That comment section is an absolute trainwreck, racism, antisemitism, holocaust deniers, people who believe the website was a government honey pot (but still use it?), and a lot more thats just...
That comment section is an absolute trainwreck, racism, antisemitism, holocaust deniers, people who believe the website was a government honey pot (but still use it?), and a lot more thats just straight up wrong.
That's actually pretty par for the course for Voat. There are dozens of Voat alternatives that I'm sure these people will scurry off to. 8kun, Ruqqus, maybe even Parler... All these "free speech...
That's actually pretty par for the course for Voat.
Happy to see it gone, hope it stays gone.
There are dozens of Voat alternatives that I'm sure these people will scurry off to. 8kun, Ruqqus, maybe even Parler... All these "free speech for conservatives" sites all wind up like Voat due to the paradox of tolerance. Each site has 2 options:
Moderate hate speech. This means once dog whistling crosses some arbitrary threshold, it is then bannable (similar to the "standard" that is often applied on other platforms.) If this happens, claims of censorship will spread rapidly and the new platform dies.
Refuse to moderate hate speech. Sure, it looks bad, but to survive on this "free speech" branding they must be radical in what they refuse take down. Perhaps only illegal acts of threatening violence are removed. This becomes a Voat/8chan where content becomes so perverse and hateful it's off-putting to even solidly right leaning conservatives.
Rightists simply can't have a moderate platform they manage themselves, they are incapable of it. Even the operators of 8chan and Voat were mercilessly accused of being CIA/deep state operatives. Had they been even a little more decerning in the content they allowed, they'd be left for yet another site.
God reading that post was painful. The author actually tried to sound like a martyr at the end, quoting the Bible and all. And the replies aren't much better. On one hand, good riddance, but on...
God reading that post was painful. The author actually tried to sound like a martyr at the end, quoting the Bible and all. And the replies aren't much better.
On one hand, good riddance, but on the other, I am always scared this will lead to an exodus that will ruin otherwise decent sites. But knowing how extreme these users are, chances are they wouldn't want to use anything that doesn't already advertise itself as extremely pro free-speech (and is thus generally already an alt-right rabbit hole by default)
I heard thedonald.win wants to create some sort of reddit clone, so they can have foster a larger community and not just be centered around Trump. Maybe that's where all these users will flock to one day.
I find this melodramatic way of speaking is pretty common amongst many Very Online people, but particularly the alt-right and conspiracy theorists. The way a lot of them talk reminds me a bit of...
The author actually tried to sound like a martyr at the end, quoting the Bible and all.
I find this melodramatic way of speaking is pretty common amongst many Very Online people, but particularly the alt-right and conspiracy theorists. The way a lot of them talk reminds me a bit of how I'd play pretend as a little girl; high stakes, secret enemies, evil factions opposing the battered underdog. I think that's a key part of it, honestly. It feels exciting and important.
Yeah I find that is a pretty common element among the alt-right too. It makes everything feel grandiose and special, which in turn makes people feel like they're part of something with a purpose...
Yeah I find that is a pretty common element among the alt-right too. It makes everything feel grandiose and special, which in turn makes people feel like they're part of something with a purpose that is worth following.
If you paint all the horrible things you do and say under this heroic paint, it makes it less likely that people inside the community will question it since they'll get excited instead.
I feel a bit bad since I've seen his videos get posted everywhere and I want to support smaller creators, but Shaun made a great video out outrage news and why everything in right-wing media...
I feel a bit bad since I've seen his videos get posted everywhere and I want to support smaller creators, but Shaun made a great video out outrage news and why everything in right-wing media especially needs to be the end of days. Hbomberguy has a much shorter section at the end of one of his videos that discusses this as well but I sure as heck can't remember where.
This may point to childhood trauma issues. I know this from personal experience. We truly were victims then, and many normal adult situations trigger us and appear to be the abus that happened...
very online
This may point to childhood trauma issues. I know this from personal experience. We truly were victims then, and many normal adult situations trigger us and appear to be the abus that happened then. Without good therapy and support, childhood trauma amd cptsd folks live oir lives in a triggered state, and isolated from others, perpetually licing as victims. The online space gives us a place to feel empowered and shout our threats of vengeance. At a less extreme degree, you get flamewars about hardware components.
The sad fact is now this is a lot of the people running the country.
One attitude I adopted for these shutdowns is that too much cynicism about where users "will go" isn't doing any good. People are more lazy than we allow ourselves to believe and simply not having...
One attitude I adopted for these shutdowns is that too much cynicism about where users "will go" isn't doing any good. People are more lazy than we allow ourselves to believe and simply not having a big, mainstream place to go tends to do shut up a lot of idiots for good. It's mostly a few zealots carrying these places and a lot of followers just aimlessly swimming along, because it's easy.
For example, I don't think /r/the_donald ever fully recovered from getting banned and thedonald.win is a much smaller, isolated place that's overall more harmless. The same thing was true for voat and the other hate subreddits and ultimately, these things are often short lived because you can't control a culture of hatred for too long before it eats itself. That's also why I'm not worried about parler, either and, to some degree, not even networks like OANN. I think they're all one scandal away from being forced into obscurity.
You know that is a pretty good way to put it. I hadn't thought about it that way before. I have always believed that deplatforming works without fully comprehending how but looking at it this way...
You know that is a pretty good way to put it. I hadn't thought about it that way before.
I have always believed that deplatforming works without fully comprehending how but looking at it this way it's a bit easier to put into perspective.
Its like constantly deviding the base. Eventually you're just left with infinitely small irrelevant clusters with little power.
Yup, they lose their ability to recruit new members into their cult, the moderate members usually soften without their popular platform to feel...moderate on while participating in the club, and...
Yup, they lose their ability to recruit new members into their cult, the moderate members usually soften without their popular platform to feel...moderate on while participating in the club, and the few crazy die-hards (and they’re always way smaller than the moderates and those dipping their toes in) slink off to ever smaller websites and chat services...where they belong.
The claim that these ideas need to “stay in the light” on large visible platforms to be properly combated is either intentionally malicious or woefully ignorant.
Oh, it'll lead to an exodus alright. Any of the reddit alternatives that are unlucky enough to inherit this demented echo chamber's members will rapidly start losing the 'normal people' crowd. I'd...
Oh, it'll lead to an exodus alright. Any of the reddit alternatives that are unlucky enough to inherit this demented echo chamber's members will rapidly start losing the 'normal people' crowd. I'd bet a bunch of them go back to reddit again. Parler and Ruqqus are probably in for the worst of it.
Speaking of, it looks like ruqqus is already prepping for the influx: https://ruqqus.com/+changelog/post/5ywz/ruqqus-227-improved-content-filtering-guildmaster
Speaking of, it looks like ruqqus is already prepping for the influx:
Ruqqus 2.27 - Improved Content Filtering, Guildmaster Tools, and Mod Queue
This is the first in a series of updates that we are accelerating due to the impending death of Voat.
