Tildes is open-source

2018-07-27T00:00:00-06:00

If this is the first that you've heard of Tildes, you should start by reading the announcement blog post for general information about the project and its goals.

One of the overarching themes of Tildes is to involve the community as much as possible. This starts from the very foundations: the company is a non-profit supported by user donations—there are no investors, advertisers, or other outside influences. This approach ensures that the site's priorities will stay aligned with its users', and that development can be done in an open and honest manner.

To truly support this, the Tildes code is now open-source and available on GitLab, with all further development being done publicly. Contributions are welcome, and several fixes and updates by other developers have already been integrated since it was open-sourced last week.

Jumping in

The rest of this blog post is going to briefly go over some general information related to Tildes development. If you'd rather jump right into looking at the code or tinkering with a development version, please start by reading the project's CONTRIBUTING file, which will point you to all the information you need.

License

The Tildes code is licensed as AGPLv3. Much like organizing as a non-profit, this license choice represents a long-term commitment to principles. It ensures that the code will always remain open, and that people can contribute to it with confidence that their work can't be closed off in the future.

If any other sites (or companies) decide to use Tildes code as a base, this license will also require them to open-source their changes and additions.

Technology

From the technical side, Tildes aims to use modern versions of simple, reliable, "boring" technology. This is especially important as an open-source project hoping for outside contributions, since it means that people can get involved much more easily.

The core technologies are Python 3.8 (using the Pyramid web framework) and PostgreSQL 12. A few other systems are used for specific needs, but overall, Tildes is structured as a fairly "old-school" server-side web application, with Python and PostgreSQL handling as much as possible.

Approachability

One of my main goals for Tildes as an open-source project is to have it be approachable even for relatively inexperienced developers and people that have no experience contributing to other open-source projects. Web applications are complex, but being able to contribute changes to a site that you use can be exciting, and is a great motivation to learn.

The Tildes code has been built with this in mind and uses various methods to improve its quality and consistency, including strict code style (using Black), full Python type declarations (via mypy), and extensive commenting. By being disciplined about these aspects from the very beginning, the code will be able to stay far more approachable for interested contributors.

Getting involved

If you'd like to be a part of Tildes, there are a few possibilities:

The site has been in invite-only alpha for a couple of months now. It's fairly active already, but more users are certainly welcome. If you'd like an invite, please send an email to invites@tildes.net to request one.
If you're interested in contributing to Tildes's development, please read the CONTRIBUTING file for more links and information about how to get started.
As always, donations are much appreciated and enable me to continue focusing on developing Tildes.

Thanks for your interest and support so far—the first few months of Tildes have gone very well, and I'm excited to see how being open-source is able to help the site progress even more quickly and openly.

Announcing Tildes - a non-profit community site driven by its users' interests

2018-05-02T00:00:00-06:00

Contents

Why is this happening?
We can do better
How can I get involved?
Who's working on Tildes and how can I contact you?
It's up to us

Online communities are in a precarious and unhealthy state right now.

Major internet platforms are exhibiting a wide range of issues: they collect our personal data and fail to protect it; amplify outrage and encourage mob harassment; spread false information and radicalize viewpoints; and allow racism and hate speech to propagate. These are all incredibly serious issues, yet they're still only a small sample of the problems that are becoming apparent.

The companies behind the platforms know their products cause these negative effects, but they've decided to treat them as acceptable costs instead of taking decisive action to address the issues. Only legal or public pressure seem to produce meaningful responses.

Why is this happening?

I believe that almost all issues with internet platforms trace back to two root causes:

Dependence on venture capital and the expectation of massive returns for their investors
Business models based around selling user attention and data to advertisers

These factors force companies to obsess over growth—there's no concept of having "enough" users or revenue. As the profitability noose tightens, any original principles are abandoned in favor of growth and revenue, which are goals important to owners, not users.

We can do better

It doesn't need to be this way. We should have places online where we can have meaningful interactions without worrying about our privacy and relationships being exploited for others' financial gain. Places that respect us and the communities we build, and help make them better instead of just trying to make them bigger.

Over the last year, I've studied what people want from online communities and what we need to change to make it possible. Combined with my own experiences, everything I've learned affects how I've been building Tildes, a new link-aggregator-style community site that's starting its invite-only alpha today.

Non-profit, no investors

The organization behind Tildes is a not-for-profit corporation with no investors, which ensures that there's no looming requirement to chase profit or constant growth. The aim is simply to make the site sustainable while focusing exclusively on what's important to its users. Growth will be the organic result of building a site that people want to use, not a goal in and of itself.

