I have made a decision to alter and/or remove various restrictions on Voat. I’ve thought a lot about this and it’s something both @Atko and I believe needs to be reevaluated.
Voat has always had a problem with spam. @Amalek would spam posts and hijack the new queue making it unusable. MH101 and then later @SaneGoatiSwear would hijack comment pages making them unusable. The rules Voat uses were put in place in to combat this behavior. They are old rules, mostly remaining unchanged from the initial versions of this site. Most, if not all, of the rules were in direct response to spam attacks. It was never Voat’s intention to limit non-spam accounts, but this is what has happened as an indirect result of these rules.
Voat will not keep in place a system that permanently limits a segment of users from debating and conversing. This isn’t Free Speech as I see it or as I want it.
Voat will shortly be going live with a new code base, and I want to have a new system designed and ready for when this happens, so I am posting this announcement to get feedback from the community.
The main areas of concern:
- Commenting restrictions on negative CCP accounts that aren't spamming their comments
- Limiting any account that spam comments
TL;DR
We need to allow unpopular opinions while preventing comment spam.
How do we do it?
All options are on the table
https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806
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Goathole ago
With that in mind let's evaluate what "free speech" is, what it consists of and why it is important. Freedom of speech is needed to challenge popular and unpopular ideas alike. It is meant for a free people to acknowledge and address the behavior or thoughts of others. It is paramount that it remains unrestrained.
That said, here at voat people do not downvoat without cause. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm saying there isn't usually a coordinated mass effort to silence people. There are accounts that are downvoated into oblivion because they are purposely trying to achieve that.
I'll use my own account for an example. I hate cops. I mean I FUCKING HATE COPS! and say so regularly which IS an unpopular opinion here at voat. I don't ever, ever restrain myself and I do so fully aware of the "consequence". A quick look at my most downvoated posts shows this...I'm sorry, my cop hate has seemed to have been dwarfed by my veteran hate. So a -16 was the best they could do. So what are those people doing that have negative CCP? Something awful. They do not belong here. We all have freedom of association and we obviously don't want to associate with them.
Now, if they truly wish to interact and the CCP restricted account is a problem then they can make a new one. It's not a problem.
Spam has nothing to do with freedom of speech. They aren't speaking for or against an action, they are selling something. That's capitalism not freedom of speech. BAN THEM. BAN THEM OFTEN AND QUICKLY.