing your own philosophical boundaries on acceptable content. Porn is not the only example nor a particularly important one. It goes down to political philosophy and content type as well. I get that Reddit is a little too "memey" but goodness, this place is dry as a 5-foot well in a desert. I was honestly hoping for a place where the ratio of high-effort memes to low-effort memes was a little higher than Reddit--I don't need it to be so elitist that goofy jokes are totally unacceptable and all we do is post discussions.
As for political philosophy, I want to be clear that this is not about partisanship. I am far less concerned by the lack of Trump voters than I am by the sheer similarity of most people I've run across here. It's not that they are liberals, and I'm not--I consider myself a liberal, even an anarchist. I think within the left there are hundreds of valid political philosophies with useful things to say, and you have not captured any of them in any significant quality except a very, very small cluster that agrees with you. That is to say nothing of the many, many reasonable people who are on the right as well.
I really question this shift from "build a good platform" to "curate the content from the top down" that I've seen. I honestly thought you were attempting to start a project which primarily used good design to prevent the cancer which has infected Reddit. That is really valuable to me, someone who values free speech (you can read my previous comments to see how I define that and I think it's compatible with your beliefs) and good political discourse. I wanted to see a place which would ensure that everyone had the voice they could earn through peaceful discussion and good behavior.
Instead, I am seeing a carefully curated group of people creating a carefully curated selection of content. And I'm concerned. I'm not trying to piss on your parade, and I think it's salvageable, but I'm worried that, as the founder (and a founder without any partners), you are no longer being spoken to frankly by anyone and you've gotten yourself into the sycophancy stage of this operation. So here I am, speaking frankly to you.
Recap:
I'm honestly not really sure what to tell you, I think you've picked up the wrong impression about my plans for the site. This isn't a pure democracy, where I'm going to do whatever the users want regardless of my own opinion. It's closer to what a lot of software projects call a "benevolent dictatorship".
I'm happy to take input from other people (which is why I do things like the daily discussions constantly asking for it), but it's still exactly that—input. Sometimes my mind gets changed by other people's opinions, sometimes it doesn't. It's still me making the decisions though, not the community. I've always felt that fairly strong moderation/curation is needed to produce high-quality communities, and that's the same philosophy I'm applying to the overall site.
I have no interest in running a porn site. I've seen what it's like from working at reddit, and I don't want to do it again. If not having porn on Tildes will make it too "dry" for you, then this just may not be the site for you.
The good news is that the site will be open-source. Anyone else can start up their own instance of the site with all the same mechanics, so they can start "Tildes, but for porn" if they think it'll work well. Or "Tildes, but for memes", or "Tildes, but for cute animals", or anything else. Maybe those sites will even be more popular than Tildes itself, and that's totally fine. Popularity isn't my goal for the site.
I think the idea of a more wholesome platform is important to go alongside content such as porn. I would like you to go through my previous comments about this--I don't want to rewrite them all here, but I have some good arguments for it.
I would rather that young men and women encounter relatively realistic/tasteful porn in a relatively egalitarian/nonsexist setting. I think that a "reddit alternative" would have the power to make that change for a large number of young people, and I think that it would have a profound and surprising effect on society, especially as those individuals age.
I don't think a dictatorship is ever a good position to be in, even for the dictator. I had no idea that all the high-minded rhetoric in your "whitepaper" was actually a dogwhistle for you running the show as you like and deciding what is and is not wholesome or good discussion.
It never shifted. It was always a curated site, and was always going to be.
I don't know how you got the idea that Tildes would be some free-for-all democracy allowing free speech. It's been very clear to me that Deimos is running this place as a benevolent dictatorship - especially in these early days, when he's the only one calling the shots. He has a certain philosophy which he has outlined in his blog and his documentation - and he explicitly says Tildes will "never be described as anything like "an absolute free speech site".' It's clear that this is not a free-for-all, nor a democracy.
If you saw something else, I can only suggest that maybe that was you projecting what you wanted onto this site. Like one of those Rorschach ink blots, you saw what you wanted to see.
I never had any idea that it would be a free for all or that it would be an absolute free speech site. I read that document before I joined. I do not define free speech (or protected speech) as anything that can be said--it's advocacy for a peaceful change in culture, society, rules, leadership, or laws. That's what I'm interested in protecting.
