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Why I suddenly felt like voat is a psychological science experiment?

rchaud 6y ago
In a way, it is. It's the perfect embodiment of "careful what you wish for", which is referencing people's inability to anticipate unintended consequences. Every HN post about Patreon or Youtube banning somebody leads to lengthy treatises about free speech. Well, here's Voat. All free speech, all the time. What's that, bigots have taken over the platform and chased out all the non-bigots? Who could have seen this coming?
- sgillen 6y ago
  Well, voat was a community founded and populated by all the people banned or unwelcome by mainstream platforms. I don’t think it follows that Reddit would become as bad a voat if it was “all free speech all the time”.
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    I think the bigger issue is that somebody has to pay the bills. Very few are willing to pay to host those sorts of extremists views.
  - rchaud 6y ago
    > I don’t think it follows that Reddit would become as bad a voat if it was “all free speech all the time”. Do you remember r/uncensored_news, a sub that sprang up in the wake of the Miami Pulse nightclub shooting? Apparently its raison d'etre was to show people "the truth" because r/news moderators were not approving the numerous news posts about it fast enough. Unsurprsingly, that was considered censorship. It took all of 3 months for that sub to become filled with racist and bigoted misinformation. Reddit's admin policy is very generous. On numerous occasions, they have allowed hate speech communities to grow, right up until the inevitable calls to violence occur. At which point Reddit kills the sub and pretends it never existed.
    - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
      But the same issue applies for that sub. Because the mainstream place pushed them out, all the deplorables end up on the next best alternative.
- rnd0 6y ago
  That's a true -but incomplete- picture of what happened. I never made an account there, but from what I read on reddit they modified some of the parts of their software so that you weren't able to do anything if you didn't get upvotes or whatever, and if you got too many downvotes you were basically shadow-banned. The impression I had was that it's a more extreme version of what Reddit does. Free speech would be "ok, here's my sub on anarcho communism", but that's not what happened -because you'd be effectively shadowbanned before you had the chance to create that sub.

In a way, it is. It's the perfect embodiment of "careful what you wish for", which is referencing people's inability to anticipate unintended consequences. Every HN post about Patreon or Youtube banning somebody leads to lengthy treatises about free speech. Well, here's Voat. All free speech, all the time. What's that, bigots have taken over the platform and chased out all the non-bigots? Who could have seen this coming?

sgillen 6y ago
Well, voat was a community founded and populated by all the people banned or unwelcome by mainstream platforms. I don’t think it follows that Reddit would become as bad a voat if it was “all free speech all the time”.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  I think the bigger issue is that somebody has to pay the bills. Very few are willing to pay to host those sorts of extremists views.
- rchaud 6y ago
  > I don’t think it follows that Reddit would become as bad a voat if it was “all free speech all the time”. Do you remember r/uncensored_news, a sub that sprang up in the wake of the Miami Pulse nightclub shooting? Apparently its raison d'etre was to show people "the truth" because r/news moderators were not approving the numerous news posts about it fast enough. Unsurprsingly, that was considered censorship. It took all of 3 months for that sub to become filled with racist and bigoted misinformation. Reddit's admin policy is very generous. On numerous occasions, they have allowed hate speech communities to grow, right up until the inevitable calls to violence occur. At which point Reddit kills the sub and pretends it never existed.
  - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    But the same issue applies for that sub. Because the mainstream place pushed them out, all the deplorables end up on the next best alternative.
rnd0 6y ago
That's a true -but incomplete- picture of what happened. I never made an account there, but from what I read on reddit they modified some of the parts of their software so that you weren't able to do anything if you didn't get upvotes or whatever, and if you got too many downvotes you were basically shadow-banned. The impression I had was that it's a more extreme version of what Reddit does. Free speech would be "ok, here's my sub on anarcho communism", but that's not what happened -because you'd be effectively shadowbanned before you had the chance to create that sub.