Now that Reddit appears to have gone terminally to shit, people are looking for alternative platforms again. I approve, and think it’s long overdue. No platform should be permitted too large an audience lest its owners mistake it for “the public square”1 and begin to flatter themselves by thinking their platform’s continued existence is vital to public discourse. We’re too used to thinking of “network effects” as divine providence or a force of nature to which we must adapt.
One such alternative is a basic little forum called tildes. It’s run by a non-profit and apparently breaks even on donations so there’s no advertising. Anybody can lurk, but you can’t create a user account and post without an invitation. They don’t claim to be a “free speech” platform, and it’s run out of Canada so the First Amendment doesn’t apply there.
If you know where to look you’ll see a lot of sob stories on Reddit from unreliable narrators about how they were unfairly banned without cause or explanation. At no point do any of these people acknowledge that their own behavior might have been a factor in why they were ejected from a platform they do not own or even financially support.
I have a story of my own. I used to have an account there as “demifiend”. As you can see, I too was banned from Tildes. And I had it coming.
What did I do to deserve being banned? Simple: I was a poor guest. I flouted the clearly stated rules one time too many even after being reminded by management. If memory serves, I had cracked one joke too many about wanting to see overprivileged billionaires party like it’s 1929 and do the dead cat bounce, and the admin “deimos” wasn’t interested in hosting somebody who expressed a desire to see the oligarchs commit suicide.
And, in all honesty, I was OK with that. I’m still OK with that. I knew when I got the invite way back in 2017 that I was a guest. I proved to be a poor guest, so I got the boot. I never protested, or even talked about it in public until today.
Even if Tildes was hosted in the US by a 501(c) non-profit I still wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, because Tildes isn’t my website. It was a website on which I was permitted to post at the management’s pleasure. Since I made it clear that I did not accept the management’s terms and conditions, I was shown the door.
This is the case with every platform that allows “user-generated content”. The fundamental rule is TANSTAAFL, generally expressed in the context of social media as “if you aren’t paying, you’re the product”.
Again, Tildes doesn’t host advertisements, but they’re still selling a sense of online community and I was ruining the vibe. Whatever platform replaces Reddit will be no different. The myriad platforms comprising the Fediverse are no different. Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, etc. are no different. None of them owe me, or you, a goddamn thing2. They certainly don’t owe you and me a free soapbox with which to shout every stray thought or half-baked opinion to cross our waking minds.
That’s what personal websites and blogs are for. I’ve got mine. What’s your excuse? It can’t be that hard to rent a domain and space on a web host. Even I managed that.