But you're somehow concerned that "it's a copout to blanket ban or subtly discourage certain kinds of content". This implies that you thought all content would be welcome here - or you wouldn't now be concerned that Deimos is limiting the types of content he wants here.
I'm concerned that the decisions are unilateral. Even a truly benevolent dictator is not to be trusted--you don't trust their execution, even if you trust their intentions. Everyone is biased, everyone makes mistakes, and having a single point of failure is a nightmare indeed. lt can lead to arbitrariness in leadership and enforcement. If Deimos is grumpy one day, that is a totally different experience. If Deimos has a whim one day, that's what we will end up doing. If Deimos thinks it is good to block a certain kind of content, he doesn't have to consult with anyone. If Deimos gets hit by a bus while crossing the street, the whole site goes down.
At the very least, having a partner would be much safer and wiser.
As for content, again, I think that's terribly arbitrary and I think you are seeing the tip of the iceberg. I was not aware that "not a bastion of free speech" was a dogwhistle for dictatorship. I thought it meant, "We won't allow any hint of bigotry whatsoever," which is a little further than I would go myself but was definitely close enough to be tolerable.
NSFW posts ARE free speech. It's part of the normalization of alternative sexualities. Not only is it a little derogatory to everyone to act like sex is so disgusting that it doesn't belong on an elite forum like this, but it marginalizes the LGBTQ and kink communities, both of whom are struggling to find purchase in the mainstream in today's world. You can say something like, "Oh so they need to be able to post porn?" like it's a joke, but that would be really disingenuous and I hope you don't do that.
They need to be able to post things that are absolutely out of the mainstream's comfort zone. That's how political change and education happen--you have to leave your comfort zone. Only allowing things that Deimos is comfortable with is going to limit your community to his biases, whether he knows them or not. You will likely see your Overton window here shrink in the future as Deimos gets tired of various groups. Right now, this is all exciting--the website is being built bit by bit. But as time goes on, Deimos will start to get bored. And tired of fielding all these issues regarding certain subjects. And then those subjects will be banned. Poof. Bye.
I don't think it's a good way to run a discussion platform, and while Deimos keeps claiming Tildes will be open source, that hasn't happened yet and even if it does, the original Tildes burning to the ground will likely be a serious disadvantage to anyone wishing to fork the project--people will be mistrustful of the platform due to Deimos' mistakes. That's my set of predictions for the future.
I won't ever say I told you so, though. Once these start to come to pass, trust me that I won't be here to tell you anything.
I have given good reasons for why sexual content would be vastly easier to moderate in a place like Tildes, because the tag system ensures that there will be no abandoned groups. Fragmentation would be drastically reduced, and one mod would be able to see so much more at once. The costs associated with hosting such content would be LESS here than Reddit, guaranteed.
As someone with a so-called "alternative sexuality", I do not need to post pictures of naked men in order to achieve your, or anyone else's, acceptance of me or my sexuality. I do not need to post porn here (or anywhere) to be normalised. I am not defined by pornography.
That is not the same as needing to post pornography.
Do not use me and people like me as a supporting example for your "free speech" argument. It doesn't hold water.
I'm done here.
You completely rewrote what I said, and while it's clear that you don't really care to hear my thoughts on this, I'm posting them for anyone else in this thread.
I find your entire comment to be completely intellectually dishonest. It's good rhetoric--I'd have loved to have had you on my debate team in high school. But it's empty. You could have turned the emotionally-charged comments into actual arguments and we could have progressed. Maybe next time.
If you're not talking about porn then what on earth does this mean?
The only way I can read that is that LGBT people need to post naked pictures to normalise their sexuality.
NSFW includes an incredibly broad category and the very fact that you confuse it with porn (a subset of that category) illustrates the problem, which is that nobody can draw a perfect line which will not be intentionally or unintentionally misused.
Depending on the forum, certain memes, stories, works of art, projects, and discussions could be considered NSFW. And people like you may mistake them for porn. That is a problem I really do not think that already marginalized people need to deal with.
I cannot imagine that someone who can string together full sentences can't also see how sets and subsets relate to each other and how the blurry line between them could be a problem in terms of speech. Radicals need a place to be radical, or change never happens. They need to be able to post things that make other people uncomfortable and challenge them. Colin Kaepernick didn't kneel to make anyone comfortable or to make it easy on the NFL, and everyone who runs the NFL said, "Yeah this is a pain in the ass for us and at least professionally, we don't want to deal with it." He did it to get his thoughts into the mainstream. To be heard.
