Hmm, PuttItOut isn't the founder. That was Atko, but PuttItOut started helping with the site's development, and ended up taking over everything when Atko no longer wanted to be involved. I think...
Hmm, PuttItOut isn't the founder. That was Atko, but PuttItOut started helping with the site's development, and ended up taking over everything when Atko no longer wanted to be involved. I think the only time Atko's been around at all recently was when the site went down for over a week and PuttItOut didn't even notice. Nobody knew how to get ahold of him, so Atko had to come back to fix the site.
Not much attention got paid to it at the time (doing a news-dump on Christmas day helps), but it's probably relevant that someone bought Voat late last year, and they're keeping the owner secret. I think it's hilarious that the site is so conspiracy-minded but overall doesn't seem concerned that they're literally owned by someone whose identity is being actively concealed.
Slightly off-topic. I'm still sort of sad that Voat turned out the way that it did. Before the many subreddit bans, Voat was a neat little place not unlike Tildes - just a lot less users. It was a...
Slightly off-topic.
I'm still sort of sad that Voat turned out the way that it did. Before the many subreddit bans, Voat was a neat little place not unlike Tildes - just a lot less users. It was a rather cozy place to hang out but as the article says, it was basically flooded and turned into a far-right haven overnight, more or less.
i think the change was inevitable, honestly, and it would have eventually happened with or without the subreddit bans. the value of absolute free speech is simply not conducive in this environment...
i think the change was inevitable, honestly, and it would have eventually happened with or without the subreddit bans. the value of absolute free speech is simply not conducive in this environment to a good community in the long term, because it doesn't leave you much room to do community cleanup and it enables the assholes to say basically what they want with no recourse for you. in an earlier time of the internet, it's possible that voat would have thrived without eventually becoming a shitshow and internalized values that kept the crazy people to the fringe, but just personally i'm pretty cynical that the absolutist principle of free speech it took on could have ever ended differently than this.
My fault, I basically started this again, so I'll end it too. Let's do something more interesting with our Friday night / weekend than keep rehashing this same tired argument.
My fault, I basically started this again, so I'll end it too. Let's do something more interesting with our Friday night / weekend than keep rehashing this same tired argument.
Two things: This is horrible and I hope those sending death threats are caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. It is impossible that no one saw this coming. No one in their right...
Two things:
This is horrible and I hope those sending death threats are caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
It is impossible that no one saw this coming. No one in their right mind would look at that migration of Reddit users to Voat and think, "This will end well. Now they've got their own space to continue spreading their hateful ideology, we can just ignore them and they'll never be a problem again." Someone, somewhere, surely could have implemented SOMETHING before things got this bad.
oh, everybody saw it coming, lol. voat's past and current owners aren't idiots i'm sure, and they know exactly what bed they've made and have since they took on the FPH and Coontown migrants. as i...
It is impossible that no one saw this coming. No one in their right mind would like at that migration of Reddit users to Voat and think, "This will end well. Now they've got their own space to continue spreading their hateful ideology, we can just ignore them and they'll never be a problem again." Someone, somewhere, surely could have implemented SOMETHING before things got this bad.
oh, everybody saw it coming, lol. voat's past and current owners aren't idiots i'm sure, and they know exactly what bed they've made and have since they took on the FPH and Coontown migrants. as i recall, they straight up lost their provider for awhile because their community was in flagrant violation of their provider's rules not long after, and that didn't spurn them to any sort of second thoughts about whether or not what they were doing was a good approach to forming a community. they're really just trying to damage control with this, i think, because a terrorist or mass shooter of any kind originating from voat would probably bring the wrath of god down on the site and its ownership, given the lackadaisical attitude to what's fermented there.
just judging by the comments on the post in question, it doesn't seem like this hearty plea (which, by some act of god, has not been obliterated with voat's equivalent to downvotes) is going to...
just judging by the comments on the post in question, it doesn't seem like this hearty plea (which, by some act of god, has not been obliterated with voat's equivalent to downvotes) is going to work out so well. also, the liberal use of words like "kike" and "nigger" in that thread are honestly so on the nose given the circumstances that i can't help but laugh. you'd think some of these people might want to at least dial it back a bit and keep it in their pants so they don't get fucked later on down the road, but nope! full on 1488.
I created an account there nearly 5 years ago, when it was still just a website with potential and hadn't yet been invaded by the rejects of Reddit. You've just reminded me: I've increased the...
I created an account there nearly 5 years ago, when it was still just a website with potential and hadn't yet been invaded by the rejects of Reddit.
You've just reminded me: I've increased the security of my password on that account. I don't want anyone impersonating me on Voat (because I use this username pretty much everywhere I go).
Can we talk about voat in general for a minute? Because I've had this, uh, discussion, in multiple threads which ended up locked or deleted, and feel the need to point out, AGAIN, that this is...
Can we talk about voat in general for a minute? Because I've had this, uh, discussion, in multiple threads which ended up locked or deleted, and feel the need to point out, AGAIN, that this is what happens when you just lump everyone who disagrees with you together and tell them all to fuck off instead of trying to solve underlying problems or engage with/change their point of view. Yes, it gets them out of your space, but that doesnt actually solve any problems, it just condenses them into one space that you can no longer reach at all.
It solves many problems. Nobody believes that banning racists from reddit will somehow eliminate racism from the world, but it absolutely has an impact on their ability to spread their views and...
It solves many problems. Nobody believes that banning racists from reddit will somehow eliminate racism from the world, but it absolutely has an impact on their ability to spread their views and how accepted those views appear to be. There's a massive difference between having it one click away (or even mixed into the same pages) on the same site you use to read news and look at cat gifs, and needing to go to an obviously dingy corner of the internet. It's like having a KKK recruiting booth in a mall.
