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Voat Is Shutting Down

voat.co

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Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#11

Post by santoshalper »

Thorentis wrote: post #5
ignoranceprior wrote: post #4

Voat was founded as a neutral free-speech platform. After alt-right extremists were booted off reddit, they found a new home there. The site was bombarded by /pol/ chan culture, and after that nobody else of other political persuasions really wanted to join. Kind of like that "paradox of intolerance" meme. Free speech platforms usually end up becoming extremist platforms. I remember going on voat a couple years ago a…

As opposed to Reddit where every subreddit aside from those dedicated to alt-right topics has a left-leaning tinge. Every platform has biases. It's just that Reddit chose to ban a specific group, so it's logical that group alone would dominate alternatives.

Society has a left-leaning tinge. Especially society in the age range that reddit caters to. There's no grand conspiracy. Right politics are wildly unpopular with young to middle-age people.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#12

Post by striking »

Archive link: https://archive.li/vE4iR

TL;DR:

> I fight not being bitter and resentful. You see, this wasn’t supposed to happen, at least not now. The short of it is that the “Angel” defaulted on the contract in March 2020. This is when Voat lost all of it’s funding. I personally decided to keep Voat up until after the U.S. election of 2020. I’ve been paying the costs out of pocket but now I’m out of money.

> I will lay Voat upon the cross on December 25th 2020 at 12 noon PST

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#13

Post by Threeve303 »

herbstein wrote: post #10
superkuh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were corners of it that were decent in terms of content and tone. Particularly v/justgrowit which was about gardening. But yeah, for every polite person in some isolated corner there were 50 screaming about politics on the front page. But that wasn't the problem with Voat. The problem with Voat was the terrible code making the site non-functional. You literally couldn't submit a URL which had a tilda in it. A t…

> But yeah, for every polite person in some isolated corner there were 50 screaming about politics on the front page. The problem with Voat wasn't that some people were "talking politics" on the front page. The problem was that the vast majority where anti-semites, racists, and otherwise horrible. That's beyond "talking politics" in any decent sense of the phrase.

When the hardcore believers from /r/The_Donald moved to Voat, I was happy that it was still possible for anyone to read what they were saying. Similar to a honeypot or sting operation, we are probably worse off when they scatter back to the shadows.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#14

Post by edoceo »

technion wrote: post #8

Whilst the content on voat kept me from using it, I clicked this link and couldn't help noticing how quickly it loaded. How much content was on the screen. How many comments I could read before hitting "load more", which simply loaded more rather than sending me to a different page. For a site with funding issues and limited Devs, voats usability should be a huge embarassment to the Reddit it based itself on.

Once again tho, it's not the tech that makes/breaks the company/platform

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#15

Post by draw_down »

technion wrote: post #8

Whilst the content on voat kept me from using it, I clicked this link and couldn't help noticing how quickly it loaded. How much content was on the screen. How many comments I could read before hitting "load more", which simply loaded more rather than sending me to a different page. For a site with funding issues and limited Devs, voats usability should be a huge embarassment to the Reddit it based itself on.

Well, performance didn’t save Voat, so not sure what your point is exactly...

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#16

Post by herbstein »

Thorentis wrote: post #5
ignoranceprior wrote: post #4

Voat was founded as a neutral free-speech platform. After alt-right extremists were booted off reddit, they found a new home there. The site was bombarded by /pol/ chan culture, and after that nobody else of other political persuasions really wanted to join. Kind of like that "paradox of intolerance" meme. Free speech platforms usually end up becoming extremist platforms. I remember going on voat a couple years ago a…

As opposed to Reddit where every subreddit aside from those dedicated to alt-right topics has a left-leaning tinge. Every platform has biases. It's just that Reddit chose to ban a specific group, so it's logical that group alone would dominate alternatives.

I'm not entirely sure I understand this point. Even if I were to concede the point that all of Reddit has a left-leaning (in a US sense of the word) tinge, is that at all comparable to the right-leaning tinge of Voat?

Is advocating for e.g. defunding the police, medicare for all, and free college comparable to saying immigrants should be shot on the border, that the holocaust simultaneously didn't happen and wasn't effective enough, and that racial minorities should be hanged?

Even if you vehemently disagree with the three examples of left-leaning policies I used as an example, and any other examples I could've used, surely you can recognize that they are fundamentally different to the stuff that permeated every crevice of Voat? Saying Reddit and Voat both have a tinge completely ignores any context and nuance.

EDIT:

There's an example I'd like to bring. It's from a thread on the frontpage called "Voat, I could use a little life advice". It's from a person that is having trouble paying their bills, and can't do much doordash driving because they refuse to wear a mask. The most upvoted response is this:

> "Was a really good programmer for years". Good, not many people are and it's a skill that's good for decades. n* * * * * * can't fake coding skills like they do everything else

Another upvoted response from the thread says this:

> Why don’t we create funds for fellow nationalists like the n* * * * * * and the ki* * *? Somewhere to pool resources to lift white brothers in need.

Mind you, this is from the front page of both the AskReddit-equivalent and the global front page. And this is on a question that wasn't about anyone but the original poster and their money trouble.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#18

Post by faitswulff »

Threeve303 wrote: post #13
herbstein wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But yeah, for every polite person in some isolated corner there were 50 screaming about politics on the front page. The problem with Voat wasn't that some people were "talking politics" on the front page. The problem was that the vast majority where anti-semites, racists, and otherwise horrible. That's beyond "talking politics" in any decent sense of the phrase.

When the hardcore believers from /r/The_Donald moved to Voat, I was happy that it was still possible for anyone to read what they were saying. Similar to a honeypot or sting operation, we are probably worse off when they scatter back to the shadows.

I’m fairly sure both honeypots and sting operations were carried out on voat.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#19

Post by 236dev »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #2

How much was he/she paying a month to keep it up? Why not ask for donations/people to subscribe? I mean, I don't personally use and I don't know anybody who does but...

I think they would be kicked off whatever fund raising platform they use pretty quickly.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#20

Post by DrAwdeOccarim »

Thorentis wrote: post #5
ignoranceprior wrote: post #4

Voat was founded as a neutral free-speech platform. After alt-right extremists were booted off reddit, they found a new home there. The site was bombarded by /pol/ chan culture, and after that nobody else of other political persuasions really wanted to join. Kind of like that "paradox of intolerance" meme. Free speech platforms usually end up becoming extremist platforms. I remember going on voat a couple years ago a…

As opposed to Reddit where every subreddit aside from those dedicated to alt-right topics has a left-leaning tinge. Every platform has biases. It's just that Reddit chose to ban a specific group, so it's logical that group alone would dominate alternatives.

Eh, reddit is a big place. The subreddits I subscribe to have zero politics; I never found that on voat...
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