Trending/All now feature content filtering options, which are available to both logged-in and logged-out viewers. Guildmasters: be sure to select a category in guild settings so that your guild can be shown to interested users.*
Guildmasters now have faster access to the Exile button via the dropdowns on posts and comments. Now you don't have to go into guild settings.
Two bugs in offtopic reporting have been fixed. These came in from the original Heroku migration, and offtopic reports works again.
We've set up signups to allow new users to register at a limited rate. This will allow us to begin absorbing some of the load from Voat without getting completely overwhelmed.
edit: Guilds won't be shown in All/Trending until they pick a category.
I'd never heard of Ruqqus until today and I had a quick look just now, I'm not sure adding more idiots from Voat is going to be that noticable given that every single post I clicked on had some...
I'd never heard of Ruqqus until today and I had a quick look just now, I'm not sure adding more idiots from Voat is going to be that noticable given that every single post I clicked on had some sort of racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic or otherwise bigoted comment.
I've been checking in on all the various reddit alternatives occasionally, just to keep track of any interesting features they implement, and keep informed on the happenings in the alt-right...
I've been checking in on all the various reddit alternatives occasionally, just to keep track of any interesting features they implement, and keep informed on the happenings in the alt-right hate-o-sphere. On ruqqus the bigotry is currently more of a filthy undercurrent, rather than floating on the surface for all to see, like it was at voat. But now that voat is no more, even with these upcoming changes I doubt ruqqus will manage to stem the tide and prevent themselves from going the way of voat now too... Which seems to be the inevitable trajectory of all these absolutist "free speech/censorship free" sites. And yet none of them ever seem to learn a lesson from that.
Imagine being one of the devs of ruqqus right now, knowing with absolute certainty that their site is considered the next best place to go to by all those soon to be homeless voat users, and yet still being largely powerless to stop their migration due to their shared ideology. How the hell they stay convinced they're doing the right thing by developing their site, and continuing to believe in absolute free speech, is honestly beyond me. :/
They just don’t get how free speech works. It’s important and sacred because people shouldn’t be put in jail by the governments for things they merely say or believe...but that doesn’t mean you...
They just don’t get how free speech works. It’s important and sacred because people shouldn’t be put in jail by the governments for things they merely say or believe...but that doesn’t mean you should just allow Neo-Nazis to attend your private family bbq. You can’t just tell your guests “free speech bro!”. Nobody is going to want to go to your gatherings anymore, except of course Neo-Nazis.
I think there’s certainly a discussion to be had about how freedom of expression should work on the internet and on individual site. There’s a convincing argument to be had that mega sites like...
I think there’s certainly a discussion to be had about how freedom of expression should work on the internet and on individual site. There’s a convincing argument to be had that mega sites like YouTube and Facebook are effectively equivalent to public squares, and thus should be treated as such, with all of the relevant 1A protections. However, the reach of the sites is orders of magnitude greater than a newspaper or a physical town square (and with less of the attendant consequences for, say, getting in someone’s face), and I saw some interesting discussions on r/TheoryofReddit and HackerNews about the idea that fascist argumentation relies on mental and logical tricks which cause those ideas to spread virally in the open, rather than being disinfected by “sunlight”. Ultimately though, I’m deeply skeptical of governments and corporations (which seem to be increasingly similar) being given power to heavily police content a) under the assumption that it will always be a benevolent, democratic system implementing these regulations and b) with the assumption that concepts like “hate speech” have a clear, firm definition. I’m not really sure if there is a good solution to this problem. I’m worried we may have hit some sort of fundamental limit on what societies can look like on a globalized scale.
This is a non-issue. A hypothetical future non-benevolent dictatorship doesn't need precedent or existing structures to censor/propogandise through, they'll just create whatever they want or need...
a) under the assumption that it will always be a benevolent, democratic system implementing these regulations
This is a non-issue. A hypothetical future non-benevolent dictatorship doesn't need precedent or existing structures to censor/propogandise through, they'll just create whatever they want or need at the time. That's one of the things that makes them non-benevolent.
b) with the assumption that concepts like “hate speech” have a clear, firm definition.
This is commonly managed pretty well in quite a lot of countries outside the US. You don't actually need a 100% clear definition, laws have fuzzy edges all the time - just think about things like 'dangerous driving' or 'anti-social behaviour' - fuzzy definitions let you take context into consideration, which I'd argue is far more useful. "Hate speech" is equally easy to catch most of. The definition should probably lean towards under-application than over, but still.
I agree these sort of things can go wrong but given how wrong things are currently going, I think it's probably worth trying something. In the worst case, failing differently is still a sort of progress. Societies have dealt with these kind of problems forever, I don't think it's necessarily an unsolvable problem.
With respect to a dictatorship, it is more common than not for authoritarian regimes to co-opt the organs of the existing state rather than destroy them entirely. While certain entities may wither...
With respect to a dictatorship, it is more common than not for authoritarian regimes to co-opt the organs of the existing state rather than destroy them entirely. While certain entities may wither away, the bulk of government remains unchanged.
I guess my concerns are more related to definitions than I previously thought. For example, a frequently seen term is “inciting hatred based on ethnic, racial, or religious characteristics”. Hatred doesn’t seem to have a bright line definition, which you seem to be okay with, because it allows context to be considered. I’m not so comfortable with it, however, in part because of what I discussed above. Would states controlled by the GOP prosecute people who criticized Christianity? Would a statement like this “ every religious idea and every idea of God is unutterable vileness ... of the most dangerous kind, 'contagion' of the most abominable kind.” (from Lenin) be open to prosecution? Would casual use of n****r be an offense, or would it be a requirement to encourage killing or physical harm? Incitement implies encouraging others to commit a crime, would that be a condition of the law? Laws should be clear, vagueness invites misuse.
I guess my final concern is this: fascism and white supremacy are detestable ideologies. However, they are still political belief systems. In almost all cases they incite hatred or genocide. If incitement of hatred is criminalized, does that criminalize promotion of the attendant ideologies? Does that begin to police what we may or may not believe? I’m not entirely opposed to the concept of a hate speech law, but I believe it requires more scientific studies into how hatred affects people.
Yeah, things do become trickier when you live in a fundamentalist theocracy. I guess suck it and see. Am I right in thinking church and state are supposed to be separated by the constitution? I'm...
Would states controlled by the GOP prosecute people who criticized Christianity?
Yeah, things do become trickier when you live in a fundamentalist theocracy. I guess suck it and see. Am I right in thinking church and state are supposed to be separated by the constitution?
Would casual use of n****r be an offense
I'm not 100% on this but I think it is in the UK already. Where "casual" means used as an insult. Not where used between peers. I did mention context, yeah? :)
Laws should be clear, vagueness invites misuse.
Well, yes and no. Clarity is important but you can't write down every single possible case. That's partly why we have courts and judges and stuff. To apply laws in context. If the law was completely 100% clear we wouldn't need any of that, you could replace the courts with a flow chart.
