Guide to TangleRoot

Blocking another user prevents them from seeing your posts, seeing your comments, commenting on your posts, or messaging you. It also makes it so that you will not see their posts or comments.

How to block someone: the "block" option appears in the "your feed options" dropdown on a user's profile page.

Visibility: users you have blocked will be able to tell that you have blocked them.

Muting another user makes it so that you will not see their posts or comments, but it does not prevent them from commenting on your posts.

How to mute someone: the "mute" option appears in the "their feed options" dropdown on a user's profile page.

Visibility: users you have muted cannot tell that you have muted them.

Opening messaging allows another user to send messages to you even if your settings would otherwise prevent them from sending you messages. For example, if a friend of yours just made an account, but your settings block new accounts from messaging you, you can "open messaging" with your friend's account to let them message you anyway.

How to open messaging: you can choose to open or close messaging with someone in the "messaging options" dropdown on their profile page.

Visibility: TangleRoot tells people whether they are allowed to message you or not, but it does not tell them why.

Closing messaging prevents another user from sending messages to you even if your settings would otherwise allow them to send you messages. For example, if your settings allow anyone to message you, but you don't want to recieve messages from a specific person, you can "close messaging" with your that person to prevent them from messaging you.

How to close messaging: you can choose to open or close messaging with someone in the "messaging options" dropdown on their profile page.

Visibility: TangleRoot tells people whether they are allowed to message you or not, but it does not tell them why.

Private notes are notes that you can write on someone's profile.

You can use notes help you remember how you met someone, to help you remember why you muted or blocked someone, or anything else you think you might want to remember about the person the note is about.

How to write notes: click the "add a private note" button on a user's profile page.

Visibility: your private notes are visible to you and only you. No one else, including the person a note is about, can see what it says or even tell that it exists.

Keeping costs low and user contributions.

Because of The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 aka "COPPA".

Basically, there's a whole bunch of extra stuff we would need to do to have users under the age of 13, including getting explicit parental consent to let someone under 13 create an account, and a whole bunch of extra recordkeeping and compliance stuff that we just aren't set up to do. If you've ever wondered why so many sites disallow signups for people under 13, this is why.