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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KingoftheMolePeople ago
Remove restrictions from Negative accts. Put in place a Spam button. Once an account has X number of Spam button reports, acct restrictions go into effect. To prevent abuse, if the restrictions are refuted("I am not spamming"), upon investigation, anyone found to be abusing the Spam button faces consequences, from restrictions themselves to a full on site ban.
blipblipbeep ago
If this becomes a thing, there should be a record of who pressed the spam button.
peace...
KingoftheMolePeople ago
a public log would be pretty cool. I think that alone would help squash abuse.
weezkitty ago
I'd honestly like to see public logs of most (report and moderation) functions.
KingoftheMolePeople ago
I would too. The more the better I think.
Public logs of up and down voating on submissions and comments would be interesting. Not sure if it would be a net gain or loss, but it would be very interesting to see done.
captainstrange ago
How can you be 'not sure'? This isn't even a debateable point. Transparency is always going to be a net gain on a site like this.
Logs of everything. Everything out in the open for everyone to see. No powers or decisions kept in the dark "to protect the community / mod privacy / decision making process" or any of that other fucking horseshit that we've heard before.
ShinyVoater ago
There's a reason real-world elections have secret ballots. Making spam reports public is far enough; at worst you have people downvoating instead of reporting, which is what tends to happen anyway.
KingoftheMolePeople ago
Because Im willing to admit Im not omniscient. Things often have unintended consequences. It may result in enough genuine users not voating at all that it ends up squashing speech.
There is also the potential overhead costs on the site itself, which I cant speak to since Im not privy to the infrastructure.
I like the idea. I think it would make brigades very obvious for one. But it might also incite revenge brigade via alts. And it wouldnt change my voating habits personally. Id love to see many things have public logs. But Im willing to admit that just because it fell out of my head it might possibly not be the best idea. Its an admission of falibility and that Im open to listen to others input.
captainstrange ago
This should be posted as a public response instead of a message, it made me reconsider. Make brigades obvious. I'd say that is smart, and something I overlooked.
KingoftheMolePeople ago
If you like you can make it a suggestion at /voatdevs. I like the idea of many public logs myself. We agree on that point. Feel free to run w the idea if you want.
captainstrange ago
Congrats you have an advocate.