And not only marginalized people, but honestly people of all walks of life have an interest in NSFW posts. Sex is a part of us. It's something that means something to a lot of people. And the attitude that it's dirty or difficult or unsavory is honestly offensive to plenty of both the most and least privileged people. The elitism is not becoming.
Remember what NSFW means: "not suitable for work". It isn't "not suitable for this forum", it's "not suitable for work". It's not forum-dependent, it's an internet-wide category. It's a tag to let people know that a post is probably not suitable to view in their workplace.
In 90 out of 100 cases, that's going to be images of naked people. The other 10 cases are most likely related to illegal content.
My boss won't notice if I'm reading a lengthy post about how to torture someone in my personal dungeon for sexual pleasure, or whether I'm reading a conversation organising a political protest against discrimination. My boss and my co-workers will notice if there's a picture of a naked man or woman on the computer screen at my desk.
I think you're extending the meaning of "NSFW" far beyond what most people understand it to mean in order to make your point about free speech. They're two separate issues: displaying content which isn't suitable for viewing in workplaces, and freedom to discuss ideas even if they're controversial. By conflating them, you're undermining your argument.
I would personally never open those posts at work, and I think many people would feel the same way as me. Going by a "fail-safe is better than fail-dangerous" framework, it would be good to have an NSFW category which is a little too broad than a little too narrow.
Most people don't only use NSFW to determine what is acceptable at work. Some people don't even work--it is NSFSchool or NSFPublicViewing or whatever. That is a variety of different contexts with different needs and taboos.
I think that NSFW is in general a fairly broad category and I can see plenty of evidence for that based on how Reddit handles NSFW posts. Plenty of text posts are tagged NSFW.
I could make this exact argument in reverse and claim that you are intentionally making it too narrow to further your point about porn (implying that you have a bias around porn as you imply I have around free speech). Generally, arguments that are reversible like this are not particularly productive to a conversation or to truth-finding.
Arguing over the definition of terms isn't productive. If you and @Algernon_Asimov can't agree on what NSFW means, maybe you should scrap that term and get to what you are really talking about: The distinction between pornographic images vs. discussion about sexuality, in all its flavors. If you do that you might not be disagreeing with each other as much as you think.
I'm kind of arguing that the distinction is pretty difficult to make and that we shouldn't attempt to make it. There is no hard line where you can call something a pornographic image vs. a discussion.
I also think that we fundamentally disagree in that I don't mind literal porn on this site just like I didn't mind it on Reddit. That isn't a semantic disagreement.
Thank you very much for attempting to be a moderator here. I think that is really noble and I hope you do it for someone else in the future.. But this one is just plain old disagreement.
Interestingly, this is the de facto policy of… Voat. They, of course, claim that they adhere to free speach, but there is a group of (down)Voaters who, in addition to the claim above, think that “porn is not free speach” (plus, of course, their usual slurs as to who created/creates porn).
Also, where and how do you draw the line between porn and erotica?
allowing ≠ directly supporting
I actually agree that right now, when there are less than, say, 50k users, NSFW content should be temporarily disallowed, and after that, there should be ways to filter it out for those who do not want to see it (probably device-dependent, just like CSS themes).
However, I support @Prometheus720 (full comment) that Tildes should not always remain as “dry as a 5-foot well in a desert”.
Yeah, there is a very disturbing sentiment here that sexual content is somehow bad or inappropriate. Surely there is a time and place for sexuality but, humans are sexual beings and that is not wrong or evil or "crude" or whatever people say. It is normal.
What do you mean by "NSFW"? Porn? Political extremism? Violence? Illegal activities?
Thats part of the question. What is allowed? I think we can all agree that illegal activity will be banned but how will the site handle other things?
Its not like it would be on the frontpage. It would be separate communities you would actively have to subscribe to. You wouldn't see anything.
Its all good. I'll read the new one and go from there.
What is real discussion? Does anything that you don't like get excluded from it? If this place is a platform for speech than I'm interested in seeing how it treats controversial communities.
