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Voat Is Shutting Down

voat.co

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Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#171

Post by phire »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #50
ignoranceprior wrote: post #4

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…

> Reddit, in its earlier days, was never dominated by the Voat contingent.

Reddit never had free speech as a key attracting point. People came to reddit not because it was free speech, but because there was good conversations and content there.

Reddit's early "free speech attitude" came about mostly because they had a staff of 4 people who spend all their time trying to keep the site from crashing as it scaled. It was a stance of convenience which they kept as long as possible.

Vote explictly advertised it as a "free speech alternative to reddit". Free speech was it's number one advertising point. It's really not surprising it instantly attracted the wrong type of users and drove away everyone else.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#172

Post by canofbars »

Kequc wrote: post #158
PurpleFoxy wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning them stops them spreading this content on mainstream platforms and stops normal people falling in to the trap. It also makes the site tolerable.

Not everyone is as stupid as you're projecting them to be. You're in a bubble you created yourself.

I'm not really sure how this relates to the parent comment. On that original point, it seems crystal clear that a large chunk of the population is easily impressionable and can get quickly swept up in to batshit insane conspiracy theories and cults. There is no bubble here, we can see by the sheer number of supporters these conspiracy theories have that they are a very serious problem and we need to come up with solutions rather than going "Ah well it'll be alright"

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#173

Post by echelon »

tzs wrote: post #54

Most 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…

That's a rolling dumpster file.

And they just donated several million dollars to the operator:

https://www.walletexplorer.com/wallet/00000014ea8b260f

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#174

Post by duskwuff »

jcims wrote: post #149
stavros wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I visited once out of curiosity, and was just shocked to see how overtly racist people were. It wasn't just "immigrants should stay in their countries" (which I was expecting), it was full on "I don't see why I shouldn't be able to kill me a n*gger if I feel like it" speech (censorship mine). Truly disgusting.

Same. It was so on-the-nose I wasn't entirely convinced that everything I was reading was authentic. Obviously that type of person exists but some of the conversations seemed performative.

A lot of it probably started out as performative, but later became sincere -- either as users on the site became further radicalized, or as the site became a magnet for users who actually believed the awful things they were saying.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#175

Post by yakireev »

superkuh wrote: post #7
ignoranceprior wrote: post #4

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…

There were corners of it that were decent in terms of content and tone. Particularly v/justgrowit which was about gardening. But yeah, for every polite person in some isolated corner there were 50 screaming about politics on the front page. But that wasn't the problem with Voat. The problem with Voat was the terrible code making the site non-functional. You literally couldn't submit a URL which had a tilda in it. A t…

> But yeah, for every polite person in some isolated corner there were 50 screaming about politics on the front page.

I checked the front page, and they're still screaming, with only difference between now and 2016 being the lack of pro-Trump screams. Good riddance, but the total perceived amount of screaming did not change much for me.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#176

Post by brayhite »

cbozeman wrote: post #141
ignoranceprior wrote: post #4

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…

Its not that free speech platforms are destined to fail, its anonymity. You're not responsible for your words. That's why these fail. Notice I use my real name here on this website. Not a pseudonym. Whatever I say here, I would say to you in front of your face. Same as I do on Facebook and Twitter and Reddit and the other areas I post. I've always used my real name. I'll always use my real name. We don't require anyo…

This may have been true at one time, but in the age of Youtube videos and live broadcasts being a popular vehicle for all of the above, I don't think folks care anymore about anonymity.

It's a toxic race for attention and engagement to either a.) generate revenue, b.) acquire some taste of "fame", or c.) both. Being anonymous plays a role in some corners of the internet, but the ones that are contributing the most to the cultures you mention above don't depend on anonymity. They're being perpetuated and propped up by very knowable online identities, and I highly doubt the folks doing the propping think they're safely anonymous.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#178

Post by TheTrotters »

cbozeman wrote: post #141
ignoranceprior wrote: post #4

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…

Its not that free speech platforms are destined to fail, its anonymity. You're not responsible for your words. That's why these fail. Notice I use my real name here on this website. Not a pseudonym. Whatever I say here, I would say to you in front of your face. Same as I do on Facebook and Twitter and Reddit and the other areas I post. I've always used my real name. I'll always use my real name. We don't require anyo…

"Taking responsibility for what you say" often equals being attacked or ostracized for deviating from the Correct Opinion. Anonymity is often required for freedom of expression.

Give a person a mask and he'll tell you the truth, and all that.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#179

Post by thaumasiotes »

zapzupnz wrote: post #95
superkuh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were corners of it that were decent in terms of content and tone. Particularly v/justgrowit which was about gardening. But yeah, for every polite person in some isolated corner there were 50 screaming about politics on the front page. But that wasn't the problem with Voat. The problem with Voat was the terrible code making the site non-functional. You literally couldn't submit a URL which had a tilda in it. A t…

Not really a reply to the whole tech debt bit, but the ~ symbol is called a tilde in English. I suspect spelling it with an a at the end comes from another language?

No, the symbol is called a tilde in Spanish, where it's part of the writing system. It's unused in English and therefore doesn't really have a name, but people who have learned Spanish may call it a tilde. If you were studying Greek, you'd call it a "circumflex". (Or, if you were Greek, you'd call it a "perispomene".)

Spelling it as "tilda" just reflects the fact that a reduced vowel in English may be spelled in any number of different ways (and "e" is particularly unlikely); we can assume that superkuh is more familiar with the word orally than in writing.

Re: Voat Is Shutting Down

#180

Post by ALittleLight »

herbstein wrote: post #16
Thorentis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As opposed to Reddit where every subreddit aside from those dedicated to alt-right topics has a left-leaning tinge. Every platform has biases. It's just that Reddit chose to ban a specific group, so it's logical that group alone would dominate alternatives.

I'm not entirely sure I understand this point. Even if I were to concede the point that all of Reddit has a left-leaning (in a US sense of the word) tinge, is that at all comparable to the right-leaning tinge of Voat? Is advocating for e.g. defunding the police, medicare for all, and free college comparable to saying immigrants should be shot on the border, that the holocaust simultaneously didn't happen and wasn't e…

I think it's very problematic to conflate "right wing" with "racist". There's nothing inherently right or left wing about being racist, and I suspect you'd find many racists who support government healthcare and strong social safety nets.
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