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

471–480 of 671 posts

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#471

Post by torben-friis »

dwardu wrote: post #451
torben-friis wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

nothing bad about that. are you just annoyed jesus was mentioned?

I'm not annoyed, I just wonder if it looks somewhat normal in other countries/cultures. It does not feel inappropriate, just completely coming out of nowhere.

It's like having a regular interaction like "hey, at what time do we meet up?" "at 10:20, because 2010 is the year justin bieber relased his first big hit and justing bieber is the best artist I have loved in my life, he is the best among all." The way I read it it's out of place to the point where it sounds creepy/makes me wonder about the mental state of the person making that connection.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#472

Post by themgt »

pjc50 wrote: post #333
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 a trans male who identifies herself to be a woman should be allowed to take part in female sport competition (box, running)? Trans woman ; trans men would be competing in the male competitions, and seem to be invisible in the whole trans debate anyway. The problem with this is that it's almost entirely based on prejudice and people saying things that turn out not to be true, along with vague biolo…

The problem with this is that it's almost entirely based on prejudice and people saying things that turn out not to be true ... Caster Semenya [has] high natural testosterone

Caster Semenya has XY chromosomes and internal testes. Semenya has "high natural testosterone" as a result of having male anatomy and hormones. The specific regulation Semenya has been fighting is explicitly "limited to athletes with ’46 XY DSD’ – i.e. conditions where the affected individual has XY chromosomes."

The idea that testosterone confers physical advantages of strength/speed is not "vague biological determinism" it's one of the most basic facts of our existence. It the primary reason sex-segregated sports exist in the first place.

"To say that an XY human can’t compete in the women’s category of professional sports unless they lower their testosterone below 5 nmol/L — a figure that is still 7.5 times the value of the average woman competing at the 2011 and 2013 track and field World Championships and a figure that not a single healthy woman born with XX chromosomes, ovaries, and producing estrogen at puberty can reach — isn’t a huge human rights travesty. It’s a protection of women’s sports."

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2019/05/what-no-one-is-telling-...

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#473

Post by pc86 »

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…

"Complaining about SJW culture" could mean any of 50 things depending on who is saying it, and there's not enough context here to know what you're saying exactly, but I don't think complaining/debating it is a contentious thing. There is some absolutely bat-shit crazy stuff coming out of the extremist left. It's just not as overtly racist as the equally bat-shit crazy stuff coming out of the extremist right, and the Overton window being what it is it's not as heavily monitored/censored.

> You did not bring them up in good faith

Nobody talks about the airplane ticket thing if they care about the "wellbeing and rights" of morbidly obese people. But that doesn't detract from the facts of the point. Whether someone does or doesn't care about the wellbeing of some unnamed morbidly obese person is irrelevant to whether or not they're making a good point or argument.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#474

Post by joepie91_ »

totony wrote: post #465
dlisboa wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>You can either: believe people are inherently evil and will support genocide at the first opportunity; or people can be influenced by pointed words from a group intent on manipulating them. It is also possible this was a prevailing thought, or that the environment was encouraging of such thoughts, in that nation at that time; that something caused division, and that the nazi used this as a way to assert power and sp…

> It is also possible this was a prevailing thought, or that the environment was encouraging of such thoughts, in that nation at that time; that something caused division, and that the nazi used this as a way to assert power and spearhead their ideology.

Doesn't this exactly confirm the original claim that words do lead to actions and therefore affect people's rights?

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#475

Post by UncleMeat »

dotancohen wrote: post #336
XorNot wrote: 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.

Now do this 1,000 times. Now 10,000 times. It is trivial to suck all the air out of a forum by repeatedly posting this.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#476

Post by ashtonkem »

verroq wrote: post #314
ashtonkem wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Folks can rant about free speech all they want, but no sane person would actually want to experience it. Always remember that "free speech" is 100% about the right to say what you want and not be prosecuted for it . It has never, ever been about the social consequences of any particular one person's speech. Insulting your boss and getting fired isn't an abridgement of free speech, neither is getting banned from the…

>Always remember that "free speech" is 100% about the right to say what you want and not be prosecuted for it No I don’t remember. You can have “free speech” except the social consequences are that your neighbours lynch you in the streets. No I don’t recall it like that. Free speech has always been absolute because the majority opinion is immune from social consequences. It is the minority opinion that requires prote…

Aside from the extreme hypothetical you made up, there are other laws against lynching, you know. That has nothing to do with free speech.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#477

Post by UncleMeat »

throwaway3699 wrote: post #446
ninkendo wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Maybe I should expand a bit more... I think being scared of coming into contact with bad ideas (and tackling them) just stops people from understanding why they are bad ideas. E.g. if we create a cultural taboo long enough, I do believe people will stop caring if something is bad. Just look at all the edgy teenagers who think Nazi stuff is funny -- because it's taboo and not talked about enough. Sure, teens will be t…

> I think being scared of coming into contact with bad ideas (and tackling them) just stops people from understanding why they are bad ideas.

