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Voat Is Shutting Down

voat.co

561–570 of 671 posts

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#561
post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Laws don’t work, which is why we need more laws” is quite an argument.

Me: “there isn’t enough done to protect dissenting voices” You: “so we should do nothing and give them up to the lynch mob, laws don’t work anyway, this is what I call freedom of speech but not from consequences”

You know, there is a rule about presuming good faith. Accusing me of "giv[ing] them up to the lynch mob" is not that. Knock it off.

Here's the issue, either you're advocating for something useless, or for the suppression of speech.

On one hand, you have the idea of criminalizing violent responses to unpopular speech. This is completely superfluous; we already criminalize violence, what will adding another law do, really? The theory might be that it'll dissuade action, but someone furious enough to literally lynch their neighbor over speech isn't rationally balancing the pros and cons. "I strongly disapprove of this and therefore I want whoever does it to be locked up forever" might feel viscerally good, but we know it's a bad way to run a country.

On the other hand, attempting to protect people from non-violent responses involves the suppression of speech based on popularity. You might have the right to say whatever you want, but I also have the right to tell you exactly how I feel about that. You can't abridge my legal right to say that because I happen to be in the majority any more than you can suppress my speech if I was in the minority. And if my push-back to your original speech is noxious in its own right, then maybe I'll suffer social consequences for my own speech, as is completely fair.

Oh, and remember that any tool you give the government might be abused. We're already seeing local cities trying to pass "hate speech" laws against anti-cop sentiment, which is probably not what the original authors had in mind. The path between "we need to suppress the mob" and "my political opponents are a mob and must be suppressed" is very straight and very short.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#562
post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the canonical meme of free speech That's a pretty dismissive way to say "jurisprudence". > If every arena where people actually meet is privately owned, and all of these places agree on what ideas are valid topics of discussion, the effect on society will largely be the same as if a state actor suppressed free speech. The concept that you're edging up to here is called "State Action". It's the idea that the…

I didn't say that you were wrong , or dismiss your viewpoints. I'm pointing out that there is a broader debate here, which has value but is misunderstood by many. Freedom of speech as a philosophical concept spans wider than its codification in law, and probably requires adaption or extension in response to changing circumstances. The "twitter mob" argument was really an ancillary point to show where one ends up if e…

The solution is to not look to the government to solve social issues like this. Governmental policy and law is way too slow, coarse grained, and unwieldy for stuff like this.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#563
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty weird assertion - Voat doesn't have to worry about literally any of the scale problems Reddit does.

The design of your website in Reddit's case has nothing to do with scale. Shitty UX will always be shitty UX no matter how many users are on your platform.

>The design of your website in Reddit's case has nothing to do with scale

Sure it does. Once you reach a large enough scale you kind of need to do stuff to attempt to not be losing money on the development & hardware costs of such a large platform.. so you end up changing, even if it's not 'for the best'.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#564
post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way, it is. It's the perfect embodiment of "careful what you wish for", which is referencing people's inability to anticipate unintended consequences. Every HN post about Patreon or Youtube banning somebody leads to lengthy treatises about free speech. Well, here's Voat. All free speech, all the time. What's that, bigots have taken over the platform and chased out all the non-bigots? Who could have seen this com…

Well, voat was a community founded and populated by all the people banned or unwelcome by mainstream platforms. I don’t think it follows that Reddit would become as bad a voat if it was “all free speech all the time”.

I think the bigger issue is that somebody has to pay the bills. Very few are willing to pay to host those sorts of extremists views.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#565
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

At which point wouldn't they switch to BTC? Agree or disagree with who Voat is and what they say, but I can only assume at least one coin exchange would be willing to do business with them.

And again we come to the conclusion of the only real use for cryptos- moving money when no one wants to touch you with a 10 foot pole otherwise.

But to the moon, right!

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#566
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing is, simply repeating a common tract, belief, thought, or “fact” to refute and drown out “wild theories” is just as effortless. There is a serious logical hazard in believing that any of this is asymmetrical.

I don't think it is effortless to refute. Wild theories are effortless to construct since they can be devote of facts, and variants are also effortless to create. Refuting requires gathering facts and evidence. Additionally presenting them in a way that's relatively easy to digest for the audience is also difficult.

Take the recent US election for example. Very effortless to claim fraud and stolen election; just a couple of tweets in fact. Debunking them rather more difficult. Then there are the more specific claims, such as:

- China and Venezuela worked together to do this - Voting machines flipped votes - There were vote dumps at midnight - Dead people voted for Biden

All very easy claims to make, all rather more difficult to debunk sufficiently. Then, when one is debunked, another one easily pops up. Don't get me wrong, I think it's well worth the effort and we should fight disinformation, but effort it does take.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#567
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People can just go ctrl+c the response someone else made on the subject. Bookmark links and have your list of links publicly accessible.

And what do we do with a new variant that pops up? We've debunked dead people voting, now the claim is voting data is being sent to Germany for processing.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#568
post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the canonical meme of free speech That's a pretty dismissive way to say "jurisprudence". > If every arena where people actually meet is privately owned, and all of these places agree on what ideas are valid topics of discussion, the effect on society will largely be the same as if a state actor suppressed free speech. The concept that you're edging up to here is called "State Action". It's the idea that the…

I didn't say that you were wrong , or dismiss your viewpoints. I'm pointing out that there is a broader debate here, which has value but is misunderstood by many. Freedom of speech as a philosophical concept spans wider than its codification in law, and probably requires adaption or extension in response to changing circumstances. The "twitter mob" argument was really an ancillary point to show where one ends up if e…

It certainly appears to me that it is being discussed widely. I see this discussion all the time.

Really you are talking about societal norms. Sometimes I agree with those norms, and sometimes I don’t. I think the norm that gays should be ostracized was wrong, and I’m happy to see how much this is changing. I think the norm that racism shouldn’t be tolerated is right, and I’m happy when it is upheld.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 muc…

You also have the non-zero risk of the site shutting down. Predict-It's been around a long time now, but I still wouldn't wire them more than I could afford to totally lose. 4% on what I can afford to lose really isn't worth the hassle.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#570

Voats problem was it was boring. This is why it failed. As far as I could tell they couldn't start or prop up anything like a Pizzagate. It was a poor mans 4chan. They had a real opportunity in 2015 to be the next Reddit, but seem to have missed it. To many outages, I felt like they didn't embrace Venture Capital as well as they could. They still created something. And it's easy to criticise I guess. But it sucks bei…

Pizzagate moved there.............
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