It's simply not possible to write 100% clear laws 100% of the time and I don't think not making laws because there might be some wiggle room in them is the best approach. Also lots of laws are completely clear already and people still wiggle out of them - who was that guy who got caught in the act of raping some girl and still got let off because he was white and rich? Brock someone?
If incitement of hatred is criminalized, does that criminalize promotion of the attendant ideologies?
Yes, to an extent. But that is OK. Look up Popper's paradox of tolerance. Personally speaking, I'm totally fine with making Nazis illegal.
So the thing is, a lot of what you seem to be saying looks like a bunch of slippery slope type arguments, which I personally never find particularly convincing. Look at what currently happens in other countries who already have hate speech legislations, and compare that to what is happening in the US where such laws don't exist so much.
I might have in some ways less freedom than you, but on the other hand I don't recall many demonstrations in the UK in which actual fuckin' neo-nazis were walking around waving guns in the street and calling for another, bigger holocaust. So I'd invite you to consider that it is perhaps possible the US has already slipped a little too far the entirely wrong way down the slope which concerns you.
I was considering Popper’s paradox of tolerance when commenting. I’m just deeply suspicious of giving the government and corporations more power when it comes to our core rights and freedoms, but...
I was considering Popper’s paradox of tolerance when commenting. I’m just deeply suspicious of giving the government and corporations more power when it comes to our core rights and freedoms, but I’m not sure how to reconcile it with the fact that Nazis and fascists often infringe on those rights too. Concepts like stochastic terrorism will throw a wrench into things as well. Maybe some sort of independent board would be useful for enforcing these sorts of things. I’m not exactly happy with the direction the U.S. is heading on race relations. I do think more research into the sciences behind racism and the spread of it would be helpful.
Expert level cognitive dissonance or more likely, given that it's really not that hard to put together a link aggregator with comments and votes, simple old fashioned stupids. As J S Mill said:...
How the hell they stay convinced they're doing the right thing by developing their site, and continuing to believe in absolute free speech, is honestly beyond me.
Expert level cognitive dissonance or more likely, given that it's really not that hard to put together a link aggregator with comments and votes, simple old fashioned stupids. As J S Mill said: "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives..." continued
I mean they named their site after a fight, I doubt we're dealing with the brightest and best here.
I think there is also a very likely third option that I am only applying at an individual level, and not saying is true of all devs on the project. There's an option that some of the devs like the...
I think there is also a very likely third option that I am only applying at an individual level, and not saying is true of all devs on the project. There's an option that some of the devs like the Voat content. I've encountered so many shitty incels and racists in tech spaces, especially IT. I don't find it hard to believe that there are people working on this project who are working on it explicitly because they are the far right and want to build websites for the far-right to gain traction in the mainstream. Now this and the two things you listed certainly aren't mutually exclusive, I'm just surprised that people aren't considering the option that the devs ideology lines up with the people leaving Voat.
Edit: I want to expand a bit on this. I don't want my comment to come off as aggressive. I'm just surprised that after all of these "free-speech" sites fail that people are surprised that more crop up. More crop up because an end goal of some devs is to get more people into the far-right discords, mastadon instances, Parlours, etc. The sites don't need to live for super long, because there will always be another one. The people who coded <insert free-speech site that failed> didn't just disappear. I feel like sometimes people jump to attribute malice to ignorance, but here it feels like the opposite: I feel like when people talk about these sites failing they're overly generous with saying they're just ignorant or egotistical and think they wont fail, when I think its probably likely that they just view the failed site as "how many people did we convert" and then move on to developing the next reddit ripoff to redpill people. There are certainly people who make these sites with ideals of free-speech and not far-right indoctrination, I don't want to go so far to say none believe that. But I feel as though people are surprised because they're looking at the interest stated in their description and less about the goals of the movements they allow to dominate the spaces.
Oh, I'm sure their ideology does align. If it didn't, who would keep such a site running? If I made voat and it turned into the cesspit voat turned into, I'd take it offline then make a special...
Oh, I'm sure their ideology does align. If it didn't, who would keep such a site running? If I made voat and it turned into the cesspit voat turned into, I'd take it offline then make a special trip to the datacentre so I could burn and salt the hard drives it lived on.
Apologies in advance for going off at a bit of a tangent here but recently I've been thinking a bit about Hanlon's Razor ("never attribute that to malice which is adequately explained by stupidity") and Clarke's Corollary ("any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice"). It comes up quite often when people wonder whether $politician or $political_party are stupid or evil. I used to wonder that too, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that the question is a category error. In that the two things are, functionally, the exact same thing.
The two 'laws' I mention suggest that stupidity and malice are at least on a spectrum and in some cases interchangeable. It's stupid to think that a civilised society can exist with unfettered free speech, it's equally stupid to think white people are inherently superior - but you can equally assert those things are malicious. My point is that it doesn't make any difference. They are the same.
Stupid and malicious aren't a spectrum, they aren't two sides of the same coin, they are in many - possible all - cases the exact same thing.
I agree in the abstract but I don't know that I'm quite comfortable to say they are the same. I think the way I'd think of them would be more as a venn diagram? You can have malice that isn't...
I agree in the abstract but I don't know that I'm quite comfortable to say they are the same. I think the way I'd think of them would be more as a venn diagram? You can have malice that isn't based in ignorance, and you can have ignorance that isn't rooted in malice. For example, if a child picks up a racial slur from a parent and repeats it without understanding the meaning (something children are known to do), that child would fall under ignorance, but I wouldn't say they are being malicious. This is a simple example but I can think of lots of things, especially involving trans and nb people that I have done out of ignorance but I would say I did them without malice. I did them without knowing better, and once I was told I stopped. Was I being malicious? It would depend on who you ask.
I've avoided putting this in the context of the far-right because it is where malice and ignorance get... murky, but in the topics we are talking about specifically I would definitely throw them in the overlapping section of the Venn Diagram. That said, I think distinguishing between the two is important because I think it is one of the most important factors in determining how much time and energy to spend on someone. If someone is simply ignorant, patience and education work pretty well, at least in my experience. However, if someone is malicious, it is probably less worth you time. You can still try to educate them, but if at the root is malice then no amount of education will overcome cognitive dissonance.
God even that site sucks. Reminds me of old Reddit where you’d see some reasonable posts but there’s still all this disgusting shit thrown in too. Don’t get me wrong, Reddit still sucks too...
God even that site sucks. Reminds me of old Reddit where you’d see some reasonable posts but there’s still all this disgusting shit thrown in too. Don’t get me wrong, Reddit still sucks too (that’s why I’m here) but it’s a pretty different website from how it used to be when shit like /r/jailbait and worse used to roam free.
I think that dispersing a compact mass of cancerous individuals in an uncohesive exodus to other platforms is a good thing. When they have each other to bounce the hateful and discriminating ideas...
On the one hand good riddance, but on the other, I am always scared this will lead to an exodus that will ruin otherwise decent sites.
I think that dispersing a compact mass of cancerous individuals in an uncohesive exodus to other platforms is a good thing.
