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 →
10257967? ago
I never argued for this. I maintain and have always maintained that downvotes as a ranking system, and even the collapsing of comments, should remain. It is only the use of downvotes for assigning restrictions that I objected to.
I also never said this. I said the consequences of accruing too many downvotes are not in the spirit of freedom (I explicitly said that it is not censorship, that it is just at the same time not appropriately free!)
What a ridiculously sweeping statement. I never argued for this; I argued for the opposite -- that specific actions should have specific consequences and that only those who commit the crimes should do the time. If this is how thoroughly you've misunderstood me it is no wonder you have started a totally unnecessary and counter-productive witch hunt against me. Do you know how desperately I want Voat and its freedom to flourish? Enough to reply to every single one of your slanderous comments to defend myself. Enough to dedicate large hours out of every day to test bugs for the Voat port. Enough to keep track of everything that happens on Voat and ensure actions taken are still in the interests of freedom.
Fuck you for all of this. We ought to be working together to defend Voat and its freedom, but instead you've done this.