First of all your tone is quite sexist and offensive. On many subreddits the discussions of the sort you are describing (rather crudely TBH) happen most of the time under posts women make themselves, either directly for the sub, or publicly on various media. And it's not like r/ladyboners and the like have philosophical debates on sexuality.
Personally I have no problem w/ sexual content as long as it's hosted elsewhere and linked from here, and rigorously tagged so that people can exclude such content. People masturbate, talk about masturbating and sex in general, and it's better to talk more about it than less. For many individuals it's hard to find a friendly, honest and welcoming environment to do so. But yet we should draw the line between a mini-instagram like many porn subreddits are and a community around sexuality. I gues having a ~sex group (no pun intended) and not allowing groups specialised for different sexualities, fetishes &c would be a good start. Then, sexual imagery can have its own recurring threads so that it can be isolated. I think the same goes for other types of imagery, like in r/aww where it's thousands of comments just "it's so cute b/c this" and "it's so cute b/c that". Then, we can observe and decide whether to allow pic based groups or not.
Notice I say sexual content instead of NSFW, because I don't really like the latter: it's too broad. I'm totally against groups that resemble r/watchpeopledying or other gross violent stuff because people following these it's impossible that they are sane. We should decide what subcategories of "NSFW" is applicable and avoid the term NSFW itself because it's to vague to be useful.
Again, I want to point out moderation fragmentation on Reddit as a major source of these issues. In Tildes, there won't need to be 3 forks of every major subreddit, each of which is abandoned after a month or two. It'll just be tags. Moderators will have a much easier time this way.
Sure I'm with you. But why not avoid them instead of banning them?
That's a new take on subreddits. I didn't think much about them until I came here but it feels pretty generic without a wide range of communities.
Maybe I visit other types of NSFW subs (actually, my NSFW focus is softcore, i.e., erotica rather than porn, but I am well aware that when one talks about banning porn it tends to end up with
Sharia19th century); you are, however, right that there is no great discussion, and what I typically see in such posts is links to other places where, e.g., more pictures of the model can be found.This looks like the zero-sum fallacy: people either go to porn content or discuss other topics. I daresay that if there are eventually some HQ erotica subgroups (which, of course, can always be filtered out) here, people will spend more time on serious discussions on Tildes as they will not need to switch sites for a few minutes of rest (and those few minutes will not turn into hours—I can develop this point).
I thought the Reddit front page excludes NSFW by default but you apparently know better because I visited that front page by mistake a handful of times during my four years on Reddit and never while logged in. Otherwise, I only look at the subreddits I am interested in (including NSFW some 1% of the time). I can easily ignore the sea of fluff and concentrate on discussion, and the main reason why I am disinvesting myself from Reddit is its commercialisation, especially real-time tracking. My account is anonymous for a reason, and I do not want it to be linked to any real identity.
On sites like Tildes and reddit you can't avoid them. I might be able to avoid seeing the content, sure. But I can't avoid creeping social norms. This study found that when two subreddits were banned, language associated with those subreddits decreased across all of reddit. Basically what this shows is that norms that were acceptable on fph and coontown creeped into the rest of reddit. There's a real risk that the same thing could happen on Tildes.
Another argument is that allowing porn risks alienating certain users, like women. Particularly if the creeping social norms thing happens.
What are your arguments for including that kind of content? What benefit would it bring to Tildes?
Who gives a damn about Tildes? In the end, it's not about the site. It's about the world that we live in.
Nobody, and I mean nobody joined Tildes just to have better discussion online. They joined to try and make online discussion better because that makes the world better.
What if the social norms of the rest of Tildes crept into the porn subgroups? What if young men and women consumed relatively tasteful porn alongside relatively tasteful people? Porn SHOULDN'T alienate women. Sexist porn might, tasteless porn might, objectifying porn might, but the concept of porn itself? Totally unisex. People like sex, end of story. If they're asexual or not in the mood or whatever other reason, they don't have to look at it.
Think about /r/wholesomememes on Reddit, and compare it to the rest of the site. Not perfect, but better. I have no idea if this is a thing or not, but would you rather inject some wholesomeness into how people, especially young men and women, are exposed to sexual topics online? Or would you rather keep it away and act like Victorians who pretend sex isn't even a thing? Would you rather make people feel ashamed of their sexual desires when you brand them as low-brow or whatever, or would you rather imply that sex is a normal and acceptable part of the human experience and nothing to be particularly shy about?
