Does the founder go into details on how much it cost to run and what the traffic was? Might help future generations.
Voat Is Shutting Down
301–310 of 671 posts
Re: Voat Is Shutting Down
#302Most of the original Voat groups were groups that has been kicked off of Reddit, but then people there made groups that corresponded to groups that were still on Reddit, like /v/science and /v/movies. Reading those is quite an experience. On /v/science right now there is a submission about dark matter and MOND [1], which was also discussed today on HN [2]. The title of the Voat submission will give you a good idea of…
Wow. Clicked your last link. That is absolutely awful.
Re: Voat Is Shutting Down
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
Holy fuck. That’s way worse than I expected. I can’t imagine people actually think like that. They must be doing it for the shock value, or because of some echo chamber effect.
Not for this, but for the "obviously crazy" Trump beliefs we have a useful proxy. PredictIt ran a large number of betting markets (far more than a traditional bookmaker) for the 2020 US Presidential Election. Of course the markets about Trump have lots of people spouting outrageous nonsense. You could dismiss that as just "for shock value". But PredictIt is real money (albeit not the sums involved in the "real" inter…
> For 96¢ you could buy a dollar
I'm skeptical of this because Withdrawals are subject to a 30-day holding period after your initial deposit and a 5% processing fee. (https://www.predictit.org/terms-and-conditions) If people have trouble getting in and out of trades those are the situations in which you expect market prices to be somewhat wrong. 5% is actually spectacularly high in most situations, imagine how much of an edge you need at predicting to beat that.
The price on predictit was ~85c for a very long time after the election. But it's not necessarily because people are unreasonable, there are limits of arbitrage as well. In order to make any profit at all you'd need to lock up a sizeable chunk of money, say $1000, for something like a month, pay 5% commission, plus I imagine the hassle of it all, and all you get is a few dollars. In economics literature things like this are described as limits of arbitrage, to explain situations (like deep out of money options) where it seems like an arbitrage opportunity exists but where everyone still thinks it's a bad trade.
Re: Voat Is Shutting Down
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those days ended fast. I saw it happen. On my forum, that very question was asked, and it wasn’t a philosophical debate. It was an operational one - how do we balance free speech ideals vs actual forum evidence. The framework that fits the evidence and the ideals was 1) we want a market place of ideas to function 2) there is content that easily dominates and sidelines all other ideas. 3) there are Maliciously enginee…
Plus there is an asymmetry here. Wild “theories” and purposefully inflammatory content is easy to post, and also easy to believe for those that align with them ideologically. Countering them, especially to a degree that can be convincing, takes a lot more work. End result, a lot more of the former and less of the latter.
explain early reddit? much more interesting and intellectual than current reddit despite almost no 'censorship' in the way you are implying.
Re: Voat Is Shutting Down
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
A huge problem, which is the cause of this far more than "free speech" ever was, roots in these platforms optimizing for engagement. And then vacuous controversy maximizes engagement so you're really optimizing for controversy, which is a dumpster fire. But separating the combatants doesn't just stop the algorithmically-promoted unintelligible flame wars. It stops the debate entirely. You lose the ability to even enc…
Pragmatically speaking, that will happen anyway. I’m not gonna use any platform that allows me to encounter Nazis. Voilà: the debate is stopped entirely, even though the platform has done nothing to stop it. And on that topic, do we really need to debate Nazis? Like, are we so committed to the idea of moral relativism that we can’t draw some lines? Because frankly, I have zero interest in debating with anyone whether…
I agree with you, and so it seems that actually allowing completely free speech is not that great of an idea in the end - as if it is banned from a major platform they will form their micro-platforms where they will think they are more numerous, and that their ideas are accepted. So I do believe that Europe see it well, there should be a certain border of free speech
Re: Voat Is Shutting Down
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Free speech platforms usually end up being extremist platforms. ...when the popular platforms stop being free speech platforms. Reddit, in its earlier days, was never dominated by the Voat contingent. They were there, but they were far less extreme there than they were on Voat. And then whenever they would post rank inaccuracies, there were clearer-minded people to point out why they were wrong, in the same place w…
> So the answer has to be to stop the witch hunts in the places where everybody else already is. Got to be honest, bro, I don't really care to sacrifice for "the good of society" or whatever. If you make a website where some dude is going to post anti-Semitic shit everywhere and someone else is going to have to politely explain that Jewish lizard people are not conspiring to elect a Black woman as President then sure…
> post anti-Semitic shit everywhere and someone else is going to have to politely explain that Jewish lizard people are not conspiring to elect a Black woman as President
Your actual argument - yeah, sure. All for it. But it is a lot pretend people are anti-Semitic lizard conspiracy theorists if they aren't there to defend themselves. If Reddit wants a more ideologically aligned user-base good luck to them. But this exact scenario has played out many times through history - having a majority culture doesn't magically confer greater moral integrity, or intelligence.
