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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NeedleStack ago
Definitely remove such restrictions. Unpopular opinions deserve as much say as the others.
PuttItOut ago
Agree, we need to eliminate or modernize.
The particular problem with this one is that roughly 75% of heavily down voted accounts are uncharacteristically hostile and imo are purposefully seeking this response. The other segment is the side that is hurt by these restrictions.
logos_ethos ago
Some of those hostile accounts act like community stalkers or people who use Voat to practice their 17 techniques for truth suppression or other things. They are technically not spammers, but their posts share the same lack for mutual dialog and share the same irritation as spam. I do not think such accounts should share the same unrestricted access as honest community users, and the current negative post limit addresses that. If these accounts become more active, then I can see myself and others become less interested in spending time on Voat. That is what they want.
10247580? ago
Your concerns are legitimate, but you should realize that the current system does little to actually limit these users. They are the ones with the most alts; if they reach restrictions they make another account and keep shilling.
If you care about freedom of speech and not a safe space from shills you will understand that the current system does more to hurt innocent and established users than it does to suppress shilling. Just downvote their nonsense and move on, don't let them chase you off of the website because they annoy you...
logos_ethos ago
There are markets for buying down votes for Reddit and Voat, and Voat is more expensive to buy downvoats for. It does affect their operating costs, and it does deter them to some degree. If you want an objective measurement for how well your shill protection works, just monitor their cost per downvoat after changes have been made for a while.
I value freedom of speech in the classical liberal sense. "Live and let live" and "remove those who won't." People often forget that second part. Both are necessary. If an account goes negative, then that satisfies the "remove those who won't" part. Ignoring that second part means that you are not a liberal with a viable philosophy for a sustainable community (like the modern left). Classical liberal philosophy does not translate to no consequences for community agitators.
The system that we have now is far superior to outright bans and shadow bans. I fear that if we abandon what is working for us right now, we might go down the outright ban or shadow ban road some day, or maybe something else that is worse than what we have right now. So as far as freedom of speech goes, don't let perfect be the enemy of good. We will never have perfect freedom of speech, so lets be willing to settle for good freedom of speech. For politics, those who think that they can bring about a utopia end up bringing about the most misery, suffering, and death. I am not accusing you of that. I am just pointing out that perfect is a horrible goal to shoot for, so we need to be willing to settle for the best that human nature allows for, and no more.
10248316? ago
Downvotes are more expensive for Voat because we require 100 CCP to be able to downvote in the first place, which makes it harder for shills to build up downvote capable accounts. Making it so that restrictions are only applied to proven spammers instead of anyone who winds up with negative CCP is only an improvement as I see it and does not weaken us at all.
But we are not removing restrictions altogether; we are finding a more efficient and accurate system for identifying those who deserve the restrictions.
There will never be shadow banning on Voat; Atko stated this years ago. We already do ban spammers, though. The negative restrictions are only in place to slow down their spam until Putt can get around to banning them -- this is in line with the "remove those who won't" philosophy, by the way. Again, we are not discussing removing restrictions altogether; we are trying to structure a better system.
If we take steps that are un-transparent or anti-freedom I will be the first to speak up against it.
But if we can do better, we should try. If in trying we fail. we'll revert back.
Perfect is a fine goal to shoot for; those doing the shooting just need to have the wisdom to recognize that it is impossible to reach it. What is possible is continuing to get closer when we can.
logos_ethos ago
Thank you for your helpful reply.
As @Crensch also pointed out, there are some "voices" that are not interested in having a 2 way conversation and will consume the community's time and enjoyment. Some of these are either paid for, or people who have more time on their hands than brain cells required participate in the workforce. Some of them do not spam in the technical sense. They do not copy and paste. They will give the appearance of starting a genuine discussion, but they always fail to follow through and abandon discussions by quickly moving on to the next fake discussion or run out of techniques. These people do not get banned, but they are currently limited and will become uninhibited if we make these changes. Would you now ban these people, let them post more than they do now, or is there another way of addressing this issue? Remember, Voat is still a small community, and this community can be overwhelmed if some people make the right effort. We can still end up with an artificial, bland, advertiser friendly community because some organization does not like our free speech and found a way to manufacture consent.
10248816? ago
Sounds like the Khazar technique.
Downvotes will still hide submissions and comments from sight; they just won't be responsible for restricting or banning users -- reports, or something else, will. Maybe. Maybe nothing will change; it just depends on whether or not we can come up with something better.