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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Slayfire122 ago
Don't outright ban YouTube. Just give an option to automatically replace YouTube links with hooktube and visa versa.
cynicaloldfart ago
I personally prefer HT, but since that's a personal opinion, having a checkbox appear when submitting a YT vid that asks "Would you rather post that as HT?" would be a good option. The person that prefers the other can still get there if they want after the post is posted. The post is created by one person, and as such, should have the decision what site they prefer.
Currently, since I don't like giving YT any clicks, when I see a post goes to YT, I copy/paste that address lnk into a new tab, edit to HT, and view that. It's my choice, so I go to the trouble of selecting that option.
Slayfire122 ago
I was thinking an individual setting in voat.co/account/manage that says "Open YouTube links in Hooktube. Then underneath it would be an "Open Hooktube links in YouTube" option.
cynicaloldfart ago
That sounds like a great idea. Leaves the choice up to each individual user and isn't forced on anyone.