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

Reddit alternative Ruqqus shutting down

ruqqus.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 67 posts

Re: Reddit alternative Ruqqus shutting down

#51

Post by tomjen3 »

exogeny wrote: post #40
bmarquez wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a frequent lurker at /r/nonewnormal and I agree with your analysis - dissent from the mainstream opinion that lockdowns and mandates are good, but more of an opinionated criticism than anything banworthy. The moderators put a great deal of work to keep it civil and non-partisan, and their efforts were completely destroyed when they were kicked off Reddit. Some /r/nonewnormal participants went to Ruqqus, some we…

>Anyone who can solve the the "less echo chamber than Reddit but less racist than Ruqqus" hosting dilemma stands to gain a large audience. Do you believe that is possible? Ruqqus would lead me to believe that it's not. The moderation needed to make it less racist is anathema and unpalatable to the audience that would need to support it in the first place. And that's not even mentioning the lack of a viable business m…

Not OP, but I think it can be done. You will have to seed the place with some of the best commenters and very slowly let in new folks to avoid the problem Slate Star Codex mentioned. You will also have to moderate heavily, more so than you did before.

I think moderation, by a human being, is key. HN wouldn't be HN if it didn't have Dang.

Re: Reddit alternative Ruqqus shutting down

#52

Post by Igelau »

dang wrote: post #11
exogeny wrote: post #4

It's hard for me to imagine a less surprising result. And yet it's going to happen again, and again, and again. Voat, Parler, whatever.

" Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How is that a shallow dismissal? Pointing out a pattern is a shallow dismissal? A dismissal of what?

Re: Reddit alternative Ruqqus shutting down

#53

Post by tomjen3 »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #6
exogeny wrote: post #4

It's hard for me to imagine a less surprising result. And yet it's going to happen again, and again, and again. Voat, Parler, whatever.

It's amazing how many "founders" think "having a better product" will win out against network effects.

Of course one is biased in favour of ones own product, but the network effects of AIM were essentially completely overtaken by facebook messenger, thanks in part to a technological change (phones) and delivering a product that didn't require both parties to be online at the same time.

Digg died and the population moved to reddit. MySpace is deader than most zombies.

Re: Reddit alternative Ruqqus shutting down

#54

Post by hunterb123 »

a_t48 wrote: post #31
hunterb123 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought you were quoting because you agreed with it, you didn't explain why. It's an offensive statement, no matter who said it, it's a sweeping generalization. There are plenty of intelligent conservatives, and either way, they want a community.

Look inwards in your community then, and lay down some standards.

Right back at you? Mainstream social media is a cesspool, see Twitter & Reddit.

Re: Reddit alternative Ruqqus shutting down

#55

Post by detaro »

winternett wrote: post #42
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #3

I got a slight chuckle out of this because it reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from Slate Star Codex (in this case the blog post was talking about Voat): > The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven…

Well if you ask me, Reddit is now mostly a small community of chosen people posting lead content, whilst everyone else watches and works for free in hope of earning a few imaginary points and reaching the now unobtainable (without paying in some form or fashion for it) front page anyway... It's real easy to fake a user community with proper automation and a hand full admins nowadays in order to run a "revenue machine…

I kind of doubt the majority of reddit posters cares about reaching the frontpage.

Re: Reddit alternative Ruqqus shutting down

#56

Post by native_samples »

mahogany wrote: post #34
jorgesborges wrote: post #22

I'm not familiar with these alternatives, or if it's true they descend into abhorrent extremism. But the problem with mainstream social media platforms prohibiting content is that it fuels the extremism it's trying to combat. I understand it's their right as private companies yada yada yada. But there's an increasingly narrow space within which to have meaningful conversations. And things are getting bad. Moderates f…

> But the problem with mainstream social media platforms prohibiting content is that it fuels the extremism it's trying to combat. I've held this belief before but now I'm not so sure. Is this actually quantifiable? For example, I'd be interested to know if there are people or groups that have grown in size/reach after (and more specifically, because of ) being banned from major platforms. In fact, you just said that…

They tend to reach smaller audiences but not that much smaller. It's been only a few months since Alex Berenson got banned from Twitter (for a tweet that contained true statements taken from the US government's own documents, sigh), and his audience on Substack is now closing in on his prior Twitter audience. Given they're different mediums and he would have had some lapsed followers (e.g. who followed him in older times but no longer paid attention), that's not too bad, especially as it's much easier to monetize the new Substack audience.

Other people who got cancelled or pushed out - like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald - now stand to get really very rich indeed off their new audiences. Writing, it turns out, can be profitable. Just not the sort of writing you find in most media outlets. This also applies to Scott Alexander, quoted above, though he wasn't directly cancelled, "just" doxxed by the New York Times.

Does this fuel extremism? Well it certainly fuels distrust of large institutions and mainstream media narratives, although what "mainstream" means is increasingly unclear. Joe Rogan pointed out the other day that given CNN's tiny audience sizes, it's really Rogan that's mainstream and CNN that's the fringe now. Groups like CNN, MSNBC, even the BBC seem increasingly extremist to me. The rationality and moderation you might hope for from older journalistic institutions is now to be found elsewhere, like the places they like to insinuate are full of extremists.