First things first – I really admire your optimism. Seriously. I'm not being sarcastic nor am I intending to belittle you. Positive outlooks like yours are what drives things forward and makes things better. Although I do want to say that I care about ~Tildes and I'm here for quality discussion. The statement that "nobody cares" just isn't true.
If porn was treated on Tildes in the manner you describe, I agree it would likely be less of a problem. The thing is though "tasteful" is harder to define than porn and as the site opens up, there's zero guarantee that the people consuming it on Tildes will also be tasteful. Lots of women watch porn. I'm not arguing the facts. In an ideal world porn wouldn't alienate women. But the vast majority of porn produced today is alienating to women because by and large, porn is produced by men, for men. There's a reason why the most popular search term for porn by women is "lesbian" and it's not because the majority of women are a little gay.
When you say "would you rather keep it away and act like Victorians who pretend sex isn't even a thing?" you're arguing against a point I didn't make. Of course we can talk about sex on Tildes. I'd totally back a subgroup of ~health that focuses on sex. I'd also support a subgroup of ~creative if people wanted to share erotica or art. But porn is designed to titillate, not discuss. I am not optimistic that, should porn be posted here, that the result would be fascinating discussions about how the angle of the webcam is evocative of Hitchcock, heightening suspense so that we're on pins and needles wondering, "when is he going to cum on her face?!"
I think what I was trying to say here is that Tildes is not at all an end goal. Nobody makes something like this just to make it. It's supposed to have an effect on the rest of your life--you learn something, whether it's facts or attitudes or new concepts. And that is supposed to follow you to the rest of your life. A platform is a means of discussion, and discussion is a means of education.
My ideas here are based on nudge theory. You can't shift someone's attitude or behavior miles to one side all by yourself. But you can give them a little nudge. You can heighten the discussion just a little bit more. You can improve standards just a little bit. And later on, they'll be ready for another nudge. On a societal level you could call it incrementalism. I think increments of more tasteful platforms for pornography and erotica are really the only way to push porn and its consumers towards a more balanced, less sexist, and more ideal version.
I misunderstood then, because I couldn't agree more.
This sounds lovely. However, the reason why I remain skeptical is that that's the goal rather than the current state of things. If we don't have it right now, how do we populate a group with that kind of material? And if we can, then hasn't the goal been met and there's no longer any point? (aside from misogyny-free titillation)
There's also a question of scale. This kind of thing is much easier to manage right now when Tildes is small, and closed to the wider public. What happens when it grows and the group gets overwhelmed with people posting regular porn and making regular porn comments? It's a massive amount of work to keep a community on track when there are thousands of people who think it should go the other way. Is it worth it? What it really comes down to (in my mind) is this: is allowing porn on Tildes necessary for the goals you state above to happen?
Like, ever? Heck no. It can happen at any time, or never at all. I have no idea. Tildes isn't necessary. But we are sitting here with an opportunity, regardless of whatever else we've got.
If we can't build an online platform capable of managing content on this scale and of producing edification, discussion, and growth, then I predict serious problems for the future of an internet-integrated society. Porn is one aspect out of thousands, but I think it's an important one. It is worth it as a test case if nothing else that it is possible to use nudge theory, modern psychology, and good design to slightly improve online discourse in even the most difficult of venues.
If you don't like it, then don't go there. I'm very confused about this attitude. Do you think that talk will filter to the rest of Tildes? Or do you have another objection beyond "It's gross"?
And perhaps the goal of good online platforms should be to raise the discussion level. I hear LOTS of people talk about how it would be nice if porn was less exploitative, sexist, objectifying, and whatever else. I see no one really stepping up to that plate.
I'll be blunt. Tildes would be better at porn than Reddit. The tag ecosystem by itself lends itself way better to ensure scam links and nasty things actually get moderated out, and would help people find what they want. And IMO, a nicer community would make for less sexism and nasty things like that being spread around. You may not care for porn on here, but what if platforms with good communities became popular enough to have an effect on the real world?
What if young men and women consumed porn curated by amicable, egalitarian, and just very slightly more intelligent people than what's on the internet now? Do you think that would reduce sexism in society and help young people build better relationships? I don't want to think too hard about what today's porn does to today's kids.
I think it should be handled just like any other content. If it's interesting content that could generate discussion or meaningful comments, then by all means let it happen.
