5 ms·

>a strong counterpoint against Reddit alternatives becoming an inherently successful business prospect It looks like Voat is not in good financial shape too:

by r721 9y ago

>a strong counterpoint against Reddit alternatives becoming an inherently successful business prospect It looks like Voat is not in good financial shape too: https://voat.co/v/announcements/1866053 https://voat.co/v/announcements/1866053 https://voat.co/v/announcements/1881376 https://voat.co/v/announcements/1881376

minimaxir 9y ago
Voat never raised millions in venture capital, though. (and can't given their content/userbase)
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  They will probably have a hard time raising from institutional investors, but my guess is their userbase is primarily single men who spend large amounts of time on the computer, a decent subset of whom have spending cash. The "goats" are also people who feel like they've been politically badgered into a corner, so I suspect they will spend to maintain their last refuge. Your will to fight goes up as the space you are confined to gets smaller. I think there's definitely a market for a "social network of last resort" in this age of community guidelines. Which... I think is a great thing. It's good that Twitter, Reddit, etc, are being aggressive about harassment. That promotes the freer flow of certain ideas (feminism, social justice, etc). But then that necessitates an alternate space for the free flow of opposing viewpoints (harassment filters out the weak, feminism is cancer, this woman should be raped for her opinions, etc).
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    > primarily single men I was at this event with a close friend of mine and noticed the distinctive Voat logo on her phone. "Are you .. are browsing Voat?" I'd classify her as libertarian-esque. I know it's just one datapoint, but I don't think the voat userbase is as 1-dimensional is you think.
  - Frondo 9y ago
    Oh man, I know this is not always the most popular viewpoint, but I would be happy to live in a world in which "this woman should be raped for her opinions" had no place to be expressed, ever.
    - erikpukinskis 9y ago
      I don't. I would like to live in a world where no one ever thinks it. I think the only way you get there is by keeping dialog open with the people who do think it. If you refuse to listen to them, you strengthen their belief that they're seeing something other people are unwilling to look at. And I think trying to "no platform" those people only strengthens their rhetorical position, making it easier for them to extract sympathy from moderates, which normalizes rape culture and quite possibly leads to more rapes. Which is really tragic. But all of this is just a smaller part of a general failure of feminist policy to do anything with perpetrators besides punish them. Restorative justice is starting to catch on in feminist circles, at least in terms of lip service. But it's a tough sell, because it's completely at odds with the basic feminist methodology of "Step 1: Separate the situation into Oppressor and Oppressed. Step 2: Direct all available resources towards the Oppressed. Step 3: Fuck the oppressor up, if you can. Though you probably won't be able to. #lesigh #patriarchyamirite" Of course, that is totally understandable. When you live in a society that systematically fails to punish perpetrators, and willfully ignores your calls to punish them, where else does that lead besides a laser-focus on self care and becoming psychotically obsessed with trying to punishing perpetrators? And Men's Rights has a totally impoverished accounting of the situation, being able to say little more than "Not all men!" and "Women are perpetrators too!" which doesn't advance the dialog at all either. Those are orthogonal situations, and don't address the underlying issue which is that the victim/perpetrator dialectic obscures the root of violence, so it can never be pulled out. We should all listen more carefully to the black civil rights community, who is leaps and bounds beyond the rest of us in drawing a nuanced picture of violence and ways to see through it to community healing.
      - Frondo 9y ago
        Man. Great reply.
  - jimmyk 9y ago
    Which... I think is a great thing. You think it's a great thing that there is less dialogue between people with differing opinions and more places that function as echo-chambers?
    - sanswork 9y ago
      Yes I think it is a good think there is less dialogue between hate groups. I want them to all feel they are the only ones in the world with those beliefs so they died off with them.
      - jimmyk 9y ago
        Why would echo chambers, where people are surrounded by those who think like them, convince anyone that they are alone in their beliefs?
        sanswork 9y ago
        Honestly my response is the result of reading the thread wrong shortly after waking up.
  - dominotw 9y ago
    opposite of feminism/social justice is not 'women should be raped', opposite is 'weak should not be helped and left to die'.
- CM30 9y ago
  Voat were approached by VCs at one point though: https://voat.co/v/AskVoat/comments/196002/579547 https://voat.co/v/AskVoat/comments/196002/579547 Not sure how it turned out, but investors were apparently interested in investing in them. And may have raised a decent amount of cash through the process as well.
nebabyte 9y ago
either*, and I wouldn't use voat as a yardstick - it's had its own slew of fairly poor decisions and has likely not evolved out of the "run as a side project" mentality it was founded with (though idk, haven't been keeping tabs.)
zapt02 9y ago
Can't help but to feel a tiny bit of schadenfreude since they locked themselves into proprietary platforms and now are desperately trying to claw themselves out of it into the warmth of open source.
- thomasz 9y ago
  Their problem isn't paying for proprietary software, their problem is that they are unable to make any money.
  - hueving 9y ago
    Not proprietary software, but really overpriced cloud platforms. There are so many viable businesses that burn themselves to the ground because they think they need to run everything on EC2/Azure and pay 10x what they need to.
    - thomasz 9y ago
      Cloud hosting allows a startup to scale quickly. This is very important to seize opportunities as they arise without having to wait for physical servers to be shipped into the data center. OTOH, last time I looked at their source code, it didn't seem like they were making a serious effort towards efficient data access patterns. This can get very expensive on a cloud DB service. Anyways, if monthly costs of a little bit more than $6000 are enough to sink the ship, then the whole thing isn't financially viable. Sooner or later you have to pay people to maintain the whole thing, and that is going to be a lot more expensive.