When they have each other to bounce the hateful and discriminating ideas off of, the effect is a lot greater than if said ideas were presented in an environment where proper arguments can be raised to oppose them.
I think the biggest problem on the internet currently is the fact that everyone hurries to sweep the bigots and the crazies under the rug, instead of trying to educate them with proper arguments. Vilifying and dehumanizing them is not a proper response, even if they have been doing it first.
That assumes "proper arguments" can "educate" such people away from their hateful ideologies, which I am not convinced is actually even possible, at least online. In person, with considerable...
I think the biggest problem on the internet currently is the fact that everyone hurries to sweep the bigots and the crazies under the rug, instead of trying to educate them with proper arguments
That assumes "proper arguments" can "educate" such people away from their hateful ideologies, which I am not convinced is actually even possible, at least online. In person, with considerable effort, perhaps, but on a pseudo-anonymous social media site, it's highly unlikely IMO... Especially since such a feat would require good faith from all parties involved, but let's be honest here, those espousing hateful ideologies aren't exactly known for their good faith behavior.
And even if a few people might be convinced to renounce their hateful ways through rational discourse on a platform that allows them to express their hateful ideology, so they can then be challenged on it, how many more people will be lead down the hateful path in the mean time by all those who won't ever be convinced?
What's more, just by virtue of allowing the hateful a voice on your platform, you're also likely to drive a significant portion of non-hateful people away from it, which makes it even less likely the hateful will be convinced to reconsider their ways. Nobody with any sense wants to share a social space with those who are arguing that they or other groups of people should be exterminated, and so eventually, inevitably, all that will be left on the platform will be those who are hateful, or those who can stomach to be around them. It's the Nazi bar dilemma. If you allow Nazis to congregate at your bar while openly displaying their affiliation, even if you disagree with their ideology, pretty soon you'll become known as the "Nazi bar" in town, and eventually they and their sympathizers will be the only people willing to frequent your establishment.
Yeah one single person won't make a difference, but I believe a general attitude would. A lot of people swept up in the alt-right movement are simply highly influenceable. They got clickbaited...
on a pseudo-anonymous social media site, it's highly unlikely IMO
Yeah one single person won't make a difference, but I believe a general attitude would.
A lot of people swept up in the alt-right movement are simply highly influenceable. They got clickbaited into a particular news diet, which has been conditioning them over time to think a specific way.
When left-leaning communities violently reject those people (regardless of whether this is the right thing to do), it plays into their world view of being an oppressed minority, a martyr etc.
I agree with @0lpbm that sweeping these people under the rug is not the right thing to do, but at the same time you can't just let awful ideologies fester and give them a platform. I think overall, a good strategy welcomes the people but rejects the content. And I also believe that overall, Tildes' approach somewhat reflects that strategy. Even though Tildes is highly left-leaning, I don't believe it rejects people, other than being upfront about it probably not being what you're looking for if you're a Voat user (for example).
I also think that overall, @Deimos & co have been pretty careful with bans. An easy way to radicalize people is, like I said above, making them feel oppressed. Silencing someone entirely can achieve that, especially if they feel it was unjust, or if they feel like their political views is preventing them from sharing cat pictures or something.
I believe that to mitigate this, you need to 1) Never pre-emptively ban someone / ban on prejudice; 2) Give a clear and transparent explanation to the user on why they were banned; 3) Give people a way to appeal / argue their case with the person who handed out the ban.
(Personally I'd also like to see a bit more transparency relating to bans and deleted comments; eg. a ban log and something like HN's "showdead". But that's more for the sake of accountability from other users, than for the ban subjects themselves)
I don't disagree with you but, regarding your 2) and possibly 3), I remember at one point this article: On a technicality (which is also listed on the Tildes' Introduction/Design) was once...
I don't disagree with you but, regarding your 2) and possibly 3), I remember at one point this article: On a technicality (which is also listed on the Tildes' Introduction/Design) was once discussed about trying to give explanations or being transparent to people who do not argue in good faith.
I think the conversation was also about people who like to "rules lawyer" and wrangle with mods about technical details such that even if the rules at first started simply like, "Don't be a jerk" the vagueness eventually had to give way to ever increasingly more detailed and complex set of rules to the point where newcomers wouldn't even bother reading them due to the length of the list. I'm sure there's a balance to strike somewhere, and this mostly only applies to people who aren't honest about their intentions.
I have seen the HN's approach to ban logs discussed somewhere else on Tildes as well. I might be able to find it somewhere, although I don't personally use HN. The transparency thing is definitely something that is an on-going debate, even as far back as the first ever ban. More here and here about keeping logs (and some of the futility of trying to keep them or the example of the SomethingAwful moderation log not being a good fit).
I hadn't been on Voat since it started (early June, 2015 during the alpha) and almost immediately went down hill. If this comment has any truth to it, that's a great payday for the guy that was...
I hadn't been on Voat since it started (early June, 2015 during the alpha) and almost immediately went down hill.
If this comment has any truth to it, that's a great payday for the guy that was running it.
That comment seems like the author just doesn't really understand bitcoin or know what they're talking about, but managed to make up a pretty good conspiracy theory out of it anyway. There's...
That comment seems like the author just doesn't really understand bitcoin or know what they're talking about, but managed to make up a pretty good conspiracy theory out of it anyway. There's absolutely no way that 779 bitcoins were sent to Voat, they're just confusing some kind of service's shared address as one that belongs to solely to Voat or something like that.
That sounds about right. I spent about half an hour looking through Voat --- its pretty much all conspiracy theories. A lot of QAnon stuff, as expected, too. My favorite conspiracy theory that I...
That sounds about right.
I spent about half an hour looking through Voat --- its pretty much all conspiracy theories. A lot of QAnon stuff, as expected, too.
My favorite conspiracy theory that I saw was the honeypot mentioned above. I can't believe some of the rhetoric on there, though. I don't visit sites like this at all but have an idea of what's going on... but it was still surprising. Stuff like 'bringing your Voat-self to the public' -- essentially being racist in every day life -- its all so absurd.
Man can you imagine if the Feds cared about White supremacy enough to create a honeypot like this? We might never have gotten Trump. We certainly wouldn’t have gotten the Pulse Nightclub.
Man can you imagine if the Feds cared about White supremacy enough to create a honeypot like this?
We might never have gotten Trump. We certainly wouldn’t have gotten the Pulse Nightclub.
I wouldn't be surprised if they have honeypots for CP and other horrible things. I'd be surprised if they weren't monitoring sites like this. It's all so sad and gross.
I wouldn't be surprised if they have honeypots for CP and other horrible things. I'd be surprised if they weren't monitoring sites like this.
I was on it right as it started as well - it was a nice little community for a very short time, and then the crazies started using it... Edit: Oh my god this comment from the post on Voat is...
I was on it right as it started as well - it was a nice little community for a very short time, and then the crazies started using it...
