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Voat Is Shutting Down

voat.co

371–380 of 671 posts

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#371
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The hardcore believers from /r/The_Donald are on thedonald.win now. The place is as full of anti-semitism, racism and misogyny as you'd expect. It's a good place for a laugh every now and then, if you can stomach the hate.

It'll get worse.

Being on reddit anchored them to a wider community and gave them rules to abide by. This meant the true nastiness wasn't on display only hinted at. People drawn in by the memes from wider reddit weren't immediately repelled by the kind of nastiness that's on display in thedonald.win.

Now they're on their own platform they have no anchor and no real rules, they'll "muh free speech" themselves to destruction.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#372
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?

Constant dehumanization of people does not eventually lead to physical violence? someone somewhere must believe that they should do something about these bad people. your argument at best is in bad faith

>your argument at best is in bad faith

I disagree (although this was a question more than an argument)

>Constant dehumanization of people does not eventually lead to physical violence?

What it might lead to is irrelevant, the act of speech does not impede anything and a lot of things have the potential to lead to violence, yet legalizing it is arbitrary at best

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You’re part of the tyranny who won relative to billions of others.

So-called civilized society is using its wealth to expropriate resources from other nations rather than destroy its own land.

And poisoning it’s community.

But it would be tyranny to stop it, according to the average opinion.

Infinitely big little numbers and the cognitive ability to spin in semantic circles often seem like similar concepts to me.

But there are consumer clouds to build in and gadgets to dispose of! Don’t tread on me treading on the species at scale!

Free speech is great but management of reality for the success of the species should not be left in the rear view mirror. Change in personal agency must be part of the solution, but my free speech!

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not the original commentor but would like to address : > > It is an absolute disgrace how it's become normal > Why? I have seen where almost ALL discussions lead to judgement based on politics and that takes away from the core discussion point. What is the point of having separate subs then? For example take this link ( https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/khlnyz/ronaldinho_o... ), this was the top post on t…

> I've seen people take time to go through your profile and dig out one comment and then label you, just one. That feels like a disgrace. Eh, depends on the comment. I recently saw a particularly erroneous comment about COVID-19, so I checked the poster's comment history to see whether it was worth trying to engage them in good faith, or just post a dry correction for others to see. I then saw this comment posted ear…

Where did you find that comment? My googling is failing me...

Also, that comment is interesting because the actual things stated (higher violence, worse economic output, net burden on the state) are literally true and uncontroversial but the way they are phrased and the mere fact they are brought up at all tells an unpleasant story.

Unless of course the commentator is just ignorant or uncaring about such implications (e.g. an edgelord).

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think trying to win those people may be a better strategy in the long term. People feeling left out are angry, and if the train stops and they ride together, they wouldn't be so anti-social. Again, "I think" (Which is more of a hope, admittedly).

People with views like these shouldn't be given oxygen with platforms that allow them to form community around horrible and hateful ideas. In my opinion they should feel left out, until they realize that it is their immoral views that make them unacceptable to larger society.

As long as it isn't illegal (well thought crimes aren't yet) why do you care?

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is your thesis seriously that nazi does not exists?

And in fact quite a few of your examples in fact are part of that ideology.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#377
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moderators are there to ensure the community thrives, not to respond to 50 restatements a day of "COVID-19 is a hoax" by people "just asking questions". Part of that is very much ensuring that the front page is not wall to wall conspiracy theories, and members don't have every thread inundated with the same junk.

So each time a post "just asking questions" is posted, close it with a link to the explanation of why the idea has already been debunked. Just like a Bugzilla dupe or a StackOverflow dupe.

For a long time, Reddit moderators did not have the tools to do this. Regardless, whenever bad-faith argumentation is removed, the person whose comment was removed paints the event as censorship which just backs up their conspiracy argument more

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#378

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…

> 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.

No, the system is working as it should. If a platform is so full of fringe extremists that the vast majority of people want to have nothing to do with, then they have to bear the commercial and social consequences of that.

Your right to free speech doesn't take priority over my right to have nothing to do with it. Go find your own little patch of land to shout your opinions from.

Free speech doesn't mean you have to right to make me hear you. It just means that government is not allowed to restrict it (for the fear of political suppression). That's it.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#379
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old.reddit.com still exists, and is a lot more usable. Ed: to be clear, I use it logged in. I don't know how dark-patterny it is when logged out.

Old.reddit.com is not usable on mobile.

Like the sibling commenter, I use old.reddit.com on mobile - but the key being that I switch the browser into Desktop mode.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#380

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…

For someone who has a bit of context: is this supposed to be real or tongue in cheek? It sounds like mental illness to me but maybe I'm just incredibly out of touch with the reality of the average voat user.

> I will lay Voat upon the cross on December 25th 2020 at 12 noon PST. I have chosen Christmas as the day to do so in honor of the only True thing you will find in this world and that is Jesus Christ, the son of God, and the only way to the Father. I chose 12 noon in honor of the twelve disciples who spread the message of salvation to the world.

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