I haven't been back long enough to determine for myself whether I'm in a "Nazi bar" or not.
I'm also very new here, but as far as I can tell this probably wouldn't be tolerated.
If you think something is toeing a line, consider reaching out to a longtime member of the community (e.g. cfabbro) so you can bounce your thoughts off of them.
If you are convinced that you're seeing something malicious, reporting the comments with the Malice label will get it to the attention of the site admin who may act on it.
I’ve been here since 2020, and I don’t recall and crypto-Nazi JAQing off. I think you’d need to point thread(s) out , as that sort of bullshit is explicitly not tolerated here.
It’s not that we never have threads that go in unfortunate directions, but those are almost always locked or deleted. If we somehow did turn into a ‘Nazi bar’, as @teaearlgraycold said, I have no doubt some kind of mass account purge would occur.
Other people have already said most of what I had to say, but I'd just like to add that the philosphy of tildes is unlike most other new social media websites. Most of them market themselves as "alternatives to big tech" or worse "free speech havens". While none of those things are bad in theory, they tend to attract the type of people you are describing. Tildes philosophy is not like those sites. That being said, most people don't read those things (not saying you didn't, I just wanted to add this for completeness' sake)
It's hard for any community to find the balance between aggressive ban hammer and Nazi free speech haven.....my impression is that Tildes swings closer to aggressive ban hammer side of things. Report away!
Sometimes, I think users who aren't daily immersed in US politics aren't as well versed in the dog whistles of the day and bad faith sneakiness du jour. What @Gekko has observed with folks trying to help but inadvertently giving bad faith actors aid is usually due to unfamiliarity with the constantly evolving slippery slime
If users who are familiar can point it out, and report it, it would not only serve to stop the fester and clear the air, but it would also educate others on "markers" to spot next time. Like training up one's immune system.
short answer: we're not perfect, but we're definitely not a Nazi bar.
long answer:
since the Great Reddit Migration, there has been a noticeable uptick in comments with the sort of dog-whistle-y / just-asking-questions vibe you mention. it's a small relative increase to what was already a small absolute value - the vast majority of the site has no problems of this nature. but it has been there.
Tildes is trying to thread the needle between two very difficult goals - on the one hand, rejecting the paradox of tolerance, and on the other hand, embracing the principle of charity.
in other words, if someone says something that can be interpreted ambiguously, and one interpretation is that they're a bigot, the principle of charity pushes us to assume the best possible interpretation of their words. but meanwhile, if they make other comments that remove any ambiguity about them being a bigot, rejecting the paradox of tolerance means that we must also stop treating them with the principle of charity.
and there isn't a clean, easy, simple answer to that problem, as much as we would like there to be. there's inherently a grey area and a zone of uncertainty between the two, where we're left wondering if a particular comment is made in good faith by someone who is ignorant-but-not-stupid and genuinely wants to know more, or if they're a "just asking questions" troll.
personally, the best approach I've found is to either:
a) don't reply at all. if you feel it's warranted, mark the comment as noise, offtopic, or malicious. Tildes, in most cases, uses comment activity as a signal to boost the prominence of that topic on the front page. if you feel that a comment thread is already a tire fire, the best thing you can do is walk away from the tire fire without commenting on it. if possible, find a topic you think is higher-quality and more worthy of discussion, and redirect your energy towards commenting on that instead.
b) engage, but as constructively and non-argumentatively as possible. don't get sucked into a back-and-forth. wait a few hours, or overnight, between replies. if you feel you must respond, remember the principle of charity and let their words speak for themselves. don't assume what they mean, ask them to elaborate. if they're talking in hypotheticals, ask them for concrete examples (this is something I find useful in general, and not just for dealing with the sort of comments we're talking about here)
something that Tildes is perhaps missing is a "dogwhistle" or "bad vibes" or "sus" label. this would be a lesser signal than the Malice label, and probably only looked at if there was a pattern of a particular user having multiple of their comments labeled by multiple different people over time.
as a non-productive conversation where it seems nobody has read the actual article, probably because it is behind a paywall. I think ‘Black Twitter’ is a very interesting story from a McLuhanite perspective but that is not what is being discussed here, instead the main gist seems to be generic talk about the (very real, serious, …) problem of racism, othering of somebody (seemingly not present) who doesn’t believe racism exists, as well as of evangelical Christians, etc.
Sigh,
You've seen it, then show us? This isn't just some claim, this is an accusation of the nature of this platform and I think it's straight up defamatory.
I'm now more inclined to believe this is based on your interpretation, rather than anything explicitly implied by the content you refer to.
Maybe when you chose to leave you were unaware of community moderation through the malice label.
Be the change you want to see. Deimos will and does ban bad faith actors. Tag it malice, write an explaination of why its bad, tag it noise to collapse the comment and move on.
I feel like anyone posting in good faith and not outright spewing hate should be encouraged to contribute to the conversation. I'm tired of people talking about dog whistles, motte and bailey, sealioning as ways of dismissing and refusing to engage in discussion.
Assuming the discussion is actually relevant and not someone just shouting from a soapbox, we need to understand some people have dissenting views. Well researched well argued opinions can sometimes make people upset.