Edit: Oh my god this comment from the post on Voat is actually real, good grief: "I don't have cable/satellite, kikeflix, go to movies or restaurants (even if they were open), and so on. I can only buy so many bullets and bunker supplies. Show me a way to support this website without doxxing myself and the money will flow."
Something I find curious is that they don't have the funds to stay up. Looking at the comments, a ton of them are people saying "fuck I'll donate money to keep this site up". Which like, y i k e...
Something I find curious is that they don't have the funds to stay up. Looking at the comments, a ton of them are people saying "fuck I'll donate money to keep this site up". Which like, y i k e s, but also does make me curious as to why they didn't look for user donations to keep afloat. Even in the post the creator says they tried to keep the site up through the 2020 election by self-funding but now can't afford to keep the lights on anymore, but that would have been so much easier to do getting donations from the community. Idk maybe something ideological stops them from wanting to accept money? But that doesn't make sense because the OG site was fully funded by one person? But maybe they view it differently when it is one rich person funding it vs the community funding it. Idk. I'm not an expert in right-wing ideology. Maybe the creator just got sick of the work and decided to let it die, but wanted to go out in a blaze of glory and so made an outrage post to martyr themselves.
They did take donations at one point, but then paypal froze their account due to their numerous policy violations, and I highly doubt any other payment processor would have allowed them to use...
They did take donations at one point, but then paypal froze their account due to their numerous policy violations, and I highly doubt any other payment processor would have allowed them to use their services either. So the only way for them to take donations was with cryptocurrency, which they also did for a while. However that either turned out to be too much of a headache to deal with, or (more likely, IMO) wasn't actually enough to cover costs, so they went with the mysterious backer instead. And now that the backer has withdrawn their support, my guess is PuttItOut knows there is nothing left that can actually keep the site afloat, even with all the people claiming they would donate.
Ah. I remembered the paypal thing but I didn't know they had previously tried crypto and it had failed. I still find it a bit surprising but I guess if crowdfunding was easy more sites would be...
Ah. I remembered the paypal thing but I didn't know they had previously tried crypto and it had failed. I still find it a bit surprising but I guess if crowdfunding was easy more sites would be able to survive on it.
Yeah, and I suspect long-term, sustainable crowd-funding is even more difficult on sites like voat, where even the slightest perceived misstep by the people in charge results in the community...
Yeah, and I suspect long-term, sustainable crowd-funding is even more difficult on sites like voat, where even the slightest perceived misstep by the people in charge results in the community immediately targeting them with their ire, and accusing them of conspiratorial nonsense regarding their motivations too.
Good-bye and good riddance. Early on I used the site. I quickly left when I saw it turning into a right-wing cesspool. That said, I'm surprised, with the rise of right-wing chat services like...
Good-bye and good riddance. Early on I used the site. I quickly left when I saw it turning into a right-wing cesspool. That said, I'm surprised, with the rise of right-wing chat services like Parler they didn't find a way to sell out.
Never been on voat much except visiting once when it was created and a couple years ago when I was trying to leave reddit. Anyone know of any other sites like this, that are basically carbon...
Never been on voat much except visiting once when it was created and a couple years ago when I was trying to leave reddit.
Anyone know of any other sites like this, that are basically carbon copies of reddit but maybe a few other changes? Obviously unlike Tildes, which very much tries to do its own thing.
Good to see you here too @petrichor. I do hope discussion picks up on Gurlic soon. I see a lot of lurkers in my logs. I guess we'll just have to wait for more users. Meanwhile, I'm working on bug...
Good to see you here too @petrichor. I do hope discussion picks up on Gurlic soon. I see a lot of lurkers in my logs. I guess we'll just have to wait for more users. Meanwhile, I'm working on bug fixes... :)
I think it's just crashing. I had posted a comment yesterday saying that it was down early too, but deleted it after it came back up a few hours later.
I think it's just crashing. I had posted a comment yesterday saying that it was down early too, but deleted it after it came back up a few hours later.
That comment section is an absolute trainwreck, racism, antisemitism, holocaust deniers, people who believe the website was a government honey pot (but still use it?), and a lot more thats just straight up wrong.
Happy to see it gone, hope it stays gone.
That's actually pretty par for the course for Voat.
There are dozens of Voat alternatives that I'm sure these people will scurry off to. 8kun, Ruqqus, maybe even Parler... All these "free speech for conservatives" sites all wind up like Voat due to the paradox of tolerance. Each site has 2 options:
Moderate hate speech. This means once dog whistling crosses some arbitrary threshold, it is then bannable (similar to the "standard" that is often applied on other platforms.) If this happens, claims of censorship will spread rapidly and the new platform dies.
Refuse to moderate hate speech. Sure, it looks bad, but to survive on this "free speech" branding they must be radical in what they refuse take down. Perhaps only illegal acts of threatening violence are removed. This becomes a Voat/8chan where content becomes so perverse and hateful it's off-putting to even solidly right leaning conservatives.
Rightists simply can't have a moderate platform they manage themselves, they are incapable of it. Even the operators of 8chan and Voat were mercilessly accused of being CIA/deep state operatives. Had they been even a little more decerning in the content they allowed, they'd be left for yet another site.
God reading that post was painful. The author actually tried to sound like a martyr at the end, quoting the Bible and all. And the replies aren't much better.
On one hand, good riddance, but on the other, I am always scared this will lead to an exodus that will ruin otherwise decent sites. But knowing how extreme these users are, chances are they wouldn't want to use anything that doesn't already advertise itself as extremely pro free-speech (and is thus generally already an alt-right rabbit hole by default)
I heard thedonald.win wants to create some sort of reddit clone, so they can have foster a larger community and not just be centered around Trump. Maybe that's where all these users will flock to one day.
In any case, nothing of value was lost.
I find this melodramatic way of speaking is pretty common amongst many Very Online people, but particularly the alt-right and conspiracy theorists. The way a lot of them talk reminds me a bit of how I'd play pretend as a little girl; high stakes, secret enemies, evil factions opposing the battered underdog. I think that's a key part of it, honestly. It feels exciting and important.
Yeah I find that is a pretty common element among the alt-right too. It makes everything feel grandiose and special, which in turn makes people feel like they're part of something with a purpose that is worth following.
If you paint all the horrible things you do and say under this heroic paint, it makes it less likely that people inside the community will question it since they'll get excited instead.
I feel a bit bad since I've seen his videos get posted everywhere and I want to support smaller creators, but Shaun made a great video out outrage news and why everything in right-wing media especially needs to be the end of days. Hbomberguy has a much shorter section at the end of one of his videos that discusses this as well but I sure as heck can't remember where.
This may point to childhood trauma issues. I know this from personal experience. We truly were victims then, and many normal adult situations trigger us and appear to be the abus that happened then. Without good therapy and support, childhood trauma amd cptsd folks live oir lives in a triggered state, and isolated from others, perpetually licing as victims. The online space gives us a place to feel empowered and shout our threats of vengeance. At a less extreme degree, you get flamewars about hardware components.
The sad fact is now this is a lot of the people running the country.