Go ahead over to Voat and start talking to the people being racist and see how many people's viewpoints you can change by engaging with them and being logical. That's the approach you're advocating, so it should be easy to change some minds and prove it's feasible, right?
With all due respect for you and your views (which I mostly agree with), I still feel the need to point out that this scenario can't possibly work. Voat has been attracting and collecting a group...
Go ahead over to Voat and start talking to the people being racist and see how many people's viewpoints you can change by engaging with them and being logical. That's the approach you're advocating, so it should be easy to change some minds and prove it's feasible, right?
With all due respect for you and your views (which I mostly agree with), I still feel the need to point out that this scenario can't possibly work.
Voat has been attracting and collecting a group of racists for a long time. They're the majority on that website, and they spend most of their time reinforcing each other's views.
If some naïve person decides to wander into that lion's den to convince the racists of the wrongness of their views, that person is going to be attacked by a whole lot of people, because they're the outsider and in the minority. There is no way one social justice warrior is going to convince a racist they're wrong when the racist has thousands of other racists on their side, backing them up and reinforcing them.
This ain't gonna happen, and it's ridiculous to even suggest it. It's like asking someone to stop a flood with a bucket.
I'm not saying we should welcome racists into the mainstream, so that they can be convinced by the majority. I don't need or want to see racism (or any other bigotry or hatred) on a website I'm frequenting. I'm happy for the racists to be quarantined and kept away from decent people. I'm just saying that the hypothetical scenario you've challenged @TheInvaderZim with is impossible to win - and you know it. If one wanted to seriously change a racist's mind, it would be easier to do when the racist is separated from their support network.
I know it seems like you're contradicting me, but we're actually agreeing—the support networks can't be allowed to build up, or they can form into entrenched communities like this, and it becomes...
I know it seems like you're contradicting me, but we're actually agreeing—the support networks can't be allowed to build up, or they can form into entrenched communities like this, and it becomes much harder (or maybe even impossible) to fix. Voat wouldn't have ever become more than some guy's student project if reddit hadn't allowed all these communities to build up to massive sizes before finally shutting them down and sending them to Voat.
Voat only continued to exist because reddit fed it the users to make it viable.
And this is the response I always get, though not from you Deimos. I'm disappointed. That's not how you keep these problems from spreading, it's how you radicalize those who come into contact with...
And this is the response I always get, though not from you Deimos. I'm disappointed. That's not how you keep these problems from spreading, it's how you radicalize those who come into contact with them. I would much rather have (to use the relevant example) a white nationalist present on a larger and more colorful community where their views can be openly condemned, mocked, and fought against. It's not about convincing that one moron, it's about convincing the 95% of other people that see him make his case that it's not right.
That's the distinction; putting these people in a corner doesn't mean we're taking away their megaphone, we're just no longer trying to refute them.
Here is my step by step logic on what happens when you push aside these ideas:
Person making hate-filled/fascist/otherwise unacceptable point (here on known as 'idiot') posts in respectable community, which refutes claims. Onlooker sees both sides, moves on.
Idiot is finally completely removed from community via ban. Any logic that they used to arrive at their point, no matter how erroneous, is no longer present and refuted. Onlooker either posts it themselves, resulting in a much faster ban, or looks to other areas to find it/see if they can agree with it.
Idiot forms own community with other idiots. All refuting points are now banned. Onlooker now only sees idiot's claim.
Without opposition, onlooker agrees with point and becomes part of the problem.
*5. The problem grows without interaction and eventually invades.
The crux of the issue: to you or me or most other people who are for such things, a muslim-ban being a stupid, racist idea is self-evident. You don't need to justify to me why white nationalism is bad, and I don't need to justify to you why women should have equal rights. But this is not the case for everyone. If you, a semi-neutral party, had never seen the explanations for any of the above points, but CONSTANTLY see the explanations for the opposite, why would you do anything BUT assume that those sides are correct, ESPECIALLY if you already have a bias, say, from misjudged experience?
You poke fun that I should be trying to change minds on voat, but in actuality, if more minds had been changed before voat had appeared, it would not exist. You HAVE to have tolerance for the appearance of these ideas, and fight them off, again, and again, or else you go from sharing a stage with your opponent to giving up your position altogether.
Does that make sense? I'm legitimately asking if my logic follows, because I get such an adamant response each time and it's making me question my sanity.
Why? Why is it my job to educate every single racist who pops their head up on my website or in my subreddit or in my forum? Why is that my, or anyone else's, responsibility, when all we want to...
You HAVE to have tolerance for the appearance of these ideas, and fight them off, again, and again, or else you go from sharing a stage with your opponent to giving up your position altogether.
Why? Why is it my job to educate every single racist who pops their head up on my website or in my subreddit or in my forum? Why is that my, or anyone else's, responsibility, when all we want to do is read and discuss articles about news and history and politics and such things? Why do we need to get dragged into these arguments again and again and again? Why does my internet experience need to be spoiled by this?
I don't want to open a thread about some police event, and read the stale old commentary that niggers are just criminals. I don't want to open a thread about a history article, and read the stale old commentary that kikes are running the world. I don't want to open a thread about Middle Eastern politics, and read the stale old commentary that all towelheads are terrorists. I don't need that shit in my life. And I certainly don't need to be continually arguing against it! I want to come on the internet, read articles, and discuss them without continually getting dragged into pointless arguments with hateful, bigoted people.
