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    1. Tildes should recognize the Gaza Genocide, and moderate accordingly

      This has been on my mind for a while, and I've voiced a similar concern 1.5 months ago in the recurring topic, but it went unnoticed. Israel has been and still is actively committing genocide...

      This has been on my mind for a while, and I've voiced a similar concern 1.5 months ago in the recurring topic, but it went unnoticed.

      Israel has been and still is actively committing genocide against people of Gaza. You can read a summary of the reasons it's being called a genocide in the Wikipedia entry (and its sources) . Wikipedia itself has recognized it as genocide, naming the entry Gaza Genocide, and it's a major feat considering the contentious nature of the topic and the heavy regulation and debates in Wikipedia culture. Even a UN human rights experts said in March that there are reasonable grounds to think a genocide is being committed, and UN is dominated by US influence, and is much slower to act and react, especially when western or US interests are concerned (which applies in this case, because Israel is an ally).

      Israel's online propaganda machine has been hard at work about this issue, in order to control the narrative (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Israel also now ranks among the world’s leading jailers of journalists., another evidence of their commitment to suppress dissenting voices and control the narrative around this issue. It's also worth noting that western coverage of Israel's acts has been said to be legitimising Israel's behavior.

      I think most things in the world are some shades of gray, and it's very understandable for people to have ambivalent attitudes about it, but I do not think this is one of those cases, for the following reasons.

      • There is an active, ongoing genocide.
      • The genocider nation-state has been spreading its propaganda to control the international narrative, especially in US (because US is its biggest ally and funder). It's doing this because it knows support from US and its allies is crucial to keep the genocide going. This involves manufacturing consent in the citizens of these nations.
      • Tildes is heavily populated with citizens of US and other western nations.
      • Not actively opposing this propaganda means one is helping -albeit indirectly but still significantly- the genocider nation.

      I should clarify that, as of this moment, I'm not blaming the moderators, and I'm not saying they are doing this consciously and with full consideration. Instead, I'm trying to illustrate what is going on in the wider context, and what the actions in this mini-environment mean in the wider context. Simply put, genocidal propaganda is not an issue where you can follow the middle-ground, especially when you have power over a community.

      For these reasons, I propose two changes in terms of moderation.

      1. Both from now on and retroactively, change the names of the "Israel-Hamas war megathreads" to "Gaza Genocide megathreads".
      2. Create and, both from now on and retroactively, use the tag "Gaza Genocide" when tagging.

      The first point is self-explanatory. As for the second point, there comes up only 4 topics when I search for "Gaza Genocide" in the site, even though there have been numerous discussions about it. None of them have the mentioned tag, but they have the Gaza and Genocide tags separately. Furthermore, one of the topics is mine, and I had put the tag Gaza Genocide but it was later removed by moderation, and replaced with other tags mentioning this topic. Again, not throwing personal shade to anyone, but I think this is not a good way to go about this topic. A special tag would give it more visibility, which the victims of the genocide need.

      These are my suggestions. If anyone can think of anything else, they are welcome to share as well.

      52 votes
    2. Three Cheers for Tildes: App updates and feedback (September 2024) — Version 1.1 adds an in-app YouTube player

      This topic is for the Three Cheers for Tildes mobile app. I'll summarize the major updates at the start of each similar topic, so people can read the updates and then hit Ignore if they don't care...

      This topic is for the Three Cheers for Tildes mobile app.

      I'll summarize the major updates at the start of each similar topic, so people can read the updates and then hit Ignore if they don't care about more frequent updates and user feedback.


      Recently:

      Three Cheers version 1.1 is out for Android and iOS! (Sep 14, 2024)

      • Added an in-app YouTube player
      • Added 2 settings related to YouTube and autoplay
      • Tweaked the labels dialog UI
      • (Android) Fixed Back button navigation in the WebView
      • (iOS) Fixed UI bug commenting on a deeply nested comment

       

      Some technical details: The YouTube player uses the YouTube IFrame Player API using the Android and iOS wrapper libraries. They are both open source and I was able to submit some improvement patches to them.

       

      Regarding release schedule: Prior to version 1.0 of the app, I was working (a little too) hard on the app and putting out monthly megathreads. These days I'm allocating my time differently, so topics won't be monthly. Please continue to feel free to reach out, whether posting in the megathread even if months old, or emailing me using the contact info on the app store pages, or using iOS TestFlight feedback functionality.