One attitude I adopted for these shutdowns is that too much cynicism about where users "will go" isn't doing any good. People are more lazy than we allow ourselves to believe and simply not having a big, mainstream place to go tends to do shut up a lot of idiots for good. It's mostly a few zealots carrying these places and a lot of followers just aimlessly swimming along, because it's easy.
For example, I don't think /r/the_donald ever fully recovered from getting banned and thedonald.win is a much smaller, isolated place that's overall more harmless. The same thing was true for voat and the other hate subreddits and ultimately, these things are often short lived because you can't control a culture of hatred for too long before it eats itself. That's also why I'm not worried about parler, either and, to some degree, not even networks like OANN. I think they're all one scandal away from being forced into obscurity.
You know that is a pretty good way to put it. I hadn't thought about it that way before.
I have always believed that deplatforming works without fully comprehending how but looking at it this way it's a bit easier to put into perspective.
Its like constantly deviding the base. Eventually you're just left with infinitely small irrelevant clusters with little power.
Yup, they lose their ability to recruit new members into their cult, the moderate members usually soften without their popular platform to feel...moderate on while participating in the club, and the few crazy die-hards (and they’re always way smaller than the moderates and those dipping their toes in) slink off to ever smaller websites and chat services...where they belong.
The claim that these ideas need to “stay in the light” on large visible platforms to be properly combated is either intentionally malicious or woefully ignorant.
Deplatforming works.
Oh, it'll lead to an exodus alright. Any of the reddit alternatives that are unlucky enough to inherit this demented echo chamber's members will rapidly start losing the 'normal people' crowd. I'd bet a bunch of them go back to reddit again. Parler and Ruqqus are probably in for the worst of it.
Speaking of, it looks like ruqqus is already prepping for the influx:
https://ruqqus.com/+changelog/post/5ywz/ruqqus-227-improved-content-filtering-guildmaster
I'd never heard of Ruqqus until today and I had a quick look just now, I'm not sure adding more idiots from Voat is going to be that noticable given that every single post I clicked on had some sort of racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic or otherwise bigoted comment.
I've been checking in on all the various reddit alternatives occasionally, just to keep track of any interesting features they implement, and keep informed on the happenings in the alt-right hate-o-sphere. On ruqqus the bigotry is currently more of a filthy undercurrent, rather than floating on the surface for all to see, like it was at voat. But now that voat is no more, even with these upcoming changes I doubt ruqqus will manage to stem the tide and prevent themselves from going the way of voat now too... Which seems to be the inevitable trajectory of all these absolutist "free speech/censorship free" sites. And yet none of them ever seem to learn a lesson from that.
Imagine being one of the devs of ruqqus right now, knowing with absolute certainty that their site is considered the next best place to go to by all those soon to be homeless voat users, and yet still being largely powerless to stop their migration due to their shared ideology. How the hell they stay convinced they're doing the right thing by developing their site, and continuing to believe in absolute free speech, is honestly beyond me. :/
They just don’t get how free speech works. It’s important and sacred because people shouldn’t be put in jail by the governments for things they merely say or believe...but that doesn’t mean you should just allow Neo-Nazis to attend your private family bbq. You can’t just tell your guests “free speech bro!”. Nobody is going to want to go to your gatherings anymore, except of course Neo-Nazis.
I think there’s certainly a discussion to be had about how freedom of expression should work on the internet and on individual site. There’s a convincing argument to be had that mega sites like YouTube and Facebook are effectively equivalent to public squares, and thus should be treated as such, with all of the relevant 1A protections. However, the reach of the sites is orders of magnitude greater than a newspaper or a physical town square (and with less of the attendant consequences for, say, getting in someone’s face), and I saw some interesting discussions on r/TheoryofReddit and HackerNews about the idea that fascist argumentation relies on mental and logical tricks which cause those ideas to spread virally in the open, rather than being disinfected by “sunlight”. Ultimately though, I’m deeply skeptical of governments and corporations (which seem to be increasingly similar) being given power to heavily police content a) under the assumption that it will always be a benevolent, democratic system implementing these regulations and b) with the assumption that concepts like “hate speech” have a clear, firm definition. I’m not really sure if there is a good solution to this problem. I’m worried we may have hit some sort of fundamental limit on what societies can look like on a globalized scale.
This is a non-issue. A hypothetical future non-benevolent dictatorship doesn't need precedent or existing structures to censor/propogandise through, they'll just create whatever they want or need at the time. That's one of the things that makes them non-benevolent.
This is commonly managed pretty well in quite a lot of countries outside the US. You don't actually need a 100% clear definition, laws have fuzzy edges all the time - just think about things like 'dangerous driving' or 'anti-social behaviour' - fuzzy definitions let you take context into consideration, which I'd argue is far more useful. "Hate speech" is equally easy to catch most of. The definition should probably lean towards under-application than over, but still.
I agree these sort of things can go wrong but given how wrong things are currently going, I think it's probably worth trying something. In the worst case, failing differently is still a sort of progress. Societies have dealt with these kind of problems forever, I don't think it's necessarily an unsolvable problem.
With respect to a dictatorship, it is more common than not for authoritarian regimes to co-opt the organs of the existing state rather than destroy them entirely. While certain entities may wither away, the bulk of government remains unchanged.
I guess my concerns are more related to definitions than I previously thought. For example, a frequently seen term is “inciting hatred based on ethnic, racial, or religious characteristics”. Hatred doesn’t seem to have a bright line definition, which you seem to be okay with, because it allows context to be considered. I’m not so comfortable with it, however, in part because of what I discussed above. Would states controlled by the GOP prosecute people who criticized Christianity? Would a statement like this “ every religious idea and every idea of God is unutterable vileness ... of the most dangerous kind, 'contagion' of the most abominable kind.” (from Lenin) be open to prosecution? Would casual use of n****r be an offense, or would it be a requirement to encourage killing or physical harm? Incitement implies encouraging others to commit a crime, would that be a condition of the law? Laws should be clear, vagueness invites misuse.
I guess my final concern is this: fascism and white supremacy are detestable ideologies. However, they are still political belief systems. In almost all cases they incite hatred or genocide. If incitement of hatred is criminalized, does that criminalize promotion of the attendant ideologies? Does that begin to police what we may or may not believe? I’m not entirely opposed to the concept of a hate speech law, but I believe it requires more scientific studies into how hatred affects people.
Yeah, things do become trickier when you live in a fundamentalist theocracy. I guess suck it and see. Am I right in thinking church and state are supposed to be separated by the constitution?
I'm not 100% on this but I think it is in the UK already. Where "casual" means used as an insult. Not where used between peers. I did mention context, yeah? :)
Well, yes and no. Clarity is important but you can't write down every single possible case. That's partly why we have courts and judges and stuff. To apply laws in context. If the law was completely 100% clear we wouldn't need any of that, you could replace the courts with a flow chart.