Why should I, or anyone else, be subjected to this?
The internet, by design, gives a platform to anyone with a voice, no matter how radical their ideas, and is far too complex and WAY too big to effectively play wack-a-mole with the hate speech like you could've 50 years ago.
I used to be a very busy and active moderator on Reddit. It's interesting that you refer to "whack-a-mole", because one mod team I was part of used exactly the same metaphor: no sooner do you ban one racist, than another pops up, and another, and another. We sometimes used to describe the game as "whack-a-troll".
And, when those racists appeared in our history-related subreddit which was dominated by academics, other experts, and legitimate seekers of knowledge, they weren't amenable to having their views changed. Their only agenda was to proselytise, not to learn. Even the questions they asked were leading questions, designed to give them an opening to present their racist views. Their classic approach was to ask a variation on this question: "Why did Africa never develop a civilisation?" No matter how much historians might explain about climate and domesticable animals and availability of arable crops and so on, or even referred to the existence of actual African civilisations, the racists would simply reply that these explanations didn't hold water, and the true reason Africans never developed civilisation is because blacks are stupid. Despite the presence of educated people who actually know their stuff, the racists didn't learn a single thing. Not one single mind was changed. Not one single racist learned the errors of their ways.
In response to your question: https://tildes.net/~tech/crc/voat_the_censorship_free_reddit_begs_users_to_stop_making_death_threats#comment-33yy In response to your second point, I sympathize. But...
In response to your second point, I sympathize. But you've TOTALLY undersold the impact that you had by refuting those assholes, again and again. Reddit has systemic problems with upvoting and downvoting, so there's no way to gauge your success, only your failure. But that's the thing - you're not trying to change the mind of that 5% of people who were posting those comments on those threads. You're trying to stop that idea - their explanation - from being unopposed towards the other 95% of people. "Why isn't ancient african society more recognized" is a legitimate question - one with two responses, yours, and the racist's. That silent, faceless crowd of literal hundreds, or even thousands, that read those rebuttals isn't going to speak up, or congratulate you on beating down the racist, but they're also WAY less likely to enter the racist's camp, so mission accomplished!
There's another way to prevent people from reading racist points of view and thereby entering the racists' camp: just remove those comments when they appear, and leave only the legitimate...
That silent, faceless crowd of literal hundreds, or even thousands, that read those rebuttals isn't going to speak up, or congratulate you on beating down the racist, but they're also WAY less likely to enter the racist's camp, so mission accomplished!
There's another way to prevent people from reading racist points of view and thereby entering the racists' camp: just remove those comments when they appear, and leave only the legitimate responses visible.
But there is not a way to prevent people from looking for, and basically falling for/being tricked by, those racist points of view. And just because they stumble upon, or even look for, that point...
But there is not a way to prevent people from looking for, and basically falling for/being tricked by, those racist points of view. And just because they stumble upon, or even look for, that point of view, doesn't mean they should be lumped into that camp. If you're surrounded by racists, or your circumstances lead you to think racism might be correct, you desperately need the moderated response to those ideas when you look for them, to set you on the right path.
More than that, people are stupid by nature. Virtually anyone you meet (especially online) will be a highly suggestible mental child that doesn't know about anything and is constantly believing whatever they're told. If a racist tells someone that racism = yes, they will believe it. And you'd better believe that there's a lot more people out there SCREAMING racism = yes than there are people equally screaming racism = no, particularly on the same stage. The only way we can turn the tide is by flipping that point on its head, which is opposite of what's happening.
Sorry, I don't have the time or interest to debate this today (I probably shouldn't have replied in the first place). I do understand where you're coming from though, because I used to feel...
Sorry, I don't have the time or interest to debate this today (I probably shouldn't have replied in the first place).
I do understand where you're coming from though, because I used to feel similarly. However, I've reversed my opinion on it over time because I've seen what actually happens in reality, and it's very different from the logic of how it should work out in theory.
Well, let's not call it a debate then - I'm interested in where I'm wrong. What did you see happen in reality that was different in theory? The big glaring flaw in it from where I'm standing...
Well, let's not call it a debate then - I'm interested in where I'm wrong. What did you see happen in reality that was different in theory? The big glaring flaw in it from where I'm standing (especially as it pertains to reddit) is that people simply stop refuting the points but it takes a long time for bans to start happening, and that gap itself becomes the problem.
Because I feel like it summarizes your point the best, I'm going to point to this sentence for response: The reason I brought this up on this thread in particular is because Voat is a perfect...
Because I feel like it summarizes your point the best, I'm going to point to this sentence for response:
If you dont provide them a platform in the first place they are not exposed to those hateful ideologies and you dont have to convince people otherwise.
The reason I brought this up on this thread in particular is because Voat is a perfect example of how this is not true. Like, let's use race as an example: black communities, being generally poor, have a very high crime rate, leading to a disproportionate number of black men being criminals considering the size of the demographic. If you don't know, one way or the other, the root cause behind that, as I've said, to those who do it's self evident. It's blatantly obvious to me that being black doesn't mean you have a racial tendency towards crime. So you go look for explanations, and hey, here's this group of people that are saying, unequivocally, that black people are just criminals in nature - and they're totally unopposed, and REALLY vocal about it!
This can be applied to any controversial issue, from gender and sexuality to gun control.
Additionally, you're operating under the idea that these people can't simply make their own platform, which is not true. Pirates do it. Drug dealers do it. Pedophiles do it. And each time, the problem doesn't lessen, it only gets more entrenched. So they got banned from reddit, and moved to voat. Then voat gets shut down, and they go to 4chan. Then 4chan bans them, and they go to 8chan. Then 8chan gets nuked, and they go to some other site.