Using examples I've seen going around this thread, posting a picture of a porn star naked or a gif of her having sex probably won't bring too much to the table. You'll get comments like "oh yea this is so hot", which are completely useless, and that's about it.
On the other hand, a post about sex education or a health focused one would be perfectly fine. I'd say even AskReddit-style posts like "What are your fetishes" are fine. Those get people involved, generate discussion and often have interesting information.
We shouldn't ban NSFW just because it's NSFW, we should treat it like every other kind of content.
That said, we would probably need a functional NSFW tag before we start posting that.
IMO discussions about NSFW things should be allowed, but not posting those NSFW things themselves (e.g. you can talk about sex but you can't post pornographic images). The internet has enough sex on it already.
I just wasted 45min typing and researching examples only to accidently click the page back button and ruining my whole work and taking my PC's virginity (yes Gustav never searched for porn before).
Because I'm now very frustrated I only sum up my previous statements (I'm focusing on sexual-NSFW, because that seems to be taking the most of heat):
As an end note: It is hard to differentiate of nudity as a natural thing and as a sexual thing and they often cross. This is why I think it is important, to decide case by case and focus on the quality of content.
OOTL, gonna need an ELI5 here.
Here is an article about some recent bans (mostly focusing on one sub).
A longer list of banned subs can be found here as well. This has been going on for awhile and there are ban lists of subs that have been eliminated over the years. Some of them are good calls but others are questionable. Its mostly sanitation for advertisers.
You’re conflating reddit banning marketplaces and nsfw content. The ban of those subs also happened at the same time craigslist got rid of their sections that were used for similar products, as did many Facebook groups, etc. This was not in regards to ads because these subs and groups actually paid for ads to sell their wares, this was in response to new laws regulating how sites are held responsible for items sold on them. I’m certain tildes will likely have a similar stance on those types of groups as Canadian laws dictate.
Many of those subs had rules against conducting sales. The darknet subs were strictly discussion forums. No sales were performed and anyone that tried was promptly banned. I can't speak for all subs and I'm sure some were conducting sales but most were not.
Reddit has a history of this. They have made some good calls but they have been rather loose with the ban-hammer for awhile.
Right, but your edit is the real issue. Reddit is just too big to police all the pms and comments and so their simpler solition was to just ban anything that could be construed as sales related. They were not interested in facts, just the fact that it could have led to legal issues which means potential fines as well as fees associated.
Reddit isn’t concerned with the content there as long as at the end of the day it’s not costing them money. Purely speculation, but I would assume that banning subs like coontown, fph, etc wasn’t because they didn’t like the content but rather that those subs were costing them human resources (man-hours responding to legal notices, responding to reports of harassment, etc). It’s similar to why ProCSS was a success, people rallied to flood their support with messages which cost man-hours to clear the queue.
There are still a half-dozen active darknet market subs and advertising is quite prevalent. And the sub mods care nothing at all about Reddit's legal liabilities, so they're perfectly content to leave up ads for widely-regulated substances, drug precursors, card skimmers, and all the other stuff that sketchy people with disposable anonymous email addresses try to promise, if not actually deliver, in exchange for bitcoins. The transactions might not actually be taking place in Reddit's DMs the way they do on, say, /r/mechmarket, but, eh.
To be fair, there's all sorts of sketchiness all over Reddit, if you look hard enough. If you know the right words and phrases to search for, there are folks actively soliciting donations for jihadis in Syria, for example. (Though to be fair, for all I know those are, like, MI5 stings, or something.)
Oh, you're talking about stuff like r/darknetmarkets, not r/gonewild. Thanks for clearing it up.
They also stopped all NSFW subs from showing up in the search results of the official app.
Are you talking about on iOS? Apple's a bit weird with NSFW content. At one point, they removed all reddit apps from the app store that had any sort of "enable NSFW" toggle in their options. The only way for the apps to get back in the store was to remove that option and make people need to go through the reddit website itself to enable NSFW content.
It really doesn't make sense because they allow browsers, which can obviously access all sorts of NSFW content (and even be used to enable the exact toggle they made them remove), but they did it anyway.
Nope, this is on android
Don't they do that by default sitewide anyways? When I search a subreddit, I have to opt in to allowing nsfw results.
