Tetratto New Year's Resolution 2026

Hey everyone! Thanks for sticking with Tetratto for (mostly) all of 2025. I know it's been a rocky year, from the closing of Neospring, to the creation of Tetratto and all of its subsequent new features and feature removals.

Tetratto has had its fair share of issues in the past year. New things have been added, many things have been removed, and I've struggled to find the right balance for what's to exist on Tetratto. Next year, I want to do things differently. Starting in 2026, I (and the rest of the staff) are going to be more up-front about not just development changes, but also major policy and moderation changes. Instead of just removing features at will (with maybe a week or two of notice), feature removals are not only going to become less frequent (we all live with out choices), but will also have at least a month (* or two) of notice. Additionally, when possible, you'll be able to extract your data from services that matter (such as messaging) to archive it yourself. That will happen during the notice period.

That's not all that has been mishandled, though. I've been (admittedly) clumsy with how Tetratto (and Neospring) make a profit. While it's mostly through supporter subscriptions, various other tactics have been tried (such as Tetratto coins). When these fail or their associated features become a drag on the site and are removed, the users have had to pay the price through monetary losses or data loss. Beginning 2026, I'll be making it a little more clear on how we're managing refunds and payments, as well as having the support of less feature additions and removals.

Moderation is a big part of what makes a social platform social. We've continuously failed to protect our users from NSFW, harassment, bullying, and just generally unsightly posts. Coming 2026, I'll be slowly rolling out not just a new moderation system, but also better moderation tools for our staff to use. Human judgment is what makes moderation tricky, which is why I'll also be positioning staff to not have to make the tough calls themselves. To achieve that, new moderation guides will be provided to staff which will provide a more in-depth process for moderating Tetratto.

I've seen your feedback on how we currently handle moderation in Tetratto, and I'd like to take the time to address some of your concerns. I know reports have been patchy, so I'll also be improving the guidelines for what makes a good report. Currently, almost 90% of the reports we receive are 3 word reports like "being very mean" or "very bad person". Reports like these not only clog our moderation team up with useless junk, but also make the real reports harder to find. Additionally, we haven't even received a report since November, despite taking action on over 30 rule-breakers and wrongdoers. The report tool is there to help you alert the staff to possible TOS violations, but random reports make that harder for us.

Despite this, we've definitely struggled to maintain an active staff team over the past three months. I'll be looking into bringing in more moderators this coming year, since I think Tetratto is in desperate need of some help when it comes to keeping things clean.

Tetratto has gone through many changes and features that looked like a good idea, but turned out to not work so well in the atmosphere of Tetratto. The codebase behind Tetratto has grown to over 30k LOC, and has become muddled with remnants of dead features that didn't quite make the cut. Instead of killing the whole platform (like was done with Neospring), I'm taking a new approach this time that I think will be better for everyone. A large refactor (and full rewrite of the frontend) of Tetratto is currently underway, and I'm looking to start an open beta of that (with a testing database) in the near future. The current Tetratto is slow, memory hungry, janky, and just plain broken in some areas. I think starting 2026 on a clean(er) slate will be a welcome change.

In this large update, all of your data will remain in place. While communities are being replaced (with something better and simpler to use... so long, messy permissions system), everything from your posts, likes, questions, profile, and settings will remain as they were (and still are).

This update is also bringing some major changes, such as users now being able to upload images in their posts for free (up to 2 MB, 8 MB for supporters). This update also brings a major overhaul of Tetratto's "look and feel", bringing a much-needed refresh to the (almost copied) look it currently has. The current look of Tetratto is inherited largely from Neospring, which was written entirely from scratch, but it was done in a way that it would mirror how Retrospring looked in order to make migration easier. I think it's time for Tetratto to find its own visual identity, so I hope you'll be patient as I work through that.

Reminder, I'm always happy to hear feedback on every decision, be it design, moderation, funding, anything! Tetratto has always, and will always, be open-source and community first. I hope you'll continue to stick with us as we work through previous bad decisions, as well as any that may come in the future (but hopefully won't). Please feel free to reach out, either on Tetratto, or via email.

Thanks! I hope you all enjoyed 2025, and are looking forward to a productive 2026!

Trisua ❤️