It's simply not possible to write 100% clear laws 100% of the time and I don't think not making laws because there might be some wiggle room in them is the best approach. Also lots of laws are completely clear already and people still wiggle out of them - who was that guy who got caught in the act of raping some girl and still got let off because he was white and rich? Brock someone?
Yes, to an extent. But that is OK. Look up Popper's paradox of tolerance. Personally speaking, I'm totally fine with making Nazis illegal.
So the thing is, a lot of what you seem to be saying looks like a bunch of slippery slope type arguments, which I personally never find particularly convincing. Look at what currently happens in other countries who already have hate speech legislations, and compare that to what is happening in the US where such laws don't exist so much.
I might have in some ways less freedom than you, but on the other hand I don't recall many demonstrations in the UK in which actual fuckin' neo-nazis were walking around waving guns in the street and calling for another, bigger holocaust. So I'd invite you to consider that it is perhaps possible the US has already slipped a little too far the entirely wrong way down the slope which concerns you.
I was considering Popper’s paradox of tolerance when commenting. I’m just deeply suspicious of giving the government and corporations more power when it comes to our core rights and freedoms, but I’m not sure how to reconcile it with the fact that Nazis and fascists often infringe on those rights too. Concepts like stochastic terrorism will throw a wrench into things as well. Maybe some sort of independent board would be useful for enforcing these sorts of things. I’m not exactly happy with the direction the U.S. is heading on race relations. I do think more research into the sciences behind racism and the spread of it would be helpful.
Expert level cognitive dissonance or more likely, given that it's really not that hard to put together a link aggregator with comments and votes, simple old fashioned stupids. As J S Mill said: "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives..." continued
I mean they named their site after a fight, I doubt we're dealing with the brightest and best here.
I think there is also a very likely third option that I am only applying at an individual level, and not saying is true of all devs on the project. There's an option that some of the devs like the Voat content. I've encountered so many shitty incels and racists in tech spaces, especially IT. I don't find it hard to believe that there are people working on this project who are working on it explicitly because they are the far right and want to build websites for the far-right to gain traction in the mainstream. Now this and the two things you listed certainly aren't mutually exclusive, I'm just surprised that people aren't considering the option that the devs ideology lines up with the people leaving Voat.
Edit: I want to expand a bit on this. I don't want my comment to come off as aggressive. I'm just surprised that after all of these "free-speech" sites fail that people are surprised that more crop up. More crop up because an end goal of some devs is to get more people into the far-right discords, mastadon instances, Parlours, etc. The sites don't need to live for super long, because there will always be another one. The people who coded
<insert free-speech site that failed>didn't just disappear. I feel like sometimes people jump to attribute malice to ignorance, but here it feels like the opposite: I feel like when people talk about these sites failing they're overly generous with saying they're just ignorant or egotistical and think they wont fail, when I think its probably likely that they just view the failed site as "how many people did we convert" and then move on to developing the next reddit ripoff to redpill people. There are certainly people who make these sites with ideals of free-speech and not far-right indoctrination, I don't want to go so far to say none believe that. But I feel as though people are surprised because they're looking at the interest stated in their description and less about the goals of the movements they allow to dominate the spaces.Oh, I'm sure their ideology does align. If it didn't, who would keep such a site running? If I made voat and it turned into the cesspit voat turned into, I'd take it offline then make a special trip to the datacentre so I could burn and salt the hard drives it lived on.
Apologies in advance for going off at a bit of a tangent here but recently I've been thinking a bit about Hanlon's Razor ("never attribute that to malice which is adequately explained by stupidity") and Clarke's Corollary ("any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice"). It comes up quite often when people wonder whether $politician or $political_party are stupid or evil. I used to wonder that too, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that the question is a category error. In that the two things are, functionally, the exact same thing.
The two 'laws' I mention suggest that stupidity and malice are at least on a spectrum and in some cases interchangeable. It's stupid to think that a civilised society can exist with unfettered free speech, it's equally stupid to think white people are inherently superior - but you can equally assert those things are malicious. My point is that it doesn't make any difference. They are the same.
Stupid and malicious aren't a spectrum, they aren't two sides of the same coin, they are in many - possible all - cases the exact same thing.
I agree in the abstract but I don't know that I'm quite comfortable to say they are the same. I think the way I'd think of them would be more as a venn diagram? You can have malice that isn't based in ignorance, and you can have ignorance that isn't rooted in malice. For example, if a child picks up a racial slur from a parent and repeats it without understanding the meaning (something children are known to do), that child would fall under ignorance, but I wouldn't say they are being malicious. This is a simple example but I can think of lots of things, especially involving trans and nb people that I have done out of ignorance but I would say I did them without malice. I did them without knowing better, and once I was told I stopped. Was I being malicious? It would depend on who you ask.
I've avoided putting this in the context of the far-right because it is where malice and ignorance get... murky, but in the topics we are talking about specifically I would definitely throw them in the overlapping section of the Venn Diagram. That said, I think distinguishing between the two is important because I think it is one of the most important factors in determining how much time and energy to spend on someone. If someone is simply ignorant, patience and education work pretty well, at least in my experience. However, if someone is malicious, it is probably less worth you time. You can still try to educate them, but if at the root is malice then no amount of education will overcome cognitive dissonance.
For that job I'd go full thermite. :p
God even that site sucks. Reminds me of old Reddit where you’d see some reasonable posts but there’s still all this disgusting shit thrown in too. Don’t get me wrong, Reddit still sucks too (that’s why I’m here) but it’s a pretty different website from how it used to be when shit like /r/jailbait and worse used to roam free.
I think that dispersing a compact mass of cancerous individuals in an uncohesive exodus to other platforms is a good thing.
When they have each other to bounce the hateful and discriminating ideas off of, the effect is a lot greater than if said ideas were presented in an environment where proper arguments can be raised to oppose them.
I think the biggest problem on the internet currently is the fact that everyone hurries to sweep the bigots and the crazies under the rug, instead of trying to educate them with proper arguments. Vilifying and dehumanizing them is not a proper response, even if they have been doing it first.
That assumes "proper arguments" can "educate" such people away from their hateful ideologies, which I am not convinced is actually even possible, at least online. In person, with considerable effort, perhaps, but on a pseudo-anonymous social media site, it's highly unlikely IMO... Especially since such a feat would require good faith from all parties involved, but let's be honest here, those espousing hateful ideologies aren't exactly known for their good faith behavior.
And even if a few people might be convinced to renounce their hateful ways through rational discourse on a platform that allows them to express their hateful ideology, so they can then be challenged on it, how many more people will be lead down the hateful path in the mean time by all those who won't ever be convinced?
What's more, just by virtue of allowing the hateful a voice on your platform, you're also likely to drive a significant portion of non-hateful people away from it, which makes it even less likely the hateful will be convinced to reconsider their ways. Nobody with any sense wants to share a social space with those who are arguing that they or other groups of people should be exterminated, and so eventually, inevitably, all that will be left on the platform will be those who are hateful, or those who can stomach to be around them. It's the Nazi bar dilemma. If you allow Nazis to congregate at your bar while openly displaying their affiliation, even if you disagree with their ideology, pretty soon you'll become known as the "Nazi bar" in town, and eventually they and their sympathizers will be the only people willing to frequent your establishment.
