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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roznak ago
Not all spamming and trolling is bad. People get exposed to spamming and trolling but in the end they create an immune system to the spam. If the cost of spamming and trolling does not bring down voat or cost then it should be part of Voat.
What makes Voat interesting is that it is an unique place where you are not shielded from harmful messages. The front page should warn you "Enter at your own risk!"
Tor1 ago
Mislabeling your enemies as mere trolls is dangerous behavior.
There are people here who want Voat banished from the internet. Who will go to any lengths to stop the free speech that is commonplace here.
If it becomes easier to clog comments and downvoat certain ideas, this is a bad thing for free speech.
If there are some users that don't deserve to be restricted, lift their restrictions on a case by case basis.
The vast majority of users with negative CCP have nothing positive to add to Voat. Rather they would go back to actively trying to disrupt and disable Voat if given another chance.
roznak ago
But they do contribute in the sense that it makes Voat stronger. They contribute to the fact that Voat evolves. They do contribute to the fact that snowflakes go back to Reddit and natural selection keeps the strong people here.
How else can we learn to resist these trolls, enemies, SJW's when we have no place to train on them? Without these trolls SJW's voat would become very boring a echo chamber. These people exposes us to the evil world, but in a controlled way. Like anti-vaccines.
Voat without the trolls would be just be just like boring Reddit.
What makes Voat this interesting is that it survives anything. What makes Voat interesting is that its community accept the reality that when this site is taken down by DoS for weeks they still stay here and post. What makes Voat interesting is that we fight together against Amalek for months, years....