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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10248844? ago
I understand that, but the entire point of this thread is instituting a change if a better system can be devised. What is wrong with restricting accounts solely based on actual spam instead of how unpopular they are? I've heard a number of people rambling about shills and their lies, but I frankly don't see how it is our perogative to censor liars. Let us downvote them to hide their lies from sight, but only ban them if they are actually spamming the website. Maybe we need to put out a more stringent definition of spam, but it seems to me that there are ways of only punishing the guilty -- or at the very least punishing fewer innocents.
TimberWolfAlpha ago
I am skeptical of the described changes being for the better. It seems like opening the doors to a lot of trouble, noise and grief. I hope at the very least we can get personal visibility threshhold settings if the sandbags come down. If we're going to be dealing with more assholes, I'd atleast like the option of not having to smell their shit.
10251603? ago
As fair a desire as any. There is certainly a great deal to discuss before any changes are made.