Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 348 posts

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#81

Post by NotAMoose »

jdavis703 wrote: post #26

I signed up on their website, went through the onboarding flow and joined a couple of communities. Without them knowing anything about my political leanings they suggested a bunch of anti-Trump communities. I guess they're not trying to solve the "filter bubble" issue, but rather becoming the Reddit for liberals? I mean it's their business for them to run as they like, but I hope somebody can take us past the Breitba…

The suggestions are random based on interests you've chosen, and based on how the volunteer community leaders (mods) have tagged their communities. So if you picked "politics" as an interest during onboarding, it will suggest popular communities that have been tagged as such.

If there were popular republican communities on the site, our system would recommend those to you.

We're a new site, and our userbase so far is pretty liberal leaning.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#82

Post by nilved »

bpicolo wrote: post #39
krapp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voat does not really support free speech, as per their user agreement: You may not use Voat to break the law, violate an individual's privacy, or infringe any person or entity’s intellectual property or any other proprietary rights. (...) You agree to not post anyone's sensitive personal information that relates to that person's real world or online identity. Do Not Incite Harm: You agree not to encourage harm agains…

Free speech doesn't mean "anything goes even if illegal"

It sort of does by definition, but nobody implements it that way.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#83

Post by cortesoft »

jsf666 wrote: post #35
threepipeproblm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I probably didn't express my view well here. I did read the article & understand they aren't free speech absolutists. Still wondering how free speech will play out here, because I wonder if they will stick to eliminating trolls or if their moderation will be subjective and "politicized".

There's no free speech if you want to ban "hate speech" or "trolling". This more or less means removing all challenging opinions and basically focus on being an echo chamber even more so than reddit. Basically thought-crime policing

While I understand it is tricky to properly moderate a forum without stifling dissenting opinions, it isn't impossible. You can censor clear, vulgar, abuse while not censoring challenging opinions.

Trolling, name calling, and abuse are NOT "challenging opinions", and removing them does not stifle discourse. There is no opinion that can't be expressed in a way that doesn't resort to abuse.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#84

Post by cortesoft »

threepipeproblm wrote: post #20
cortesoft wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you even read the article? They are explicitly saying that they will (and do) ban bullying and hateful communities. They are not free speech absolutists.

I probably didn't express my view well here. I did read the article & understand they aren't free speech absolutists. Still wondering how free speech will play out here, because I wonder if they will stick to eliminating trolls or if their moderation will be subjective and "politicized".

Probably depends on how you define politicized. Take the example of /r/fatpeoplehate... some people think banning it was simply eliminating trolls and abuse, while some people think it was SJW left-wing censorship.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#85

Post by Joeboy »

BEEdwards wrote: post #29

Lot's "but this isn't free speech" in here, but that's exactly the point, free speech has been tried and it leads to shit holes like reddit and voat. Places you might visit, but wouldn't recommend or even admit to using in a mixed group. People talk about free speech like it's some goal, but in reality all people seem to do with it is make fun of fat people and post stolen naked pictures of celebrities. When confront…

Reddit's version of "free speech" works fine for me. I almost never see the kind of hateful speech it's allegedly full of, and if I do it's voted down to -20 or something. It seems to me to be preferable to, say, the Guardian comments section which is full of people being rude to each other but heavily moderated for forbidden facts or ideas.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#86

Post by AlexB138 »

So what they really mean is "Reddit without anyone who will disagree with your sophomoric views on politics" it seems. It's people's choice if they want to dig into a non-threatening bubble, but it's fairly sad. You don't grow by surrounding yourself with people just like you.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#87

Post by AlexB138 »

mabbo wrote: post #44

The only internet community that I've ever seen achieve a set of rules that are followed by the community has been somethingawful.com. And while there's lots of criticism you can lay on them, they've maintained a culture and community for nearly two decades. They did this by making accounts to comment cost money, a one-time $10 fee. If you troll, you get banned and you need to pay $10 again to get your account back.…

Most of the early Somethingawful community is long gone, broken into splinter sites that look more like SA did in its early days. It's now populated with people who are ok with the heavy handed mods enforcing their views through bans. It's also a mostly irrelevant site now, when compared to how fundamental it was to early internet culture.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#89

Post by Joeboy »

veddox wrote: post #13

The Internet has such an enormous potential in terms of fostering cross-boundary communication, the free exchange of ideas and knowledge, and all the rest of it. It makes me sad to see once again that the greatest thing preventing it from really fulfilling that potential is that we can't stop adults from behaving like kindergarteners. Why is it so difficult to get people to abide by the basic rules of human decency a…

From what I see in the subs I'm subscribed to, the vast majority of people are perfectly personable on Reddit, most of the time. No less so than real-life people anyway. I suppose that the issue is that it doesn't take many truly awful people to make some people feel negatively towards the site as a whole.

Edit: If I went to a bar and somebody stabbed me I would probably be wary of going there again, even if the stabber was only one person out of a clientele of thousands.

Re: Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit

#90

Post by rmc »

veddox wrote: post #74

I am staggered by the amount of people here who object to Imzy's "Be Nice"-policy on the basis that it limits free speech. To me that seems to be a rather flawed argumentation: a) The First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech, explicitly does so in a political context ("Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech"). Imzy is not the US Congress, they don't have jurisdict…

> I am staggered by the amount of people here who object to Imzy's "Be Nice"-policy on the basis that it limits free speech.

It's especially curious, because HN does try to have a free speech uber alles approach. If limiting speech is good for HN, why isn't it good for Imzy?

It's also important to remember that reddit is very pro-free speech, but bans some protected speech, namely, doxxing. Redditors started to dox people who ran some of the more ahem controversial subreddits. And then reddit banned doxxing.

Post reply on HN