So long as the intention, either openly or subversively, isn't to upset others (trolling) I don't see the concern here.
Too often accusations of "dog whistling" just come across as, "hey you didn't actually say anything explicitly wrong but it's upsetting for me".
I've found myself associating some unrelated opinions with Nazi-ism since being indoctrinated by the Reddit mob. Basically any time anyone falls on the side of 'well maybe immigration in the United States should be controlled in some way' I immediately peg them as a racist, because in the past that's usually been right.
I've had to reel that in when browsing Tildes, and recognize that on this platform with less people it is actually possible to have a discussion about immigration without someone suggesting we just kill all the browns. It's been an adjustment for me, and still sometimes any time I see someone even slightly on that side of the fence about it I still go 'oh here we go'.
I think the above might be what's happening to OP.
There will always be people working against your viewpoints, wrong or not.
To even name reddit in the same breath of tildes in mentioning such issues is laughable. I was on reddit for 13 years. You cannot possibly fathom how much less moderated it was. The hate subreddits, the jailbait subreddits. You name it, it was the wild west.
You need to learn to think for yourself and ignore those folks.
If you can't handle the internet, maybe just stay off it if you are so inclined to be swayed that easily.
This is not a fair and just world, and the same applies here. Some bigots will slip through the cracks. I'm going to repeat this because it's so important to learn and understand, it's not a fair and just world. Educate yourself about topics that concern you and learn how to move on. Most of what people say is to get a rise out of you and test you. The only way to play is to leave them alone, lest you be roped into such bullshit.
I’m not sure what to make of this post. It feels like a great way to start drama in a few sentences.
So you’ve not been here long or much. You’ve already established at some point “white supremacists were testing the waters” and then left. Now you are back and wonder “how is moderation going lately?”. In itself that question is already implying it was somehow not going well in the past.
How are you expecting these things to land with people that have spent tons of time building this community? How valuable is your observation without being able to point at any real example? What are expecting anybody to do with your observations? To me, without any concrete examples, this post is just causing drama for no good reasons.
I have used Tildes intensely for a long time. There are problems on Tildes, but I don't believe your perception corespond to reality. Your pattern matching is way too greedy and you are seeing things that are not really there. At all. I can't really explain where that is coming from, but I can only assume this has to do with something that is deeply personal and unique to your own fears and subjectivity.
I'm also very new here, but as far as I can tell this probably wouldn't be tolerated.
If you think something is toeing a line, consider reaching out to a longtime member of the community (e.g. cfabbro) so you can bounce your thoughts off of them.
If you are convinced that you're seeing something malicious, reporting the comments with the
Malice
label will get it to the attention of the site admin who may act on it.I’ve been here since 2020, and I don’t recall and crypto-Nazi JAQing off. I think you’d need to point thread(s) out , as that sort of bullshit is explicitly not tolerated here.
It’s not that we never have threads that go in unfortunate directions, but those are almost always locked or deleted. If we somehow did turn into a ‘Nazi bar’, as @teaearlgraycold said, I have no doubt some kind of mass account purge would occur.
I don't think Tildes is big enough for it to be a real problem. Things that are flagged (the Malice label) get dealt with.
And as long as enough people believe that such things are worth reporting, it should continue to work.
"joke" so in short, Nazis are bad. Got it!
Other people have already said most of what I had to say, but I'd just like to add that the philosphy of tildes is unlike most other new social media websites. Most of them market themselves as "alternatives to big tech" or worse "free speech havens". While none of those things are bad in theory, they tend to attract the type of people you are describing. Tildes philosophy is not like those sites. That being said, most people don't read those things (not saying you didn't, I just wanted to add this for completeness' sake)
It's hard for any community to find the balance between aggressive ban hammer and Nazi free speech haven.....my impression is that Tildes swings closer to aggressive ban hammer side of things. Report away!
Sometimes, I think users who aren't daily immersed in US politics aren't as well versed in the dog whistles of the day and bad faith sneakiness du jour. What @Gekko has observed with folks trying to help but inadvertently giving bad faith actors aid is usually due to unfamiliarity with the constantly evolving slippery slime
If users who are familiar can point it out, and report it, it would not only serve to stop the fester and clear the air, but it would also educate others on "markers" to spot next time. Like training up one's immune system.
short answer: we're not perfect, but we're definitely not a Nazi bar.
long answer:
since the Great Reddit Migration, there has been a noticeable uptick in comments with the sort of dog-whistle-y / just-asking-questions vibe you mention. it's a small relative increase to what was already a small absolute value - the vast majority of the site has no problems of this nature. but it has been there.
