Announcing Tildes

As Facebook and Twitter work to save some face from their recent issues there's bound to be some backlash. Maybe not in the form of a mass exodus from either service but from other developers realizing that There's Got To Be A Better Way.

Enter Tildes, a private beta social network with exactly that mentality behind them. They are a Not-For-Profit organization with no investors, so there's no eternal chase for growth. They're supported by donations, so there's no advertising or user profile building. The entire writeup on What They Are is a pretty compelling read from top to bottom but I especially liked this part on Tolerance:

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.

The fact that it's written in the first person and not as "we" is, itself, telling of the scale and scope of what's being tackled here.

There are plenty of other Social Network Alternatives out there and it's entirely possible that Tildes will come and go on your radar without a second thought but it's also possible that it becomes a thriving community for a small group of folks that makes their Internet experience a better undertaking. Overcoming Facebook's scale is not the goal, just making something Good is. Hard to dispute that.

Apply for a login, let's see what happens.