I can only add that I would not be surprised if one day there is an advertiser who will offer nice money provided that Reddit bans all NSFW… then all profanity will be banned… in the end, Reddit will turn into a snowflake swamp. Well, it is their choice.
I gather from the prior posts that the most objectionable of the "NSFW" material Tildes users are discussing so far consists of images, rather than text.
On a technical basis, part of the solution could include daily quantity and file size limits for posting photos and binaries of any kind, per user/IP address, with overt porn restricted to an ~adult subgroup. Socially, it shouldn't require more than a polite request to move questionable discussions to ~adult. Approriately tagged links to external image repositories or potentially NSFW material should be acceptable.
While this might also impact technical photography or other image-related discussions, I can only say that it could improve quality of discussion if you must leave the site and come back when you have something cogent to say.
There's no technical method for preemptively blocking every conceivable type of offensive material (which is a good thing given the censorship possibilities), especially when sloppy posting or clever sociopaths are involved. As others have noted, "NSFW" in discussion encompasses a wide range of topics, and it's also possible to cause offense or legal problems in unexpected places.
I once opened a "hacked site example" link in a security forum and went straight to a Goatse image, with my boss standing over my desk - not cool. Would appropriate tagging have prevented this in Tildes? Only if I knew enough to filter in a non-NSFW labelled group, or applied filters globally, which I might not wish to do. I also haven't seen options yet for public retagging or reporting of posts where the author may not be available or willing to move a post voluntarily, and this is another technical feature which might be addressed in future.
There are locales where any LGBTQ content, or anything minors can access that's "adult", may violate local laws. That's where visitors have to bear some responsibility for their own compliance, as long as appropriate labels and warnings are given.
[***I'll out myself as female here, and note that where porn is concerned, I'm pretty difficult to offend unless someone sets out to be intentionally, grossly, unmistakably hostile; human-type monkeys gonna kink. While I don't speak for "women", it seems to me that sanitizing all NSFW content reduces a thriving agora of ideas to a "family-oriented" shopping mall.]
Not a woman but I agree with you very strongly here. I like to think of Tildes as a better-designed version of Reddit, with TrueReddit and WholesomeMemes having a lovely little baby to make up the community.
I don't think it is wholesome to shame people for being sexual beings or for having sexual desires. To me, sex is a private thing in many ways but only as much as my medical history or the details of my personal relationships would be. And online, discussing sex without worrying about my normal social circles is a breath of fresh air--I find I can be extremely candid and honest online in ways that would never be possible in person.
"NSFW" is a bucket label - it can encompass everything from hardcore porn, to naturism, war photography, "does this oozing skin rash mean I'm going to die horribly?", pictures of uncovered female faces, or pregnancy and Kegel exercise technique discussions, depending on local mores, tastes, individual religious beliefs, and so on.
I understand why @deimos doesn't want to deal with "NSFW" material, but it's too difficult to define or block without losing important conversations. We're better off with an ~adult sandbox where we can establish sets of community guidelines specific to these conversations, and visitors can decide whether or not they want to participate.
In my own comment I mentioned that porn should not be accepted here until the obstacles it is based on (handling image and video media as well as supporting good discussions of those types of content) are solved.
I think you have a similar point there with ~adult. The discussions should start with slightly more taboo conversations until we have developed our community to the point where we can also make them productive conversations.
I think that NSFW content up to and including porn should be acceptable, but I would hope that the generally positive community of Tildes would lead to a much more tasteful (read that as less sexist, less exploitative, and perhaps more realistic) selection.
However, as porn is almost entirely image and video-based, those types of content will need to be solved problems before introducing the unique obstacles that porn will present into the mix. I highly recommend against creating a porn group or allowing a sex discussion group to evolve into a porn group until general images and videos and NSFW tags and all of that jazz is well and truly sorted out.
Risque topics in general should be okay, but I think porn or discussions like does size matter shouldn't really be a thing on Tildes.
I don't agree. I can see why content that is overtly pornographic might not be allowed, but part of what makes reddit interesting is people's candour in topics that would normally be considered taboo e.g., does size matter. NSFW tags should definitely be used in those topics though.
No thank you.. there's plenty of places to find porn online, Tildes doesn't need to be added to them. Discussing NSFW topics should 100% be okay, and there should be tags for it, but poem's different.
*porn's
That damned Emily Dickinson, out with her, I say!