      Huge thank you to the few people who have set up a recurring donation in the app. From a worker perspective, it's still a tiny tiny amount if comparing with an actual wage developing apps, but luckily for my users, I'm not trying to make a wage from this app, and plan to continue developing it at my own pace. That does mean that updates will be somewhat unpredictable though.

       

      Previous topic: May 2024

       


      Where to get it

      Android version on Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes

      Or sideloadable APK at https://www.talklittle.com/three-cheers/

      iOS version on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/three-cheers-for-tildes/id6470950557

      Join TestFlight for iOS beta testing: https://testflight.apple.com/join/mpVk1qIy

      76 votes
    3. It is time to do away with the empty recurring weekly threads

      It's time to do away with the recurring weekly threads about US politics, about Israel and Palestine and other similar threads that clearly do not need weekly recurring threads. Those who do not...

      It's time to do away with the recurring weekly threads about US politics, about Israel and Palestine and other similar threads that clearly do not need weekly recurring threads.

      Those who do not wish to see topics on those events should unsubscribe from the relevant keywords for their own browsing, as all of us with other interests unsubscribe from those keywords.

      There is no flood of this content that makes gathering things in weekly threads relevant.

      No content is drowning on tildes, as no group has issues with too many posts.

      It's uninviting to folks who are actually contributing submissions to the site to be told they shouldn't be making these, but should rather make them in empty, dead posts. That is not fair to them, nor is it a good look for the site.

      These dead recurring threads should be done away with. They serve no function. The experiment has shown they are not needed, are not used and are simply auto-generated robotic clutter.

      107 votes
    4. Crossposting on Tildes, general thoughts?

      It seems like the last real discussion about the subject was about 6 years ago I am mostly wondering what the thoughts now are on crossposting something in different tildes groups. This was...

      It seems like the last real discussion about the subject was about 6 years ago

      I am mostly wondering what the thoughts now are on crossposting something in different tildes groups. This was inspired by a few things. Last week I was unsure where to post something and ended up posting it in the most topical tildes group even though previous posts that took off were posted in a different group. Meaning that people that are subscribed to ~comp but not ~life might have missed the post even though they might be interested.

      Then there is this post. I was about to post the same link before realizing it was already posted. The post in question is posted in ~games, I would have posted it in ~tech. I feel like the overlap between ~games and ~tech subscribers likely is a bit bigger, but also here I feel like people might potentially be missing out.

      I realize this might not be the biggest issue, the majority of people on tildes seem to be subscribed to all groups. But it still, it tickled something in my brain and this is the second time in a short period that I find myself thinking about this.

      Ideally, in my mind, this would be solved on a technical level where you can post something in two groups with a consolidated comment section. However, I don't see this happening in the sort term.

      Tags sort of cover this, but given they can be anything and quite numerous, browsing through them is not something I personally would ever use or actually address this.

      The second-best solution, and the one I'd like to discuss, is to simply cross post and in one of the posts leave a comment linking to the other post to consolidate discussion a bit.

      Am I overthinking the issue? Probably. :) But overall, what are peoples thoughts on allowing cross posts between groups? Any real downsides besides double entries in the listing?

      22 votes
    5. Comment fields are hard to use on mobile

      It seems like the input fields for comments are missing some required HTML meta parameters or something like that. When I'm typing in them, on mobile, I don't get any autocorrect or...

      It seems like the input fields for comments are missing some required HTML meta parameters or something like that. When I'm typing in them, on mobile, I don't get any autocorrect or autosuggestions, I can't use swipe input, I can't move my cursor with the space bar, etc. This doesn't happen with any other text field on the site (search, post body, ...), so the problem must be in something like the type param of the input element. This is incredibly annoying and there have been multiple times where I didn't want to write a comment just to avoid dealing with this experience.

      Edit: it also seems like it happens when editing a post, but it doesn't happen when making a new post

      Edit 2: I just tried clicking around and for some reason it only happens when entering a text field for the first time, but not when clicking off and the back into the text field? Might be a GBoard bug then, weird that it doesn't happen on any other site though

      Edit 3: the issue only happens that use markdown_textarea with auto_focus=True

      11 votes
    6. Tildes growth

      Do we have any information on how Tildes growth is going? I only use Tildes, used to only use reddit until they pulled their bullshit last year. I don't use any social media and I feel like I am...