I agree that reddit has systemic problems in this regard, and that they need to change, but that's a reddit problem, not a social one. Just because reddit's doing it wrong doesn't mean everyone else should also be doing it wrong in a slightly different way. If you want to get out of the pit, you have to put down the shovel first, and these philosophies are doing more harm than good!
I don't know. If that doesn't give you pause in your ideas, then I can't offer anything else that will. I worry about the angry, bullet-filled road that this path leads down, though. When you kill moderation, you give up most other options.
There's another perspective here, and it's dirt simple, cuts through all the bullshit ambiguity. If you're throwing a nice big party, you're under no obligation to deal with a pack of assholes...
There's another perspective here, and it's dirt simple, cuts through all the bullshit ambiguity.
If you're throwing a nice big party, you're under no obligation to deal with a pack of assholes crashing it. You kick them right the fuck out on their asses with extreme prejudice.
This isn't about teaching them a lesson. It's simply about having a place that isn't being bothered by them. As for their education, that's society's problem, good luck with that.
Allowing their bullshit everywhere so that everyone has to constantly refute and argue nonsense with people who don't even know how to think is going to do nothing whatsoever to help them get better. All it's going to do is piss everyone off and everyone will pack up their shit and go home. Then the party is just another group of assholes screaming nonsense at the sky until they eventually burn the place down.
I care far more about the intelligent conversations we don't get to have because certain people have to make everything about this or that one thing. I don't really care what the one thing is, or what their points are, or any of that. I only care that they are shitting up the place and making the user experience worse for everyone else.
If they can't learn to behave like adults, they get to be treated like the children they are.
Following the previous point, I understand where you're coming from with this idea that we should be marginalizing the people pushing these evil ideas as much as possible, but I think you need to...
Following the previous point, I understand where you're coming from with this idea that we should be marginalizing the people pushing these evil ideas as much as possible, but I think you need to recontextualize where that works and where it doesn't.
This isn't the newspaper era, where we can stop them from publishing in the two games in town, or even bust down a single door and take a printing press if it becomes a problem. Nor is it the era of radio, or television, where these things would also be true. The internet, by design, gives a platform to anyone with a voice, no matter how radical their ideas, and is far too complex and WAY too big to effectively play wack-a-mole with the hate speech like you could've 50 years ago. The ONLY thing you can do is try to balance the scales.
this basically argues against your point though, doesn't it? if they're always going to have a place to say things, why would we let that place be a website where it is likely to reach hundreds of...
This isn't the newspaper era, where we can stop them from publishing in the two games in town, or even bust down a single door and take a printing press if it becomes a problem. Nor is it the era of radio, or television, where these things would also be true. The internet, by design, gives a platform to anyone with a voice, no matter how radical their ideas, and is far too complex and WAY too big to effectively play wack-a-mole with the hate speech like you could've 50 years ago.
this basically argues against your point though, doesn't it? if they're always going to have a place to say things, why would we let that place be a website where it is likely to reach hundreds of thousands of people who haven't been exposed to such beliefs but would be radicalized to them (like reddit) instead of a space where everybody already believes those things which is significantly smaller (like stormfront or voat), thereby lessening the impact of these beliefs? and given that there are always people who will adhere to them and attempt to propagate them, doesn't it also generally make sense then to try and quarantine those beliefs and people to places which are easier to monitor and concentrate such beliefs instead of letting them jump from website to website and colonize those websites accordingly?
i mean, i think on some level it is necessary to proselytize to those people instead of just leaving them to the wolves because the people who don't get interacted with at all tend to become the...
i mean, i think on some level it is necessary to proselytize to those people instead of just leaving them to the wolves because the people who don't get interacted with at all tend to become the most radical--but of course, that's something that isn't inherently contingent on the internet and also i find probably not something best done by internet randos. there are people who study how radicalization works for a living and organizations which are in better positions to help people get out of situations like that than almost anybody on the internet is, and in general we should probably leave most of the de-converting such people to people who have experience with that.
Why should it be our responsibility to bring racists and bigots back into the fold? And if allowed here, while that goal of yours is being pursued and you attempt to convert them, we all have to...
Why should it be our responsibility to bring racists and bigots back into the fold?
And if allowed here, while that goal of yours is being pursued and you attempt to convert them, we all have to put up with their bigotry, and more bigots wind up getting drawn to the platform because they can get away with their bullshit here. And because of that, everyone who doesn't want to see open displays of bigotry slowly leaves, exacerbating the problem even further until the bigots are all that's left.
p.s. Can we please stop having this debate every couple days? It's getting incredibly tedious rehashing the same points over and over again, especially when nobody is budging. Free speech advocates are still free speech advocating and people in favor of banning bigots and hate speech are still in favor of it (ironic, isn't that?).
I'm assuming you, I, and most other people in the world aren't 12-year-olds, and we need to take some responsibility for the welfare of the society we live in. And, once again, I'd like to point...
I'm assuming you, I, and most other people in the world aren't 12-year-olds, and we need to take some responsibility for the welfare of the society we live in. And, once again, I'd like to point out that you aren't trying to bring that far-right 5% back into the fold, you're trying to stop that far-right 5% from becoming the new-normal 50%.
I'd love to live in a world where I could stop voting and things would be fine, or where I could stop bringing this stupid shit up, and things would change for the better on their own, but it will not happen.