Tildes is trying to thread the needle between two very difficult goals - on the one hand, rejecting the paradox of tolerance, and on the other hand, embracing the principle of charity.
in other words, if someone says something that can be interpreted ambiguously, and one interpretation is that they're a bigot, the principle of charity pushes us to assume the best possible interpretation of their words. but meanwhile, if they make other comments that remove any ambiguity about them being a bigot, rejecting the paradox of tolerance means that we must also stop treating them with the principle of charity.
and there isn't a clean, easy, simple answer to that problem, as much as we would like there to be. there's inherently a grey area and a zone of uncertainty between the two, where we're left wondering if a particular comment is made in good faith by someone who is ignorant-but-not-stupid and genuinely wants to know more, or if they're a "just asking questions" troll.
personally, the best approach I've found is to either:
a) don't reply at all. if you feel it's warranted, mark the comment as noise, offtopic, or malicious. Tildes, in most cases, uses comment activity as a signal to boost the prominence of that topic on the front page. if you feel that a comment thread is already a tire fire, the best thing you can do is walk away from the tire fire without commenting on it. if possible, find a topic you think is higher-quality and more worthy of discussion, and redirect your energy towards commenting on that instead.
b) engage, but as constructively and non-argumentatively as possible. don't get sucked into a back-and-forth. wait a few hours, or overnight, between replies. if you feel you must respond, remember the principle of charity and let their words speak for themselves. don't assume what they mean, ask them to elaborate. if they're talking in hypotheticals, ask them for concrete examples (this is something I find useful in general, and not just for dealing with the sort of comments we're talking about here)
something that Tildes is perhaps missing is a "dogwhistle" or "bad vibes" or "sus" label. this would be a lesser signal than the Malice label, and probably only looked at if there was a pattern of a particular user having multiple of their comments labeled by multiple different people over time.
Haven't seen what you are describing. Either because the Nazis went elsewhere or because the moderation has been superb.
I would point to
https://tildes.net/~tech/19u6/black_twitter_abandons_musks_x_the_influential_online_community_that_gave_rise_to_social_movements
as a non-productive conversation where it seems nobody has read the actual article, probably because it is behind a paywall. I think ‘Black Twitter’ is a very interesting story from a McLuhanite perspective but that is not what is being discussed here, instead the main gist seems to be generic talk about the (very real, serious, …) problem of racism, othering of somebody (seemingly not present) who doesn’t believe racism exists, as well as of evangelical Christians, etc.
Sigh,
You've seen it, then show us? This isn't just some claim, this is an accusation of the nature of this platform and I think it's straight up defamatory.
I'm now more inclined to believe this is based on your interpretation, rather than anything explicitly implied by the content you refer to.
Maybe when you chose to leave you were unaware of community moderation through the malice label.
Be the change you want to see. Deimos will and does ban bad faith actors. Tag it malice, write an explaination of why its bad, tag it noise to collapse the comment and move on.
I feel like anyone posting in good faith and not outright spewing hate should be encouraged to contribute to the conversation. I'm tired of people talking about dog whistles, motte and bailey, sealioning as ways of dismissing and refusing to engage in discussion.
Assuming the discussion is actually relevant and not someone just shouting from a soapbox, we need to understand some people have dissenting views. Well researched well argued opinions can sometimes make people upset.
So long as the intention, either openly or subversively, isn't to upset others (trolling) I don't see the concern here.
Too often accusations of "dog whistling" just come across as, "hey you didn't actually say anything explicitly wrong but it's upsetting for me".
I've found myself associating some unrelated opinions with Nazi-ism since being indoctrinated by the Reddit mob. Basically any time anyone falls on the side of 'well maybe immigration in the United States should be controlled in some way' I immediately peg them as a racist, because in the past that's usually been right.
I've had to reel that in when browsing Tildes, and recognize that on this platform with less people it is actually possible to have a discussion about immigration without someone suggesting we just kill all the browns. It's been an adjustment for me, and still sometimes any time I see someone even slightly on that side of the fence about it I still go 'oh here we go'.
I think the above might be what's happening to OP.
There will always be people working against your viewpoints, wrong or not.
To even name reddit in the same breath of tildes in mentioning such issues is laughable. I was on reddit for 13 years. You cannot possibly fathom how much less moderated it was. The hate subreddits, the jailbait subreddits. You name it, it was the wild west.
You need to learn to think for yourself and ignore those folks.
If you can't handle the internet, maybe just stay off it if you are so inclined to be swayed that easily.
This is not a fair and just world, and the same applies here. Some bigots will slip through the cracks. I'm going to repeat this because it's so important to learn and understand, it's not a fair and just world. Educate yourself about topics that concern you and learn how to move on. Most of what people say is to get a rise out of you and test you. The only way to play is to leave them alone, lest you be roped into such bullshit.
I’m not sure what to make of this post. It feels like a great way to start drama in a few sentences.
So you’ve not been here long or much. You’ve already established at some point “white supremacists were testing the waters” and then left. Now you are back and wonder “how is moderation going lately?”. In itself that question is already implying it was somehow not going well in the past.
How are you expecting these things to land with people that have spent tons of time building this community? How valuable is your observation without being able to point at any real example? What are expecting anybody to do with your observations? To me, without any concrete examples, this post is just causing drama for no good reasons.
I have used Tildes intensely for a long time. There are problems on Tildes, but I don't believe your perception corespond to reality. Your pattern matching is way too greedy and you are seeing things that are not really there. At all. I can't really explain where that is coming from, but I can only assume this has to do with something that is deeply personal and unique to your own fears and subjectivity.
Sorry :/