      Do we have any information on how Tildes growth is going?

      I only use Tildes, used to only use reddit until they pulled their bullshit last year. I don't use any social media and I feel like I am missing out on a lot of news and things. When I used reddit I had curated my subs to my interests and I feel like I was up to date on everything I wanted to be.

      But now, due to Tildes being a much smaller community, the news I receive is much more generalized and I've been noticing a lot of times I miss things. For example because all video games are clumped together in one Games Tildes, only the most popular kinds of gaming news gets posted there, so more specific or niche things I miss.

      Another example, I had never heard of Ozempic before the South Park episode, and a friend was shocked and told me I was so out of the loop for not knowing what it was. I'd never seen anyone talk about it on here, so how would I know?

      I also notice there's just significantly less engagement overall on Tildes. I can scroll through the front page of Tildes every morning, see maybe half posts I've already seen and half new ones, and by the end of the day there will be a handful of new posts but not many. In its golden years, Reddit would have new posts every few hours with new info or news about different things. Tildes feels really small still.

      Point being, I'm curious how Tildes is doing in terms of growth and whether it looks like it'll be getting larger communities which will split more subcategories into the broad categories we have now. Or if it has plateaued and this is how it'll be for good?

      55 votes
    7. Three Cheers for Tildes: App updates and feedback (March 2024)

      This is a recurring topic for the Three Cheers for Tildes mobile app, which is currently in alpha testing. I'll summarize the previous month's updates at the start of each topic, so people can...

      This is a recurring topic for the Three Cheers for Tildes mobile app, which is currently in alpha testing.

      I'll summarize the previous month's updates at the start of each topic, so people can read the updates and then hit Ignore if they don't care about more frequent updates and user feedback.


      Recently:

      Three Cheers version 1.0 is out for Android! (Mar 25, 2024)

      • Submit topics!
      • Added donation option in Settings
      • Share links from other apps to create a Tildes submission
      • Edit topic text
      • Delete topics
      • Require minimum Android 7.1.1
      • Fixed refreshing feed after login/logout

       

      iOS v0.11.3 (Mar 28, 2024): Fixed UI bugs and crashes on large iPhones (Pro Max series), particularly when using the in-app WebView browser.

      iOS v0.11.2 (Mar 8, 2024): Fixed crashes in Inbox under the Comments tab.

      Android and iOS v0.11.0 (Mar 3, 2024)

      • Added sort options for topics
      • Tap username on comment, and topic OP, to view profile
      • View markdown of topic OP
      • Fixed minor UI bugs
      • (Android) Fixed wrong profile showing via bottom tab, after logging into a different account

       

      Android and iOS v0.10.0 (Feb 15, 2024)

      • View and send private messages
      • Added button to send private message from a user's profile
      • Added "Tap to refresh" when a feed is empty
      • Show posted time in topic OP
      • Renamed bottom tab to Inbox (instead of Notifications)
      • (Android) Removed animation when using bottom tabs
      • (Android) Fixed crash when replying from a user's profile
      • (iOS) Fixed crash toggling Details in topic OP
      • (iOS) Fixed layout bugs with markdown tables
      • (iOS) Fixed UI bugs when replying in a user's profile
      • (iOS) Fixed minor UI bugs and crashes

       

      Last month's topic: February 2024

       


      Where to get it

      Android version on Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes

      iOS version on TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/mpVk1qIy

      116 votes
    8. Additional length tags?

      Sniffing around in the topic history here, I see a single mention of "medium length/watch", which would fit in with what I have in mind. However, what I'm really angling for here is "very long...

      Sniffing around in the topic history here, I see a single mention of "medium length/watch", which would fit in with what I have in mind. However, what I'm really angling for here is "very long read/watch" tags, as I've seen articles here that are at least twice the length of others with "long read", and anything by, for example, NeverKnowsBest, is going to be an order of magnitude larger than the 30 minute minimum for long watch.

      "Very short read/watch" is probably fine too, but I imagine that anything that would actually fit that label is probably against the posting spirit of Tildes.

      7 votes