When it comes down to it, you can take action with words now, or take action with force, later. Those are the options! But I'm not ready to lay down and roll over if/when Trump 2.0 gets elected in 8 years, and simultaneously, I'd defenitely rather avoid staring down the barrel of a gun, one way or the other, when all other discourse completely fails. That's not some pie-in-the-sky idea, this is literally the rise of fascism we're talking about. Forums like voat that have been caused by shoving these ideas aside are literally terrorism recruitment grounds.
I will continue to raise hell about this point until something changes, or until I no longer can. You consider yourself smarter than a T_D user, right? I sure do. Instead of burying your head when faced with responsibility and ignoring what the other side of your viewpoint has to say like a Trump voter, you should consider why these ideas have merit.
Why should I care more about the poor bigots being ostracized and de-platformed than I do about the super nice people who can't handle seeing that bullshit day in and day out? By tolerating...
Why should I care more about the poor bigots being ostracized and de-platformed than I do about the super nice people who can't handle seeing that bullshit day in and day out? By tolerating bigotry instead of banning users that express it, those nice people are being de facto de-platformed.
And as for debate, it's not about "smarts" when it comes to bigots and especially T_D users. They don't give a flying fuck about engaging in logical, good faith debate... all they care about is the appearance of winning, which they will attempt to achieve by any means they can (usually through gish galloping all over even the most well educated, talented debators) . And by giving them a platform, all you're effectively doing is allowing them a rallying point and place to recruit.
I will continue to raise hell about this point until something changes, or until I no longer can.
Well good luck with that... but I am done with this debate. Please read those topics I linked in my previous comment to see why. All that can be said on this subject has been said and I am not going to change my stance... and I suspect neither will Deimos since Tildes was founded on the very principle you're arguing against; Don't act like an asshole or you get banned.
i mean this might work with political views, maybe, but i don't see what productive conversation can be had to convince people who hate fat people or think that black people are inferior that...
that this is what happens when you just lump everyone who disagrees with you together and tell them all to fuck off instead of trying to solve underlying problems or engage with/change their point of view
i mean this might work with political views, maybe, but i don't see what productive conversation can be had to convince people who hate fat people or think that black people are inferior that reddit hasn't already tried and failed at, because the roots of those views aren't things reddit as a website can address. even so, though, they literally just tried the approach you're talking about with /r/cringeanarchy, and it did nothing because there was no productive conversation they could have with the mods or the users and they eventually had to ban them because of that. i get the idea--but the idea has been tried, and it just doesn't work.
Hmm, PuttItOut isn't the founder. That was Atko, but PuttItOut started helping with the site's development, and ended up taking over everything when Atko no longer wanted to be involved. I think the only time Atko's been around at all recently was when the site went down for over a week and PuttItOut didn't even notice. Nobody knew how to get ahold of him, so Atko had to come back to fix the site.
Not much attention got paid to it at the time (doing a news-dump on Christmas day helps), but it's probably relevant that someone bought Voat late last year, and they're keeping the owner secret. I think it's hilarious that the site is so conspiracy-minded but overall doesn't seem concerned that they're literally owned by someone whose identity is being actively concealed.
Wasn't aware of Peter Thiel until you mentioned him. I looked him up and wow that guy sucks.
I only knew of him regarding the whole Gawker thing.
Peter Thiel's War On Gawker: A Timeline
Thanks for the link and information. Quite eyeopening.
Slightly off-topic.
I'm still sort of sad that Voat turned out the way that it did. Before the many subreddit bans, Voat was a neat little place not unlike Tildes - just a lot less users. It was a rather cozy place to hang out but as the article says, it was basically flooded and turned into a far-right haven overnight, more or less.
i think the change was inevitable, honestly, and it would have eventually happened with or without the subreddit bans. the value of absolute free speech is simply not conducive in this environment to a good community in the long term, because it doesn't leave you much room to do community cleanup and it enables the assholes to say basically what they want with no recourse for you. in an earlier time of the internet, it's possible that voat would have thrived without eventually becoming a shitshow and internalized values that kept the crazy people to the fringe, but just personally i'm pretty cynical that the absolutist principle of free speech it took on could have ever ended differently than this.
My fault, I basically started this again, so I'll end it too. Let's do something more interesting with our Friday night / weekend than keep rehashing this same tired argument.
Two things:
This is horrible and I hope those sending death threats are caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
It is impossible that no one saw this coming. No one in their right mind would look at that migration of Reddit users to Voat and think, "This will end well. Now they've got their own space to continue spreading their hateful ideology, we can just ignore them and they'll never be a problem again." Someone, somewhere, surely could have implemented SOMETHING before things got this bad.
oh, everybody saw it coming, lol. voat's past and current owners aren't idiots i'm sure, and they know exactly what bed they've made and have since they took on the FPH and Coontown migrants. as i recall, they straight up lost their provider for awhile because their community was in flagrant violation of their provider's rules not long after, and that didn't spurn them to any sort of second thoughts about whether or not what they were doing was a good approach to forming a community. they're really just trying to damage control with this, i think, because a terrorist or mass shooter of any kind originating from voat would probably bring the wrath of god down on the site and its ownership, given the lackadaisical attitude to what's fermented there.
just judging by the comments on the post in question, it doesn't seem like this hearty plea (which, by some act of god, has not been obliterated with voat's equivalent to downvotes) is going to work out so well. also, the liberal use of words like "kike" and "nigger" in that thread are honestly so on the nose given the circumstances that i can't help but laugh. you'd think some of these people might want to at least dial it back a bit and keep it in their pants so they don't get fucked later on down the road, but nope! full on 1488.
I had an account there from four years ago, that I'd forgotten about and never used. Just deleted it.
