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.
Jixijenga ago
As long as there's a way to recind the button press or that yes/no "are you sure" thing I'm all for this one. My phone goes full retard at least three times a day so sometimes buttons get pressed and yeah, it's annoying.
I have no way of knowing what I'm doing, a user-viewable log of what spam reports they sent would also be helpful. Maybe include a way to tack a small text message to it? Being able to say, "haha I'm retarded ignore this please," would be helpful for everyone.