4 ms·
Voat is to Reddit, what Gab is to Twitter. That is to say, a site that prides itself on "free speech," but in reality makes itself the home of the same cesspoo
by thosakwe 8y ago
Voat is to Reddit, what Gab is to Twitter.
That is to say, a site that prides itself on "free speech," but in reality makes itself the home of the same cesspool that produces the alt-right, incels, 4chan, and whatever hairdo Richard Spencer is wearing right now.
It's sad, though. It had a lot of potential as a Reddit alternative.
- stefano 8y agoSadly, many subreddits are slowly going down that path too.
- diminoten 8y agoI'm a big fan of free speech as a philosophy, but I also am practical enough to understand a bit about how hateful culture festers, spreads, and grows when allowed to thrive online, and honestly I'm at a loss for how I'd reconcile these two concepts. What's the current state of the art for curbing the growth of hate groups while still providing a platform for honest and free discussion? We all probably have some ideas on how we'd give it a shot, but I wonder if there are one, or a few common themes.
- thosakwe 8y agoIt's still imperfect, but sentiment analysis and flagging known slurs might be a good start. You can roll-your-own, or use a third-party API (whatever the implications might be).
- std_throwaway 8y agoThe upvote/downvote-system by itself seems like a bad idea in regards of free speech. You'll end up with the largest group agreeing to each other and upvoting each other thereby silencing (and driving away) other groups. The votes themselves take almost no energy and simple puns get showered in upvotes while long and well thought-out but slightly unusual posts die in the desert. If you go with the voting system alone with moderate moderation you'll probably always end up with mediocre content that is easy to consume by a majority of your users. Depending on your users you'll get funny cat gifs or ever repeating racist jokes. The subreddits seem to help a bit since they filter users by interest first and employ strict moderation throughout but after they reach a certain threshold they, too, seem to go downhill fast. I have no solution but the effortless vote system doesn't sound like such a good idea after all these years.
- bduerst 8y agoIf you're really keen on free speech as a philosophy, read up on John Stuart Mill's contributions. His take is that free speech is paramount except when it causes harm, which is missed by many today.
- ghrifter 8y ago> whatever hairdo Richard Spencer is wearing right now Ah yes, wearing a popular European football player haircut means Im alt right!
- CedarMadness 8y agoIt's really the natural outcome of any "X Alternative" site. Anyone that gets banned from X goes to the alternative, and anyone else has no reason to go, because X still works for them. So X Alternative fills up with horrible users, and even more nobody wants to go there.