I created an account there nearly 5 years ago, when it was still just a website with potential and hadn't yet been invaded by the rejects of Reddit.
You've just reminded me: I've increased the security of my password on that account. I don't want anyone impersonating me on Voat (because I use this username pretty much everywhere I go).
Heh, file me under that column too.
"You have been with us for 4.7 years" - well, more like just the first four months. :P
Can we talk about voat in general for a minute? Because I've had this, uh, discussion, in multiple threads which ended up locked or deleted, and feel the need to point out, AGAIN, that this is what happens when you just lump everyone who disagrees with you together and tell them all to fuck off instead of trying to solve underlying problems or engage with/change their point of view. Yes, it gets them out of your space, but that doesnt actually solve any problems, it just condenses them into one space that you can no longer reach at all.
It solves many problems. Nobody believes that banning racists from reddit will somehow eliminate racism from the world, but it absolutely has an impact on their ability to spread their views and how accepted those views appear to be. There's a massive difference between having it one click away (or even mixed into the same pages) on the same site you use to read news and look at cat gifs, and needing to go to an obviously dingy corner of the internet. It's like having a KKK recruiting booth in a mall.
Go ahead over to Voat and start talking to the people being racist and see how many people's viewpoints you can change by engaging with them and being logical. That's the approach you're advocating, so it should be easy to change some minds and prove it's feasible, right?
With all due respect for you and your views (which I mostly agree with), I still feel the need to point out that this scenario can't possibly work.
Voat has been attracting and collecting a group of racists for a long time. They're the majority on that website, and they spend most of their time reinforcing each other's views.
If some naïve person decides to wander into that lion's den to convince the racists of the wrongness of their views, that person is going to be attacked by a whole lot of people, because they're the outsider and in the minority. There is no way one social justice warrior is going to convince a racist they're wrong when the racist has thousands of other racists on their side, backing them up and reinforcing them.
This ain't gonna happen, and it's ridiculous to even suggest it. It's like asking someone to stop a flood with a bucket.
I'm not saying we should welcome racists into the mainstream, so that they can be convinced by the majority. I don't need or want to see racism (or any other bigotry or hatred) on a website I'm frequenting. I'm happy for the racists to be quarantined and kept away from decent people. I'm just saying that the hypothetical scenario you've challenged @TheInvaderZim with is impossible to win - and you know it. If one wanted to seriously change a racist's mind, it would be easier to do when the racist is separated from their support network.
I know it seems like you're contradicting me, but we're actually agreeing—the support networks can't be allowed to build up, or they can form into entrenched communities like this, and it becomes much harder (or maybe even impossible) to fix. Voat wouldn't have ever become more than some guy's student project if reddit hadn't allowed all these communities to build up to massive sizes before finally shutting them down and sending them to Voat.
Voat only continued to exist because reddit fed it the users to make it viable.
Good point.
And this is the response I always get, though not from you Deimos. I'm disappointed. That's not how you keep these problems from spreading, it's how you radicalize those who come into contact with them. I would much rather have (to use the relevant example) a white nationalist present on a larger and more colorful community where their views can be openly condemned, mocked, and fought against. It's not about convincing that one moron, it's about convincing the 95% of other people that see him make his case that it's not right.
That's the distinction; putting these people in a corner doesn't mean we're taking away their megaphone, we're just no longer trying to refute them.
Here is my step by step logic on what happens when you push aside these ideas:
Person making hate-filled/fascist/otherwise unacceptable point (here on known as 'idiot') posts in respectable community, which refutes claims. Onlooker sees both sides, moves on.
Idiot is finally completely removed from community via ban. Any logic that they used to arrive at their point, no matter how erroneous, is no longer present and refuted. Onlooker either posts it themselves, resulting in a much faster ban, or looks to other areas to find it/see if they can agree with it.
Idiot forms own community with other idiots. All refuting points are now banned. Onlooker now only sees idiot's claim.
Without opposition, onlooker agrees with point and becomes part of the problem.
*5. The problem grows without interaction and eventually invades.
The crux of the issue: to you or me or most other people who are for such things, a muslim-ban being a stupid, racist idea is self-evident. You don't need to justify to me why white nationalism is bad, and I don't need to justify to you why women should have equal rights. But this is not the case for everyone. If you, a semi-neutral party, had never seen the explanations for any of the above points, but CONSTANTLY see the explanations for the opposite, why would you do anything BUT assume that those sides are correct, ESPECIALLY if you already have a bias, say, from misjudged experience?
You poke fun that I should be trying to change minds on voat, but in actuality, if more minds had been changed before voat had appeared, it would not exist. You HAVE to have tolerance for the appearance of these ideas, and fight them off, again, and again, or else you go from sharing a stage with your opponent to giving up your position altogether.
Does that make sense? I'm legitimately asking if my logic follows, because I get such an adamant response each time and it's making me question my sanity.
*forgot the end result.
Why? Why is it my job to educate every single racist who pops their head up on my website or in my subreddit or in my forum? Why is that my, or anyone else's, responsibility, when all we want to do is read and discuss articles about news and history and politics and such things? Why do we need to get dragged into these arguments again and again and again? Why does my internet experience need to be spoiled by this?
I don't want to open a thread about some police event, and read the stale old commentary that niggers are just criminals. I don't want to open a thread about a history article, and read the stale old commentary that kikes are running the world. I don't want to open a thread about Middle Eastern politics, and read the stale old commentary that all towelheads are terrorists. I don't need that shit in my life. And I certainly don't need to be continually arguing against it! I want to come on the internet, read articles, and discuss them without continually getting dragged into pointless arguments with hateful, bigoted people.