Re: Voat Is Shutting Down
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe this is called the "Gish Gallop". The idea being that I can come up with many, many more questions that are hypothetical, but that require more energy to answer than they take to ask. Often times the person will combine this with a carefully worded question that has to be unwound by the counter-debater. Like, "Knowing that this will cost working class Americans jobs, why do you want X?" Well... X doesn't co…
> Like, "Knowing that this will cost working class Americans jobs, why do you want X?" A good politician would never answer that question. Instead they would answer a different question that they already had a good answer to. “I think the important thing to remember here is...” This tactic works just as well online. Never directly answer a question you don’t like. Always stay on message. By the time you finish your a…
I find this inappropriate. Politicians are engaged in political messaging - so it makes sense there - but online, we're engaged in conversation. What you're describing is good at putting a message across - but I don't want to have conversations with people who are simply broadcasting a message in my general direction. It's a form of bad faith communication, same as the weighted question.
These days, I'd probably just not respond to bad faith communication, but I've historically enjoyed being horrible. Unlike a politician, you don't have to preserve your own credibility in the eyes of onlookers, so you can just be awful if you want.
Re: Voat Is Shutting Down
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't respond to AntiImperialis2 directly anymore, so I'll leave this here... I don't think that because Boomers and (a lot of ?)GenX tended to grow more conservative as they got older proves it's 'the natural order'.. Millennials are approaching 40 now and the liberal ones I know are still very liberal.. I'd argue that Truman getting elected in 1948 meant that there were a lot 'progressive' older folks back then.…
The “people get more conservative as they get older” idea is somewhat of a myth. My family and family friends who were free love hippies in the 1960s and 1970s are Trump haters on Facebook today. To give some more solid data than people in my circle of friends: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_United_States_presidentia... This is the demographics for the 1984 election, the one where Reagan wiped Mondale out. Among…
All that shows to me is youth is liberal, which no one was denying? I'd be happy for enough for the general population to be more liberal leaning, but I can't say I'm seeing evidence of it outside of urban areas ?
Re: Voat Is Shutting Down
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Free speech platforms usually end up being extremist platforms. ...when the popular platforms stop being free speech platforms. Reddit, in its earlier days, was never dominated by the Voat contingent. They were there, but they were far less extreme there than they were on Voat. And then whenever they would post rank inaccuracies, there were clearer-minded people to point out why they were wrong, in the same place w…
> So the answer has to be to stop the witch hunts in the places where everybody else already is. Got to be honest, bro, I don't really care to sacrifice for "the good of society" or whatever. If you make a website where some dude is going to post anti-Semitic shit everywhere and someone else is going to have to politely explain that Jewish lizard people are not conspiring to elect a Black woman as President then sure…
Yes, but there is some middle ground between antisemitism and following what mainstream loves the a given point of time. And right now if someone dares to stick outside mainstream views this is considered hate speech, anti-XXX, etc.
Can we discuss if overweight people should pay more for sits in a plane? Can we discuss if a trans male who identifies herself to be a woman should be allowed to take part in female sport competition (box, running)? I am afraid we no longer can discuss such "uncomfortable" topics because starting such discussion of Facebook or Twitter leads to being "flagged", shadow-banned, because this is hate speech or something-foby or hurts someone's feeling.
I see this as a problem as censorship is precisely what pushes people into bubbles that cannot communicate outside and that get more and more radical. You can't have liberal democracy in a bubble society, as there is no respect for opposite opinion, there is only pushing one's agenda as soon as a given bubble wins the election. Democracy becomes just a tirrany of those who managed to win election (which means those who has more money and who has better access to media).
Re: Voat Is Shutting Down
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't respond to AntiImperialis2 directly anymore, so I'll leave this here... I don't think that because Boomers and (a lot of ?)GenX tended to grow more conservative as they got older proves it's 'the natural order'.. Millennials are approaching 40 now and the liberal ones I know are still very liberal.. I'd argue that Truman getting elected in 1948 meant that there were a lot 'progressive' older folks back then.…
I think the primary factor is that the society itself becomes more progressive, so definitions of "progressive/conservative" change. Sixty years ago, segregated schools were supported by mainstream conservatives, and same-sex marriage would have been considered a radical leftist agenda. An "ordinary" young person from 1960s, growing old without changing their opinions, would seem hopelessly out of touch today.
I would have assumed that as well, but it seems a lot of 'social norms' I thought had changed, really haven't..from racism, to sexism, to hate crimes..It really seems we've evolved very little from 100 years ago.