Yeah one single person won't make a difference, but I believe a general attitude would.
A lot of people swept up in the alt-right movement are simply highly influenceable. They got clickbaited into a particular news diet, which has been conditioning them over time to think a specific way.
When left-leaning communities violently reject those people (regardless of whether this is the right thing to do), it plays into their world view of being an oppressed minority, a martyr etc.
I agree with @0lpbm that sweeping these people under the rug is not the right thing to do, but at the same time you can't just let awful ideologies fester and give them a platform. I think overall, a good strategy welcomes the people but rejects the content. And I also believe that overall, Tildes' approach somewhat reflects that strategy. Even though Tildes is highly left-leaning, I don't believe it rejects people, other than being upfront about it probably not being what you're looking for if you're a Voat user (for example).
I also think that overall, @Deimos & co have been pretty careful with bans. An easy way to radicalize people is, like I said above, making them feel oppressed. Silencing someone entirely can achieve that, especially if they feel it was unjust, or if they feel like their political views is preventing them from sharing cat pictures or something.
I believe that to mitigate this, you need to 1) Never pre-emptively ban someone / ban on prejudice; 2) Give a clear and transparent explanation to the user on why they were banned; 3) Give people a way to appeal / argue their case with the person who handed out the ban.
(Personally I'd also like to see a bit more transparency relating to bans and deleted comments; eg. a ban log and something like HN's "showdead". But that's more for the sake of accountability from other users, than for the ban subjects themselves)
I don't disagree with you but, regarding your 2) and possibly 3), I remember at one point this article: On a technicality (which is also listed on the Tildes' Introduction/Design) was once discussed about trying to give explanations or being transparent to people who do not argue in good faith.
I think the conversation was also about people who like to "rules lawyer" and wrangle with mods about technical details such that even if the rules at first started simply like, "Don't be a jerk" the vagueness eventually had to give way to ever increasingly more detailed and complex set of rules to the point where newcomers wouldn't even bother reading them due to the length of the list. I'm sure there's a balance to strike somewhere, and this mostly only applies to people who aren't honest about their intentions.
I have seen the HN's approach to ban logs discussed somewhere else on Tildes as well. I might be able to find it somewhere, although I don't personally use HN. The transparency thing is definitely something that is an on-going debate, even as far back as the first ever ban. More here and here about keeping logs (and some of the futility of trying to keep them or the example of the SomethingAwful moderation log not being a good fit).
And nothing of value was lost.
It's a Christmas present for the Internet!
I hadn't been on Voat since it started (early June, 2015 during the alpha) and almost immediately went down hill.
If this comment has any truth to it, that's a great payday for the guy that was running it.
That comment seems like the author just doesn't really understand bitcoin or know what they're talking about, but managed to make up a pretty good conspiracy theory out of it anyway. There's absolutely no way that 779 bitcoins were sent to Voat, they're just confusing some kind of service's shared address as one that belongs to solely to Voat or something like that.
That sounds about right.
I spent about half an hour looking through Voat --- its pretty much all conspiracy theories. A lot of QAnon stuff, as expected, too.
My favorite conspiracy theory that I saw was the honeypot mentioned above. I can't believe some of the rhetoric on there, though. I don't visit sites like this at all but have an idea of what's going on... but it was still surprising. Stuff like 'bringing your Voat-self to the public' -- essentially being racist in every day life -- its all so absurd.
Man can you imagine if the Feds cared about White supremacy enough to create a honeypot like this?
We might never have gotten Trump. We certainly wouldn’t have gotten the Pulse Nightclub.
I wouldn't be surprised if they have honeypots for CP and other horrible things. I'd be surprised if they weren't monitoring sites like this.
It's all so sad and gross.
I was on it right as it started as well - it was a nice little community for a very short time, and then the crazies started using it...
Edit: Oh my god this comment from the post on Voat is actually real, good grief: "I don't have cable/satellite, kikeflix, go to movies or restaurants (even if they were open), and so on. I can only buy so many bullets and bunker supplies. Show me a way to support this website without doxxing myself and the money will flow."
Something I find curious is that they don't have the funds to stay up. Looking at the comments, a ton of them are people saying "fuck I'll donate money to keep this site up". Which like,
y i k e s, but also does make me curious as to why they didn't look for user donations to keep afloat. Even in the post the creator says they tried to keep the site up through the 2020 election by self-funding but now can't afford to keep the lights on anymore, but that would have been so much easier to do getting donations from the community. Idk maybe something ideological stops them from wanting to accept money? But that doesn't make sense because the OG site was fully funded by one person? But maybe they view it differently when it is one rich person funding it vs the community funding it. Idk. I'm not an expert in right-wing ideology. Maybe the creator just got sick of the work and decided to let it die, but wanted to go out in a blaze of glory and so made an outrage post to martyr themselves.They did take donations at one point, but then paypal froze their account due to their numerous policy violations, and I highly doubt any other payment processor would have allowed them to use their services either. So the only way for them to take donations was with cryptocurrency, which they also did for a while. However that either turned out to be too much of a headache to deal with, or (more likely, IMO) wasn't actually enough to cover costs, so they went with the mysterious backer instead. And now that the backer has withdrawn their support, my guess is PuttItOut knows there is nothing left that can actually keep the site afloat, even with all the people claiming they would donate.
Ah. I remembered the paypal thing but I didn't know they had previously tried crypto and it had failed. I still find it a bit surprising but I guess if crowdfunding was easy more sites would be able to survive on it.
Yeah, and I suspect long-term, sustainable crowd-funding is even more difficult on sites like voat, where even the slightest perceived misstep by the people in charge results in the community immediately targeting them with their ire, and accusing them of conspiratorial nonsense regarding their motivations too.
If anyone couldn't see the announcement like me, it was archived.
Good-bye and good riddance. Early on I used the site. I quickly left when I saw it turning into a right-wing cesspool. That said, I'm surprised, with the rise of right-wing chat services like Parler they didn't find a way to sell out.
Never been on voat much except visiting once when it was created and a couple years ago when I was trying to leave reddit.
Anyone know of any other sites like this, that are basically carbon copies of reddit but maybe a few other changes? Obviously unlike Tildes, which very much tries to do its own thing.
Gurlic's fun and new, but definitely different - it's a pretty pure link aggregator / post platform, with fairly minimal discussion so far.
Good to see you here too @petrichor. I do hope discussion picks up on Gurlic soon. I see a lot of lurkers in my logs. I guess we'll just have to wait for more users. Meanwhile, I'm working on bug fixes... :)
Looks like they took the site down a few days ahead of schedule. The announcement was archived for those who want to read it though:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201223034957/https://voat.co/v/announcements/4169936
I think it's just crashing. I had posted a comment yesterday saying that it was down early too, but deleted it after it came back up a few hours later.