Why should I, or anyone else, be subjected to this?
I used to be a very busy and active moderator on Reddit. It's interesting that you refer to "whack-a-mole", because one mod team I was part of used exactly the same metaphor: no sooner do you ban one racist, than another pops up, and another, and another. We sometimes used to describe the game as "whack-a-troll".
And, when those racists appeared in our history-related subreddit which was dominated by academics, other experts, and legitimate seekers of knowledge, they weren't amenable to having their views changed. Their only agenda was to proselytise, not to learn. Even the questions they asked were leading questions, designed to give them an opening to present their racist views. Their classic approach was to ask a variation on this question: "Why did Africa never develop a civilisation?" No matter how much historians might explain about climate and domesticable animals and availability of arable crops and so on, or even referred to the existence of actual African civilisations, the racists would simply reply that these explanations didn't hold water, and the true reason Africans never developed civilisation is because blacks are stupid. Despite the presence of educated people who actually know their stuff, the racists didn't learn a single thing. Not one single mind was changed. Not one single racist learned the errors of their ways.
In response to your question:
https://tildes.net/~tech/crc/voat_the_censorship_free_reddit_begs_users_to_stop_making_death_threats#comment-33yy
In response to your second point, I sympathize. But you've TOTALLY undersold the impact that you had by refuting those assholes, again and again. Reddit has systemic problems with upvoting and downvoting, so there's no way to gauge your success, only your failure. But that's the thing - you're not trying to change the mind of that 5% of people who were posting those comments on those threads. You're trying to stop that idea - their explanation - from being unopposed towards the other 95% of people. "Why isn't ancient african society more recognized" is a legitimate question - one with two responses, yours, and the racist's. That silent, faceless crowd of literal hundreds, or even thousands, that read those rebuttals isn't going to speak up, or congratulate you on beating down the racist, but they're also WAY less likely to enter the racist's camp, so mission accomplished!
There's another way to prevent people from reading racist points of view and thereby entering the racists' camp: just remove those comments when they appear, and leave only the legitimate responses visible.
Because there are only so many times you can or want to provide the ultimate smack-down to these racists (not my work, but it was remarkable).
But there is not a way to prevent people from looking for, and basically falling for/being tricked by, those racist points of view. And just because they stumble upon, or even look for, that point of view, doesn't mean they should be lumped into that camp. If you're surrounded by racists, or your circumstances lead you to think racism might be correct, you desperately need the moderated response to those ideas when you look for them, to set you on the right path.
More than that, people are stupid by nature. Virtually anyone you meet (especially online) will be a highly suggestible mental child that doesn't know about anything and is constantly believing whatever they're told. If a racist tells someone that racism = yes, they will believe it. And you'd better believe that there's a lot more people out there SCREAMING racism = yes than there are people equally screaming racism = no, particularly on the same stage. The only way we can turn the tide is by flipping that point on its head, which is opposite of what's happening.
Sorry, I don't have the time or interest to debate this today (I probably shouldn't have replied in the first place).
I do understand where you're coming from though, because I used to feel similarly. However, I've reversed my opinion on it over time because I've seen what actually happens in reality, and it's very different from the logic of how it should work out in theory.
Well, let's not call it a debate then - I'm interested in where I'm wrong. What did you see happen in reality that was different in theory? The big glaring flaw in it from where I'm standing (especially as it pertains to reddit) is that people simply stop refuting the points but it takes a long time for bans to start happening, and that gap itself becomes the problem.
Because I feel like it summarizes your point the best, I'm going to point to this sentence for response:
The reason I brought this up on this thread in particular is because Voat is a perfect example of how this is not true. Like, let's use race as an example: black communities, being generally poor, have a very high crime rate, leading to a disproportionate number of black men being criminals considering the size of the demographic. If you don't know, one way or the other, the root cause behind that, as I've said, to those who do it's self evident. It's blatantly obvious to me that being black doesn't mean you have a racial tendency towards crime. So you go look for explanations, and hey, here's this group of people that are saying, unequivocally, that black people are just criminals in nature - and they're totally unopposed, and REALLY vocal about it!
This can be applied to any controversial issue, from gender and sexuality to gun control.
Additionally, you're operating under the idea that these people can't simply make their own platform, which is not true. Pirates do it. Drug dealers do it. Pedophiles do it. And each time, the problem doesn't lessen, it only gets more entrenched. So they got banned from reddit, and moved to voat. Then voat gets shut down, and they go to 4chan. Then 4chan bans them, and they go to 8chan. Then 8chan gets nuked, and they go to some other site.
I agree that reddit has systemic problems in this regard, and that they need to change, but that's a reddit problem, not a social one. Just because reddit's doing it wrong doesn't mean everyone else should also be doing it wrong in a slightly different way. If you want to get out of the pit, you have to put down the shovel first, and these philosophies are doing more harm than good!
I don't know. If that doesn't give you pause in your ideas, then I can't offer anything else that will. I worry about the angry, bullet-filled road that this path leads down, though. When you kill moderation, you give up most other options.
There's another perspective here, and it's dirt simple, cuts through all the bullshit ambiguity.
If you're throwing a nice big party, you're under no obligation to deal with a pack of assholes crashing it. You kick them right the fuck out on their asses with extreme prejudice.
This isn't about teaching them a lesson. It's simply about having a place that isn't being bothered by them. As for their education, that's society's problem, good luck with that.
