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
view the rest of the comments →
chmod ago
Justin, no, don't do it.
We're here for free speech. If you limit it, even for spam, you're going down the wrong road. Free speech isn't for popular speech, it's to protect unpopular speech!
Now, if you want to limit spam then do so. Just give the mods a spam button, then watch us become Reddit.
We're pretty good at policing this site ourselves.
PuttItOut ago
How is removing restrictions limiting free speech, shouldn't the inverse hold truer?
chmod ago
You wrote this:
The main areas of concern:
Commenting restrictions on negative CCP accounts that aren't spamming their comments.
If I'm reading this wrong then I apologize. I actually think I am wrong.
You need help. I've volunteered, as have many others. Don't let this place die. We need ya buddy.
PuttItOut ago
We are in the beginning stages of building something great here. I just want to make sure we question ourselves and don't fall victim to a bias we don't see. I am constantly on guard to make sure we don't become that which we despise.
I want freedom of expression here at Voat and I think we can do better. How much better is yet to be seen.
I will state again that if we can't improve our system we will return to this one.