You can learn about these topics in scholarly environments taught by actual experts who can provide you with real analysis. Refusing to have conversations with klan members does not prevent me from understanding and analyzing racism in america. In fact, I'm going to get a much better understanding by speaking to historians than klan members, since klan members aren't exactly incentivized to provide a dispassionate analysis of their ideology.

People aren't scared of coming into contact with bad ideas. People are frustrated with having to come into contact with propagandizing bigots who want to murder them.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#478

Post by UncleMeat »

0xBA5ED wrote: post #219
eropple wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds good until you realize that we're dealing with literal-not-figurative fascists here. The world has figured out how to deal with a Nazi. I've linked this elsewhere in the thread, but it is worth understanding the lessons of this story deeply: https://twitter.com/IamRageSparkle/status/128089153745134387... Say you're something anodyne, like /r/RomanHistory or something (I don't know if that's real). For obv…

This is wrong on so many levels. You are encouraging witch hunts based on fear and paranoia. Moderation is about maintaining order, not slapping down baddies. You could argue that one leads to the other, but it's the difference in mindset that allows for effective moderation without the need for all that negativity.

> Moderation is about maintaining order, not slapping down baddies.

That's the same thing.

I have several friends who are professors of medieval history. For various reasons, fascists are really interested in medieval european history and like to attend conferences as "independent scholars". They pass out propaganda and harass scholars who have the gall to do things like discuss women in medieval europe or any form of cultural transmission between europe and the islamic world. The solution has been to rip this stuff out. You can't have "order" in the conference where people are able to share actual scholarly work while free of harassment without "slapping down the fascists".

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#479

Post by corobo »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #211
andrewflnr wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no "solution", just like there's no "solution" to "politics". Everyone just has to keep trying really hard all the time so we don't drown in shit. That's it, until the lights go out for good. As for the next step, it looks less like starting a reddit competitor and more like building individual, independent communities that can stand or (more likely) fall apart from any others.

Yeah, it's hard for me to envision what the next iteration on Reddit could be. Maybe there isn't one and instead we're seeing a resurgence of forum silos again that's winning back the mainstream. For example, I was pleasantly surprised to see Discourse have so much success and high profile roll outs (like Boing Boing and Blizzard). It turns out that everyone was ready for a modern revitalization of the forum experien…

> hard for me to envision what the next iteration on Reddit could be

You mention it in your post. It's Discord. We're looping back to IRC. Give forums another 5 years or so

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#480

Post by lordCarbonFiber »

Recurecur wrote: post #423
ninkendo wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Thanks, I hadn't run across that writeup, though well aware of the issue. This was a little gem in that article, seemingly highly relevant now: > However, Rawls qualifies this with the assertion that under extraordinary circumstances in which constitutional safeguards do not suffice to ensure the security of the tolerant and the institutions of liberty, tolerant society has a reasonable right of self-preservation aga…

So that's the stance "the liberties of the intolerant should be limited only insofar as they demonstrably limit the liberties of others" most of the major social networks take and it falls short in that it's hard to draw that line. (also the ideas of constitutional safe guards applying to private entities is a whole other can of worms; id argue the speech the government can limit should be a subset of what any given private moderator might choose to)

Two examples: what im going to call the "im not touching you" type of harassment -- that is posting things clearly designed to hurt and wouldn't make sense in context unless designed for harassment. The platonic example here is the image macro that's the trans flag with the words "Your parents will burry you with the name they gave you". Cuel to the extreme, but doesn't technically call for violence against the given person, or the protected group at large so twitter and facebook, etc happily leave it up (and people wanting to be assholes hyper optimized pretty quick; ive seen the macro posted by multiple people in multiple places).

Second being the idea of stochastic terrorism. Painting a group as an unchecked evil means you don't have to tell anyone specifically they should commit violence, but, it's hard to be surprised if they come to that conclusion. See the shootings in Charleston or Christchurch.

Post reply on HN