Re: Reddit alternative Ruqqus shutting down

#57

Post by akvadrako »

Igelau wrote: post #52
dang wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How is that a shallow dismissal? Pointing out a pattern is a shallow dismissal? A dismissal of what?

I don't understand why this comment was singled out in particular, maybe it was edited.

But I do think this kind of low value and lazy opionionating should be discouraged.

Re: Reddit alternative Ruqqus shutting down

#58

Post by Igelau »

akvadrako wrote: post #57
Igelau wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that a shallow dismissal? Pointing out a pattern is a shallow dismissal? A dismissal of what?

I don't understand why this comment was singled out in particular, maybe it was edited. But I do think this kind of low value and lazy opionionating should be discouraged.

> low value

There's a pretty decent size thread of interesting discussion beneath it, demonstrating that it is of value.

> I don't understand why this comment was singled out

I don't moderate this site, but if I did I might be tempted to use a script to scrape for keywords and phrases that sound like violations of the guidelines and issue replies at a key press or automatically. And that's a good way to do it, except occasionally it causes... well... a shallow dismissal?

Re: Reddit alternative Ruqqus shutting down

#59

Post by toss1 »

chuckee wrote: post #36
toss1 wrote: post #29

Nice demonstration of the Paradox of Tolerance [1]: "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." This is the naive weakness exploited by every strain of authoritarianism, the i…

How does that paradox square with the transition of intolerant societies into tolerant ones? Where intolerant attitudes were not only tolerated, but the norm? If this was really a paradox, such a transition should be impossible. But since such transitions took place, the same forces that enabled them can also prevent a society from becoming intolerant. Of course in practice this paradox is only ever invoked by those…

Humans have created a rather extensive historical record of seeking freedom from oppression in all forms, all of which involves intolerance. I.e., a large majority of humans want a tolerant environment

Most often, they do NOT actually manage to transform their intolerant society from within, but leave to find tolerance elsewhere. This is the most basic history of the worlds largest superpower - it's European inhabitants fled the various forms of intolerance at home, and then declared and fought for their independence when the rulers tried to extend their intolerance into the new lands.

This can also feedback to provide assistance to those still in the original lands. Also, the intolerance occasionally gets so bad that it will cause revolts and uprisings, which is typically how new tolerance is created.

The tolerant countries also can feedback and support such fights. One of the more notable ones was when Intolerance rose to a severe form in Germany in the 1920s, and we fought WWII to overcome it. Tens of millions died to fight intolerance, showing that fighting intolerance is a rather strong drive in humans.

I can think of few examples where tolerance gradually grew.

What happens is that a tolerant society is created first with great vigilance, and then after a few generations of getting comfortable with it, vigilance declines, and vacuous arguments like this pop up, attempting to separate freedom from responsibility for maintaining it, and an opening is created for the few to exercise their intolerance on the many.

So, nonsense, just because intolerant societies can be overthrown by the majority that just want to be left alone and 'live and let live' —and this usually requires massive effort and usually bloodshed —, that has zero bearing on whether intolerance can grow and drive out tolerance in a tolerant society.

In fact, the situation is the opposite.

If tolerance was the metastable state, then intolerance would never be able to grow in tolerant societies, yet it almost always does grow — and that paradox is how it does so.

Re: Reddit alternative Ruqqus shutting down

#60

Post by micromacrofoot »

hunterb123 wrote: post #43
micromacrofoot wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but these aren't communities of conservatives, these are communities of bigots... they're not debating fiscal responsibility, they're self-proclaimed nazis They're not getting kicked off of twitter and facebook for being conservative, they're getting kicked off for being extremely racist

There are many who got kicked off Twitter/FB for purely political statements like sharing the Wuhan lab leak theory or Hunter Biden's laptop at the wrong time. Or maybe just a #LetsGoBrandon. Just like there are many bad and good liberals on Twitter, there can be many bad and good conservatives on other platforms. That doesn't mean there isn't unjust censorship as well. Crying racism or misinformation won't cover it…

Again, read OPs post. These "conservatives" are attempting to co-exist on sites that end up predominantly featuring nazis. The first suggestion you saw when signing up for the site was "hitlerwasright" closely followed by racist slurs.

If conservatives want to stop being lumped together with nazis and racists they need to draw a line in the sand. You can't co-exist on the same site without being equated with them. This is why reddit has also cracked down on incels, creepshots, thedonald, and other questionable subs. This is why chan sites are considered toxic cesspools. If conservatives can't exist without distinguishing themselves from people who support racial genocide then they're going to fade into irrelevancy.

This is true of any ideology... for example there's a fair amount of infighting amongst feminists when trans women are excluded. There's a feeling that trans-exclusionary feminism defies the basic tenets of feminism and puts the entire movement at risk... conservatives should be more outspoken about the nazis and racists that claim their ideology is one in the same.

Post reply on HN