No advertising, user-supported

Tildes has no advertising, and is supported by donations. Almost all sites generate their revenue through advertising, which motivates them to maximize metrics like page views, time on site, and "engagement". Common techniques to increase these metrics degrade the user experience for the benefit of advertisers; the only way to ensure that users are truly the priority is to make them the source of funding.

Open, honest, and open-source

Tildes will be transparent with records and financials for the non-profit itself, open-source as much code as possible, track issues and plans publicly, accept code contributions, and provide a fully-capable API for outside developers to utilize.

The site's code is open-source (licensed as AGPLv3), and development is done publicly, with outside contributions welcome.

Minimal user-tracking, better privacy

Tildes collects as little user data as possible and no data will be voluntarily shared with third parties. User data will be treated as a dangerous byproduct, not an asset.

Facebook's pervasive tracking has come under particular scrutiny recently, but the reality is that they are only one of thousands of companies performing heavy surveillance on their users. The reason for this aggressive data-collection is almost always the same: because it has value to advertisers. Since Tildes has no advertising, there's no compelling reason for tracking anything more than the minimum needed for functionality.

High-quality content and discussions

Tildes prioritizes quality content and discussion through its mechanics, design, and organization. Fixation on growth and related metrics results in other sites having a bias towards high-appeal, low-depth content like funny images, gifs, and memes. The priority on Tildes is to cultivate high-quality communities, which are far easier to build when they don't have to fight an uphill battle against the platform itself.

Limited tolerance, especially for assholes

Tildes will not be a victim of the paradox of tolerance; my philosophy is closer to "if your website's full of assholes, it's your fault".

This is a difficult topic, so I want to try to be clear about where on the spectrum Tildes is trying to land. I'm never going to refer to the site as a "safe space" or ban anyone just for occasionally acting like a jerk in an argument—I'd probably have to ban myself fairly quickly. However, it will also never be described as anything like "an absolute free speech site".

There's a reasonable middle ground between those extremes—I believe that it's possible to support the ability to freely discuss important and controversial topics without also being obligated to allow threats, harassment, and hate speech.

How can I get involved?

Note: this blog post is from May 2018. Tildes is now publicly visible, and you can browse the site freely without an invitation at https://tildes.net. If you'd like to register and participate, you're welcome to email me as described below.

The initial alpha test group will be small and by invitation only. I hope to start expanding pretty quickly before long, including giving users their own invites to send out. Send me an email at invites@tildes.net if you're interested in being included in one of the early groups.

Since I'm avoiding investors and similar funding options, the most beneficial way to contribute would be to please donate to the non-profit (any amount is appreciated). I want Tildes to exist, so I'm going to keep working on it regardless, but I won't be able to continue focusing on it exclusively without donations.

To be notified of future posts and updates, please subscribe to this blog's feed or follow the Twitter account. If you're interested in reading more about Tildes, there are also some pages available on the docs site that expand on the topics in this post and cover other aspects of the site.

Who's working on Tildes and how can I contact you?

I'm Chad Birch, and on the internet I generally go by "Deimos" or "Deimorz". I've been participating in and helping build online communities for over 25 years, starting from pretty much the most minimal one possible—a small-town, one-phone-line BBS where only a single user could be "on line" at a time.

Since then, I've experienced how communities have evolved from BBSes to new incarnations on Usenet, IRC, and multiple generations of web forums and platforms. Most recently, I worked as a developer at reddit for almost 4 years as it grew into one of the largest sites in the world. I left in late 2016 and wasn't sure what I wanted to do next, but a few months later I started thinking deeply about how online communities had gone wrong and what we could do to fix them. Tildes is the result.

If you'd like to contact me directly for any purpose except requesting an invite, please email deimos@tildes.net. I'd love to hear from anyone: people interested in the site, journalists, researchers, or anyone that wants to offer help.

It's up to us

I want to end by linking to one of my favorite recent articles about technology: "No one's coming. It's up to us." The overall message is that we can't just expect new tech to automatically improve the world. If we want a better future, we need to make conscious decisions about what kind of world we want, and contribute to work that moves us in that direction.

That's what I'm trying to do with Tildes—I truly believe that online communities can be much better, but we need to abandon some common but false assumptions about what's necessary to fund them. It won't be an easy or quick process, and no doubt we'll make some mistakes along the way; but we'll learn from them, and I hope that some of you will join me.