Allowing their bullshit everywhere so that everyone has to constantly refute and argue nonsense with people who don't even know how to think is going to do nothing whatsoever to help them get better. All it's going to do is piss everyone off and everyone will pack up their shit and go home. Then the party is just another group of assholes screaming nonsense at the sky until they eventually burn the place down.
I care far more about the intelligent conversations we don't get to have because certain people have to make everything about this or that one thing. I don't really care what the one thing is, or what their points are, or any of that. I only care that they are shitting up the place and making the user experience worse for everyone else.
If they can't learn to behave like adults, they get to be treated like the children they are.
Following the previous point, I understand where you're coming from with this idea that we should be marginalizing the people pushing these evil ideas as much as possible, but I think you need to recontextualize where that works and where it doesn't.
This isn't the newspaper era, where we can stop them from publishing in the two games in town, or even bust down a single door and take a printing press if it becomes a problem. Nor is it the era of radio, or television, where these things would also be true. The internet, by design, gives a platform to anyone with a voice, no matter how radical their ideas, and is far too complex and WAY too big to effectively play wack-a-mole with the hate speech like you could've 50 years ago. The ONLY thing you can do is try to balance the scales.
this basically argues against your point though, doesn't it? if they're always going to have a place to say things, why would we let that place be a website where it is likely to reach hundreds of thousands of people who haven't been exposed to such beliefs but would be radicalized to them (like reddit) instead of a space where everybody already believes those things which is significantly smaller (like stormfront or voat), thereby lessening the impact of these beliefs? and given that there are always people who will adhere to them and attempt to propagate them, doesn't it also generally make sense then to try and quarantine those beliefs and people to places which are easier to monitor and concentrate such beliefs instead of letting them jump from website to website and colonize those websites accordingly?
i mean, i think on some level it is necessary to proselytize to those people instead of just leaving them to the wolves because the people who don't get interacted with at all tend to become the most radical--but of course, that's something that isn't inherently contingent on the internet and also i find probably not something best done by internet randos. there are people who study how radicalization works for a living and organizations which are in better positions to help people get out of situations like that than almost anybody on the internet is, and in general we should probably leave most of the de-converting such people to people who have experience with that.
Why should it be our responsibility to bring racists and bigots back into the fold?
And if allowed here, while that goal of yours is being pursued and you attempt to convert them, we all have to put up with their bigotry, and more bigots wind up getting drawn to the platform because they can get away with their bullshit here. And because of that, everyone who doesn't want to see open displays of bigotry slowly leaves, exacerbating the problem even further until the bigots are all that's left.
p.s. Can we please stop having this debate every couple days? It's getting incredibly tedious rehashing the same points over and over again, especially when nobody is budging. Free speech advocates are still free speech advocating and people in favor of banning bigots and hate speech are still in favor of it (ironic, isn't that?).
See: https://tildes.net/~talk/cjn/in_my_opinion_censorship_is_a_bad_way_to_combat_hate_speech
https://tildes.net/~tildes/bx1/banning_of_users_and_the_discussion_of_controversial_subjects
I'm assuming you, I, and most other people in the world aren't 12-year-olds, and we need to take some responsibility for the welfare of the society we live in. And, once again, I'd like to point out that you aren't trying to bring that far-right 5% back into the fold, you're trying to stop that far-right 5% from becoming the new-normal 50%.
I'd love to live in a world where I could stop voting and things would be fine, or where I could stop bringing this stupid shit up, and things would change for the better on their own, but it will not happen.
When it comes down to it, you can take action with words now, or take action with force, later. Those are the options! But I'm not ready to lay down and roll over if/when Trump 2.0 gets elected in 8 years, and simultaneously, I'd defenitely rather avoid staring down the barrel of a gun, one way or the other, when all other discourse completely fails. That's not some pie-in-the-sky idea, this is literally the rise of fascism we're talking about. Forums like voat that have been caused by shoving these ideas aside are literally terrorism recruitment grounds.
I will continue to raise hell about this point until something changes, or until I no longer can. You consider yourself smarter than a T_D user, right? I sure do. Instead of burying your head when faced with responsibility and ignoring what the other side of your viewpoint has to say like a Trump voter, you should consider why these ideas have merit.
Why should I care more about the poor bigots being ostracized and de-platformed than I do about the super nice people who can't handle seeing that bullshit day in and day out? By tolerating bigotry instead of banning users that express it, those nice people are being de facto de-platformed.
And as for debate, it's not about "smarts" when it comes to bigots and especially T_D users. They don't give a flying fuck about engaging in logical, good faith debate... all they care about is the appearance of winning, which they will attempt to achieve by any means they can (usually through gish galloping all over even the most well educated, talented debators) . And by giving them a platform, all you're effectively doing is allowing them a rallying point and place to recruit.
Well good luck with that... but I am done with this debate. Please read those topics I linked in my previous comment to see why. All that can be said on this subject has been said and I am not going to change my stance... and I suspect neither will Deimos since Tildes was founded on the very principle you're arguing against; Don't act like an asshole or you get banned.
Snap! haha
Damn, jinxed. Looks like I owe you a beer. ;)
What would I do with a beer? (asks the teetotaller...)
An aussie that doesn't drink beer? Well now I have seen everything! ;)
i mean this might work with political views, maybe, but i don't see what productive conversation can be had to convince people who hate fat people or think that black people are inferior that reddit hasn't already tried and failed at, because the roots of those views aren't things reddit as a website can address. even so, though, they literally just tried the approach you're talking about with /r/cringeanarchy, and it did nothing because there was no productive conversation they could have with the mods or the users and they eventually had to ban them because of that. i get the idea--but the idea has been tried, and it just doesn't work.
Jesus fucking christ.