by r721 9y ago

minimaxir 9y ago

Voat never raised millions in venture capital, though. (and can't given their content/userbase)

erikpukinskis 9y ago
They will probably have a hard time raising from institutional investors, but my guess is their userbase is primarily single men who spend large amounts of time on the computer, a decent subset of whom have spending cash. The "goats" are also people who feel like they've been politically badgered into a corner, so I suspect they will spend to maintain their last refuge. Your will to fight goes up as the space you are confined to gets smaller. I think there's definitely a market for a "social network of last resort" in this age of community guidelines. Which... I think is a great thing. It's good that Twitter, Reddit, etc, are being aggressive about harassment. That promotes the freer flow of certain ideas (feminism, social justice, etc). But then that necessitates an alternate space for the free flow of opposing viewpoints (harassment filters out the weak, feminism is cancer, this woman should be raped for her opinions, etc).
- djsumdog 9y ago
  > primarily single men I was at this event with a close friend of mine and noticed the distinctive Voat logo on her phone. "Are you .. are browsing Voat?" I'd classify her as libertarian-esque. I know it's just one datapoint, but I don't think the voat userbase is as 1-dimensional is you think.
- Frondo 9y ago
  Oh man, I know this is not always the most popular viewpoint, but I would be happy to live in a world in which "this woman should be raped for her opinions" had no place to be expressed, ever.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    I don't. I would like to live in a world where no one ever thinks it. I think the only way you get there is by keeping dialog open with the people who do think it. If you refuse to listen to them, you strengthen their belief that they're seeing something other people are unwilling to look at. And I think trying to "no platform" those people only strengthens their rhetorical position, making it easier for them to extract sympathy from moderates, which normalizes rape culture and quite possibly leads to more rapes. Which is really tragic. But all of this is just a smaller part of a general failure of feminist policy to do anything with perpetrators besides punish them. Restorative justice is starting to catch on in feminist circles, at least in terms of lip service. But it's a tough sell, because it's completely at odds with the basic feminist methodology of "Step 1: Separate the situation into Oppressor and Oppressed. Step 2: Direct all available resources towards the Oppressed. Step 3: Fuck the oppressor up, if you can. Though you probably won't be able to. #lesigh #patriarchyamirite" Of course, that is totally understandable. When you live in a society that systematically fails to punish perpetrators, and willfully ignores your calls to punish them, where else does that lead besides a laser-focus on self care and becoming psychotically obsessed with trying to punishing perpetrators? And Men's Rights has a totally impoverished accounting of the situation, being able to say little more than "Not all men!" and "Women are perpetrators too!" which doesn't advance the dialog at all either. Those are orthogonal situations, and don't address the underlying issue which is that the victim/perpetrator dialectic obscures the root of violence, so it can never be pulled out. We should all listen more carefully to the black civil rights community, who is leaps and bounds beyond the rest of us in drawing a nuanced picture of violence and ways to see through it to community healing.
    - Frondo 9y ago
      Man. Great reply.
- jimmyk 9y ago
  Which... I think is a great thing. You think it's a great thing that there is less dialogue between people with differing opinions and more places that function as echo-chambers?
  - sanswork 9y ago
    Yes I think it is a good think there is less dialogue between hate groups. I want them to all feel they are the only ones in the world with those beliefs so they died off with them.
    - jimmyk 9y ago
      Why would echo chambers, where people are surrounded by those who think like them, convince anyone that they are alone in their beliefs?
      - sanswork 9y ago
        Honestly my response is the result of reading the thread wrong shortly after waking up.
- dominotw 9y ago
  opposite of feminism/social justice is not 'women should be raped', opposite is 'weak should not be helped and left to die'.
CM30 9y ago
Voat were approached by VCs at one point though: https://voat.co/v/AskVoat/comments/196002/579547 https://voat.co/v/AskVoat/comments/196002/579547 Not sure how it turned out, but investors were apparently interested in investing in them. And may have raised a decent amount of cash through the process as well.

nebabyte 9y ago

either*, and I wouldn't use voat as a yardstick - it's had its own slew of fairly poor decisions and has likely not evolved out of the "run as a side project" mentality it was founded with (though idk, haven't been keeping tabs.)

zapt02 9y ago

Can't help but to feel a tiny bit of schadenfreude since they locked themselves into proprietary platforms and now are desperately trying to claw themselves out of it into the warmth of open source.

thomasz 9y ago
Their problem isn't paying for proprietary software, their problem is that they are unable to make any money.
- hueving 9y ago
  Not proprietary software, but really overpriced cloud platforms. There are so many viable businesses that burn themselves to the ground because they think they need to run everything on EC2/Azure and pay 10x what they need to.
  - thomasz 9y ago
    Cloud hosting allows a startup to scale quickly. This is very important to seize opportunities as they arise without having to wait for physical servers to be shipped into the data center. OTOH, last time I looked at their source code, it didn't seem like they were making a serious effort towards efficient data access patterns. This can get very expensive on a cloud DB service. Anyways, if monthly costs of a little bit more than $6000 are enough to sink the ship, then the whole thing isn't financially viable. Sooner or later you have to pay people to maintain the whole thing, and that is going to be a lot more expensive.