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

Voat Is Shutting Down

voat.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 671 posts

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#361

Post by Clampower »

esperent wrote: post #328
piokoch wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 You can debate those things on reddit without being censored on a lots of subreddits. However, the reason these are such contentious topi…

The fact that gender critical subreddits were banned, (like LGBdroptheT) where respectful discussion on gay erasure were taking place, speaks volumes. In The current political climate, gay people need to hear from members of their own community that homosexuality is transphobic, because it excludes transpeople. Mainstream gay and lesbian subreddits are teaching lesbians to like "girl dick". A simple joke that gay men need not to worry about getting pregnant is transphobic because WHAT ABOUT TRANS MEN. LGBT communities on reddit are incredibly homophobic, and no community that tries to speak survives. I am So incredibly sad for young gay men and women who are being victimized by their own communit, being told that being attracted to only the same sex is wrong.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#362

Post by concordDance »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #285
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #119

Earlier 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’m not gonna use any platform that allows me to encounter Nazis

The main reason you think of your political opponents as nazis is because you haven't been interacting with them and talking to them.

"Nazi" as a label is pretty useless as there are dozens of beliefs that are associated with "Nazi" (normally used as a label for rejecting any of the core tenants of progressivism), most people called Nazis might agree with a watered down version of one of them and disagree with the rest (The amount of conflation going on is a bit ridiculous, someone who believes in using military power to acquire resources and someone who believes in a "traditional" gender roles and someone who thinks those with learning difficulties should be steralized and someone who thinks Jews have too much influence in media are all "Nazis" but will agree with eachother on nothing else).

Of course, because someone who voices one of the views will get ejected from their community and go to the community of rejects where other people who had a single "Nazi" belief are... they'll become radicalized and adopt some of the other "Nazi" views they would otherwise have opposed (though rarely all). :/

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#363

Post by LunaSea »

esperent wrote: post #328
piokoch wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 You can debate those things on reddit without being censored on a lots of subreddits. However, the reason these are such contentious topi…

You confirmed the parent comment's position on the need to have a free speech platform by making the mistake of disqualifying other peoples opinion:

> I don't think I'm ever seen these topics discussed in good faith.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#364

Post by mistermann »

artemisyna wrote: post #124
sfblah wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some specifics of #3 just for color? I'm not interested in debating or trolling at all. I'm just curious what people say that does this. Is it just people cheering for Trump or something?

Not the OP, but as an example: Take a flat earther argument that's explanations within explanations within explanations to cover whatever "what about x?" type of questions you have. Change "flat earther" to whatever conspiracy theory/controversial topic of the day, and there you go.

How to build a strawman 101.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#365

Post by [deleted] »

ngcazz wrote: post #315
piokoch wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s tiring to have to repeat that you’re proposing debating the legitimacy of the humanity of certain people as though it merited debate.

[deleted]

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#366

Post by mistermann »

sfblah wrote: post #239
lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tones of statements fall under that header. It can be Trump supporters tallking about election fraud, nazis talking about "race based IQ distributions" or transphobes talking about "bathroom predators"; there's no shortage of these kind of bad faith low effort "arguements". There are mountains of high quality sources you can use to argue against the claims but it takes many times the work than just showing up to "jus…

No interest in wading into the specifics of these topics obviously. But, it occurs to me that deciding which topics are troll topics and which ones aren’t confers a lot of power. I have actually seen people banned from communities when coming armed with pretty detailed data and thorough argumentation. I wonder if there’s a principled way to separate low-effort trolls from those simply willing to argue the unpopular s…

There is a principled way I'd think, but very few minds remain anymore that haven't been corrupted by incompatible heuristics.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#367

Post by concordDance »

intended wrote: post #78
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #50

Earlier 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…

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…

Counteranecdote: I remember being on a forum for a good ten years while it had a free speech policy. It worked just fine as in practice social pressures and being shouted down kept any talk of "gas the jews" basically nonexistant.

Unfortunately, the forum moderation team became woke and started introducing rules ouutlawing types of speech they disagreed with. This ended up reinforcing a whole load of vicious cycles (conservatives self-censoring, conservatives being ejected, moderation drifting further left) and you ended up with a very nasty circle-jerk of endless posters trying to one-up eachother with the latest scandal about how Evil their enemies were. Surprisingly, it didn't just kill discussion of left vs right on social issues, it killed basically all discussion of non-culture war political topics as well, drowned out by the purity spiral circlejerk.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#368

Post by Vinnl »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #120
_opc6 wrote: post #88

I've said this before and got downvoted for it. But if companies allow extremists on their platforms then the moderates will leave. It's not so much a paradox but a cause and effect.

What almost every comment about Voat here misses though is that when you start a competitor clone to an incumbent like Voat did, there’s literally zero reason for most people to join. The only people who have an incentive are people banned from the incumbent. You see this all the time. As a kid I posted on a forum Opa-Ages that was just weirdos banned from Gaming-Ages (NeoGAF). This isn’t so much about free speech an…

> The only people who have an incentive are people banned from the incumbent.

Other groups might be people who feel harassed by people who aren't banned from the incumbent. For example, I think Mastodon saw early large influxes of LGBT users who were getting tired of Twitter's lack of moderation.

(Though of course, Mastodon has seen other influxes as well that might have helped it get over a specific niche - IIRC many Japanese who had different ideas about what is tolerable than Western platforms, and of course techies enthusiastic about federation.)

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#369

Post by totony »

glouwbug wrote: post #260
totony wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>'free speech' supersedes other rights and should go unchecked at the expense of others Curious about this, what right does anti-Semite/racism rhetoric removes from others? How can words affect your rights as a person?

> How can words affect your rights as a person? Remember the holocaust

>Remember the holocaust

I'd posit the words weren't the things affecting people, but whatever actions they took

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#370

Post by Icyphox »

ngcazz wrote: post #315
piokoch wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s tiring to have to repeat that you’re proposing debating the legitimacy of the humanity of certain people as though it merited debate.

This is a standard strawman. OP was _not_ suggesting that obese/trans people don't deserve to live.
Post reply on HN